The Puyallup Fair vs. REO Speedwagon
We spent the weekend huddled by the wood stove starting out into the rain and mud puddles that formed everywhere you looked. Spent the better part of an afternoon and evening at the Puyallup Fair on Friday night getting soaked in the downpour, dodging the rain by going between the livestock barns and arts and crafts booths. During the heaviest part of the storm we took a gondola ride that went from one end of the fairgrounds to the other, looking down upon the carneys in their yellow slickers trying to keep dry by putting their heads under the small ticket window overhangs. In all the years that I’ve been going to the fair, it was the first time I’d ever been on that ride. We bought round trip tickets so we could leave Ike’s stroller on the platform, and it was raining so hard, and the fairgrounds were so empty, that after our trip, the guys just asked us if we wanted to go around again and so we did. The gondolas at the fair are small, pill shaped capsules that can just hold a family of four, if the boys are small and you can hold one of them on your lap. They have the look of something that was added about the same time as the Worlds Fair mania hit Seattle. It screams “Future” but a sixties future that never was, and is now a long, long time ago. We went to livestock areas I never knew existed, saw parts of the dog obedience show and the pig corral. Wandered through the Jacuzzi sales booths and tried to find rides that the Older Boy could go on without getting soaked. We wound up riding the bumper cars, going though the fun house and during a break in the rain, rode the Musik Express. The roller coasters were closed, as were almost all the uncovered rides, so we headed for the food court and had dinner at Meyer’s Hamburgers instead.
Dinner at Meyer’s, or lunch, or breakfast even, is one of the things on the list of “things I do every time I go to the Puyallup Fair”. Scones under the grandstand is another. You can get fair scones in a number of places around the grounds, but I never bother. There is only one place to enjoy a scone and that’s down inside the belly of the bleachers.
Friday night the music double bill was REO Speed Wagon and Styx, and though we passed by the T-shirt selling booth, I couldn’t make myself get one. I decided that the irreverence of wearing a shirt like that would no doubt be lost on everyone because like it or not, I’m old enough to have liked both these bands. In fact I remember going to a REO Speed Wagon concert back when they totally rocked, or I was thirteen, or maybe it was that they totally rocked because I was thirteen. Three things I remember vividly about that show was that their guitar player Gary Richrath was much fatter than he looked on the album, that kind of fat that you can only get from drinking constantly, that red faced bloated kind of fat. Their keyboard player was so drunk, he had to prop himself up on his elbow to keep from falling over, and that at the end of the night, after my friends and I had waited near the back for autographs, the bass player and drummer were the only one who signed.
No matter how hard I tried, there was no way I was going to be able to convey all of what it felt like to be thirteen, in Germany, seeing that band right before they made it big with the schmaltzy arena rocker “Keep on Loving You” by wearing a t-shirt bought from under the grandstand at the Puyallup Fair 25 years later. It would only hold that comedic irreverence mixed with the bittersweet passage of time, sense of irony, for me. Everyone else would just look at me as some sort of pathetic aged rocker still clinging desperately to the best years of his life.
Well not everyone. Sweetie would get it; she’d roll her eyes and not want to go out in public with me, but she’d get it.
At the end of the night we ran all the way from the main gate to the car, in rain harder than I’ve ever seen in September. Me pushing Ike’s chair fast enough to take his breath away, with Sweetie and the Older Boy holding hands and laughing, following close behind.
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