A trip to the fair

Encouraged by my cousins, we took our son to the Marshall County Fair.

We ducked out of the brilliant sunshine and sweltering heat, to observe the prize-winning sheep, pigs, cows and horses. Wafts of sweet-smelling hay and manure and the crackling announcement that the pie-eating contest was about to begin, took me back to my days as a cub reporter at the Parkersburg (W.Va.) News.

I covered education, a beat that was slow during the summer. So I got the coveted county fair assignment that year. I went to the fairgrounds each day that week, instructed to find not one but two stories for the next morning's newspaper.

By Saturday, my ingenuity and creativity tapped, I ended up at the tobacco-spitting contest. "Thwack," was the first word of the story I filed that afternoon. The sound had come from the fair queen, who had chosen to participate in the event. The story made the AP wire and was picked up by some of the biggest newspapers in the country, including the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"I had reinforced the hillbilly image of West Virginia and set the state back ages," an Inquirer reader and West Virginia native wrote to my editor in complaint. To this day, I have kept that story.

Seasoned traveler

We made our annual trip to Grandma Edna's house this week. My son handled the two-day, 1,000-mile drive from Minnesota to West Virginia like a seasoned traveler.

He packed his toys and books a few days ahead of time. The morning we left, he made sure we all had our hats, water bottles and the right assortment of snacks.

At rest stops, he would check the map to see where we had been and where we were headed next. And he practiced the lingo to talk with truckers over his Dad's old CB radio. "Break 1-9, break 1-9." While he could hear an occasional trucker, his radio signal wasn't strong enough to be picked up by them.

Highlights of the journey:

• Lunch and some playtime at the big lakefront playground in Marquette.
• Spotting two sandhill cranes outside the entrance to Seney National Wildlife Refuge.
• Driving across the 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge.
• Swimming with Mom in the hotel pool in Mackinaw City.
• Passing a convoy of Canadian soldiers on Interstate 75.
• Holding Mom's hand and singing John Denver's "Almost Heaven" (three times) from the time we crossed the Ohio River until we reached Grandma Edna's driveway.
  

Blueberries to the rescue

My son and I enjoyed our first harvest of blueberries this morning.

We had been picking one or two off of the plants in our backyard, testing them for ripeness. But with a busy weekend, we hadn't surveyed the crop for several days.

When I realized I had no fresh fruit in the house for breakfast, I headed out into the backyard with bowl in hand. If not yet blueberries, I can always pick more of my alpine strawberries, I thought.

Thirty plump, ripe berrries were waiting. They were delicious.

Blooming tiger lilies

The power of books

Among the pirate books my son checked out of the library last month was "Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah."

It's a true story of a slave ship that was captured by pirate captain Sam Bellamy. Heavily laden with treasure, it sank in 1717 during a nor'easter off Cape Cod. Author Barry Clifford discovered the ship in 1984 and wrote a book about the galley and its crew.

Inspired, my son and husband built a model of a ship, adapting it to look like the galley in the book -- right down to its Jolly Roger and British flags and a miniature Captain Bellamy in a red coat.

To my son's disappointment, it has 12 cannons instead of the Whydah's 18. But true to form, it's a sleeker and faster ship than his Daddy's elaborate model of the Constitution. And that makes him happy.

More great books from the library:

• Suprising Sharks (Nicola Davies)
• The Best Book of Pirates (Barnaby Harward)
• The Pirate Cruncher (Jonny Duddle)
• Skippy John Jones in Mummy Trouble (Judy Schachner)
• Big Wolf and Little Wolf: The Little Leaf that Wouldn't Fall (Nadine Brun-Cosme)
• Frog and Toad are Friends (Arnold Lobel)

Important life lessons

My husband was teaching our son how to shell peanuts this morning. What a great occupation for the second day of his summer vacation.

Yesterday he painted the fire pit and cleaned out the grill, then we all went to the beach together.