In 33 years of life, I can safely and comfortably say that I’ve been to a few county fairs and truck pulls. Evenings spent sampling the delicacies offered by trailer-bound vendors and days filled with truck pulls, demolition derbies, and vintage tractor shows are an undeniable draw.
I had the opportunity recently to attend a large county fair in Northeastern Ohio, the Canfield Fair. On Saturday evening, we found a parking spot in the back of the large field lot, guided by no less than a dozen sunburned and utterly disinterested teenagers who spent more time trying to get dates among one another than actually parking cars. It could’ve been worse, however, I’m sure. The smell of elephant ears and sausage sandwiches filled the air like a great delicious genie, beaconing us forth into the throngs beyond the gates.
Now, when I say that at this particular county fair I saw the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, I’m not counting the high school girls in ripped designer shortie-shorts, Gucci cowboy boots and Tim McGraw-style hats, or the goofy-looking guys following them around with a vacant grin on their faces. Really, it’s going a ways, because I’ve seen some pretty stupid things in my life, and been party to more than a few of them, as my wife currently reminds me. Thank you, dear. I once saw a fifty-year-old man at a wedding try to do a split on the dance floor while lip synching “Stayin’ alive.” He was not successful, and had to be carried out crying. No, this stupid was of the more pointed kind, the less laughable and more “what are you thinking?” type of stupid. My brother and I attended the truck pulls later in the evening, and the cacophony of noise that assailed us was no less than I had expected of 1,000 + horsepower engines built for the sole purpose of dragging a weight 300 feet. There were the usually gaggle of kids around us, with parents protectively providing heavy earmuff-cup hearing protection for the three, four, five year old enthusiasts. Everyone was having fun.
Just after the last of the single-engine tractor pullers finished up, a driver trotted out a long-wheelbase behemoth with not one, but five supercharged engines lined up on the truck’s chassis. At idle, it was louder than the pickup truck pullers had been at full throttle. After a few moments, the truck lined up behind the sled, and like the rest of the people in the grandstand, I plugged my ears against the coming onslaught. It was no less than what I thought. The roar caused a vibration in the grandstand’s wooden seats that threatened to shake my fillings out. The truck finished his pull at well past the 300-foot mark, and then another lined up behind him to do the same. As I sat talking to my brother and trying to keep the kid behind me from whacking me on the head with his water bottle, unsuccessfully, I happened to notice a family leaving the grandstand. Two men leading a young girl who was maybe all of twenty years old. In her arms, she held a newborn baby.
Let me let you get past that for a minute, and really get to the heart of what I’m saying here. Truck pulls produce the kind of noise levels that can only really be matched by sitting next to the speaker at a Poison concert, or perhaps sticking your head into the output of a jet engine. The point is, these trucks can deliver enough noise to damage YOUR hearing, imagine what they could do to a developing newborn. I would have thought, at least, that the girl would be holding the baby’s ears as the second truck made its pass down the track. No, she didn’t even think twice about it, just walked calmly and slowly down the stairs toward the exit, everyone in the grandstand likely thinking the exact same thing as myself. If ever there was a moment for child protective services, this was it.
When they had left, the rest of the grandstand sat remarking to one another about what it must take to bring such a young baby to something like this, the incredible stupidity. But who was more stupid, the woman and her husband for bringing the baby, or the gate attendants for letting them in?