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Tom Jackson:
Tom Jackson is in a 12-step program for recovering sports writers; as part of his rehabilitation, he writes a column centered on the people, politics, passions and peculiarities of Pasco County. Email
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Of Course It’s The Same Old Same Old
Posted Feb 16, 2009 by Tom Jackson
Updated Feb 19, 2009 at 08:56 AM
“Same old county fair,” said the fellow leaning into the hill, wearing a lumpy jacket and a Gators national championship ballcap pulled low on his brow.
His tone was neither rueful nor complaining, merely matter-of-fact. Another President’s Day, another opening day. Another weeklong shot at deep-fried everything, smothered in mountains of confectioner’s sugar. Another weeklong chance to be flipped and spun and twisted and whirled. Another week of cows and chickens and rabbits and albino guinea pigs that win blue ribbons, possibly because judges have never seen quite so many cowlicks on a single domesticated animal.
Another week of talent shows and third-tier magicians, of barkers who invite you to trade a buck to gaze upon a rain forest mummy or a gigantic horse with “feet the size of nail kegs.” Does anyone know, anymore, how big a nail keg is? People who would spend a dollar to look at a gigantic horse, I suppose.
Another week of strawberries five different ways, of kiosks serving food you’d run from if you stumbled across it anywhere else. I mean, really, a pot roast sundae? Another week of steering around the well-meaning Gideon’s Bible folks, and wondering how that Florida Gator nightlight would look in the hallway to the bathroom ... or whether it would wind up mysteriously stashed behind some dusty reference books on a shelf, to be discovered only when one needed to be reminded who said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
Same old county fair? Well of course it is. Some things we not only count on remaining constant—the house of mirrors, the cheesy haunted house ride, the games nobody can win—we consider them beneficial to our culture, generational rites of passage.
The same old county fair is back for its weeklong run up the hill from State Road 52. Live the nostalgia. You’ll be glad you did.
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