KEIB:
An adventurous toddler decided that he wanted to go check out the county fair, so he got into his battery-powered tractor and drove to the Chisago County fairgrounds. Kenneth Allen left his backyard and hit the sidewalks, cruising along at one-mile-per-hour toward the fair…
Beats walking!
This kid is my hero. “I’m getting my hotdog, soda and roller coaster ride momma, it’s the county fair. Nothing runs like a deer.”
Kid should have claimed he was a sovereign and had the right to travel.
This kid is America.
That independent free spirit will have to be brain washed out of him in kindergarten and replaced with “gay thought.”
All that effort for the county fair? If it was the Minnesota State fair I could see. For those of you who are not in the know- the Minnesota State Fair is a sight to see. I’ve been to other State Fairs and they don’t amount to a mouse fart when compared to the MN Stat Fair. Don’t ask me to explain it just trust me on this.
What I will say is there is one particular vendor that sells chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven and then, as if it was a conspiracy right next to that vendor is another vendor selling ice cold milk. There is another vendor selling roasted ears of corn. When you buy on they shuck it back, use the shuck like a handle and dip the whole ear of corn in the melted butter and then hand that to you (massive salt shakers are there for your enjoyment). Then there is every kind of thing that can be bought or sold on display and every conceivable food item on a stick. You have not lived my friend until you have had “pizza on a stick”.
But the problem these days is, to get to this fair, you have to go through Minnesota and despite all the beauty that is Minnesota I’m boycotting those ignorant Ollie & Sven bastards until they wake the hell up and stop it with the self destruction votes. (Omar & Fraken)
That’s the same one George Jones used to drive to the liquor store.
We all know what’s in that boy’s heart, and McFartus is right, “This kid is America”. When I was three, I took off alone and walked about 1/3 of the way to “Carkeek Park” (about two miles from our house and a favorite family destination for a quick picnic on Puget Sound). My Mom and sisters eventually figured out what I must be up to, much to my disappointment. Hey, there were railroad tracks along the beach that you had to cross on foot back then! Coolest thing I had seen up until that point other than looking up at Mt. Rainier from Paradise.
When I was two years old I road my tricycle around the corner and was lost. Some nice lady took me in and made me the butter and sugar sandwich I asked for. She was nice to me and then the police showed up and took me home- I don’t know how because I did not know my address. Any county fair two blocks away and I’d be lost forever. This was a determined young man for sure. LOL
livinthecovelife-
Butter and sugar sandwiches are the best! 😀
@MJA ~ Your mom made butter and white sugar sandwiches for you? That’s awesome! We had such a sugar baseline for our diets, right?
That kid has presidential timber.
I can vouch for Pelopidas regarding the Minnesota state fair and what’s become of the state politically. It may change though. The shit Omar (if that’s her name) is stirring up may end up hitting them in the face. Trump has predicted that he will win in Minnesota in 2020.
Back to the fair; when I was a little kid you could get good 25 cent hot dogs and all the milk you can drink for 10 cents.
That kid’s a future IOTWer!
Who knew electric cars would be good for anything?
I made a beer run in Dad’s old pickup at the ripe old age of about four. Hi-centered on a tree stump, the rear tires still idling away in granny gear, I was hastily collected off the floorboard and given a wholesale ass whoopin’.
Good times.
My grandson snuck out of the house when he was 3 years old. A cop brought him back and charged my son with child neglect for not keeping a better eye on him.
So now he has that on his record.
@ Pelopidas JULY 22, 2019 AT 1:14 PM
You couldn’t pay me to go to the shithole Washington State Fair in Puyallup. I thoroughly enjoy many county fairs every year, but even the thought of going to the Washington State Fair is hateful to me. I have never uttered a word to poison my kids’ minds on the Washington State Fair and their great aunt took them last year and they hated it.
The Evergreen State Fair in Monroe is fine though.
I too went for a short but wild ride in mom’s car, it slid into reverse to easily. Ended up sort of hitting the babysitter and was stopped by the neighbor’s bushes.
I don’t know about the 1mph limit in the article. We had a couple of those ride ons for the kids and they went faster than 1mph.
livinthecovelife-
She sure did! So did my grandma and aunts and uncles! 😀
Back when I was a kid, the butter was fresh and it really made a difference!
Do you guys remember those pedal cars?
My sister had a red car and I had a space ship. It was round so it was a bitch to get around corners. LMAO!
So much fun, though. I rode it until I couldn’t fit in it anymore.
MJA – Rode the rubber clean down to the rims on mine and kept riding.
JD,
I hear you loud and clear. The only reason I have gone to other state fairs was because I figured they all must be like MN state fair. After the 3rd one I realized the MN State Fair was in a class all by itself.
The Emmett Idaho Cherry Festival (not even a country fair in the middle of nowhere Idaho) was more inspiring than those 3 other states fairs. I’m going to keep it positive and not go into long detailed descriptions of the Carney Trash that seemed to be the life’s blood of the 3 other state fairs. And I’m not saying all Carneys are trash. I’ll just say the Minnesota State fair pull is not the carneys or the midway games. If there is any one draw to the MN State Fair it is _____ on a stick that was new last year and what in the hell will they will come up for this year’s new food item on a stick. The last time I went it was Pizza on a stick- for all I know the R&D deep fried food on a stick people have managed to come up Panda Express’s Orange Chicken with rice and noodles all on a stick. Think Willy Wonka’s obsession with getting meal into a stick of gum but redirected to “on a wooden Popsicle stick” the multiply that one man’s obsession into 10’s of thousands per day and you will get an idea for the kind of electricity in the air.
Another factor for the MN State fair being such a grand event might have something to do with the fact that it is held from the end of August to the start of September and everyone knows they could be hip deep in snow the week after the state fair closes shop. So it’s like the whole state is doing the Grizer Bear binge before the ice comes and stays for the next 9 months. (I’ve seen it snow the first week of June) I know what you are thinking- ‘that should be an Oktober Fest thing”. You are right if winter gets a late start and it’s not already 20 below. Things are still “festive” if you give Ollie & Sven a reason to drink to excess in public and that is Oktober Fest to be sure. But when Olli & Sven start pole dancing and get stuck to the pole and are frost bite by the time they are removed one understands why the previous Festivity is more festive. When it get’st that cold the “festive excuse” is called “Ice fishing”. And here is the 411 on that: when the lakes freeze over the party moves to the “ice fishing huts” which, in some cases, may be a tent and in other cases are actual mobile homes with generator and a gas run kitchen. So, that means you can drive your 4×4 to the part of the lake you set up shop, park it, go inside your mobile home, turn on the lights and heater and fish from your lazyboy from the hole you cut in the floor and then the hole you cut into the ice while watching the flat screen TV and all while knocking back brews as you sit in your underwear while it’s 35 below outside. I’m not making this up. You won’t know about this from Garrison Keller- that putz had no friends until he made it big back east, built up his cult of personality in St. Paul and came back to rule over them like Marshall Applewhite except when it came to the sex he was more like Jim Jones but that only came out with the “#Metoo”. But I digress.
There is a lot of research indicating the negative effect on emotional health, the development of mental spatial cognitive mapping function, and the brain’s hippocampus function especially during childhood due to the huge decline in the distances children roam from home over the past few generations.
Some decline or loss of freedom to roam is from over protective parenting, some due to children’s loss of desire to explore the world in a six mile radius from their home. Preferring to restrict their world to what they see on their smart phone screen.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html .
https://reason.com/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generation/ .
https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/video/nicholas-carr-world-not-screen .
I’m glad the boy was ok, and he certainly proved the spirit of adventure still lives.