Learning the Newcastle way of living, one event at a time

I
  am aware that I come from a vastly different culture than what I surround myself with here in Newcastle. I have seen events and participated in things that I have never even heard of before moving here. And it is on that point that I dive into the following column with fear and trepidation. Fear because it is not my intent to cause insult to anybody, and trepidation because that’s a word I always see linked to the word “fear.” 
I do realize that I am the one that is foreign to this culture. Y’all – we say that in Texas – y’all probably look at me as if I have antenna sprouting from my head, I’m sure. I don’t, I promise you. My antenna sprout from … well, from someplace else, but we won’t go there. And sometimes I wonder and ponder such things as “Should I write about thus and so?” or “Will they understand that I’m just kidding here?” or “Now, where did that gash on my head come from?” But that question is for another time unless a reader of this column gets offended and hits me with something. At that point, I’ll know from whence the gash came.
 Right now, though, I hope enough time has elapsed since I saw the truck pull at the Weston County Fair that I feel it’s safe relating my experience there. That is, I feel safe as long as nobody from Newcastle, or Weston County for that matter, reads this column. If you’re from someplace else, I think you live far enough away that I don’t have to worry about the repercussions. But, if you’re from this area, you may want to only look at the pictures associated with this story – feel good that you’re alive and well, and then head on over to the next article. I have a good reason for this attitude, and I’ll explain it fully right now. It’s not because I’m going to say anything rude or make some put-downs about the event and the people. I won’t – maybe. It’s also not because I didn’t have a good time there, because I did. It’s one of the best times I have had at the fair, and since it was the first event I went to by myself, it has a special place in my heart. 
No—none of those reasons apply here. The reason I think you may want to skip this article if you live here is simply this – I’m not going to tell the truth. In fact, while there will be elements of the truth in this, you can rest assured that about 70% of it will be a total fabrication. But I promise to make those falsehoods as accurate as I can. I can’t stand it when a lie is misleading.
 When I arrived at the truck pull, I was quite surprised about the whole affair. That is due, partly, because I have never been to one before. Where I come from fairs are mostly about the midway and the carnival atmosphere. That is the reason I usually didn’t go to the county fair where I grew up. Well, that, and the fact that my mom always wanted to pull me into the barn where they did square dancing. I’m not against square dancing at all. But when I participate in something of that ilk, I want to be dancing with some hot chick who makes all the other guys drool and envy me to the point that they turn unnatural colors and hate me forever. I have never had that experience, much to my chagrin. But I’m only 57, so I’m not crossing that off my bucket list yet. I figure I have at least 30 more good years in me before that becomes unreasonable to expect. After that, though, I think I might be a tad too old to be attractive to that type of girl. My mother was NOT that type of girl, so I never really had a good time doing that, and she doesn’t count.
 I also don’t like midways. If I wanted to have my head snapped off as a roller coaster car careened around a hairpin turn at 200 miles an hour, I would have hopped in a car that my brother was driving. It’s cheaper and probably even more thrilling, especially if I survived. I have never survived that experience before, and I doubt that I ever will in the future, so I am only speculating there. And while I like shopping, lining up behind the entire population of California so I can buy one of those Chinese finger traps is also not something I find very fun. If I want that type of experience, I could get it in San Francisco at China Town, and at least there you’re within a mile and a half of the nearest bathroom. But at Cal Expo in Sacramento or the Stanislaus County Fair in California, it’s not like that at all! The public bathrooms are always in another state, and by the time you get there, there is a line of 150 million men waiting their turn and doing the pee-pee dance, sometimes without success.
 This fair was unlike any of those experiences, though. First of all, the events weren’t anything I’ve ever encountered before. They had a strong rural feel to them, which I enjoyed a lot more than the city experience growing up in California. That includes the truck pull. I didn’t know what this was but found out quickly. The contestants hooked their trucks and Volkswagen Bugs up to what is called a sled. Then they revved up their engines and tried to pull this sled, which somehow got heavier as you towed it along a track. They had to see if they could do it for a set distance. However, the entire time they were doing this, someone was hooked up to the underside of their vehicle. While there he was trying to dismantle the engine. If the truck made the entire pull, they won. If the fiend under the truck took apart the engine before they made the whole run, they won. And if you were one that hooked up a VW Bug to the sled, everyone in the grandstand won because you looked ridiculous and we were all having a good laugh at your expense. Man, I really wanted to see that happen.
 But one of the best parts about this event was not the dirt flying around as the truck tires were spinning away. It wasn’t even seeing a trail of mechanical parts being strewn all over the race track, although that was a blast. You could easily see the great joy on the faces of those contestants who left half their truck strewn for miles in their wake. And I learned a lot of new colorful words during those moments. 
But here’s my favorite part, and it was because of Outlaw Motors. They were throwing away T-shirts. “Throwing away” may be oversimplifying it. Because they weren’t just going around and tossing clothing to the audience – No! They were openly inviting riots with those things. If you wanted one, you practically had to joust to get one. Kids dog-piled on each other, biting, scratching and clawing at the chance to wrap their hands around a shirt and then pulling them into their chests in a death grip. I would have been OK with this if it weren’t for two significant problems. First of all, it was noisy. Now I’m a cultured and refined, quiet sort of person with lots of grace and dignity. If you don’t believe me, ask someone who knows me well and then don’t believe their lies. But I know that I am, because my wife (who is never wrong) and I just got into a knockout fight about that subject, where I finally had to scream, “I’m a cultured and refined, quiet sort of person with lots of grace and dignity!” To which she replied, “Yeah – right!” So you can see, she endorsed what I had just said, and as I stated earlier, she is never wrong. Now, back to the truck pull. Follow me. I left it up there. The yelling and screaming at the truck pull were just too much. I mean they were drowning out my cries of, “Hey, That shirt’s MINE!.” The second reason I wasn’t okay with any of this is that I didn’t get a T-shirt.
 But this isn’t the worst part of the T-shirt roller derby. It was how Outlaw Motors was throwing them into the crowd. You see, there was this flatbed on the other side of the track with a cannon mounted to it. Not your ordinary cannon loaded with black powder, NO! Because then they would have been shooting cannonballs at us and that would not have been very nice. I am also a slight bit concerned that the cleaning and repair bill would have grown a fair amount as well. Plus, can you imagine what the liability costs for something like that would have been? And as far as I’ve been able to find out through an exhaustive research on the internet that lasted about 15 seconds, the only company willing to insure a real cannon firing real cannonballs into the crowd would have Farmers Insurance because they’ve seen everything—bum, ba-dum, bum, bum, bum, bum! Instead, this was a cannon rigged up to an air compressor. And then a T-shirt was stuffed inside the contraption and rammed deep into it with the Jolly Green Giant’s cotton swab, which I have on good authority he has not gotten back yet. He’s not happy about that either, because he needs a good ear cleaning. Once the pressure built up enough, Katara Cade, who was operating the cannon, aimed at the audience and tried to kill them! Of course, I jest, so calm down. She was not trying to kill anybody. She was only trying to maim them – over and over again!
 While Katara was firing this cannon, I kept taking pictures. I wanted that one shot where I captured the T-shirt just exiting the muzzle of the gun. I am sorry to report that I was not able to get that picture. And I got no help from Katara at all! About halfway through the event, I even got to talk with her, and I thought we had worked out a signal that would let me know exactly when she would fire the cannon off, thus giving me the best chance of snapping the picture at the right time. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many photos I took, I missed it by just a little bit, and all I got was smoke trails issuing from the end of that machine! I feel that the image of a cannon smoking is not a good influence on our youth, but it’s not my fault. Anyway, it is at this precise section of this story that (in my mind) I’m inserting all types of explicative phrases. The only reason you can’t see those cuss words is that they have been typed over by these words instead after the fact. But, be assured that my heart is with the colorful language right now.
 I should qualify that just a bit, because it may seem like an extreme reaction. But I feel justified, and here’s why. Right near the end of the truck pull, I turned around to look in the stands. I wanted to see the crowd to determine if they were having a good time. They were. It seems that public maiming is at the top of the list of favorite pastimes here. Now, while Katara was shooting the shirts at everyone, only two of them came even close to me. I mean this was the whole night up to this point. I also had one brush across the index and middle finger of my right hand. Can you imagine how excited I was by that? But the moment I turned my back on the track and was facing the stands, BAM! Right between the shoulder blades! And it is right there that I AM telling the truth. That really did happen. Could you imagine that picture, getting a T-shirt in frame coming right at me? That would have been priceless. But I missed the shot and wasn’t even able to see that particular shirt coming at me. It just hit me squarely in the back blades while I was looking elsewhere. That’s the bad news.
 The good news is that my doctor said there’s no permanent damage and I’ll probably be okay in short order.