Fair

A DAY AT THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY FAIR

My caricature. I don't think it really looks like me, but I should have tipped her extra for making me look so young.

Fair Fare. Note the healthy vegetables and water. And yes, I ate the whole thing.

The ever popular carnival.

Art, my brother, warned me the fair would likely seem smaller than I remembered it. Au contraire, if anything, it seemed larger. One could easily get lost.

Art also warned me—as our parents used to do—against making myself sick with cotton candy or breaking a tooth on a candied apple—both cautions which I duly took to heart.

No, that's not me dangling from the bungee jump. Would this have fixed my back? Maybe I should have tried it after all.

One of my favorite exhibits—the garden displays. Luv them cacti!

Amongst the garden displays was one of bonsai trees from Upland Bonsai. The handout directed viewers to contact Dwight Goins for further information. Dwight was one of my childhood Sunday school teachers. A young man at the time, he seemed to me the last person who would ever be interested in anything related to the painstaking, patient culture of miniature plants.

Another fave: the animal barns. Though there didn't seem to be as many animals as I remembered from my youth, and the ones there didn't seem well displayed.

Speaking of animals: When I went to the fair as a kid, you could win a gold fish in a tiny bowl at the games booths and you could buy little green chameleons and little turtles with painted shells. None of these are offered these days—no doubt due to our enlightenment which, while ignoring the plight of homeless people and those without medical insurance, is deeply concerned about kindness to animals.

Eating lunch (see above), I shared a table with a woman from Arcadia. Never got her name, but she

• Always loved Upland, my home town, a beautiful little burg.
• Has a brother living in Dallas & liking Texas.
• Told about an acquaintance who underwent experimental radiation treatment for cancer at M.D. Anderson in Houston & is now cancer free but has many residual side effects.
• Assured me that Loma Linda UMC is a wonderful hospital.

After 5 hours at the fair, I returned to Loma Linda exhausted. To make up for my fair lunch, I had dinner at the Happy Family Vegetarian Restaurant—Kung Pao Wheat Gluten Chicken. Yum! I feel redeemed.