Love On A Stick

Big Paul has an infant resting on his stomach. From a distance it looks like a lost, weary, traveler passed out on a sand dune.

It's the first scene I encounter on a Sunday afternoon at the Minnesota State Fair.

Carla has a Harley t-shirt that must have shrunk in the dryer. She's Paul's gal. Last week she was Stu's gal, but Stu couldn't make the fair today, he's in prison. He probably understands that Carla needs to move on, but he'd hate to see his young son resting on Paul's shiny belly

Dan and Denise are at the Fair as well. Denise wants Dan to look at flowers in the horticulture building. Dan wants to sit on a wooden bench, with a beer, and  imagine he's with a girl like Carla. There are lots of girls like Carla at the fair, but Dan married a girl more like, say, Elisabeth Dole. She makes Dan look at flower arrangements and homemade honey. She tells him to tuck in his shirt. She licks her fingers and removes ketchup from his chin. Dan yearns to find a note on the fridge informing him Denise has run away with her minister.

Roger and Ella are making their 53rd appearance at the Fair. They met here in '54. Ella was grooming a show horse, Roger was campaigning for the State Legislature. It was love at first sight, says Roger. Ella refers to it as "stalking."

After spotting Ella twice at the Fair, Roger appeared at her family's farm house in Rosemount, claiming to be door knocking. But the farm was miles from Roger's district. A few days later he sought an interview with Ella claiming to be a free-lance writer for a 4H publication. He was indeed a writer, but a technical one for 3M.

Roger lost the election in November but won Ella's heart in September. Not through prevarication, but by saving her father's life when the old man fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Roger spotted him, on account of being on the last rung of a ladder looking in a bedroom window he thought was Ella's. Roger still feels queasy about the excitement he felt when first noticing that bare fleshy shoulder emerging from the white bed sheets. But then he spotted the cigarette, and the smoke, and pounded on the window to wake the old man. He later told the family he was there that night to propose to Ella. Truth is, he had hoped to simply watch her sleep. It was a Saturday night and he was lonely.

The act of saving the old man changed everything for Roger. Ella saw it as a sign. She and Rodger were engaged a month later, under a harvest moon, and married the following June.

Fifty-three straight years of the State Fair followed. Some memorable, some arranged solely out of obligation, some culminating in thoughts of the different spouses the two might have found had they both skipped that 1954 Minnesota get-together.

"You go where the tide takes you," says Roger. "You fight it from time to time, but, in the end, it wins. It's bigger than you."

Happy Anniversary Ella and Roger. Happy trails Dan and Denise. And Carla, you and Big Paul are just starting out, on the very same grounds that gave birth to Roger and Ella's family. Six wonderful children. May your family be as blessed. And may Stu's parole in 2009 not result in any unnecessary turbulence for the little one.

See ya 'round the Ferris Wheel.