The third Saturday in October, I woke up to a text from my sister, Shannon. She let me know that she and her husband, Aaron, were headed to the State Fair of Texas with my four-and-a-half-year-old niece. I screamed to Paris, who was in the shower, that as soon as he was out, we were headed to the Fair. It was closing weekend, and the weather was perfect – a cool 75 degrees, no clouds in the sky. It’s what we called “Fair weather” growing up. Not meaning “fair” as in temperate; we meant capital-F “Fair” as in, the type of weather perfect for going to the Fair.

We went to the Fair every single year when I was a kid. We had a route we’d always walk, always parking in the same lot, exchanging our coupons for foods at the same stands. It marked the beginning of the fall season for us, and for me, meant that my birthday was around the corner.

It also meant we got two days off school and a free ticket to the fair. Every year I’ve been in town, I’ve gone back to the Fair. In 2019, the first year Paris and I were dating, I went with my family but not with him. As a non-native Texan, Paris doesn’t quite have the same attachment to the Fair as me. It makes sense, really. When you try to explain the Fair to someone not from here, you sound absurd.

“There is a giant cowboy named Big Tex who used to be a Santa, then he burned down, but now he’s back. He wears jeans with a twenty-foot inseam. There are buildings filled with cars, and you can just, like, sit in them. Then in another building, people will try to holler at you until you buy stuff. Like live action infomercials. Also, there’s a place with glass cases full of people’s art projects. Yeah, like homemade quilts and dolls and puppets. The rides are great. The best part? They’re the exact same ride machines that were there when I went as a child. I am 35 years old, why do you ask?”

In 2020, the Fair offered a COVID-safe drive-through experience, but I had no interest. I didn’t want to see the shuttered buildings and closed food tents. So, earlier this year, when a Facebook targeted ad offered me seasons passes, I snatched them up. I went on opening day with my cousin, Ami, a Fair aficionado.

With the gates reopened, I decided to shake up my usual McKinney Family Fair To Do List. Instead, I let Ami lead the way and let myself spend coupons on things I never had before. I tried a caramel apple covered in nuts. I had to keep my tradition of Texas-shaped nachos from the Hass family booth. To change it up, instead of a small boat of chips and plain cheese, I went with Nachos Grande, an order that came on a plate and was covered in salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and finished with a little Texas flag set onto a toothpick.

On my second visit this year, I went with my dear friends Gypsy and James. Gypsy was born and raised in Mesquite like me, so she also has a deep love for all things Big Tex.  We happened to go the weekend before I had a combination colonoscopy/endoscopy. On the hunt for whether celiac disease was causing my severe stomach illness that had only gotten worse since July, my doctor told me to have some gluten on Sunday.

“Just don’t go crazy,” he said.

Sorry, doc. I had Deep Fried Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo, which tasted exactly as it was described.  A ball of fettuccine noodles and chicken, slathered with Alfredo sauce and fried into a ball. It was disgusting and amazing all at the same time. I also followed Gypsy and James to their favorite funnel cake stand where I ordered a red velvet funnel cake.

This was my idea of “not going overboard.” The gluten worked. I got my diagnoses (non-celiac gluten intolerance and some other stuff). I was only sick for about 48 hours since the pre-treatment for the colonoscopy flushed out everything I’ve ever eaten. The funnel cake was worth it, even though I got covered in so much powdered sugar I looked I sneezed while doing cocaine.

(Honestly, I’ve never done cocaine. I don’t know if it’s the same consistency as powdered sugar. I’m basing this totally on what I’ve seen in movies.)

Another day, I went with my high school pals. Sean was in town from Austin, and we met Jeff, Emily, and their baby, Canyon, for a day of fair fun. We ventured toward the beer garden area where I sampled the Fair’s version of frozen daiquiri for the first time. Not bad. Just as you would expect, like a Slurpee with some wine in it.

We also headed down the Midway where they took Canyon on the carousel. He squealed and cried, and honestly, I’m not sure what else he did. That thing spun so fast, it seemed like it could whiff off its axis at any moment. I didn’t see the ride operator’s panel, but I am sure the speed was cranked up to eleven. Just watching it was enough to make me dizzy.

The Fair only runs from the end of August through mid-October. When Shannon texted me that weekend, I was eager to go one last time before it shut down for the year. Paris and I met her, Aaron, and Sydney at around 11am on a bright and sunny Saturday morning. There were folks milling about the main area around Big Tex, and Paris and I navigated the crowds to find my family.

People watching at the Fair is one of the best parts. Walking through the hoards, we passed a man in a black t-shirt, printed with neon green letters asking the age-old question: “Do I Look like I give a fuck?” Paris and I read the shirt at the same time.

“We can’t know from the back of his head,” Paris said. We walked faster to pass him and saw the shirt was printed with the same question on the breast pocket.

“He does not look like he does,” I said.

We found them though the mess of folks, and started off for some food and rides. After getting her face painted, Sydney was most excited about the funhouses. At the State Fair, the funhouses are portable metal structures, between one and two stories tall, with various lights, mirrors, obstacles, and optical illusions throughout. They’re also machines of death and destruction.

When I was about ten years old, my dad and I went through one of these funhouses. The entrance contained a set of mechanical stairs that slid back and forth. Walking up these steps, my left foot was swallowed whole. The cerulean canvas shoe I had been wearing was torn to pieces, leaving my foot bare and smashed between unceasing pieces of moving wood.

I screamed to the point that Fair medics showed up and carted me off to the first aid tent in a golf cart. They ended up duct taping my shoe back on my foot, and my family continued our Fair visit. We couldn’t waste a good Fair day just because a foot was crushed, could we?

The first one she chose was not my nemesis funhouse. It was a whimsical structure and cost seven coupons to enter. That should have tipped us off as to its complexity and intensity. Though she passed the height requirement to get in, she was the littlest person in there by several feet. No matter, she walked the same steps as the teenage boys in front of us without hesitation.

We slid down the final slide together, and she marched in a straight line to her parents, asking to go through another one right away. The next two we tried only cost five coupons, followed shortly by one that only cost four. It seemed we had leapt off the seven-coupon cliff and would be chasing that high until the Fair next year.

As we rounded a corner that final day of the Fair this year, I came upon it. The funhouse that ate my foot. Shannon and I exchanged glances and told the story to Aaron and Paris. I looked at the admission: five coupons. I felt ashamed that I had been bested by a five-coupon funhouse all those years ago. Sydney was determined to conquer them all, so we turned our coupons over to the grizzled man at the entrance and headed toward the stairs. I silently swore an oath to shove my foot back into the stairs if I needed to in order to protect her.

My dramatic plans were unnecessary. She hopped up and over them with no issue. Same with the spinning barrel. She just ran right through. We made it across a bridge and over some unstable platforms that spun beneath us. Halfway through the very funhouse that had chewed on my limb all those years ago, she looked up at me and said, “They’ve got to make these harder for me.”

Sure, kid. Great idea. The last time I set foot in here, I was actually devoured by the machinery, but yes, let’s crank up the thrills, limbs be damned. I’m proud of her every single day, but I was overwhelmed in that moment. So little and already so brave. Turns out the best way to beat something like that is just not to flinch.

We ventured back through the Midway where Aaron and I decided to ride The Magnum. Listen, I know out of context saying I decided to “ride The Magnum” with my brother-in-law sounds very backwoods, but let me tell you – it is very backwoods. It’s just not sexual

The Magnum is a long-time State Fair staple. In operation for at least 30 years, this metal machine whips riders around in small circles, strapped into carts that extend from a four-armed piece that itself also whips around in circles. Then the carts aren’t even secured in place. They rock back and forth on a center axis.

It’s hard to explain, but I imagine it’s like a homemade version of what they used to prepare astronauts for G-force in space.

We both walked onto the ride with full knowledge of what could happen to us. We weren’t fraudulently induced. Not only is the ride operating in the open in broad daylight, we’ve both seen it there for decades. It’s the same hunk of metal that has occupied space on the Midway since the Reagan administration, beckoning riders to hop on board with the enticing imagine of an airbrushed Tom Selleck.

We handed over our fourteen coupons each – if you’re playing at home, 1 coupon = $1 – and walked onto the metal platform toward our waiting coffin. We took our seats and clicked the shoulder bars into place.

“You know you don’t realize how rusted everything is until you’re strapped down,” I said.

We both noted the bolts, the very ones that kept our cart attached to the rest of the ride, and how rusted and crumbling they were.

“Nice knowing you,” I said.

“Why did we do this?” Aaron asked. We both looked at my sister, ever the good decision maker, staring back at us from solid ground. She waved.

The machine revved up. They played some song like “Highway to Hell” as we began to spin. Then we spun some more. Then we flipped. We would get stuck halfway through a flip, suspended in the air, parallel with the ground, before we whipped back the other way.

I think I handled it pretty well, screaming, “This is how we die” multiple times in a row.

For the record, we didn’t die. It was only about a 2-minute ride. Not even a full song, but it felt like plenty. We got our fourteen-coupons’ worth. And we both managed to walk away without losing consciousness or the food we had just ingested.

“Did y’all have fun?” Shannon asked.

“Too much,” I said.

It was getting late in the day, and the Fair started getting crowded. They headed for their car while I told Paris I wanted to ride one last ride.

It was a ride we would beg to go on as kids, and sometimes we did. But as we grew up, we adopted a new Fair route. See, the Fair has something like eleven different entrances. Depending on how you get there and where you park, your route through the place will change. A long time ago, we began favoring a parking lot near an eastern entrance, which meant we hit certain booths and food stands in a certain order, following a well-trodden path.

Now, with the Fair reopened, knowing how much there was I missed out on when it was closed for the pandemic, I wanted to branch out. As a creature of habit, this is hard. I can’t always bring myself to deviate from my rituals. I like what I like.

I am, on the other hand, marrying Paris Brown – the king of Let’s Just See Where This Path Takes Us and emperor of Let’s Try This New Thing. It’s both exhausting and thrilling.

So, in the spirit of going where the path leads, I asked to ride the haunted house ride, the same one that had been around since my childhood. The last time I had ridden it was probably 20 years ago. Paris, ever eager for an adventure, jumped in the fiber glass cart with me. We squeezed beside each other and filled the entire space.

“Tight fit,” he said.

“Fun fact – these are the same carts they have used for the past thirty years,” I said.

“What?”

The cart began to move.

First, we slammed through a set of swinging doors, wood dented and paint chipped from years of use. The walls at various points were covered in aluminum foil, glow-in-the-dark paint, and mirrors. We rode through artificial fog past a skeleton with its pants down. Paris asked if it had also been there when I was a kid.

“That’s a new addition,” I said. No funds for new carts, but sure, add a pervert skeleton.

After bends, curves, and a short drop that took us outside past the waiting line, we rolled out the exit doors. We disembarked and another couple scrambled on as our cart slammed into the one in front of it.

Headed back toward our car, we passed the official Midway Barker of the State Fair. He’s a talking optical illusion – human torso and head (a real guy) from the chest up suspended on a long brass pole. It gives the illusion that he’s missing everything from his ribs down, which he takes as an opportunity to gather a crowd and sing parody versions of popular songs, replacing the lyrics with references to his pole or lack of body. It

I glanced at the Barker and kept walking. Paris stopped, awestruck, and listened to a few of the jokes. He caught up to me and took me by the hand.

“How did you walk by that so nonchalantly?” he asked.

“Walk by what?” I asked. “The Barker? That’s just the Fair, babe.”

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.