My Heart has a History

Labour Day weekend is one of those yearly milestones that arrive with mixed feelings for a lot of us. A signal to the looming end of summer, and a herald of the Fall Fair season. I always look forward to both as I am not a big fan of summer heat and I just love a Fall Fair. Well, to be honest it is not the Fair so much as the food, corn dogs and cheesy fries being my treats of choice. Corn dogs and cheesy fries become Pogos and Poutine in Quebec, but delicious no matter how you say it! This year my daughter and I decided to go to the Shawville Fair because Paul Brandt was headlining and we both just love the bones off this guy. Road trip Yippee!! Let the excitement begin. As we arrive in Shawville we are greeted by the Main street locals all enthusiastically waving a welcome at us and inviting us to park on their lawns for the small sum of $5.00. Walking up to the entrance gates the smell of a country fair assails us, cigarette smoke (both the legal and illegal kind) wafts through the air, mixed with the aroma of fresh horse dung and Johnny on the spots. The first order of business was to get our food and head to the main stage area to scope out the best spot to spread our blankets. We wandered for a bit, checked out the vendors stalls and the over priced, hand made (mostly in China) souvenirs, bought a pink Cowgirl hat in honour of the Country Music Star we were about to watch perform. Pogos and Pountine obtained, check, find spot for blanket, check. Hey, wait a minute, what are all of these chairs doing here? It seems the modern Fair attendees now bring soccer chairs NOT blankets. They set them up and then abandon them, trusting that the chairs will still be there in the exact same spots at show time, while they go off to spend time at the midway. Well never mind that, our blankets will do just fine thank you very much, we can stretch our necks to see and will make a mental note for next time. We were so excited and had spent the whole week before checking the weather reports hoping for a dry day. I guess in hind sight we should have put a little more emphasis on warm and dry because it was cold. Not cool, not breezy but darn right teeth chattering, bone chilling cold. The kind of weather that just begs for a nice big mug of hot coffee or tea, the only problem being that neither of us wanted to drink anything because we just couldn't face another trip to the Big Blue Box! And so we sat on our blankets, in the middle of a field, surrounded by soccer chairs and giggled and reminisced about fairs gone by while we waited patiently for our Country Idol to get up on stage. Paul was great, the man can sing! We will remember this day forever and talk of it often. Worth every minute of the cold, the blankets in lieu of soccer chairs and the weird smells because my beautiful daughter and I had spent the day together creating new memories to call up when we hit pause and rewind. Oh, and for those of you who haven't yet connected the title of this blog with the story "My Heart has a History" is the title of one of our favourite Paul tunes. Thank you Paul Brandt for helping to create these lovely memories. Love and stuff Pam:}