Caricatures and Galaxy Girl

I was done with the fair on Friday. I really was. I’d eaten my fill of food, packed on enough calories to last me for the next week, and walked along the Midway, politely telling the barkers that I couldn’t play their games on account of a deal I had going down with some Nigerian prince. I’d heard the roar of the tractor pulls and the stock car racing on Thursday and had thought about going to see the rock tribute bands on Friday but ultimately decided against it. As an aside, listening to tribute bands is a lot like drinking diet soda. It’s alright, but you know you’re not getting the real thing and it leaves a funny taste in your mouth afterwards. It’s different if the band isn’t around anymore, like the Beatles or the Doors or more or less Led Zepplin, but the tribute bands were covering AC/DC and Aerosmith, two bands that are technically still rocking.

So I had determined that Saturday would be pretty low-key. Nothing fancy at all, and then I remembered the Caricatures. A woman named Kira was doing caricatures for free as part of the fair, and when I saw her on Friday, she had a pretty long line of people. It made me think of how some people wait in line for video game systems and Black Friday shopping deals, and I resolved to come back sometime later when the people who had wanted their caricatures had gotten them and Kira would be a bit less swamped. So I arrived on Saturday afternoon. Surely there would be less of a line on the weekend, when most parents aren’t working and have time to go to something like this? If you can see the flaw in that statement you’re smarter than I was.

Of COURSE the line was still long. It was as long as it was on Friday, if not longer. Still, I was here and I wasn’t going to wait until Sunday, when I more than likely wouldn’t be around Cresco anyway. So I got in line and waited. And waited. And waited.  It was a good half-hour wait, and during that time I realized how many people there are in the world who have t-shirts with slogans that indicate they are from the shallow end of the gene pool. “I can’t understand you unless I have a beer in my hand” was one. “I love MILFs (Mother I’d Like to F***)” being another. I should also point out that the men who wore these t-shirts probably had nicknames like “Terror of the Smorgasbord” at the local restaurants. Somewhere during the wait I started to think that eugenics might not be such a bad thing after all, but this was forgotten as well in favor of watching the artist at work.

If you ever see a caricature artist at work, do take the time to look at what they’re drawing. Kira was remarkably fast, and very observant about a person’s features. She’d obviously had a bit of experience with this kind of thing, and when she was done she’d show the person their caricature, and everyone got a good laugh at how they looked. I didn’t see a single person upset at their caricature, which rekindled my faith in the human race. So Mister “I Love MILFs” is guilty of having less class than a school in July and being more delusional than Kim Jong-Il on LSD, but he could laugh at himself and his foibles. That counts for a lot.

As for my caricature, I learned two things. The first is that you should always, always shave before having your caricature drawn. The second is that I apparently squint. A lot. I am just Squinty McSquintface here. Not in the inscrutable Asian-looking way, either—it’s like my cheeks are touching my eyebrows. So yeah.

Afterwards, I walked toward the pavilion where a local band was playing cover songs. This may sound hypocritical since I mentioned that I’m not a fan of tribute bands, but I liked these guys. They were unpolished, sure, but darn it they were good. They covered a lot of 90s songs, along with a smattering of 70s and 80s songs. They didn’t favor any one musician, and they obviously had fun doing it. It didn’t hurt that their lead singer selected the songs that worked well with his voice, and everyone knew what they were doing. There were one or two missteps, but they recovered quickly. I even whipped out my lighter and held it up. I’m pretty sure no one else had any idea what I was doing, but the band got it.

Finally, I was about to go home until I saw a very tall ladder with a pole on top of it, and a sign saying that Galaxy Girl was going to do some death-defying stunts over 100 feet in the air. Could there be a better way to end my day at the fair? Probably, but it would have involved a bikini model and a bucket of warm chocolate chip cookies. So I waited as the bleachers filled up and people drifted toward the stunt apparatus, which also included a motorcycle attached to a fulcrum, on a mini track suspended about 30 feet off the ground. This was going to be interesting.

The speakers blared out a mix of very hard rock and remixed theme songs. The one that really caught my attention was the techno James Bond theme. Perfect background music while a daredevil performs. Then, out came Galaxy Girl in a white jumpsuit, kind of like Evel Knievel. People not up on their pop culture might not know who he is, so I’ll just say he’s a stunt man who makes the cast of “Jackass” seem safety conscious. Anyway, Galaxy Girl climbed up the ladder, up to where the ladder became a steel pole, and unhooked a trapeze bar that was swinging there. She hung on it, first by two legs then by one leg and then held herself on the trapeze by her hands. Then she climbed up the pole, which had to have been sturdier than it looked, because that thing swayed while she climbed it. It swayed a lot, and I freely admit if I were in her place I’d hold on for my life at that point and wait until the pole settled the frick down. Galaxy Girl didn’t slow down, though. She climbed to the top, stood on a ring that was attached to the pole unaided, and then did a handstand on the pole. To be honest, it wasn’t all that impressive. I understood the risks involved, and I would personally not want to fall 100 feet. But just standing up there and doing  a handstand seemed kind of anticlimactic.

The motorcycle-fulcrum was a lot more impressive, though. The act consisted of Galaxy Girl’s partner, Jake Rocket, driving around the mini track on his motorcycle while Galaxy Girl, who had shed her jumpsuit to reveal a more revealing outfit, swung around on the trapeze, using the centrifugal force to showcase some spectacular trapeze work. Then she hung by her neck and spun, using only her neck to support her. She called it the “helicopter,” which I found both descriptive and impressive. If I would have to do that, they would have to change the name to “twisting corpse.” Then she swung from her toes. Technically, she swung from her metatarsi, but I don’t think anyone in the audience was in the mood to split hairs. Then she performed some trapeze maneuvers while Jake Rocket sped up his motorcycle, leapt the track, and spun head-over-foot, or handlebar over taillight, in mid-air. It was a great way to finish the act.

Afterwards, both Galaxy Girl and Jake Rocket stuck around to ask questions, although Galaxy Girl was undoubtedly the star of the show. I went over to Jake and asked him a few questions, but I was most interested in why he did what he did. Let’s face it, with almost any other job you have a good sense of why people do what they do. It’s a mix of hard work, passion and plain luck. Daredevils, though, they put their well-being on the line time after time, and only for the amusement of the crowd. Obviously, they have to enjoy it, but how on earth do they get into this?

Jake gave me the answer. “It’s all I know how to do,” he said.

The extended version of the answer is that he’s been working with and riding motorcycles since he was a kid, and he just kept going from there. He’s ridden inside those steel spheres with other motorcyclists, done some jumps, and finally he’s here. He actually designed the motorcycle-fulcrum device himself.

Galaxy Girl gave the same answer. She’s done something similar to this since she was six, and she married into a family of daredevils. Both Galaxy Girl and Jake Rocket said they enjoyed what they do, but I caught a bit of wistfulness in their voices, as though they didn’t quite have a choice in the matter. It’s understandable—you can’t really do death-defying stunts and then say that the skills you learned somehow transfer to accounting. But it seemed that both Galaxy Girl and Jake had somehow been destined to do this. It also seemed that being a daredevil stuntperson is one of the last family businesses in America, and that the old joke about children of circus performers running away to be accountants is probably not that far-fetched. I walked away from the show with Galaxy Girl still signing autographs and posing with girls who looked up to her as a role model and guys who didn’t disguise the fact they thought she was really hot. For some reason, I felt really free, like I could go anywhere in life. All I had to do was leave.

Come to the Fair, Come to the Fair

For the next few days you can feel something different about Cresco. A certain energy, where kids are more hyperactive than normal and adults go “meh, again?” That’s right, until Saturday the Mighty Howard County Fair is back in town.

County fairs are interesting things. They’re much less of a spectacle and have less statewide importance than a state fair, but in their own way they’re arguably more important. Until the fair ends, visitors from all over the county converge on Cresco, and the normally calm town bustles a bit. It’s one of the few times I can honestly say I have trouble finding a parking spot in Cresco.

Before I go on, I should say that my experience with fairs has been kind of mixed. When I was growing up we had the Expo, which turned out to be the shorthand way to say “Oscoda County Fair and Great Lakes Forestry Expo.” At least that’s what I thought it was, until I Googled “Oscoda County Fair and Great Lakes Forestry Expo at the end of the last sentence. Now, it seems that the Oscoda County Fair and the Great Lakes Forestry Expo may be conjoined into one event some years, that they may be separate events other years, and that the Expo may be held at the Oscoda County Park, while the Oscoda County Fair is held at the Oscoda County Fairgrounds, about five miles away or so. I can think of all kinds of reasons for the division, but this has gotten a lot more complicated than I ever dreamed it would be. For now, I’m lumping my memories together as “The Expo.”

The Expo had everything that could hold a kid’s attention. You had huge vehicles the DNR and Forest Service used to fight forest fires, vehicles that by all rights belonged in a G.I. Joe cartoon. You had displays where people would give you stuff for free, cool stuff like lollipops, keychains and ball-point pens. When you’re a kid, it doesn’t take much to excite you. There were all sorts of booths where people sold arts and crafts, and I remember my brother Andy and I being drawn on one particular occasion to a wall where there were—get this—magnets painted to look like Masters of the Universe action figures and characters from Peanuts! This put the ball-point pens to shame. Andy and I begged Mom and Dad to let us buy one, and they eventually did. Andy got a He-Man magnet that showed He-Man striking a heroic pose with his shield and battle axe. I bought Snoopy holding his supper dish in his mouth. Looking back, I have a sneaking suspicion that may have been a character defining moment for both of us.

Regardless, the Expo was a kaleidoscopic blur of events, even later in life when the veneer had finally worn off, along with a lot of the paint and maybe one or two boards. I remember seeing a classmate of Andy’s being one of the main events, which was her basically singing Country-Western using a karaoke track without the benefit of a karaoke screen, which sounds mean but it’s not like you can just round up a band on short notice. Mostly I remember adults wandering around with the “Meh” attitude before anyone came up with “meh’ as a concept. Back in those days you’d usually call it “terminally bored and sick of seeing the same thing for the past ten years but you’re in a rut and it’s something to do and somewhere around the eighth year you just got the feeling you were expected to go there or else you’d be seen as a hermit and antisocial and very likely a communist so I’m here ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?” There were still kids there, and they were still happy. There were also teenagers, mostly just excited that something was going on in the area.

Personally, I’m still in the mindset that the fair can be fun, even if you’re not a teenager. At the very least, it’s interesting. This is why I bravely went to the Mighty Howard County Fair not once, but twice in order to experience it fully in order to write about it. It was a sacrifice, but nothing’s too good for the blog.

First things first—the name. I don’t know where northeast Iowa gets this “mouse that roared” quality from, but I like it. It’s the same kind of verve that made someone in Iowa open up a coffee shop without a Starbucks logo. It’s the kind of spirit that made Leuthold sell trendy, fashionable clothes. Something about this region just makes people say “I can do anything that you can do in a big city and just as well albeit a bit smaller.” It’s why the Koreanna restaurant in Decorah serves sushi and expects it to sell. For that matter, it’s why people buy sushi from Koreanna. 

When you’re a kid, the best thing about a County fair is all the rides. You want to go on every ride at least twice, although you eventually settle for going on one ride and watching the other rides at least twice. This keeps you looking forward to next year when your mom and dad may let you go on another ride. Once you’re an adult, you can go on as many rides as you like. Of course, by then you’ve seen the endless news reports that the local news likes to broadcast during the summer about how fair rides are as unsafe as getting on a plane with a pilot named Alfred Qaida. Even if you’ve never seen one of these reports, which I am convinced the news broadcasts just to screw with its viewers during the summer, you may still become intensely aware that you are placing your well-being in the hands of someone who may or may not have a high school diploma or GED equivalent. I don’t want to discriminate against high-school dropouts, but I remember the kids in high school who ended up dropping out, and I wouldn’t trust them with my socks, much less my life.

So what’s left for the adults? The food! When you become an adult, eating fair food is as big an adventure with going on the fair rides. It’s got a similar chance of killing you, but the reward is fried heaven. The Howard County Fair doesn’t have a whole lot of food on a stick, but like any good Midwest fair it has frying down to a science, not to mention decent brats. I’m personally fond of the smoked giant turkey drumsticks and the ribbon cut potato chips, but just as much I like buying from the local organizations that sell the food. When you have the choice between spending your money in front of a brightly lit trailer that offers everything your little heart, throat and stomach could desire or a simple tent with four or five volunteers frying up brats and meat and selling it on behalf of the 4-H club or the Methodist church, I personally like to see what the locals have to offer. I’ll admit to being emotionally manipulated, but I think the volunteer work makes the food taste better. This did not stop me from getting some mozzarella sticks at one of the brightly-lit trailers, though. Mozzarella sticks can overcome a whole bunch of faults.

On a whim, I decided to strike up a conversation with one of the vendors—the one who supplied me with the Mozzarella sticks. I learned two things. One, it’s hard to keep a vending trailer looking new. This trailer had a few years of use on it, and it showed more inside than outside. Second, the guy running the trailer owned a restaurant in Missouri. He does this because he gets to see the Midwest, although he included Texas in his definition of “Midwest,” and because he gets a little stir crazy when he’s confined to his restaurant for most of the year. The fairs are kind of a godsend to him. It was kind of interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes.

More to come…