Our day at the Fair

Most of our day was spent at the Texas State Fair in Dallas. Norman and Seth were over pretty early and after a quick breakfast we swapped out the desks in Mama’s and my bedroom. We loaded the roll-top desk in Seth’s truck to be taken back to Bowie for Grandpa. Mama and I fed the animals as we normally would except Mama decided to lock up the cattle - who now have free access to the farm - in the barn lot in case we wanted to sort out the cows from the calves while we had help. I nixed the idea hoping we could do it at some later time and get on the road to the fair. It is about an hour drive to get to the fairgrounds and the day was expected to get very hot. We ended up getting on the road by 9 a.m. Not too bad.

Since we had never been to the fair we trusted the GPS on the phone to get us there and ended up parking by Gate 2 which, I think, Is on the north side of the fairgrounds. Next time I will take a different, more direct, route but we got there without incident. On the bright side it put us in the fairgrounds near the best curio shopping at the fair; which made it our last stop on our way out. We got a couple of unique Christmas presents there so we are down on the total number we need to accumulate for this year. And this gave us the chance to get some really interesting gifts without them being overly expensive.

Sadly, since we were late getting to the fair most of the animals were gone. There were no hogs, no horses and no cattle other than the Brahmas. That barn was full and the cattle there were very impressive. One bull we were up close to weighted in at a little over 2680 pounds. We were eye to eye with him as his owner was leading him to the bathing area. He was mostly a sliver color; dark in the front and light in the back with a huge hump on his shoulders. As a bull’s life goes I am guessing he had it pretty good.

One of the most interesting places in the fair was the children’s area. They had giraffes, camels, zebras, a Watusi steer and several other exotic animals (buffalo, porcupine, emus and ostriches, etc.) as well as a large collection of regular farm animals. Among the sheep was one we had never heard of, a group of Jacob Four Horned Sheep. Mama and I are going to look for a couple over the next few months. Depending on what Rick, our goat guy, says about compatibility we may end up getting a weather to run with the herd because they are protective over whatever flock they are herded with. They trace their name back to Jacob, the son of Isaac; one of our Bible characters. That makes it even a a bit more interesting to have a part in maintaining the heirloom breed.

We rode in a revolving, enclosed ride that took us up about one hundred feet above the fair. It provided a very good view of both the fairgrounds and the Dallas skyline. It was one of the cheapest things we did. Everything took tickets which were sold at kiosks throughout the fairgrounds. So, other than the curio shopping we did at the end of the day, everything we bought required us to have tickets to exchange; rides, food or drinks, souvenirs. Unless you paid pretty close attention it was hard to tel just how much everything really cost. We only stayed about four hours because it was getting very hot and expensive. Thankfully, there was a pretty good breeze blowing throughout the day. It helped with the heat, not much, but it helped.

Mama and I finished out the day by going to Gainesville with some of the church people for an Old Fashioned Tent Revival. It was well worth the trip. We will probably be going back on Thursday night.