Vic Socotra

10 August 2008

The County Fair

There is not a great deal better than making the Saturday List on a sunny day in August.

The possibilities were endless, or nearly so. There was the mundane, of course, the scut-work of putting together the Quarterly, checking the office stuff that would pile up, but there was no Project hanging out there for the first time in weeks.

The pool, of course, the precious days starting to dwindle. The obligatory trip to the Vodka Village, which combines liquor and gas sales, a genuine two-fer; a possible trip to a Wegman’s supermarket, an outpost of the New York State food empire that has  plopped down in the wilds of Fairfax County.

Weggies has been consistently voted one of the best places in America to work, and I would like to see some contented employees. Saturday would not be a good day to try it, though. There was something else, though, the Doctor told me about it.

The Doc, in addition to her academic credentials, is an artist. She specializes in watercolors  of the places she has visited with her husband since retiring. She is really quite good, and volunteers for the Arlington Arts Council, a loose confederation of those in the artistic trade. She described her two hours in the booth at the County Fair while we were doing the cardio bounce in the pool. She said her most challenging moment had come with an old man who became enamored of a watercolor hanging in the booth. The subject was of a little boy with long hair, winsomely looking out from his frame to ask who would comb his hair.

The old man said it reminded him of a girl he had known in 1940, and that is the nature of the art market, the confluence of the four components of art:  artist vision, execution, customer resonance and wallet.

The old man had to have it, though the price was $500.

I said it sounded creepy, and said so. The Doc nodded and said that artistic expression is its own world. She is an artist, so I had to defer.

Anyway, the she said that every organization in the County had a booth at the Fair, and I made a resolution to go and check it out. I have done the parenting thing, and done my share of local activities that can be done with strollers and small ones, and it had been a long time since I went near anything where young people shrieked in mock-terror.

At least willingly.

I almost made it that morning. I was dressed and ready to walk over to the Jefferson Community Center near Glebe, but I had to walk past the pool to get there, and Murderer’s Row was already set up.

Ms Hamilton was there with her muscular fiancé Raman, the two of them so fit is hurts; Candi, the new resident who is the only one who could challenge her for the annual Tanning Award, and obviously is posturing for next season, when Ms becomes Mrs and leaves for New York. Sarah One, Mary Margaret,20Old Pat and the Wolverine were already in place, and they shamed me immediately with my lack of dedication and commitment.

I went back upstairs and changed into my suit and joined the line.

There was a hint of autumn in the air, nothing so radical as a chill. Respite from the humidity might be the best way to put it, and the sun was delightfully fierce and the water crisp.

So that is how the list fell away, and the day was wasted in the animal pleasure of basking and doing nothing. The characters changed out over time, Mrs Hitler took her accustomed place at the NE corner of the pool where a long ray of sun shines most of the afternoon. Jiggs and Joe cam e in after golf; Gratia and Doug appeared, very relaxed now that Gratia has taken the Bar Exam, and she was actually reading a book for fun. She ran in the Bride’s Race at the local mall and secured a $750 wedding gown for a song. Dug seems comfortable with the idea. That was not the only wedding talk, of course, since Candi’s son is marrying another guy in September, and she produced one of the invitation.

They are very handsome men. All the women agreed.

Inevitably, the desultory conversation rambled through sex and the latest sc andals, including Senator Edwards, and the more interesting ones in Big Pink. Then it came around to art, and then Funnel Cake and the Fair.

I am a high-minded sort, and my tastes run to art and cocktails rather than granulated sugar and thrill rides. But that was where the conversation was going. The Arlington County Fair had only a day more to run, and then it would be gone.

Sarah One had worked for the Theme Park Lobbying Association, and was able to comment authoritatively that this company was inspected by the Federal Government, and they had corrected the problem with the free-fall ride that had neatly amputated a woman’s feet last year.

They had been able to re-attach one of the feet, and the cables had been replaced altogether.

I resolved to wander over when my skin could not take it any more, which happened around four, when the shadows began to lengthen.

My vision was bleached out from the sun, and changing into shoes and shorts almost gave me a bit if vertigo. The tunnel under Route 50 is filled with the detritus of the people who live in it when the darkness comes, though they were gone as I passed through, only the empty quart bottles of Schiltz Malt Liquor and the smell of urine to mark their passing.

Past the George Schultz Center for Foreign Service Training, which used to be a nest of spies, and isn’t now. The Goodwill, and its harvest of good discards from the wealthy residents of the County, and across bustling Glebe and up through the neighborhood of newly gentrified duplexes to the Jefferson center.

The first thing on the midway was the traveling MADD Death Car exhibit, which is irresistible. It comes encased in a glass-walled trailer, like the one Sleeping Beauty might arrive in, with a blow-up of the police report plastered on the wall. The signs are in English and Spanish, of course, and the truck inside was literally exploded around the passenger compartment where someone’s life was obliterated in sickening instant.

The report said the driver was going 75mph on a narrow County road, snagged a tire, and flipped the massive F-150 a couple times before wrapping it around a tree.

He was the designated driver, the report said, and it was the passenger’s birthday.

The tires were still good.

Things got a little chaotic after that. The Midway and the rides were part of a traveling concern which is the lineal descendent of the old traveling carnivals of the early part of last century. The Carnies who run the thing are about as far from posh Arlington as you can get, and it was a little jarring to see the apparatchiks of the Federal Government hob-nobbing with the gap-toothed rogue Carnies.

Mardy One and the Mystery Woman

In the old days, the grins with the missing spaces would have meant bad dental care; now, I suspect it means the embrace of crystal meth. The rides were outside, past the funnel cake stands and the grilled sausages and the bubbling cauldrons of hot fat. The Jefferson Center was filled with card-tables, just as the Doc had said, and I walked up and down the rows, looking for art that resonated.

Couldn’t find any, though the Sister Cities people were insistent that I come to the picnic in September, and the Historical Society was implacabl e in their resolve to commemorate the first military aircraft flight that happened less than a mile away, exactly one hundred years ago.

Gratia and Cheese Fry

I left the hall feeling a little blue. All those good people and all those wonderful and Quixotic causes. The smell of hot fat rolled over me when I walked out into the line of food tents, and along the walk I saw Mardy One and the Mystery Woman who works for You Know Who, and Gratia and Doug, who were eating cheese fires from a tall cup. Doug held a deep-fried battered foot-long hot-dog that was shaped like something I can’t articulate.

Doug and Dog

The rides lacked a certain depth, since the neon did not show while the sun was still up, but it was still impressive for a late afternoon.

I wandered away eventually, headed back to a place where the drinks were free, and everyone had their teeth. I did not buy a t-shirt, but I can safely say that I have now been to the County Fair.

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