133. It's Fair Time Again

Well, fair time has come around again.  Our Santa Barbara County Fair sounds a whole lot bigger than what it is.  You would think that since Santa Barbara is such an upscale city that it's county fair would be a much more lavish event than it is.  The county fair grounds is in Santa Maria and even though it is the same county, lavish it isn't.  That's not to say that a good time can't be had, it's just that it certainly isn't the L.A. County Fair.

We have taken the local newspaper from time to time, but it never gets read and I personally protest the keeping of birds in cages so it seems a waste of good paper for our house.  We depend on commercials on the local television channels to inform us of community events and when the commercial rolled for the free entertainment this year, Bob and I couldn't believe our eyes.  Clint Black was on the bill!  Clint Black for the price of admittance?  That's right, my friends, for the senior price of five dollars apiece we spent two hours being entertained by none other than Clint himself.  He was absolutely wonderful.

I have to admit that Santa Maria did him proud, too, though.  The area was filled to the brim with appreciative, well mannered fans and I do mean filled.  It got quite cold around nine o'clock and he made several comments about how cold it was, especially since he is from Texas.  He changed guitars after each song so that a stage hand could keep tuning them.

About the only other thing that struck our interest other than a few quilts (love looking at quilts) was the Turkey Stampede.  Now, we've watched pig races but never a Turkey Stampede.  It was fun to watch the turkeys  chase a remote controlled truck.  They were enticed to do so because the back of the truck was filled with turkey chow.  While this was a new twist to an old game, the really funny thing was the folks who own the Turkey Stampede also own a camel dairy...that's right...they milk camels.  They didn't explain why, but there must be a market.  I'm sure it isn't because they can.

Before we hit the fair we went to the Bent Axle Car Club's annual car show in Orcutt.  It seems to get bigger each year and this year was extra nice.  They even had live musical entertainment that added a nice ambiance, not loud and crazy, just right for us "old folks."It went on for several blocks and the weather was perfect, so we took the opportunity to stroll through the whole event.

I'm not keen on fair food so we headed for Costco to have a REAL

hot dog and then it was on to the fair grounds to spend the evening with Mr. Black.  How much better can a day get??  Kinda glad it's fair time again.  Hmmm, I wonder who is playing at the fair in Paso Robles???