The Iowa State Fair...

State Fair was a movie written many years ago and it was based on the Iowa State Fair. I found that a 1933 movie was made and then a Walter Lang remade it in 1945. The latest one, made in 1962, was the one with Pat Boone as a star in the movie plus Bobby Darrin, and Jose Ferrer. We attended the fair today and above was a painting done by an artist portraying what it looks like at the back side of the Grand Stand. This painting was at the art show among many good artworks.
We had a pretty good day, inspite of the forty percent rain that we did feel on our backs. Fortunately we walked through buildings to avoid the mist and our timing was perfect as we were setting in a food tent while it downpoured for a very long time. It was very cold and we had to find a building filled with a lot of people to warm up, from the crowd body heat in the building. It was 65 degrees most of the morning.
My wife and I took almost 200 pictures so I have lots to show you. I will edit out duplicate stuff and try to give you just the flavor of what we saw. It will take some time sharing them all in the next week or longer, so as not to get too boring. By the late afternoon the sun came out and we were less disappointed about the weather.
In one very large metal building they had inside, new born animals on display. They had chicks incubating and as they reached the strength that they needed, they put them in the larger pen for food and water. Some of the older chicks hatched at the beginning of the fair had wing feathers developing.
There were cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, and ostriches that were being born on a daily basis. These ostrich chicks were incubated and timed to hatch for the exhibit. From the start of the fair three had hatched and there are three eggs yet to be hatched. They are a prickly looking bird when young. The ostrich is being grown in the southwestern part of the state and they sell ostrich meat for profit. They don't make any money off of me but someone must be eating them.
The mothers and newborns were penned up in a way that all could see and yet petting was limited. Before you left the had dozens of containers of bacterial lotion for your hands to use.
My wife took a lot of pictures of a horse show that we just happened upon. We watched various divisions of judging for about an hour. It was a great situation for her to get lots of reference photos in which to paint pictures for her art business. I will get to share these horse pictures and I have a definite story to write about two young brothers who took turns showing this large gray dappled horse in differnt divinsions. The photos of the horses are very important to my wife, but I will be telling you the human story that I watched unflolding while these guys were being judged.
It was nice to get away for awhile and people watch, eat funnel cakes, see art exhibits, view produce, and a butter cow sculpture. The experience was overwhelming with 100,000 people plus vendors doing their thing. We hadn't been to the fair for a long time but we will be returning more often. Thanks for reading....