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County Fairs are one of those things that you look forward to each summer.  My daughter-in-law and I took my grandson during the first week of the Fair.  He’s at that age where he doesn’t protest going to the arts and crafts exhibits, gardens and flowers, and the pavilion packed with new gadgets, cheap jewelry, homemade peanut brittle and fudge.  We ate our way through the fairgrounds.  Is there anything better than cotton candy and deep fried zucchini, funnel cakes and pot stickers? 

We wove our way carefully through the barns of cows.  “Cow” is a new word for my grandson.  “Moo.”  We saw horses, rabbits, chickens, goats, sheep, guinea pigs, ducks and swans.  My favorite: the sleeping pig and her nursing piglets. 

We saved the best for last: the carnival.  I’m too old for rides, and my DIL wasn’t interested in being tilted and whirled.  She won a white tiger for her little tiger.  Replete with junk food...

The class of ’65 gathered again this year.  We bring along year books and reunion pictures and spend the day laughing as the years fall away.  We started getting together every year when we lost two friends to cancer.  It reminded all of us how time can get away from us, and friendship is important.  We have a great class president who keeps the ball rolling.  Someone always volunteers to host the reunion, and everyone brings something to share.   It always feels as though it’s only been a few weeks since the last time we saw one another.  

Some of these friends and I go back to kindergarten.  My husband, Rick, was a late arrival in fifth grade.  A few others came in high school.  We’ve grown up to become teachers, banker, insurance agent, park ranger, historian and museum administrator, college administrator, social workers, child psychologist, senior citizen advocate, realtor, business owners, just about everything...

My brother and sister-in-law live on sixteen acres in gorgeous Northern California.  The closest town has a population of less than five thousand.  After once through town with its “hemp store”, I now take the scenic highway west -- two very narrow lanes of windy, hilly, tree-lined road.  As if ten miles weren’t far enough from civilization, my brother and SIL chose a place a mile off the road – across a narrow metal bridge with no side railing suspended over a twenty foot ravine with rocky creek bed below.  The bridge is just wide enough to accommodate a pick-up truck.  UPS drivers refuse to make deliveries and leave their parcels with neighbors.

We don’t get to visit often, but we email frequently.  I keep telling him he should write a column for one of the big city newspapers about the life of an urbanite transplanted in rural America.  He writes of “long-eared rats”(deer) invading his garden, shoot outs on main street between rival...

Certain foods bring back wonderful family memories of dinners.  Grandma Wulff always fixed “More” when I visited her at the farm.  The recipe calls for sautéed onions,  browned ground beef, cooked elbow pasta, corn, peas, chopped tomatoes and tomato sauce and spices all mixed together and then topped with cheese (or ketchup).  My brother and I called it “More” because we always wanted more.  Grandma also fixed “pull-apart” bread.  She made dough from scratch, let it rise, punch it down, let it rise again, took bits and roll them into balls, covered them with butter, cinnamon, chopped nuts and raisins and put them in a pan and let them rise again before baking.   We’d sit around the table talking as we pulled off hunks of gooey sweet bread.

My dad favored Grandma’s angel food cakes.  Mom loved her candied almonds. 

Whenever I packed our three children into the car and headed north to Oregon for a visit with...