Fair’s midway can’t compete with newborn piglets
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Julie Muhlstein Herald Columnist |
It was one of those red-hot ideas: Go to the fair. Watch showoffs ring a bell with swings of a hammer. Come away with an amusing column about human nature.
Great. Except it was a lousy idea.
Maybe I picked the wrong day. Maybe it was too warm for much action at the show-of-strength game called High Striker. Maybe my silly assumptions were gleaned from watching Popeye and Brutus.
I went to the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe Wednesday hoping to see tough guys in tank tops get theirs.
In my mind, they would heft the hammer to dazzle some petite companion, then fail to win her a tacky stuffed bunny. In my scenario, the bell would ring the first time a girlfriend, or a proverbial 90-pound-weakling of a kid, took a swing.
| If you go
The Evergreen State Fair in Monroe runs through Labor Day. Hours are 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. today and Sunday, and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday.
Admission is $7 for adults 16-61; $5 for seniors 62 and older; $4 for youths 6-15; and free for children 5 and under. Parking is $5. Today is Grange Day. Sunday is Demolition Derby Day. Monday, Last-Chance Day, it’s half-price admission for everyone.
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This never happened, of course. As long as I watched, big men made that bell ring, including carny Dean McArter, who had time to play his three-swings-for-three-bucks game on a steamy afternoon.
"Guys come here to impress their girls," he said. "They hit it about 40 percent of the time."
Asked if he could set it to be harder on burly players, McArter said that’s possible only with an electronic High Striker. "This one," he said, pointing beneath the target, "just has a spring here and a spring there." The splintered wood block showed evidence of beatings from fairs up and down the West Coast.
Butler Amusements, the Oregon company operating the rides, also has a Kiddie High Striker, whish is more fun to watch. No matter how they do, children leave with cool prizes — inflatable neon-colored hammers and swords to junk up their rooms.
"It’s unbelievable how really little kids know exactly what this is and what to do. They must see it on cartoons," said Andy Bogue, who runs the fair’s games.
Forget impressing girls here. At the Kiddie High Striker, 9-year-old Michelle Stone of Lynnwood looked mighty impressive herself. She hammered the bell two out of three times, snagging a huge blow-up cell phone.
Honestly, I didn’t learn much about human nature. And it didn’t take me long to tire of the midway.
This is less a column than a meander, which is fitting. Meander is what you do at a fair, meander and eat.
I meandered to the only ride I like, the Ferris wheel. From 104 feet in the air, I felt guilty without my kids. I wondered if the prison inmates could see the carnival from inside the penitentiary walls, and also how that woman who jumped off the I-5 bridge in Seattle was doing.
Quick, I thought, my mood is sinking faster than my Ferris wheel gondola — get me off this ride.
Back on the ground, it didn’t take much to cheer me. "Grange rocks!" said a sign created by children of the East Hill Jr. Grange of Kent. Other kids had made a neato papier mache and pipe cleaner critter for a display on "The Organic Control of Root Weevils."
Now I was getting somewhere, closer to the spirit of the fair.
At the open-class baking exhibit, it looked as though Irene Sprague of Everett and Myrl Du Puis of Snohomish were competitors fiercer than any you’d see at any High Striker.
Judging from the ribbons, Sprague can’t be beat when it comes to tiered wedding cakes, scones, biscuits, gingerbread, pumpkin bread, peanut butter fudge and frosted shortbread. Du Puis is a cookie champ, taking top prizes for chocolate chips, spritz and classic brownies.
I thought of swinging back by the hammer game, but no. Hadn’t I braved traffic? Didn’t I deserve a peek at my favorite fair attraction?
I found it in the swine barn, along with the best of human nature in a crowd gathered around hay bales protecting Hershey the sow. The pig, from Blue Ribbon Farm in Stanwood, had given birth to a dozen pink babies two days before. The piglets’ eyes were still closed; they dozed, oblivious to their admirers.
Alexis Evans, 3, of Monroe, stood on tiptoes and leaned over the hay to see.
"Hi, baby piggies," she said.
When I heard that, I could leave having truly been to the fair.
Oh, and I have to tell you — I tried hitting that hammer thing, the one at the big boys’ High Striker. The gauge is marked with inane sayings. At the bottom it says "Dead Head." Toward the top it’s "Top Dog" and "He Man."
I slammed that hammer as hard as I could. It must not be working right, because it only registered about a quarter of the way up, not even that.
Know what it said? "All In."
No argument here. I am all in, and all faired out.
Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.
The Evergreen State Fair in Monroe runs through Labor Day. Hours are 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. today and Sunday, and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday.
Admission is $7 for adults 16-61; $5 for seniors 62 and older; $4 for youths 6-15; and free for children 5 and under. Parking is $5.
Today is Grange Day. Sunday is Demolition Derby Day. Monday, Last-Chance Day, it’s half-price admission for everyone.
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