I do but it is not a mushroom. Oh well. What do you on The Planet Ann Arbor during the third week in July? You go to the Art Fairs (yes, that is plural) of course! Or not… If you are a curmudgeonly old townie, like me. Although I am not exactly a townie because you have to know that you can take the kid out of the yooperland but you can’t completely exorcise the yooperland out of the kid.

I am pretty darn blase about the art fairs these days. When I was still a “kid” in my 20s without my own children, I would walk downtown from the west side and walk all over the fairs, drooling over all of the “art” I couldn’t afford. Reality hit the year that Lizard Breath was a baby and Radical Betty (visiting from the yooperland) and I took her to the fair in a stroller. It is usually hotter than Hades during the art fair and that was the case that year and by the time we were done, all of us were hot and probably a bit dehydrated, so I was dealing with an uncomfortable, fussy baby. Still, for years, I would take the beach urchins to the fair and buy them the cheap little trinkety stuff that we could afford.

Then there were the years when we were involved in the summer theatre academy day camp *during* the art fairs. Our performances were right in the thick of things in the old Trueblood Theatre, replaced now by some big fancy dorm for rich kids. I miss that old un-airconditioned place. Anyway. The challenge during those years was how to navigate the art fair traffic, park and schlep about a billion things into the venue, then find a safe parking place for the day. I mean a place where your vee-hickle wouldn’t get ticketed or towed. During those years, I would manage to escape the ticket booth just long enough to *run* down Huron to Main and hit the second booth off Huron to buy earrings from my favorite jewelers. They are both long dead now. I first ran into them at the Sault Ste. Siberia art fair. I miss them so much.

Nowadays? There are plenty of things at the art fairs that are way too rich for my budget but, if I were not in a deacquisitional mode, I could drop a few bucks if I wanted too. Not today. Not that there wasn’t anything interesting there but I kept thinking stuff like, “Where would I put that?” So, no nothing bought. Well, except that the GG bought a bunch of tie-dyed tshirts in various sizes to put out on the Houghton Lake Group Home Pontoon Bote. For anyone who wants to wear one. But we were only down there tonight because of our habit to hang out at the Oscar Tango on Friday night after KW gets done working for the week. The art fair was somewhat incidental.

And then we jungled home through the woods.

Good night and good art,
KW

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