Despite its name Richland County is a poor area focused almost solely on agriculture. When you are coming to Mansfield you can see famous Shawshank prison just a couple miles far from the highway. Right by the fairgrounds you drive along a unique road whose lanes are divided in the middle by a row of electric pools. The fairgrounds are quite large with an asphalt surface among trailers but campgrounds are very dusty and so are paths among various barns. When you go to restrooms in the early morning you can already see kids showering their cows, horses and other animals like donkeys, sheep or goats. Most people wear jeans and high leather shoes with spurs or wellingtons so that they can walk in mud and step in dung. I went running around the fairgrounds several times but the adjacent roads don't lead to any special places so then I went running on a horse track because there I can count how far I ran quite exactly. On Tuesday I made 6 miles in an hour, which encouraged me to more training and gave kind of promise that I might be able to run that 5-mile-long contest in a harder terrain.
Richland County Fair isn't very busy. Pavel worked in Shave Ice, Dorothy in Gyros and the rest of us mostly in Lemonades, rotating around. I usually worked in Gyros No. 1 and then moved to help Dorothy when Uncle Jim and his wife Betty came at 5 pm. Do you remember these people from last year? Jim Kiplinger is an uncle of Kelly's father Tom Linn. Both Betty and Jim are about 81 years old but still in quite a good shape. They still want to work at least several hours at their favorite fairs, but sometimes their slowness drive people who work with them crazy. They waste time talking friendly to every other customer while there is a long line forming in front of the trailer, which is nice but inappropriate in busy hours. Besides that they are partly deaf and so fragile that you can't move around as quickly as you would like to because you don't want to hurt them accidentally. They are family members so it's not easy to reject their excitement for working, but on the other hand it's the highest time they realized that this rush should be handled by someone else - for their own good.
Ryan couldn't stand this fair's slowness so he kept escaping home almost every day. Kelly brought boys a couple times and, of course, I had to take Trent to see animals and rides. This year I took little Cole as well, which was quite sweet. He has grown so much in last ten months. He keeps watching every little detail of the world - every person he meets, every new thing he sees, every new word he hears… In his special thoughtful silence he looks like if he was judging every single perception, thinking how stupid some people behave etc. He tries to learn everything that Trent can do, which means a lot since Trent is a very smart and talented kid. If you heard Trent talking to unknown adult people you would never say he is only 3 years old.
Mansfield was also the place where we met Mr. K's crew. Last year we met several Polish guys that worked for him. This year just Karola came back but she brought three other Polish girls with her. Same like last year we invited these guys to party with us on Tuesday evening. Also other evenings passed in kind of party mood - watching movies etc. Compared to last year the weather was much more balanced - no hurricanes, no 110 degrees, no muddy floods.