The fair’s for family fun — and reunions, too

For many years, it has seemed like my wife and I have just about lived the entire Labor Day weekend at the fairgrounds during the annual Sheboygan County Fair.

This year, we almost took it one step further and just missed having a full family reunion at the fair.

What with Terry bringing in her entries for the fair, her helping to man the Master Gardeners booth, both of us helping to man The Review’s cabin, both of us taking pictures at the fair and trying to squeeze in a little time in between all the rest of that to wander the grounds and check out the exhibits, we could have rented out our house to visitors for the Labor Day weekend some of these years.

In years past, fair weekends have included bringing the kids to the fair to check on their school projects, taking them on the rides at the carnival, dropping them off to meet their friends at the fair — and sticking around to keep an eye on them from a discreet, hopefully unobservable distance — and feeding the kids at the fair.

They say that the fair is fun for the whole family. For us, it’s always been for the whole family, although fun may not always have been the right word to go with that.

The last few years it’s been primarily Terry and I taking in the various activities at the fair, although more often than not going our separate ways. It hasn’t been so bad that we’ve had to reintroduce ourselves to each other the day after Labor Day, but it’s come pretty close a few times.

Monday morning was one of those times when we actually got to spend some time together, as we were both working the same shift in The Review’s cabin.

Alex and Julia had come over with Aiden to take in the fair, although it was probably more for Alex and Julia, as at 16 months old Aiden’s not quite up to enjoying many of the delights of the County Fair.

Alex and Julia were back at our house with Aiden when, shortly after noon, we had some unexpected visitors at the cabin.

Out of the crowd we spotted our oldest grandson, Ty, running up to the cabin and trying to jump up through the opening in front to greet us.

I managed to catch him and pull him up on to the counter, while his parents, his baby brother Nolan and his other grandmother walked up to the cabin behind him.

It turned out they were all going to the demolition derby — in front of the grandstand right behind The Review cabin — that afternoon and stopped by to say hello.

It made us wish we’d told Alex and Julia to bring Aiden up to the fair so we could have had a full family gathering, our first one in several months.

Nolan being only 9 months old, I’m not sure if the demolition derby was good for anything for him except preventing him from taking a nap, what with all the noise.

Ty, on the other, I think was expecting to see a white Beetle with red and blue racing stripes and the number 53 on it, since “Herbie Fully Loaded” is one of his favorite movies.

He was disappointed on that expectation, but he still enjoyed the spectacle — though probably not as much as his father did or his uncle would have, if he had been there, considering how many vehicles the two of them demolished in their teenage years.

It did bring Ethan back to the scene of his first encounter many years ago with the fairgrounds.

The first place we lived when we moved here was a duplex about a block south of the fairgrounds. We moved at the end of summer when Ethan was about 3 years old.

The first weekend we were there, we put Ethan to bed on Saturday night and settled down to watch a little TV before going to bed ourselves.

A little while after we put him to bed, Ethan came running back downstairs, screaming that there were lions outside his window.

We figured it was just his fertile imagination and escorted him back to his bedroom.

That was when we realized that his bedroom faced toward the fairgrounds. On a hot summer night, we had his window open and the sound of the stock car races at the fairgrounds was coming right into his bedroom at top volume.

To a 3-year-old who’d never seen or heard a car race, it probably did sound like lions. And he made sure his sons got to hear that roar this past weekend.