It\\s August 27th, 2009 and summer is fading away. Ha! We have had maybe a weeks worth (of what I call) summer! The temperatures here in Syracuse have been very low. This past week was the first time the temperature has climbed over 90 degrees during the summer months. But, in my opinion, that is Central New York for you. I know many places say \\\"if you don\\\'t like the weather here, just wait 5 minutes and it will change\\\", but that old adage seems to always apply for Syracuse and the surrounding area.
Which, brings me to the Great New York State Fair which starts today. My 16yr old Daughter will carry on the family tradition of working at the NYS Fair. When I was around her age, I worked at the Dairylea ice cream stand. Back then the NYS Fair was not as long as it is now (11 days) but believe me when I say, even a week straight working 10 hours per day was tiring enough (as I did). I would come home after 10hrs of scooping HARD ice cream out to fair-goers with my right wrist hurting so bad that I would have to ice it down (funny it needed ice after scooping ice cream all day) just to relieve the inflammation so I could do it all again the next day. After about the third or so day of scooping, your wrist (mine anyway) started to be able to deal with the pain and each day forward the pain was less and less. It seemed like just as the wrist was totally pain free, the Fair was over. In later years, I returned to work at the NYS Fair but this time working for the Ushers union. The Ushers Union has the ticket taking contract with the state. I got (what I considered) a cake job. Since I was in good favor with the boss of one of the gates (main gate #2) I got the walk-in gate at gate #2. All I did was stand/sit there meeting and greeting the fair-goers as I took tickets. I quickly became amazed at the number of people that attend the New york State Fair on a daily basis. Most of the people I saw more than one day were concert goers. Syracuse seems to have a huge country music fan base. A lot of them would have tickets 2 and sometimes 3 nights in a row because of the line up at the grandstand. Another perk for working at gate #2 was that I would get to see the daily 6pm parade. No big deal, just something to break up the day. Gate #2 was also the gate that vendors used to enter and exit the fairgrounds. This meant that during the final couple days, they would change from bring things in (to sell) to packing things up before the end was upon them. They used to offer some of their (perishable) products to us as gifts. Otherwise the product would go bad. I left for home one night with a huge brick of American Cheese. But the best gift was the biggest bag of Cashews I have ever seen.
My 80yr old dad still works at the fair every year for the Ushers Union. He has been an Usher for about as long as I hve been alive. A few years back, he finally got a Gate Supervisor job. So if you attend the Great New York State Fair in 2009 and are near gate 9 (way out back!) say Hi to my dad! :-)
Anyway, my daughter won\\\'t have it so hard. She will be handing out slices of Dominoes Pizza and soda to the fair-goers. I bet by the end of her 11 days, she will not want pizza to eat for a long time :-) Atleast she will come away with an experience she will remember for the rest of her life. Not to mention a paycheck and a job for the resume. :-)
Koz
Summer and the Great New York State Fair |
About
This is the default theme installed with the PluggedOut Blog script, available from pluggedout.sourceforge.net.
Contact
E-Mail : you@yourdomain.com
ArchiveCalendar
SearchRecent EntriesCategorisedAffiliations
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
