Mrs. Smucker Goes To The Fair

Thursday was my annual Day At The Lane County Fair Oregon Authors' Table.

It was a grand mix of sheer boredom and being interviewed on KVAL, of watching overweight people shuffle by eating ice cream and of seeing the fascinating Frog again, of doing poorly on sales but richly on connecting with readers.

Always before, I parked in the field beside the fairgrounds, and old men on horses waved orange flags to tell me where to go.

This time, that lot was blocked off and I followed the traffic down meandering one-way streets, getting loster by the second, until I found a parking spot.

As I was unloading my stuff, a group of young women walked by. One had a tripod and one had a camera the size of a hav-a-hart skunk trap. I asked them if they know if it's ok to park there. They didn't know. Then one girl said to another, "Hey, maybe that's someone you could interview about parking."

She said she's from KVAL news and would I mind? I said no, if it doesn't take too long.

So she pinned a microphone to my shirt and hoisted the huge camera to her shoulder. She asked my name and had me spell it. "Where are you parked?" she asked me. Well, she had me there. "I don't know," I said. "I think I'm on Jefferson, and I'm just going to head out in that general direction to find the fair." I waved toward the northwest. She wondered if I thought something should be done about parking. I said I'd never had this problem before and if it only happens one or two days a year, there's no sense building a new parking lot.

And soon we were done. She got a shot of me walking off with a backpack and two rolling cases of books. Then one of them hit a crack in the sidewalk and the box flew off the rolling rack.

I don't think any of the footage ever made it on TV.*

Dan Armstrong the ex-mechanical-engineer-turned-fiction-author and I talked about his work to get the grass-seed-growing farmers to start growing more beans and grains. People in the Valley grow lots of fruits and vegetables, but actually only about 5% or less of the food we eat is grown here. He'd like to see that change and I have to say he makes a lot of sense. With the price of fuel, it seems like good insurance to have a good variety of food plants grown close by.

But if everyone switches to quinoa and fava beans, Paul will soon be out of business.

Sales were terrible compared to previous years but lots of people stopped by to say they read my column. The proportion of buyers to column-readers was 1 to 7.

One woman told me that my work is "so needed," that I show people how family is done, that people like her, with an abusive alcoholic mom who literally didn't speak to her for 14 years, want to have a sane, normal family life but don't know how. And I show them how and I give them hope and she thinks that's wonderful. Of course my first thought was, "You've got to be kidding." But when she described her situation I got what she meant. Sort of.

One lady came by with a t-shirt that said, "I am not fat. I'm hiding my fabric stash." I get that.

Another woman said, "My children have benefited from your writing. Some of your columns have stopped me from killing my kids."

Oooookaaaaay.

A young man named Jason was supposed to show up at 7 to sell his memoir but he couldn't make it. It turns out he has that same disease as Stephen Hawking has, and is just as crippled, and communicates by blinking once for yes and twice for no, and actually wrote a good memoir by blowing through a straw at a special computer screen. Imagine.

The famous Frog came for the last two hours. I've written about him before.

Frog smelled nicer than he ever has before at the Fair but he still has lots of bushy hair and his dirty joke books and his odd quirks.

But I have to say I like him. What you see is just what you get. And he isn't jealous if you make more money than he does, and he doesn't care if you wear Christopher and Banks or an old T-shirt, and he is kind and friendly.

Now the truth is he wouldn't be easy to live next door to, with his disdain for city law, and he also would neither judge nor care if I cheated on a final exam or my taxes or my husband.

But something about him always reminds me that there's a lot we Christians can learn from publicans and sinners.

I took a picture of Frog and me and sent it to Emily with the caption, "Me and my friend Frog."

Then at 9:00 I packed up and left, dreading that long walk back to the car in the dark. At the gate were two young men with bike pedicabs or whatever they are, with a little bench in back and a bike handlebars and tire in front. One offered me a ride to my car. Oh, how tempting. How much? Tips--whatever I want to give.

Ok, wonderful. I piled on my books and we set out, together finding our way back to the car. I figured he's a typical pot-smoking hyper-left-wing U of O student. We started talking. He came from a small farm in eastern Oregon and a family of six children. He was happy to live in Eugene because he could grow a garden in his back yard. Ok, I stood rebuked.

I gave him $5.

I still had to get groceries but first I stopped at Taco Bell for my first real food of the day. While there I got a text and photo from Emily. It said, "Me and my friend Frog."


It turns out Jenny had brought home her costume for the VBS program skit in which she was to be the prodigal son's dad.

I don't often laugh out loud in Taco Bell but I sure did then.

Quote of the Day:
"Yes!! You should write a Mennonite murder mystery!!"
--Shirley Tallman, the mystery writer. She and Dan Armstrong and Carola Dunn were trying to persuade me to broaden my repertoire.

*Actually, yes it did, a 3-second blip where I rather nervously say, "I've never had trouble parking before." (Here's the link. I'm at 00:25)