No. 175 – Renaissance Fair

Performer: The Byrds

Songwriters: David Crosby, Jim McGuinn

Original Release: Younger Than Yesterday

Year: 1967

Definitive Version: The Monterrey International Pop Festival, 1992.

See, this is why you check things before you write about them. I was certain that, at 1:45, Renaissance Fair was the shortest song on this here list, but I went back to check, just to make sure. It isn’t. The shortest song is Sweet Sweet by Smashing Pumpkins (good ol’ No. 765), checking in at 1:39. I didn’t even know it.

Anyway, among other things, moving back to Columbus in 1994 provided the opportunity to do things I hadn’t done in more than a decade. One was to attend the Ohio State Fair.

The Ohio State Fair, for those of you not in the know, is the biggest of its kind, or at least it was at one time. But I never really was big on going. Mordecai Brown could count on his right hand the number of times I attended before I moved back home, and I’m not sure I ever did much other than watch music those times.

Debbie loved going to the Ohio State Fair, however, and I loved Debbie, so I went with her in 1994 after we had switched from being friends to lovers. We then went almost every year after that, and I grew to … well, not mind it if not like it. I’m not a big farm guy, but it ended up being a enjoyable day.

We had a routine that we followed pretty much every year that started that first year. It reached a point where if we deviated from it, I’d ask Debbie, for example, don’t you want to stop and get a lemon shakeup?

We’d park north of the Fairgrounds, close to the museum of natural history and hike to the north entrance where the gigantic carved cardinal greets attendees. After paying due homage, we’d tour the nearby crafts booths, looking at the wood and leather products. One year, someone built a gigantic rocking chair. I mean, like 20 feet tall. Debbie took a picture of me sitting in it, looking like Edith Ann.

From there, we’d head across 17th Avenue and veer sharply to the right through the marketplace, which was mostly just a flea market of stuff I’d never buy. But making a purchase was beside the point. The point was to get in some air conditioning before heading to the Gilligan complex to see the horsies, as Debbie called them, and cows.

After that, if we hadn’t eaten lunch, it was time to get a bite, so we’d go through the Coliseum and watch a horse show if one was going on before continuing to the Taste of Ohio Café, which meant one thing: Schmidt’s.

Schmidt’s is a legendary German place in Columbus, in German Village naturally. In the mid-Nineties, Schmidt’s had several locations, but there was something special about getting a brat at the Ohio State Fair.

Regardless of whether we’d eaten lunch before or during, the next stop ALWAYS was the Dairy Products Building for fresh ice cream in one of only three flavors: vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. (Debbie got vanilla; I got chocolate.) This also was where they had the butter sculptures.

These are exactly what they sound like. The butter cow, carved out of a billion sticks of butter, was famous, and recently the sculptors started to get wacky and did a butter John Cooper, the Ohio State coach at the time. (I would suspect a butter Urban Meyer is on tap if not already in existence, although there might be second thoughts after that game last Saturday.)

As we ate our ice cream, we’d hike past the giant slide and Kiddieland to the agriculture and horticulture building. That’s where they had the award-winning pumpkins and squash and whatnot but more important, more AC. I don’t know why, but I always liked looking at the vegetables. Certainly, the air wasn’t, shall we say, as pungent as it was in the equine and bovine pavilion.

The final stops on our tour were my favorites. There was the antiques and collectibles pavilion. It never is not fun looking at baseball cards and memorabilia, although the prices were such that I never bought anything. Then came the rabbit and poultry pavilion, which was a required stop for Debbie.

We typically also ducked into the fine arts center in that part of the Fairgrounds just to see what was being exhibited. If it were paintings, we’d look around. If not, we’d leave.

One year a guy was playing acoustic folk music in that building, and Debbie discovered that it was one of her schoolteachers. She went in to say hi and enjoyed the reunion until, as she said later, she realized that her former teacher was hitting on her. Yikes!

By this time, we’d hiked the length of the Fairgrounds, studiously staying as far away from the carnival rides and games—and the teenagers therein—as was possible. That isn’t to say we didn’t do any rides, though.

After we’d made it all the way to the since-replaced block-letter OHIO that greeted fairgoers at the south entrance at 11th Avenue, we’d take the tram back to the north entrance, which gave us a view of the entire fairgrounds from the top.

Back to big-city life, until the next year …