Floppy-Ears & Bubba

Let me tell you about the Fryeburg Fair. It’s a decent place to be, but a hideous place to get to.

As I told you yesterday, we were in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for our vacation. The town of Fryeburg is in Maine. We decided that it might be enjoyable to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of their annual county fair. It seemed like a nice vacationy thing to do. So we set off on the 90-mile ride to Fryeburg.

It was a pleasant enough ride for the first 75 miles or so. Once we hit Conway, however, it turned into a vehicular nightmare.

If you’re familiar with New England and its tourist destinations, you know that getting anywhere near North Conway will set you up for sitting in traffic for a long while. And I knew that fact. I was expecting to perhaps hit a slight bit of congestion, but I also knew that with a final destination of Fryeburg it might not be too unbearable. At Conway, the road to North Conway splits off from the road to Fryeburg. I figured once we were past Conway it would be clear sailing. I had been to Fryeburg a couple of times in the past and I always flew through it.

What I failed to take into account was that the damn fair wasn’t going on when I had previously driven through the town. Add that to it being foliage season, and the road to the fair being a one-lane road for ten miles, and that not only were people going TO North Conway to vacation, but vacationers were also driving FROM North Conway to go to the fair…

Suffice to say the final fifteen miles were not pleasant.

(MY WIFE would like me to add, however, that the company was wonderful.)

It took us three-and-a-half hours to make 89 miles. I say “89”, and not “90”, because we parked about a mile from the actual fairgrounds and walked the rest of the way. This means we also walked back to the car afterward. Additionally, there was a lot of walking around from one thing to another on the grounds themselves. I didn’t take home any stuffed animals, but I transported two nice blisters on my left heel to our hotel that evening.

Live and learn, I guess. Had I any idea that the traffic would be so horrendous – that is, if I used my brains and thought about it a bit – I don’t believe we would have undertaken the journey. I mean, it's nice to walk around the fairgrounds and notice that you're the fittest specimen there, which makes you feel a whole lot better about eating those two sausages with peppers and onions, but probably not worth as much aggravation as the drive brought us.

Then again, you see some things at the Fryeburg Fair that you wouldn’t see if you stayed in Portsmouth. Bubba, for instance.

Photography being what it is, and MY photography being even more so, Bubba is not represented here in all of his ginormous glory. His ass stood about seven feet tall. Here is the sign that stood just outside of Bubba’s stall.

That is one huge pot roast. And Bubba must have sensed my preference for tasty meats. He never took his eyes off of me. And he spoke to me in threatening tones. His vocalizations were not the friendly sort of moo one might hear from Daisy the dairy cow. Bubba possessed a bovine voice about two octaves lower, but infinitely more menacing, than James Earl Jones. This won’t do it justice, but I have no good idea of how to recreate Bubba’s voice in print, so here’s my best approximation:

MOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

I had never before heard a farm animal growl, let alone with such force that it would have blown my hair back if I had any.

Bubba was securely chained to the stall, but happy 1930’s theatergoers had been assured that King Kong was securely chained, too, and I remember what happened in that movie. I pictured Bubba breaking loose, grabbing MY WIFE in his massive jaws, and climbing the Ferris Wheel while being shot at from the airplanes on the kiddie ride. If they were able to bring him down, the rent-a-cops would say…

“Well, the planes finally got him!”

To which I would have had to reply…

“It wasn’t the planes. It was beauty killed the beef.”

After my encounter with Bubba, I decided that I’d like to view some friendlier (and smaller) livestock. I wandered over to the goat barn.

I think goats have always been underrated. We are perpetually shown cantankerous old billy goats in cartoons, eating tin cans and headbutting people in the ass, but I’ve yet to meet a goat I didn’t like. Admittedly, having lived in Boston and environs my entire life, my experiences have been limited. The few times I have met them, though, they’ve seemed to me to be charming creatures given a bad rap.

When I first saw her (I know it was a “her” because there was a small sign informing me that goat butter and goat cheese could be purchased) she was eating the paint from the rail of her pen. I thought that was rather clichéd and would feed into the stereotypes. She seemed like a nice goat, and I didn’t want folks to think her parents didn’t raise their kids right. I approached and said, “Oh, come on, you don’t really want to be eating paint, do you?”

As I said it, I reached out to pet her. She stopped chewing the paint and hungrily licked my forearm. I jumped about two feet sideways.

A lady standing next to me said, “You shouldn’t have scared him!”

I said, “I didn’t mean to!”

She replied, “Oh, I wasn’t talking to you! I was talking to the goat!”

I now realized that my arm must have seemed a nice treat, being a bit sweaty and salty from the heat of the day. She wasn’t going to bite me. She just wanted to lick me (and even though I haven’t solicited such services from outside of my own species too often, it was nice of her to offer.) Somewhat red in the face, I gathered up what tatters remained of my courage and dignity and once again approached the goat. Being careful to keep my arm out of mouth’s reach, I skritched her on the head. She seemed to enjoy that. And she was so damned cute, I decided to take the photo up above. After taking it, I figured I owed her something for doing me the favor of posing in such a beguiling way, so I stuck out my arm and said, “Go ahead. Have a lick.”

She licked my forearm four or five times before I pulled it away from her. I figured it was probably provident to do so before she got the thought into her head that there might be even more salty goodness under the surface of my skin and maybe a little nip would release it.

MY WIFE, who did not accompany me to the goat barn, did not seem overly jealous when I told her of the attentions paid to me by my floppy-eared pal. If she had gone unattended to Bubba’s stall and returned with a similar tale, I’m not sure I would have been as magnanimous.

Soon, with moorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr better stuff.