TWENTY-ONE
THE FIRST PERSON
YOU'LL SEE
Most of that summer passed without any new revelations from Colton,
though I’m sure we played the “What does Jesus look like?” game on our
vacation, with Colton giving a thumbs-down to every picture we saw. It had
gotten to the point where instead of asking him, “Is this one right?” Sonja
and I had started asking, right off the bat, “So what’s wrong with this one?”
August came and with it Imperial’s annual claim to fame, the Chase
County Fair. Next to the state fair itself, ours is the largest county fair in
western Nebraska. In Imperial and the towns for miles around, it is the
event of the year. For an entire week in late August, Imperial swells from a
population of two thousand to somewhere around fifteen thousand.
Businesses alter their hours (or shut down entirely), and even the banks
close at noon so that the whole community can turn out for concerts (rock
on Friday night, country on Saturday night), vendors, and the spinning rides
and lights of a huge carnival midway.
Every year, we look forward to the sights, sounds, and scents of the fair:
kettle corn, barbecue, and “Indian tacos” (taco fixings piled on a slab of
flatbread). Country music floating out. The Ferris wheel rising above it all,
visible from all over town.
This fair is definitely a Midwestern event, with 4-H livestock judging for
best bull, best horse, best hog, that kind of thing, along with the kids’
favorite: “Mutton Bustin’.” In case you’ve never heard of mutton busting,
that’s where a child is placed on a sheep and he or she tries to ride it as
long as possible without falling off. There’s a huge trophy for each age
group, five through seven. In fact, the first place trophy is usually taller than
the little competitor.
There’s definitely a down-home, small-town flavor to our fair, as one
lemonade entrepreneur found out the hard way. One year, this gentleman
decided he could sell more of his delicious beverage using what you might
call the Hooters approach to marketing. After a night or two, a string of