Yesterday was the final day of the 2010 Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, and most of the food vendors -- ready to pack up and get the hell out of there -- were offering half-price specials on a lot of the signature culinary treats one associates with a fair: corn dogs, elephant ears, orangeade, cotton candy and my new fair favorite -- chocolate-dipped cheesecake on a stick.
The Fairgrounds had its own distinctive aroma: deep-fryer grease, burnt sugar, animal shit, cheap perfume, human sweat and, the closer you wandered toward the Swine Pavilion, eau de porc. It's the kind of intoxicating fragrance that can lure one into some potentially unwise culinary decisions, such as the frighteningly phallic corn dog -- the jumbo version pictured here.
My politically liberal friend Carol Ann was so discombobulated when the aggressive man at the Republic Party booth shoved a bright red "Fire Pelosi" sticker under her nose that she needed to calm her nerves with an orangeade: "I don't suppose," she asked the kid behind the trailer window, "you have a little vodka you could toss in there?"
He didn't -- at least not for her. "Did you see the look the man with those stickers gave me when I told him that I was a Democrat?" Carol Ann ranted. "He looked at me like I was a dirty dog."
She could have said dirty
hog, but when we toured the Swine Pavilion, we noted that -- in spite of the pungent scent of big fat pigs in the vast brick building -- most of the pigs looked as clean and well-groomed as beauty pageant contestants. There was a clown in the building -- we're still not sure why -- who flirted with Carol Ann. That improved her mood dramatically enough that she decided she wanted to taste either a Danger Dog or a Sassy Burger. She changed her mind, though, and ordered neither.
"It's too hot to eat anything," she said finally.
That didn't stop me. You haven't lived until you've had a Danger Dog with a cotton-candy chaser.