Summer's End

Today continued the ritual of going over to the Fairgrounds to retrieve the entries and collect the revenues. I'd had no entries this year, so I just drove the boys over, after picking them up at their piano lessons. (That seems odd to write.) As always, the fairgrounds looks depleted and sad after having been the center of so much activity for the past 6 days. Almost everything is gone, only a few local vendors packing up amidst the sparsely scattered debris. The kids don't notice, or feel sad, having already moved past the event of the fair, and on to thoughts of school which opens tomorrow, and to soccer practice, scheduled for tonight. Their mission is to pick up their stuff and then go to the office to find out how much prize money they've won. One collects $29 and the other the grand sum of $35. They vow to next year submit more entries and earn as much as $50, wait, make that $100. They seem happy at the thought: I envy them.

As we enter the Arts and Crafts section to gather most of the kids' entries, we pass through The Cottonwood Shop, for the past 6 days home to a million jillion craft articles of every type under the sun, all offered for sale. We had to make 2 trips, one at mid-day and the other in the late afternoon. Noontime found 2 women packing up the fancy embroidered and decorated and embellished quilts and spices and dolls and towels, carefully and diligently folding and sorting and packing and boxing each item. The women looked tired and deflated. When the kids and I returned some 4 hours later, there were the women, still working at what looked to me to be a neverending task. I hope they sold enough of their wares to have made it all worthwhile, though it didn't look that way to me.