Fall festival.(The Straggler)

OFF to the Fall Festival on an October weekend, each of us with a different motive:

Dad--To escape from the election campaign for an afternoon.

Mom--To buy pickles.

Nellie (11)--In the hope of meeting friends, so they can shriek "Omigod!" at one another while jumping up and down and flapping their arms.

Danny (9)--To ride the rides.

To deal with the pickles first: There is a store a couple of townships away that makes superb pickled cucumbers. We never actually go to the store, I don't know why; but each year they have a booth at our own township's Fall Festival, and we go there to load up on garlic pickle, dill pickle, cajun pickle, and horseradish pickle. We are a pickle family. I was raised in the old English tradition of a huge joint of roast meat for Sunday lunch followed naturally by cold meat remains garnished with cheese and pickles for supper, and again on Monday--"Resurrection Day," as my mother rather irreverently called it. My wife spent her childhood in the Chinese province of Szechwan and doesn't consider that food has any flavor at all unless it blisters the roof of your mouth.

Pickles purchased and safely stashed in the car, we head for the rides. This isn't Great Adventure, of course, just a traveling carnival with a dozen or so large pieces of equipment and some side booths. The crowds are tremendous, though. Half the township seems to be present. There are long lines for all the rides, even the ones Danny, our rides authority, pronounces "lame." Mom, however, has a bold technique of waiting in line for one attraction while the kids ride another, then pulling them into her line just as the custodian is opening the gate. This works only if you are female and petite; when I try it, a fistfight very nearly breaks out. Thus declared redundant for place-holding chores, and with a vestibular system that will not tolerate anything that rotates at high speed, I have nothing much to do.