Some of the most vivid memories I have of childhood occur at the Eastern Idaho State Fair:

I’m short, six years old or so, so there are adult rumps everywhere. Dad is leading us through the knotted crowd of fairgoers near the food booths, going I don’t know where. But he’s going, so I try to keep up. Then I can hear it: a warble, a tweet, guttural chirples and burbles. There’s a kid nearby with a whistle. A bird whistle. You fill it with water and blow into it, and it chirps and burbles. I want one. Dad buys three, because with an older sibling and a younger sibling, it’s better to spend the money three times than hear three arguments. We stop at the drinking fountain long enough to fill the whistles and spend the rest of the days burbling.

I’m a little older for this one. Eight, maybe nine. We spent a half hour in line at the ice cream booth – an eternity for one so young. I dig in, happily eating the mint chip ice cream as we walk through the livestock pavilion. I take a healthy lick, and the ball of ice cream drops to the ground. It stays there. Dad says you don’t pick up stuff that falls on the ground where cows have walked.

And on the road to the fair: hundreds, no, thousands of caterpillars. In the trees on the side of the road, monarch butterflies resting their wings. We ask Dad to steer around the bugs, but there are too many.

Mixed in there are fleeting images: Cotton candy. Stickers from the local news station, handed out by a CELEBRITY – Ken Torrey, the local weatherman, whom I also saw at the cafeteria at Lincoln Elementary, because his daughter went to our school. Tiger Ears sold by the Boy Scouts of America. And Dad, wandering through the livestock pavilions, visiting the kinds of animals he knew on the fam of his childhood in the Netherlands.

The Eastern Idaho State Fair at Blackfoot is the feather in the cap of summer. Booths that were there in my youth – Wimpy’s Burgers, Bimbo’s Burgers, the Black Angus – are still there, along with the folks selling tractors and campers and water softeners – I was always too shy to accept an Indian headdress (nothing more than a colored feather stuck in a paper headband) from those folks. But my kids wear them. I wear them now. It’s the fair. It’s what you do.

Here’s one thing not to do: eat one of the deep-fried turkey legs. You see a lot of people walking around the fair, gnawing on one of these things. I tried one. You remember how they’re deep fried? Greasy. Instead, go to Wimpy’s, or – and this is my favorite – go to the Greek place near the grandstand for a pita with lamb and feta cheese.

Take your time and see stuff. You’ve got all day. There’s no hurry. My wife likes to wander through the needlework and quilting booths. I like to check out the photography exhibits. The kids, of course, love the animals. Our daughter walked wide-eyed through a small pavilion of miniature horses, wanting to bring home every one. I was the same as a kid, but instead coveted the foam lizard that bounced on the end of a wire. I never got one of those, either.

The fair takes place every year, starting Labor Day weekend.