By Mike Nistler

I can’t believe it. The Minnesota State Fair opens this Thursday! Where did the summer go?

Going to the fair has been a tradition in our family for a number of years. But this year, as we face an empty nest again (more on that in a coming blog), it’s just my wife and I, and she’s coming off knee surgery.

So, it remains to be seen whether we make the annual pilgrimage down to the land of food on a stick and band shell performances.

If I don’t go, I’ll miss it. There is something about the “sameness” of the fair that is comforting. I remember traveling to the fair as a youngster with my parents. Today, many of the foodstands and exhibits are in the same place as they were back then, some 40 years ago.

Of course, as kids we didn’t get to do the daring stuff like the Midway, although one year my dad did take me and my brothers to a stock car race at the Grandstand. I just remember that it was loud. Oh, and we also got to go see a motorcyclist ride his bike up the inside of a silo. Centrifugal force, I guess they call it. That was loud as well.

But mostly, being sons of a farmer, we spent our time on Machinery Hill. We didn’t much care for hanging out with the tractors and farm animals since that wasn’t a vast departure from our day-to-day lives, but it was fun just the same.

As I got older my trips to the fair started to be with other people. Good-bye Machinery Hill, hello band shells, beer gardens and Whack-a-mole (again, more on that later).