Just Say No to the Great Minnesota Get-Together

It’s not too late. The Minnesota State Fair doesn’t officially end until Monday, September 7th — Labor Day. So you can still refuse to go. Resist. Resist. You know what I’m talking about…

Oh. Do I have to spell it out for you? R-i-p-o-f-f.

Let’s look at this thing calmly and sensibly. $13 for admission — unless it’s some “special day.” Like Hippie Chicks from the 60’s Sunday. Or Happy Llama Farmers Friday. Even then, they only knock off a few bucks at the gate. Then it’s $13 for parking.

Then if you get hungry — and you know you will — lucky you! You get to spend exorbitant prices on strange food combos you couldn’t come up with in your dreams. Like a cupcake of macaroni and cheese. Maybe fruit pie soaked in booze? Or deep-fried lard puffs. Or chili-filled turkey hearts (sorry, just made that one up myself but look for it next year by the grandstand). We’re talking food with too much fat, too many calories, too much silliness to eat on an ordinary day when you’re sober.

Sounds like a custom-made, indigenous rip-off Minnesotans just can’t get enough of, yah, yabetcha. But why? Why do so many frugal, hard-working, down-to-earth people happily walk into this money trap every year? Why do so many health-conscious people deliberately pay big bucks to make pigs out of themselves?

These are questions we were never meant to answer. Too many people gather each year, like hungry, over-paid lemmings, to eat food that’s really bad for them and kid themselves that it’s fun. FUN! Yeah, fun and traditional and overpriced. And unhealthy. (Sigh).

Then too, all traces of country life and farming are gradually getting erased from the fairgrounds. As in too much urban and not enough rural. Gone are the crops and animals to remind us where our food actually comes from. Step inside the fair’s gate, and you’d swear the only things farmers raise now are Twinkies so the hucksters in St. Paul can deep-fry them and sell them to us for $6 or $7 per Twink. So the contributions from rural lives are no longer respected and celebrated the way they used to be. They’re just put on a stick like everything else at the state fair to make high profits that the farmers will never get.

Why not take a stand against this nonsense and just. stay. home? The crazy prices and lard content of fair food has already gone so far off the charts that it’s going to take a village and at least 320 bachelor farmers to bring Minnesota back to what the state fair should be. But for now, the only thing we can do is boycott it.

And, if you’re reading this blog anytime after Labor Day, it’s still not too late. Just take a vow that you won’t go to this Great Minnesota Rip-off next year.