勝美2

The Friday Five. Thank you!

1. When was the last time you went to a state or county fair?

Oktoberfest.

Then there is Summerfest, The World's Largest Music Festival, and all the ethnic festivals. Fireworks every weekend. Mostly cancelled due to coronavirus.

My favorites are:

Asian Moon Festival. My nieces and I plait our hair in twintail braids and wear our yukata...

...and go for a helicopter ride. Last year there just happened to be a vintage racing car meet at the racetrack. The girls did not inherit the family love of sports cars.

The Highland Games. Wear my clan kilt (yes, there are registered Japanese tartans in Scotland including Hello Kitty which is woven of cashmere and over $1000 / yard), beat the living snot out of a warrior with a "safety" claymore (heavy two-handed sword ) as long as you get the jump on him...

Sic 'em, girlfriend!

...and listen to pipe and drum corps competition. Drink whisky. Eat haggis. Which is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

FUN FACT: I used to play bagpipes.

GermanFest. My nieces and I are pretty fräuleins in our dirndls dancing the polka. And dachshund races! Gemütlichkeit!

Bastille Days. Ooh la la. French champagne under the Eiffel Tower. And the Storm The Bastille Race.

Festa Italiana. My friend Spewgie is Italian so she is in her element and we just sort of follow her around the fairgrounds. Sfogliatella? Sure, why not. Cannoli? Mmm hmm. Limoncello torte? You betcha.

Wedding cake?

If I ever get married, it's gonna be an Italian wedding with a great big cake with tons of frosting. And I will wear my grandmother's and mother's shiromuku (Shinto wedding kimono).

And my grandmother's and mother's wedding dagger. Yes, you read that right. Dagger. Every bride carries one. Can't fight two thousand years of tradition.

Best fireworks of the ethnic festivals. And a religious procession and special Tridentine Mass in Latin on Sunday morning.

Feast With The Beasts AKA Zoo À La Carte. About four dozen restaurants converge upon the zoo with very special limited menus. With live music. And, of course the animals, the zoomobile, the miniature train and the merry-go-round.

My favorite item is Wisconsin-style kakigori. Shaved ice with the syrup of your choice (I prefer matcha tea) with azuki (sweet bean paste) and umeboshi (pickled plum) over frozen custard.

One time The Food Of The Year was alligator-on-a-stick. Tastes like chicken. And that food tent was next to the reptile house!

Spooky.

I wanted to go to Hamburger Daze in Seymour (Birthplace Of The Hamburger) and my first Cheese Festival in New Glarus ("Little Switzerland", Glarus is a Swiss canton) but it looks like those may be cancelled, too.

The trooping of the cows.

Wisconsin. Come and smell our dairy air.

FUN FACT: The dairy cow is my favorite animal.

The autumn pow wow, Polish Fest, Irish Fest, Fiesta Mexicana... and then there is the big parish festival.

All summer long.

2. Did you try your hand at the midway games?

Specialize in the basketball free throw and throwing a football through a swinging tire. My friend Spewgie shoots guns at targets. Her daughter, Spewgie Jr, and my nieces play the children's games. It's lots of fun.

Then there was the time at Summerfest when there was a small AstroTurf "island" with a flag in the harbor. The idea was to hit a golf ball (a "floater" — not a real golf ball which would sink — so a guy in a boat could scoop up the missed shots with a fishing net) into the hole.

As a gag gift, I had given floaters to my mother for her birthday. I filled in for one of the Grasshoppers in her ladies' golfing group at the country club and two of them in our foursome PUTTED ACROSS THE FOOTBRIDGE instead of hitting it over the water hazard.

Point being that I'd practiced with my pitching wedge hitting floaters. They sort of reminded me of Cayman golf balls. Grand Cayman island is so small there aren't any full-sized golf courses. They're about half-size So Cayman golf balls are "dead". Only travel half the distance of a normal ball. Personally, I'd rather play a regular nine holes twice rather than eighteen small ones but that's just me.

I think it was one dollar and you were only permitted one chance. I didn't have much choice; there was only one left-handed club and it was a three wood. Teed up my ball and hauled off and spanked that thing as high as I could. It hit the island and stuck. It did not go in the hole.

Didn't win the SUV but I did get a twenty dollar gift certificate to some golf pro shop for being one of two people to stick the green. Which is the next best thing to worthless 'cause what costs under twenty bucks? I think I bought a half-dozen Titleists and a package of biodegradable tees.

3. Which of the rides were your favorite, either now or as a kid?

Tilt-A-Whirl. Spewgie likes the Ferris wheel. The ladies prefer the dragon roller coaster. We all avoid The Himalaya and The Octopus.

4. Did you ever enter anything into the exhibits? How did you do?

Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet, our unofficial state drink. A traditional Wisconsin supper club drink.

I am a dry martini person. So. I really had to think this through. My Old Fashioned secret was Zojirushi-style ice instead of crushed "American" ice, gomme syrup for silkiness, a hint of maraschino cherry liqueur, sparkling water rather than Sprite or 7-Up and don't muddle the orange rind which imparts an unpleasant bitterness. And served in an old fashioned glass, not a canning jar. Two jumbo pimento-stuffed olives on a bamboo skewer.

Won the blue ribbon.

I can hardly wait until I am more confident in my canning and baking to enter the cherry pie or mincemeat pie competition.

Better yet, apple pie. As American as Pink Lady パイ.

5. What is your best memory that you take from a fair?

💗 Doki doki.

My favorite band. The opening act to the fair.

Did you see me? I am the pretty girl dancing and singing along.

And visions of cream puffs and food-on-a-stick danced in my head.