Driving home in abnormally dense traffic yesterday, a thought occurred to me: this traffic is the work of the devil himself. No other force could connive such a fist-clenching, lung-clogging, ear-drumming inconvenience. No other force except, of course, The Minnesota State Fair.

It has been my privilege and my crucible to have lived within walking distance of the fairgrounds my whole life. As a kid, that meant I had unparalleled access to all the secret entrances: holes in the fence, unattended gates, stow-away-able horse trailers. Plus it was profitable: one year, in three hours of selling half-chilled store-bought soda I made $90. And that was after repaying my dad’s initial investment plus interest ($18 + $0.47).

Still, despite its obvious financial advantages (not to mention being able to see the fireworks from the top floor of my house), living near the fair has several unforgettable pitfalls. When I say unforgettable I mean that I forget about them every single year.

• Many hundreds of thousands of visitors come to see this amalgam of large overfed animals, large overfed people and corn-kernel-art exhibits. That’s fine, regardless of what it may say about the Minnesotan culture that has made me who I am. But the stroller toting, muscle-T-shirt wearing, sunburn-prone hordes are not, as a rule, friends of the environment.

  They drive. And they obstruct the arterial streets I use to get home from work like a deep-fried Snickers bar obstructs a colon.

• Fireworks, loud and amusing though they were when I was 10, are just loud now. The first night; fine, whatever. Second night; OK, heh…heh. Third night: I will throw a rock you?

  And the fireworks last for twelve nights. Like some unholy Chanukah miracle that just won’t quit.

• Helicopters. For some reason the local news media sees fit to report on this annual gathering as if it has never happened before. They are like overzealous parents, shooting yet another video of their child’s birthday, even though he’s now reaching middle age. Helicopters dizzy themselves in the skies above my home every night for the duration of the fair, keeping me in a constant reflexive paranoia. All so the 10-o’clock news can play the exact same footage they played last year: lights, rides, people, cars.

  They might as well just play the last year’s tape, and save some money on the chopper by setting up a large speaker system to broadcast helicopter noises into the night.

I think every Minnesotan could easily assemble a list of annoying things about the state fair. I know few people who take unmitigated pleasure in going there. Even people who enjoy it will recognize how tiring it can be.

And yet it is as irremovable a part of our lives as summer itself. Without the fair, August would never end, children would never go back to school, and Minnesota would not be the Midwest. We’d have to pick up and move to the East Coast, squeezing in somewhere between New Jersey and New York.

It’s beyond my comprehension, but when the end of August comes around I get this primeval longing to meander down the sticky streets of the Midway on a warm night, with a bucket of Sweet Martha’s cookies nestled in my arms. I yearn to sit outside the fairground gates on a day of blazing sun and watch the jumble of people roll by. My hands splayed out behind me in the dry grass, face to the sun, and hours to go before I sleep.

The fair makes me a kid again. It’s one of the few places where the late 80s and early 90s of my youth are preserved. It’s a time warp; there’s still a ride at the fair called “Magnum P.I.” Rides like this aren’t just retro throwbacks. They were built 20 years ago (or more), and when you ride one, you can feel it.

And it’s not just my history the fair preserves; there are buildings there that have gone virtually unchanged for decades. The Space Tower (that glorified elevator I always wanted, but never got, to ride when I was a kid) was built in 1901. For people who grew up going to the fair in the post-war era, going back now must be like an intra-venous shot of nostalgia. Maybe it’s because the place only comes alive once a year for a week-and-a-half. Maybe it just hibernates the rest of the year, allowing things to change only ever so slowly.

But it does change. The state fair has a Web site (although that too looks like it’s trapped in history with its 10-colored navigation menu). Nearly everything there is now wheelchair accessible. And the quaint practice of selling soda on the sidewalk to fair-goers or comers is not what it used to be; two kids were fined last year for doing it without a permit (the fines were later dropped).

And still, though it changes and does not change, people line up to spend one of the last few days of summer at the fair. On one of those golden afternoons late in the week, just days before all the kids start going back to school, you can sit on a bench in front of the Grandstand and watch the season slip away. One pronto-pup at a time.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2004 at 11:45 am and is filed under Minnesota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.