County fair time

County fairs always bring back memories for me and this year's Kalispell fair was no different.

I've been to lots of fairs. You could say I practically grew up at one. Since I grew up on a farm, I actually kind of did.

I thought I had seen everything any fair could offer until I went to the Flathead County Fair this year.

Did I really walk into a horse barn, the one with all the Clydesdales and miniatures, and see an animal standing in a stall that was marked with a sign labeled "moose x horse?"

This animal had the body of a moose but it looked like a horse. If this is true, what would posses someone to breed a moose with a horse?

No one was around to ask so I could only imagine a cold night in the mountains, a bull moose breaking down a fence, and a mare. Or maybe some ranchers, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a sense of humor.

When I was little I always took my pig or cow to a small county fair in eastern Washington. There was always a rodeo and afterward something called a kiddie scramble.

You don't see many kiddie scrambles anymore. The Mineral County Fair in Superior—dubbed the world's smallest county fair because it takes five minutes to see everything unless you get free beer tickets—has a kiddie scramble.

The scramble in Superior involves a line of kids running toward bewildered chickens at the pop of a starting gun.

The kids don't get to keep any of the chickens they may catch and I think that is a shame. There must be nothing like taking a trodden and very frightened chicken home.

In 1969 I was 8 years old and remember standing in line waiting for the gun to go off during our kiddie scramble at the Adams County Fair.

During the previous three or four kiddie scrambles I had been in, the gun would go off and the bigger kids would trample me into the dirt. It never failed.

I would always pick myself up in a cloud of dust just in time to see all the other kids grab a chicken or goose, duck, pig, lamb or calf. At our county fair, we always had a bunch of different animals to chase.

Anyway, the 1969 kiddie scramble started no different than any of the previous kiddie scrambles.

There I stood in my best running stance at the front of the line waiting for that gun to go off. BAM!

I'll never forget raising my face out of the dirt that warm September afternoon and seeing that familiar sight. Dust in the air and the soles of a thousand Converse tennis shoes heading north.

But things slowed down. Even the dust rose a little more slowly. I was caught in some sort of slow-motion time warp, unable to move. Some chubby kid was laying on my back.

That's when I saw it: A gangly chicken coming south through the stampede. I opened my arms and he jumped in, safe from all the chasing going on.

I got up and started walking away, smiling for having finally accomplished my purpose in life. And then it happened. A man in a cowboy hat and boots grabbed my arm and said, "Let go of the chicken."

And in his hand was a rope and at the end of that rope was a Shetland pony.

See, one of the birds at each kiddie scramble had a tagged leg and the kid that caught that bird got "the surprise."

I never thought about "the surprise" because I never thought I'd even get a chicken.

I did that year and the dream I think every 8-year-old must have came true for me.

It was the best day of my life. I still have a picture of a very dusty me holding that battered chicken and a rope leading to every child's wish, a pony.