Observations at the Missouri State Fair

by Denny Banister

Observation 1: Food concessionaires at the Missouri State Fair wear latex gloves to prevent food contamination. I stopped at a kiosk and bought some popcorn. The vendor filled my popcorn box with his protective-gloved hands and proceeded to wind cotton candy with – you guessed it – his hands in the same protective gloves. Apparently the gloves are to protect the vendors.

Observation 2: I retired from the Naval Reserve last week. My retirement party was at a microbrewery where the waitress asked for my I.D. to verify I was of legal drinking age. Six days later I celebrated my 60th birthday at the Missouri State Fair and registered for free tram rides around the fairgrounds available to senior citizens. They did not card me at the State Fair Senior Citizens Lounge. I reached the obvious conclusion. The older volunteers working at the Senior Citizens Lounge at the Missouri State Fair don’t have nearly as good of eyesight as the younger people working at the microbrewery and couldn’t see how remarkably young I look for my age.

Observation 3: The latest toys for the younger set sold at the Missouri State Fair this year include a battery-operated bubble-blowing pistol. Instead of having to go to all the trouble to blow bubbles the old fashioned way, kids today can pump hundreds of identical bubbles without so much as taking a deep breath. Funny thing, though – I never did hear any of the kids yell, “OOOh, look at that one!” and then try to blow an even better one.

Observation 4: Another new toy at the Missouri State Fair is the potato gun. Kids armed with these plastic potato pistols push the tip of the gun barrel into a raw potato and then shoot little potato bullets at each other. It may be the best thing to happen to potato farmers since Mr. Potato Head first hit the market. In the early days of Mr. Potato Head before the manufacturer included a plastic potato with the toy, kids stuck the plastic eyes, ears and other plastic facial parts into a real potato – every potato face created was different because every potato was shaped differently. Potato farmers don’t care how you use potatoes, of course. You can bake them, fry them, mash them, make faces out of them or shoot little potato bullets with them. It all increases demand for their crop.

Observation 5: The Republican Party tent and the Democratic Party tent at the Missouri State Fair are immediately adjacent to the entrance of the Budweiser tent. How come? Funny thing is, the Democratic tent is on the right side of the Budweiser tent, while the Republican tent is on the left side of the Budweiser tent. I am an independent, not too far to the left or too far to the right. So I entered the tent in the middle.

Observation 6: The only health-food concessionaire at the Missouri State Fair, serving natural and organic food, went out of business. It was replaced by a concessionaire selling corndogs who, along with all the other corndog concessionaires at the Missouri State Fair, is doing a very brisk business.

(Denny Banister, of Jefferson City, Mo., is the assistant director of public affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.)