So Long At The Fair: Awkard Family Fun - Part 1

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Sept. 21, 2009

Sandra Tsing Loh takes the family to the L.A. County Fair.

This is Sandra Tsing Loh with The Loh Life. Today’s topic: So Long At The Fair. Part One: Awkward Family Fun.

I blame all of you. Any one of you could have invited us to any sort of Labor Day picnic, barbeque, potluck, fish fry, door-hanging. My kids and I could have helped you move a dresser or wash your dog.

But no. September 7, Labor Day Monday, came at the end of a long long summer. L.A. Unified began September 8, and hey, the first school day scheduled was a pupil-free day! I began to wonder, when do classes actually start – Halloween?

Anyway! In the middle of all those skeins upon skeins of free time – against a background of cows mooing from buses, chicks tweeting from newspaper racks, and donkeys neighing at me from billboards – they do have a major advertising budget, I will give you that.

Well taking the kids to the L.A. County Fair on Labor Day seemed somehow inevitable.

And such a bargain! "Look!" I exclaimed to my mom friend Kathy. "Admission to the L.A. County Fair is regularly $17. But on Labor Day, between 10 and 1, it’s just one dollar!" I don’t exactly know why a fair in Pomona should cost $17 per person but I liked saving $16.

This is how the frazzled-at-the-end-of-summer parent’s confused thinking goes. And if it’s just one dollar between 10 and 1 it’s because that is the time when nobody typically goes to... said mysterious L.A. County fair, in Pomona. So it won’t be crowded. And anyway, just who is nuts enough to drive to Pomona? No one! The sheer outrageous distance puts most people off! This was just crazy enough to actually work!

Of course I neglected to factor in the people who find driving to Pomona convenient – like the people who live in Pomona – not to mention the people who live in Azusa, Duarte, Redlands, Irwindale. All of whom 11 o'clock on Labor Day morning, we suddenly find ourselves sitting bumper to bumper with on the 10 freeway east of the – the what? The 63? Below the 4?

You see. That’s what always happens. To avoid the expense and crowds, of family fun, I’m always trolling for stuff in the paper that sounds so inconvenient no one else would want to do it. And then I find myself in a traffic jam going somewhere I didn’t want to go to in the first place!

It’s reminiscent of my Chinese dad and my German mom in the 1960s who thought, "Hey – they just had a war in Ethiopia, the landscape is blasted, no one wants to go, so our vacation dollar will stretch that much further!" And then we went and got held up by Eritrean terrorists! Everything worked out fine, but that's a tale for another day.

Of course the County Fair didn’t have terrorists. It would feature my far deeper fear: carnies. How would I manage? The answer next week.

Timothy
1 month, 3 weeks ago

When I first heard "The Loh Life" I would have never guessed that you were of any Asian persuasion, but after listening to this recent entry, it's no DOUBT that you have a little chinese in you; analyzing how to stretch $1. Classic.

Even when I go out to expensive restaurants for say something say like Sushi, I find that I have to really work hard to not let my 'frugalness' (is that a word?) take over. What is that? Who taught us that? I always thought it was a good thing but maybe you and I are discovering it isn't so?

Your children must love you so much. ;)

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