Wednesday at the county fair

Usually Wednesday is the absolutely worst day of the county fair. Traditionally it is rough truck night. For those of you who have never heard of rough truck, here is the premise: You drive your 4X4 truck or SUV through a series of pot holes, ditches, and water filled hazards as fast as you can. When you have made it through this obstacle course, the finale is to jump your vehicle off of a very large mound of dirt, going airborne. The winner is who can make it through the course in the fastest time combined with the best jump. It draws in the rednecks from a ten county radius.

This is a pick-up truck flying a rebel and a pirate flag for those of you who couldn't make it out.


I have a special shirt I wear on Wednesdays at the fair. Usually, rough truck is the largest draw, so people have to park far away and complain about where they are parking. That's why I always wear this:

Today it rained. It was one of those all day, soak the ground clear through rains. The forecast for the afternoon at the fair was scattered thundershowers. Would that be enough to keep people away from the fair? Usually not. Around here, mud brings out the stupid in people.

I was assigned to park a fairly steep hill. We were to try to pick off 4X4's from the traffic lane to come park on our muddy hill. This is the entrance to our parking place:
Well, we were able to fill our little part of the world with four wheel drive vehicles,

But the going was fairly treacherous:


The combination of the mud & the rain forecast (it did rain, but not thunderstorm) did manage to keep the crowd to the smallest rough truck crowd I have ever seen. Normally I am moved around to help park at least four different lots. Tonight, only one.

The most humorous thing was trying to keep an aisle open so the 4X4's parked higher on the hill could get out. I turned away four people who wanted to park here:
One guy that I asked to move to keep the aisle open replied "Then where else am I supposed to park? I've been up and down these aisles and can't find anywhere else." I replied "Um, How about across the street where the main parking lot is." BTW there was at least five acres of parking area left when I told him this. Usually on a rough truck night, if it can hold a car, it has a car in it. We actually ran out of parking spaces last year during rough truck.