The Big E

The Big E is New England's biggest agricultural fair, and covers 17 days in med September through early October. This is the one fair I make it to every year, because it basically has just about everything you could ever want to see and do. Still didn't get to see more than half of it, but I had a good time. My primary goal there is shopping, because I do some of my Christmas buying there. Some of the fair prices are relatively reasonable, at least when it comes to merchandise.

I went twice this year, once on opening day with Frank (the other half) and again with Lee on Monday of this past week. Frank likes making a quick hit, staying about 3-4 hours, and we're out of there before traffic gets intense. Frank sets a quick pace and so I used the trip with him for scouting around and shopping at the vendors I am familiar with. Lee and I are not in as big a rush, so that I can take my time and really look around, lingering wherever I choose.

The Big E grounds are huge and for someone as gimpy as me, I just can't see it all in one day. I don't tend to do the Midway or visit a lot of the farm type exhibits, though I do love animals and anything that smacks of rural life and would have enjoyed them if I had the time and could stay on my feet longer. It takes a lot of walking just to see the different vendors and tour the state buildings, and I try and make it into Storrowtown and the adjoining Craft Common every year.

You'll have to bear with me because I only brought my camera when I went with Lee. I didn't take very many typical fair pictures. I focused on what really caught my interest amongst the exhibits and on the grounds, so it is kind of a hodgepodge of shots below. They are also out of sequence but that is simply because I took different shots and then grouped them together to make it easier to write about them.

There must be quite a group of folks that take care of the grounds. The plantings as you come in from the parking lots and past the ticket booths are really lovely. This is just a sampling of them. Being a gardener, plants are a big deal to me.

I was trying to figure out what the big dark leaves plants sprinkled amongst the lantana were. Are they cannas, elephant ears, ornamental bananas or some sort caladium? The color was interesting.

This ornamental grass to the right was really tall, like over 6 feet in height. The striping was much more prominent up close. It looks nice blowing in the breeze. I love the feathery tips of the more prostate one in the picture below. If I ever get my overgrown flowerbeds weeded out and replanted, I want some ornamental grasses. They really look awesome in the fall.

This potted Brugmansia/Angel's Trumpet was against one of the buildings as we were walking down the row. It was the size of a small tree and the blossoms were amazing. Not hardy up here, and not cheap to get in that size, I was surprised to see it in a place open to public pawing. If there weren't so many people walking by, I would have stepped back and got a full length shot of it. Lee might have, he had his camera too.

It's a fair, so it has a petting zoo and animal rides. The elephant and camel were just getting going for the day. The view up top must be interesting. Not sure if these folks are connected with the free circus, which is also on the grounds.
The little girl looks like she is waving to the one on the camel, doesn't she?

I think this young person on the camel's back might have been a relative of the handler. It took a while for the camel to start moving and I don't think anyone would pay for a chance to watch a camel drink.

This is the Court Of Honor Stage, which hosts all kinds of free acts. In 2007 we saw Micky Dolenz (formerly of The Monkeys) here and Lee and I got our pictures taken with him, Lee also got his autograph. All was free, and his show was sensational too. Lots of interesting background info. Frank and I saw Johnny Rivers (remember the Secret Agent Man theme?) one year at another free show, and Chubby Checker and Charlie Daniels have also done free gigs there. You pay to get in and for parking, and you get a nice concert too - what's not to love about that? The Big E has been hosting some Chinese acrobats and they are fantastic.

I just love this picture with the bench seats and the asters and mums. That is the coliseum building in the background. We saw the Austrian Lipizzaner horses in there one year. Fabulous show, they were amazing.

I always call this a calliope, but it is technically a carousel organ, and it is always playing during the fair. It is diagonally across from the petting zoo and not far from the circus tent. This picture was taken on the way back and the wind was blowing, and so I have something all over my camera lens. It has a little shelter of its own with little pointed pennants on top that wave in the breeze. In one of the early Waxy Dragon stories I collaborated with Roger on, Waxy came to visit the Nancy character, and went to The Big E, and danced on top of the organ/calliope building amongst the waving pennants. Everyone thought she was part of the act except one little child, a common theme with the baby dragon tales. Children just seem to know what is real better than adults do, don't they?

This is a landscaper's demo pond that I fell in love with. It is out at the far end of the state buildings, across from the Agawam Lion's Club booth where we had lunch. It's nice to sit down under an actual roof on a chair and eat something. It was a carb-up day for me, since it is not easy to find palatable fair food that is low carb. I had a reuben and a bottle of water, Lee had a chicken and cheddar sandwich and water, and we shared some fries. Don't worry, we walked those carbs off!

I want this pond filled with koi or fantail goldfish.

There was supposed to be an antique tractor display on grounds. I caught this old John Deere on the way out. Tricycle tire setups were designed for working row crops, so you weren't running over furrows that were planted. Their other advantage is they are balanced enough that they can be run with just one front tire on, which is nice of you run into problems away from the shed. Their biggest disadvantage here in hilly, rocky New England is that they tend to be tippy on uneven ground. You still see a lot of these old boys and their other brand counterparts in use out here in the boonies where I live. Frank bought himself a new 4WD diesel John Deere back in 2006 with the backhoe and loader. Now all we need is the farm to go with it... LOL


Sure it's a fair, there are rides and everything. This one caught my eye, because it stuck up way over the buildings between it and me. Not as tall as the ferris wheel, but much more impressive. I don't do rides anymore, my back doesn't like most of them. I sure wouldn't enjoy hanging upside down like that!

This geode full of fine amethyst crystals was in the coolest shop, inside the Connecticut building. The State Buildings (there is one for each of the 6 New England states - and no folks, New York is not one of them) each host travel and tourism information as well as examples of industry, services, products, and food galore. They are fun to walk through but you want to do that early in the day before they get too crowded. I think this shop has the best display I've ever seen in the Connecticut building, though Lego has always had a wonderful display and Hamilton Standard and Pratt & Whitney Aircraft used to have a space suit and a mock up jet engine. I have a feeling this shop's display was connected with Dinosaur Park in Rocky Hill, which is a fantastic place to spend an afternoon with your favorite dino-bug. Look at that other amethyst geode in the pic below, isn't that amazing? There was a lot of stuff for sale inside, and I am kind of kicking myself for not buying a sandstone trilobite. I want that stegosaur for my garden! Some of the stuff in the displays were for sale.

At the other end of the shop, which was in the middle of the building, is that cart you can see in the picture to the right. It holds the display you see below, with the triceratops. At its feet are hunks of minerals and gem clusters. Not a great pic, but in front of it are a gorgeous hunk of peridot I wanted to run off with, and what I think might have been opal. I'd love that ammonite fossil too.

Lee and I toured both the Better Living Center and the Young Building, which are full of vendors hawking just about anything and everything you can imagine. I have my favorites in both.

The lady below, Marcille Wallis, is an extremely talented and skilled musician on the hammered dulcimer. I have 4 of her albums and they are superb - just the kind of thing I like to listen to when I writing. It is the most uplifting and peaceful music you can imagine. Unfortunately we stopped late in our day and the weather was turning and we had one more display to see, so we couldn't linger. I thought I'd give her a plug here, she is a lovely person too. Her booth, which she shares with other musician(s), is right outside the Dingle Peninsula area. Yep, there is a whole contingent of merchants and artisans that come all the way from Ireland for The Big E. How kewl is that?

Also inside the Young Building this year is an exhibit of the actual AMC Hornet featured in the James Bond movie Man With The Golden Gun starring Roger Moore. You could walk right up to it and look inside, and there were ongoing newsreels, all sort of pictures and memorabilia. The footage of how the jump was accomplished was pretty interesting. The gentleman that owns this car is the one who designed and perfected the stunt, and he performed it in the other Hornet you can see in the background. A stunt driver drove the orange one in the movie. I can't tell you how it was done, because the originator won't part with his secrets (he was there Friday BTW) but we did note that there was no back seat, and the single front seat and steering wheel were in the middle of the front.

You just never know what you are going to see at The Big E! Once again this was a free exihbit.

Storrowtown is actually a small village display within The Big E grounds and is open a good part of the year. It is staffed by a small but dedicated and knowledgeable group of volunteers in actual period costume. Lee and I actually went to Storrowtown before we did the Young Building, because it is connected to the Craft Commons and not far from where we had lunch. I think we spent more time there than anywhere else. When Roger was up here on vacation back in June, they had just opened Storrowtown for the season and we went to opening day. I met a lovely lady (whose name I am ashamed to admit escapes me) who is the garden guide and we struck up a friendship. She told me not only all about the traditional garden they have planted, but we talked plants in general - something all gardeners love to do. She mentioned that they would be having a plant sale during The Big E, the purpose of course to raise funds for keeping up the garden and buying more plants. While at The Big E with Lee I bought a couple of dye plant slips for a friend who gardens as well as spins and dyes her own wool yarn, but we mostly chatted for the better part of an hour. When other folks wandered over, I walked around and took a few shots. These are just a few below.

Doesn't that make you want to wander right in?

Those coneflowers are are tall as I am, which I admit is not saying much...

That is part of the Craft Common in the background BTW. Don't you love the brick path? Lots of work went into that.

These tall asters were tucked in here and there, and they leaned out into the paths. My gardening friend kept apologizing for the condition of the garden, because there had been torrential downpours the day before. I just love the wild look, and thought everything looked freshly washed.

Now and then I get lucky and get an 'artsy' shot. I am still learning the closeup possiblities on my camera, a Fuji FINEPIX S1000. I LOVE that camera!

New England is rocky, and we are known for our stone walls. Stone is a great building element, it certainly is abundant and it lasts almost forever. I like the way these plants colonized this terraced wall.

This is Lee relaxing and talking with our most gracious hostess. Doesn't she look grand all dressed up? She even had a small reticule (draw string purse). I am very happy that there are some dedicated folks willing to volunteer for such an important part of our heritage. New England is one of the oldest settled areas of this great country, and all you have to do is look around you when you are here to see the multiple layers of history all superimposed upon one another. And beneath us all, the water, soil and stone that carries the history of an ancient land were continental drift and collisions threw up mountains, dinosaurs roamed the shores of an inland sea, and volcanoes flowed and created massive rolling basalt deposits you can see in highway cuts.

That, I think is the attraction of The Big E for me; the sense of celebration side-by-side with living history. And so much fun to visit too, vendors and visitors come from all over the US and even outside the country to get a taste of New England.

Well, after his patience with me in Storrowtown, Lee and I started making our way back up toward the Young Building, which was just about our last stop. Across from the Flags Plaza, which is up a set of concrete stairs, is a vendor after Lee's heart - sport cards. Lee is an avid baseball card collector, and this fellow has a big bargain bin full grab bag cards that are very inexpensive. I pulled up a chair outside the martini bar and sat sipping my bottled water while Lee dug through the bins to his heart's content across the roadway from me. The wind was whipping and it was getting crowded, so I could not get a good picture without part of another body in it, but that is our intrepid Mr. Houston down on one knee rifling through the offerings.

When Lee came back all smiles to sit with me a few minutes, I decided I wanted to look at something in the booth next door. We moseyed over, I made a purchase of a pet shedding brush, and we hustled onward. The weather was starting to get ugly looking and people were talking about heavy rain coming in for the evening. After a quick tour of the Young Building, we headed back toward the gate to leave. I would have liked to stay for the parade, which I have never had a chance to see, but we had been there over 6 hours and had a long ride home, which could be complicated by rush hour traffic and bad weather. So I bought some more Mardi Gras beads at the information booth by Gate 9, and we left the grounds.

This is the wood duck house in the wildlife pond area which borders the pedestrian walkway. I have seen great blue herons in the pond before. This shot was actually taken in the morning when we arrived, but I included it here because we paused to take a few more shots on the way out. Wood ducks are the only duck I know of that will nest in a box - in the wild they would choose a hollow in a tree near the water.

These aren't wood ducks, they're mallards, probably the most common freshwater duck in New England. They were quite a distance away from us, but were happily dabbling and swimming around. It's nice that the fairgrounds provides a wildlife area like this.

I spotted what looked like a pile of flat rocks sticking out of the water, and being an amateur naturalist thought, "turtles!" A bit hazy but that was what the cropped closeup proved them to be. There's at least three of them there sunning themselves on whatever that is sticking out of the pond.

This was shot in the parking lot when we got back to the car. That sky does look pretty sinister doesn't it? Well the rain held off until long after we got home, a ride that takes the better part of an hour. Those are gulls BTW, we are well inland here but they follow the rivers up and colonize any place they can get free food - like a huge fair.

Sooo, what did I buy?????? Well all sorts of things, but I don't have a picture of each one. Some have been given away already, or are otherwise in use. Here's a partial list...

Tee shirts! I buy tee shirts at The Big E every year, from a vendor I have been doing business with for over 10 years. Most of mine are by The Mountain, though I will look at others if I like the graphic and they seem good quality. I have an entire drawer full of these, most of them featuring dragons, but I will do other fantasy themes and I am now collecting owls. I love their more subtle tie dye, and they wear like iron. I have one that is about 15 years old and has been washed a million times. While it is getting thin and faded a bit, it still looks good enough to wear. I love them. I am a walking billboard for my writing.


I think I will keep the owl and one of the dragon shirts but somebody is getting the other dragon for a winter holiday gift. Wonder who that is???? *BEG*

This gentleman, Mr. Don Thomas, had a booth set up in the Craft Common, and he had a laptop and speakers playing the most beautiful and serene guitar instrumental music I have ever heard. I was so entranced I bought two albums and Lee bought me the other two in the four ablum set. These are all original compostitions, engineered and produced in his home studio. He also had a couple of Christmas albums with traditional songs on them. A very friendly and soft spoken man, he would play you any cut or sample you wanted to hear. Don told me he had been playing for 38 years, and folks, it showed. Lovely stuff, exactly the sort of thing I listen to when I am writing. I think I will purchase those Christmas albums for the holidays this year, and I definitely want to be on his mailing list. I hope he did well, I would like to see him back next year. He has clips on his site by the way, if you follow the link.

This is exactly the thing I would like to do with my writing - cut out the red tape, the hoops, the publishers, and the middle man, and go right to the public with it. A lot of work marketing yourself that way, and Don, you have my complete admiration for doing so.

A little inexpensive bling for my mother, a pair of really nice clip on earrings. I am saving these to give her for Christmas. The picture doesn't do them justice, they are very well made. Another purchase from one of the little boutique shops in the Craft Common. I'll ditch the card and give her a nice little velvet box I have saved. We usually give her a bit of jewlery for Christmas, she loves earrings and big sparkly pins full of stones and enamel details.

Don't worry, my mother doesn't go online, so it can be our secret... *w*

A beautiful mermaid below for Lee, who loves all things that have a connection to the ocean. This was from another Craft Commons shop that I have bought from several times. The sparkly blue stuffed dragon that became Lazlo in the Companion Dragon Tales came from the same shop. The colorful interior is filled with sparkling creatures and beings looking for a new home. I managed to ditch Lee for a bit when he went hunting for a men's room and then went back and bought this lady. She hid in my tote bag until we got home and I could present her to him. That was my thank you for such a lovely day together. Lee is a heart patient and long drives really tire him out, but I have poor side vision for highway driving so he trucks me everywhere out of the area.

We had lots of fun that day, and now he has something tactile to look at and remember it by. Don't worry, she won't be lonesome, there are two other similarly sized mermaids up on the bookshelf over by Lee's desk, one of which is her sister, from that shop last year.

I have always wanted one of these sturdy and inexpensive fabric totes and don't know why I waited so long to buy one. Two of these are mine, the folded one on the floor is one of a pair I bought to give away. It is the same size as the standing one with the wheels, that is how compactly they fold up. The bag with the handles on the door I got at a local flea market secondhand for 50¢. It is like new. I folded the large one up and put it in the bottom. I bought that wheeled tote on the Friday Frank and I went together. It was a spur-of-the-monent desperation buy when I decided I had to have something to carry my purchases in besides the three decomposing shopping bags I already was lugging along with my regular purse. When Lee and I got there Monday, a vendor (there were a couple) had the wheeled totes two for $15 - I'd paid $10 for my original one. The still-folded one on the floor is for a good friend whose birthday I just missed, and I had another one with a light butterfly print that I gave to Stacey as part of her birthday gift. She loved it BTW.

Now these totes are something Lee and I bought because they are very big and so darn handy. They were $20 each, but well worth it. I like the big wheels, the heavy frame, padded handle, and manueverability outdoors. They came in the green and the blue that you see here, black, and red, and there was a pink one that had some mesh and a slightly different design. Lee initially bought the green one, but he is more of a blue kind of guy, so we traded. That tote swallowed both of the ones you see above as well as my purchases and my camera, with space to spare. The only caveat I have is I wish the flap had a buckle or other fastener, as it does blow open, and the cinch is not enough to keep the weather out. The bags are easily removable, can be washed, and they can reverse from front to back. If you look at the green one, you can see that they have a back zippered pocket, and it is deep. The frames fold flat too, which is nice for the car trunk or closet storage. We were told they are rated to hold up to 200 lbs. With those high wheels and the good balance they have, Lee and I were thinking these would be ideal for the outdoor flea markets. I am very happy with mine, it lugged all my purchases up the stairs without my having to make more than one trip or ask for help.

Not shown here are the very large blue crystal cluster with a carved flat spot for a tealight that I gave Stacey for her birthday. I got that and a couple of scorpions cast in plastic for Lee and me to use as 'computer debuggers'. Those seem to work fine, are low tech and magical, and I like to think that they eat the things that bug me. The idea will likely make some kind of appearance in a dragon story. I shamlessly borrow from my own life. I also bought a stuffed and realistic-looking chocolate lab puppy that I gave my mother just because she likes it and it looks like Ranger. I got pewter and crystal fantasy pendants for my boys as well as some butt-kickin' beef jerky. For grandson Ben I got a door sign made up with a train on it that says 'Ben's Room' and an irridescent stuffed lizard from the same shop as the mermaid. He loves lizards and calls them all 'geckos' like in the Geico commercial. I also got a large white dragon from that shop as a stand in for Ambrose, the frost dragon who lives with The Countess in the Companion Dragon Tales (Ambrose is mentioned in Lazlo #1, A Familiar Name, which is on the site. Ambrose will also appear in an older Waxy tale which we will eventually get revised and up there too.) He is now perched on the laser printer in the office, along with Glimmer and Chica (other dragons who will have their own stories) and not far from Kiri, the red dragon who lives with Lee in the tales. Those things and my first rolling tote all got purchased when I went out with Frank.

Not pictured from the trip with Lee is the pet shedding brush, and all the Mardi Gras beads we bought. We gave a lot of those to Ben, but each dragon in the office is wearing a strand. Besides the dragons mentioned we also have the venerable Shen Chao (who appears in Lazlo At Home as well as an older Waxy tale I cowrote with Roger and we will get up on the blog someday), and little Sneetch, who will be featured in tales with Nancy's grandson, since they are bonded companions. Someday we have to do a photo shoot of all the dragons so you can see who is whom.

And there you have it, a cross section of our day at the fair. We had fun, we came home with mementoes and gifts, and we got a lot of exercise walking around. How much did it cost? Well, aside from purchases and food, $10 each for an advanced weekday ticket, and $10 to park (I thought that was steep, we paid $5 in recent years). Frank and I got in free because it was military appreciation day, though we still had to pay for parking. It was well worth it for the fun, so I'm not complaining. I had a great time.