The Severed Cortex

(Scene: Thursday night. Nancy and Drew are eating dinner when the phone rings)

Robert: Are you going to come pick me up?
Me: Yes I am. Want to go watch cars crash into each other?
Robert: YES!!

Some things boys just find to be cool, even if you are a boy of forty-one years old. Frogs, bodily functions, and other sorts of things just never get old. You can file car crashes into that same category. Destroying stuff is just genetically wired into the male brain (no, not an oxymoron). As long as no one gets hurt, or at least as long as those performing understand the risks, watching stuff get destroyed is pretty darn cool.
I say 'as long as those performing understand the risk' because on the way over there we witnessed a car crash that was not pretty darn cool. On highway 143 in the city limits of Marine, there was a car flipped over in someone's front yard. I don't think anyone was hurt, but it could have still been very serious.

So, on to the fun, somewhat controlled, crashing of cars. The Madison County fair is held in Highland, which to a non-native Madison County- ... -ite? ... seems weird. Edwardsville is the county seat, Alton and Collinsville are as big or bigger, and the corn fields within walking distance to my house are pretty much the smack dab middle of the county. I'm willing to concede that I don't want the county fair that close to me, but doesn't it seem like a county fair should be more centrally located than the far southeastern county town of Highland? It is probably most representative of rural life of Madison County though, so I guess I can agree that Highland makes a good choice in that respect.

The Madison County Fair has what you would expect at a rural county fair. And then there are some things you don't expect like a combine demolition derby. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the combine crashes. I've heard it's a hoot.
But, not to be undersold, the demolition derby was a hoot too. The first 'race' was the Compact division and involved seven cars. Since it behooves a driver to crash using the rear of his car in order to protect his engine, it was surprising to see a Ford Pinto win. This race featured loads of oil smoke and a rather spectacular fire.

The winning driver of the Compact division also won the Stock division. This race had eleven cars and featured some really powerful wrecks. One car was pushed up on the concrete barricade so that it was resting at almost a 45 degree angle. The Modified division also had eleven cars. This race lasted the longest, had the best crashes, included a car fire, but wound up ending in a rather anti-climactic fashion. The last three cars sort of went kaput within a couple of minutes of each other. Still, it was a good solid two plus hours of fun and corn dogs.

On the way out of the fair there was a large crowd gathered around the pig races. Yes, you heard me correctly. I said pig races. Horribly cute little piglets with names like Arnold Schwartzenpigger and Kevin Bacon raced around a cedar chip track in search of the elusive oreo cookie. The winner received the spoils and the loser got to eat the crumbs. PETA be damned, it was a lot of fun to watch. The blur in the forefront of the picture below are the pigs racing around the track.

On the way home we stopped at McDonald's so we could share a bag of fries. Robert quickly fell asleep.