Yesterday we wandered the Montana State Fair grounds with its exhibition halls full of cookware sets, rhinestones, and amazing products to ease your life. We watched people get spur-of-the-moment tattoos and watched grease dripping down the arms of all those fair goers eating deep fried cheeseburgers and cake. The carnies had their bailing wire and duct tape ready for quick repairs and no one was daunted by an earlier accident on the Zipper. They lined up, handed over their tickets and crawled in for two minutes of terror. This all may prove what
Guthrie had to say about men at the end of the Oregon Trail faced with a steak dinner rather than fish from the Columbia. “The promise of a mere change in diet lifted all the spirits. Small as it was on any scale, why shouldn’t it? Men lived by the little things, not the big.” The promise of a deep-fat fried meatball, some Indian flat bread, and the whirl of a carnival ride.
