From Harrington to New York and Home Again

On Monday, I went back to the State Fair, this time on a solo mission. And I did the two things that I always do when I go to the State Fair: I bought a corn dog, and I went to serve drinks at The Grange.

Why do I buy corn dogs? If you must ask this question, you either don’t eat meat, have never eaten a corn dog, or should be under strong suspicion of hating America. Corn dogs are about the best food that American ingenuity has developed in the last century, and because I can only get them at the State Fair, I try to stock up. (Any of you with web access who are tempted to fire up Google to try to discover that corn dogs were in fact invented in some other country, please don’t bother—I won’t believe you.)

Why do I work at The Grange? Because I really like the good people making dinners there who permit me to help, and because it gives me a chance to say hi to fairgoers without getting in their faces too much. If you decide to buy your dinner at The Grange (which I encourage you to do, because the food is really good even though they don’t make corn dogs), I have only a couple of requests:
1. Please ask for a soda instead of iced tea. Much less work for me.
2. Please don’t ask for more ice in your iced tea. You have as much ice as you need, and if I run out some poor guy has to carry a zillion pound bag of ice out from the freezer.
3. Please don’t complain about having to pay 50 cents for a cup of ice to go with your soda. You are visiting an event that charges you a dollar to see the World’s Smallest Horse. Rational pricing is really not a realistic request at the State Fair.

Yesterday morning, I went to New York to visit some campaign donors. (Don't worry, I put in my time at work, too.) My father, who lives in New York, had told me on my last visit that “only suckers take taxis in New York, everyone else takes the subway.” Well I took the subway, and I would add to suckers “people who don’t know their way around the subway system and almost end up in Brooklyn,” and “people who have issues with being sneezed on.” My subway experience made the gridlock on Kirkwood Highway when I got home seem a little more bearable.