The sight of Percherons makes me happy. So do deep-fried cheese curds, newborn lambs and those designer chickens with feathery pompom anklets, and then you enter the Horticulture Building and see pumpkins the size of studio apartments, large enough to house a man and his wife, so today I am happy, having attended the Minnesota State Fair, our Mardi Gras, when normally cautious people can go out and be jovial in public. My wife is not a Fair person. Her problem is good taste and a limited tolerance for gluttony and barkers and violent centrifugal experiences in motorized contraptions operated by tattooed men who might have done prison time for larceny. But my daughter is Fair-bred, so I have company.

Read the full column at the Chicago Tribune’s site →