That busy season

By: 
Patrick Fisher, The New Prague Times
It won’t be long and we’ll be entering that busy time when summer is winding down. Families are getting their last trips in before parents prepare their children for school or fall sports. Plus the State Fair is getting closer where 4-H members will have their livestock or other projects on display, county fair winners will see if their entries can get a blue ribbon and families or individuals will see how many new items from the food stands they can sample in one day.
The Scott County Fair wrapped up on Sunday, July 29, and some area residents might have seen The Times’ editor Chuck Kajer there. The Dakota County Fair begins next Monday, Aug. 6, and I have friends who are making plans to enter photos, plus their daughter is entering a Lego sculpture or two. They’re fairly excited about it as I think it’s been some time since they entered anything.
I can understand that as I entered a few items in the Pennington County Fair, where I grew up, over the years. I won a ribbon or two, one was for a little bookshelf, but nothing grand. More often than not come fair time, my family was busy helping the Boy Scout Troop we belonged to help park cars. We would prepare a few days before the county fair, by turning a large field into a temporary parking lot. Of course, people being people, some tried to park where ever they wanted to. We then explained we needed a lane in that area so cars could get through.
A benefit for us as Boy Scouts was that during our breaks we could have a lot of pop to drink for free. We were out helping park cars for two hours or more before we got a break, which were relatively short. Sometimes we dared each other to see how many different types of pop we could mix and drink. We’d mix Pepsi or Coke with Sprite, Mellow Yellow, root beer, orange or we’d mix them all. We came up with odd flavors, but never any that made us go “Yuck!” and pour it down a sink.
Don’t know much
about geography
It was around that time, the 1980s, that I heard a radio news story about students who were asked to go to an unmarked world map and find the United States. Some found it, others pointed to other countries, including a few who pointed to the Soviet Union.
I bring that up because there was a twitter posting making its way around social media recently where a man was told by TSA agents he needed a passport to get home to New Mexico. Whether the posting is true or not, what is true is that New Mexico is one of the states in the union. Apparently stories like these aren’t, well, new for people from New Mexico. The publication New Mexico Magazine has a column called “One of Our 50 is Missing,” where people send in stories about dealing with those who don’t believe New Mexico is a state. The column has been running for 45 years. The stories run from people checking with their insurance agencies, banks or having an informational booth at a state fair.

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