Years ago, some friends of mine told me about their visit to the Wisconsin State Fair, which is held every August in suburban Milwaukee. “Meat,” one of them said. “When we got there, we wanted meat. We ate a lot of it.”

I now understand the impulse. I’d also add dairy to the mix. Meat and dairy.
Ann and I arrived at the Wisconsin State Fair last Friday afternoon, staying into the evening (Lilly and Yuriko couldn’t make it). She’d never been to a state fair. I had never been to one either. Neighborhood fairs, town fairs, county fairs, even a world’s fair, and fairs in a number of countries, but somehow never a state fair in the United States. Been mulling it for years, especially going to Wisconsin’s, because it’s the closest one. The Illinois State Fair is in Springfield, at least an hour further away.

We got there when it was still fairly hot. That didn’t deter a large crowd of fairgoers, but somehow the grounds managed to hold all of them without too much trouble. I’m glad that a state fair like this drew a crowd, since it’s a real event, one that requires going somewhere, and seeing something, rather than some kind of electronic entertainment. It also provides work for musicians, and not just the headliners, who tend to be acts whose heyday was 30 or 40 years ago. Considering my nephew’s profession, I can get behind an event that employs musicians.

The fair featured a vast array of merchandise booths, a good number of no-extra-charge stages with the aforementioned musicians playing, and large exhibits of farm animals, true to its roots as an ag show. Ann and I spent some time looking at the many, many cows in the cattle barns. At one point we watched a man wash his cow, making use of a squeegee. That isn’t something I’d have thought of.

But that wasn’t the main thing. The main thing was to consume mass quantities. I knew that would be the case, so we both had light lunches. We ate items individually and shared a few things. Mostly, of course, meat and dairy. Namely, a pork doughnut, elk jerky, poutine, a pizza cone, an eclair, lemonade and milk.

The pork doughnut was a regular doughnut-like pastry, not too sweet, filled with pulled pork. The poutine was poutine. I didn’t have that in mind when I went to the fair, but the poutine booth attracted my attention with a large, hand-painted cartoon moose, looking suspiciously like Bullwinkle, wearing a Mountie uniform that looked suspiciously like Dudley Do-Right’s. He promised that the poutine was authentic Quebec style, and as far as I can tell, it was. Not bad at all.

The poutine booth was near the Wisconsin Products Pavilion. Ann got some ice cream there, and on impulse, I bought an enormous eclair, not like one of the dainty delights in France, but American sized: big as fat hot dog in a sizable bun. Not quite as good as the French version, but with its Wisconsin cream and chocolate, almost that good, which is saying something.

After I ate it, I realized I wasn’t going to eat anything else that day. Even I have my limits. That was too bad, because it meant we missed trying the pizza slices cooked with bacon underneath and especially the Wisconsin State Fair Creme Puff.

The creme puff’s apparently a big deal. Even though I knew we couldn’t eat one — Ann was full, too — we went into the building devoted to making and selling creme puffs, right at the fair, just to see the place. It was a large operation with dozens of apron-wearing, hair- and beard-netted people devoted to their creation, visible behind large glass windows. People were lined up inside to buy them and at “creme puff express windows” outside the building. That eclair was good, but I would have traded it, and certainly the poutine, for one of those mountainous puffs.

So it goes. I may live long enough to encounter a state fair creme puff some other time. Next time I’ll be ready.