Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Two weeks and counting to The Cross Gardener

Exactly two weeks to go until the release of The Cross Gardener. So why not give away another Advance Reading Copy?

In TCG, the Shenandoah County Fair plays a prominent role. In the comments below, tell us your very first memory of visiting a County Fair, Carnival, Disney park, etc.

I'll pick a random winner tomorrow. Good luck!

19 comments:

  1. When i was 8 or 9 we went to the state fair and i remember seeing the tallest man in the world! ha he .....thats what the sign said anyways =) But i still remember 20 years later!!!

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  2. I think the first tme I visited a count fair was on my mission in Springfield Ill. We went on the Nursing home bus where we volunteered and it was so much fun!They had a ton of cool display booths, like taffy making, and I was in hog heaven. The elderly people were really living it up too. I'll never forget that day.

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  3. When I lived in NC, I heard about the Shenandoah County Fair and my friends and I were going to come to Woodstock to see it. We never did but I ended up moving here and not only getting to go to the Shenandoah County Fair, I worked there for years too! Had many great times with co-workers and many great laughs.

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  4. The county fair was a very big event in the small community I grew up in. I can remember how big the fair seemed. We seemed to have walked for hours and hours and rode hundreds of rides. Now that I am older,I realize how small our county fair is and there is not near 100 rides...lol

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  5. Well...I remember very vividly when I was about 6 or 7, the one and only Shen. Co. Fair. I was walking through the famous Animal Barns with my parents. The cows were huge, the smells were awful and then it happened...I turned to look at a giant brown cow and it unloaded the largest "cow pie" that I had ever seen right in front of me...good thing they were in stalls or ir could have been on me. At least that is what my father said.

    Years later, walking through the same area with my own daughter, we pass the petting zoo. In her most innocent 3 year old voice, she says, "Look Daddy, there you are, DONKEY!" (A nickname her aunt has for me) I won't forget that one either.

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  6. I remember going to the Shenandoah County Fair with my mother and younger sister when I was a pre-teen. I loved the rides, cotton candy, candy apples and seeing my friends from school. My favorite rides were the Ferris wheel and Merry-go-round. At that time someone was there that, for a small fee, would guess one's age. Kitty and I always liked to talk Momma into having them guess her age. My mother always won because she was so young looking. Another thing that fascinated me was the "hootchie cootchie" girls which have since been eliminated because of churches in the area protesting against them. Shenandoah County was the last county fair in the state to have these "performers". I liked the booths where one could try one's skills to win stuffed animals, goldfish, etc. by throwing a ball to try to knock something down. Or you could try throwing tokens into different glassware in the middle of a booth to win that particular piece of Carnival glass.
    Thank you for helping me recall these memories of growing up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

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  7. I remember growing up in San Diego and attending the Del Mar Fair. It was amazing! We would walk through all the animals. I mean ALL the animals. Then we would take in some of the hobby areas and finally end in the large building where everyone demonstrating some new gadget or another! We would come home with sacks full of "freebies." As I got older I entered my bake goods in the fair. I even won some ribbons. I still think about how I can share those fun memories with my own children!

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  8. I grew up in eastern Connecticut where the big fair is the Bridgewater Fair. It's HUGE and still runs today. We went to it each and every year when I was younger. As I grew older my interests changed and the fair always had something to offer me. I absolutely loved the 4-H display and the tractor demonstrations. One of my best memories was when I took my current groom, then boyfriend, to the fair and we took an Olde Tyme picture. Over 15 years later that picture is still a wonderful reminder of the Bridgewater Fair.

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  9. I didn't get to the fairs much as a child, but I do have a fun memory from the Magic Kingdom. A few years back I recieved a phone call from my older sister, telling me that she wanted my husband and I to take on a project for my neice Abbey, who was about 7 at the time. For school they were doing a "Flat Stanley" project, where they made flat selves and sent them to stay with someone. We were a week or so away from vacation, so we decided it would be fun to bring "Flat Abbey" with us. My sister convinced her that we left her flat self in MN, so she had no idea what we were up to. We spent three weeks in FLorida toting around "Flat Abbey". Took her to NASA, out to Cocoa Beach, pretty much everywhere we went. Best part was bringing her to the Magic Kingdom. We pulled her out and had pictures taken with Stitch, Mickey, and as many other Disney folks as we could. Man was that little girl surprised when she got the package at school with her flat self, TONS of pictures and souvineers from every place we had taken her flat self. She was the envy of her class. I couldn't have been happier.

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  10. I remember being in the 4-H county fair as young as 8 years old. Not only did I make little crafts for judging, but I also participated in the cooking contest and made a cherry crunch dessert. I had made a cute little blue checked gingham apron and matching hair band to look more professional for my first cooking debut. Ah, to be young again!

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  11. The first memory I had was going with my family and looking at the animals that were being shown by FFA/4H kids. It was great.

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  12. I was about 6 and we headed as a family to ride the rides and eat the yummy food you can only get a fairs!

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  13. I don't remember how old I was but I do remember going to a fair. I remember there were sheep and cotton candy, lol.

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  14. Fair week in Lamar, Missouri is a time of excitement, fun, and energy. It is held on the town square- the rides, the food, the games...

    It is also the week of my birthday, so as a little girl, the only thing I ever wanted was a ride wrist band.

    I used to think you had to be rich to afford fair food and that I was honestly the luckiest kid EVER to get a wristband (it did not happen every year).

    The one thing that I do like in Virginia, is that there is a lot more area for the fair and that livestock, crafts, etc are part of that as well.

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  15. I have lived in Iowa 40 (ahem) some years. I had never been to the Iowa State Fair even though I lived only 3 hours away. I finally went 5 years ago for the first time. I had heard people talk about this butter cow and how amazing it was. My friends took me to the building and I looked and looked for that butter cow....thinking it was a special cow that was milked and then butter was made out of the milk...just like I had done in grade school. Needless to say, I passed right by the infamous butter cow looking puzzled. My friends finally explained it to me that the butter cow was actually a cow made out of butter. Oops! We went back to the display and I finally saw the butter cow and it was an amazing sculpture made out of butter, who would have thought??!! embarassing much??? So thankful my friends love me for who I am, ha ha.

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  16. When I was very young, my parents would take me to an amusement park to ride the Hobby Horses. They seemed so big!! My mom always rode with me.

    Diana

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  17. I was 5 years old when we went to Disneyland. I don't remember a whole lot just a few rides that aren't even there anymore. But I do remember that we stopped on the way and we were able to see a pod of whale in the ocean. It was breath taking even for a child!

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  18. The first time I went to the state fair was when I was 21. When people talked about it, they made it seem legendary! Now I know why, and I have not missed a year since (Granted it's only been 5 years!)

    I love the fresh lemonade, giant slide you ride down in a potato sack, and the fried food that you try to keep in your stomach! Yikes...

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  19. And the winner is...

    Cheryl Hawkins! Congrats! Please send me a note with your address and I'll get your ARC right out.

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