{"id":308,"date":"2005-07-31T19:31:51","date_gmt":"2005-08-01T00:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=308"},"modified":"2007-11-09T10:59:27","modified_gmt":"2007-11-09T15:59:27","slug":"fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=308","title":{"rendered":"Fair"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richmond, Indiana<\/em><\/p>\n

Off to the Preble County Fair this afternoon. Preble County is just east of here, over the border in Ohio.<\/p>\n

Preble County still has a large agricultural base, so we saw lots of animals. The Lincoln Sheep were pretty impressive, with their beautifully groomed woolly coats. We watched a little of the judging of goats, but I didn’t understand what was going on. The judge said things like, “I have to compliment number three on good mammary development,” and “The sides slope into the [incomprehensible], and the rear legs are nice and wide-spread.” Not sure what all that means. Personally, I liked the ducks the best. And the big beautiful Barred Plymouth Rock rooster, with his finely-barred black-and-white feathers. We also saw apples that were shown by one of Dick’s children at Wechsler Orchards, with lots of blue ribbons.<\/p>\n

While we were looking for some shade, we wandered in to grandstand for the horse races, just as the pacers and trotters were warming up. Jean, being a horsewoman, had to stay and watch the horses, and then she said, can’t we stay and watch one race. Why not, Dick and I were game. The horse pulling their little sulkies behind were fun, but I liked watching the people watching the horses. Two older men sat just in front of us, racing programs well-thumbed. The one man had on a robin-egg blue polo shirt with eyes exactly the same color. His friend said one or two things in a low voice, but the blue-eyed man did not say a word that I heard. They were both intent on the various horses warming up.<\/p>\n

In front of the, two people struck up a desultory converstaion. “What did they pay last year?” she said.<\/p>\n

“Well, last year they didn’t pay much,” he said, “the ones that should’ve won did win.”<\/p>\n

“See anything you like so far?” she said.<\/p>\n

“Number 8 just rode by, and he looked pretty good there,” said the man.<\/p>\n

Their conversation went on like that. Behind us, a similar conversation between people who just happened to be sitting near each other, and who shared a passion for horses, started out about which horses looked good, and did you see such-and-such a horse race, and then it turned from horses to the bypass surgery one man had had, and whether you’re a Hoosier or a Buckeye — “I may live in Indiana, but I say I’m not a Hoosier, I’m a Buckeye who happens to be a Hoosier until retirement” — to other odds and ends of conversation.<\/p>\n

At last it was race time. The race was over pretty quickly, and it was exciting. Jean said, “I can see how people could get addicted to this.” The horse I had liked the looks of finished dead last, ten lengths or more behind the rest of the pack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richmond, Indiana Off to the Preble County Fair this afternoon. Preble County is just east of here, over the border in Ohio. Preble County still has a large agricultural base, so we saw lots of animals. The Lincoln Sheep were pretty impressive, with their beautifully groomed woolly coats. We watched a little of the judging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[225],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sauntering","tag-richmond-indiana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}