839: Meet Me at the Fair
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the state of highway, has a little more than three million people. One million come to the state fair. The story passed the swine burn and the kids talented stage and the lemon shake of stands, and the many, many corn dog stands and the central eye or railroad club exhibit building, and the chainsaw art and the live snakes in the vast, slowly moving rivers of people.

Every one of them is million here on their own personal quest. What they want out of the fair, stuff they want to do, stuff they want to see. Everybody is a mission decline and killing influenced seven and nine years old brothers from the suburb mine. They want to see the giant pool killian the big brother, talk to my cover or die will.

Are you excited to see the ball?

One, my family animals.

How come they .

can see red and red? My favorite color. what. Every day, a little brothers .

decline with the fact check c about killian's favorite color being black. Now the fact check both can actually see.

read. The boys wander .

around the outside of the cattle born, looking for the red entrance super side. Both name is teddy bear, with three thousand and sixty pounds science duck taped onto the pen, say, do not touch the ball. We just like, yeah.

what do you .

think that's cool and dig .

I don't .

be smaller.

small er OK you see .

a giant animal, you are a kid or an adult. What is there to say then? Now okay, that's about right. elsewhere.

Cable mount shooting is one of the fastest growing a question in sports in the country. It's a time demand where we use two forty five singleton long court pistoles .

and the cowboy mounted shooting competition each petition, or is on horseback, and they write, of course, shooting burning embers from their guns to pop five balloons with one pistol. Then they change guns should five more balloons with the other pistol and get up to the finish. All of that stopping some .

of these runs were going to be doing today. You're going to be nine seconds. It's that's less than a second per shot with a gun change. A lot happened in all IT once .

adam rose is actually like sixth in the world at the sport because in my way is never one first place here in his home state of iowa. That's his mission for this serious fair to Michael ka, actually kind of asia.

i'm naturally competitive. Everybody else puts their horses away in the winter. My wife take our horses to a bar and we ride. All went along. We tried to out work .

every one of our competitors. And when you survey this room of competitive writing in your level, who's the one europe most keeping an .

I am look right in the mere myself. I know that i'm the fastest one here. I have the horse is the most growing here this year. So as long I don't beat myself and I got that run my match, I know body compete with.

Slightly slower pace ever at the replica I was first church. The original was built in the eighteen thirty four. It's goes out cabin with.

The goal is to reflect on god's goodness, right in the middle of jagga tic noisy carnival. They would services twice a day during the fair. I ones are not officially permit to pray, but they are got leading the services a lot to sing prayers.

Hi, above nearly everything at this fair, looking down on everyone, stands beyond the age of eleven. The giant slide for her very first time, IT, is a massive medal slide that you fly down on a felt map. And he has a simple so we can go on the slide and i'm very careful now want a move and SHE and her sister Sally, rather mats, push off.

The buried industries building is an enjoyable, this mash of t shirts and households have, or cell, but also expensive devices to help your blood circulation, or your horses blood circulation. Plus a guy in one of the most surprising missions at the fair, I thought Martin golden, in a neatly press blue uniform, and navy, had we standing in one of the booth promoting the U. S.

S. I O, A battleship, a world or two airship, is now a fooding museum. This restoration, paid for a part by grants .

from the state of I to make the citizens of IO a more aware of the battleship IO and let you know that anybody that's a resident set of IO, I gets on board the IO battleship for free. And if they let us go there for mile, we'll take them behind the scenes to places that not open up to the general public.

But there was a catch. I were, happens to be landlocked. The ship. Is that going to santos? And my, his mission to get ironed out there, marter did.

Two years in the navy, thirty years in the reserves, is over on the ship right off the coast of pavana during the cuban missile crisis. He is also a marine biology who study ocean life. Retired now, but he loved the navy enough. That now is a tour guide on the I 我， which again is in the port of a sAnitas. Marty is not a ione who is out there.

I missed the navy so much that I volunteer now about once a week down in the battleship Violet.

And they fill you out here.

More or less.

are you fill yourself out here.

I contributed a substantial amount of the effort to get out here. So basically you said.

let me go and do this that would be fine. And they're like, great.

yeah. They probably would have covered my all of my expenses. But I believe in the ship. The ship is always struggling to bring money in to keep Operating. So so you didn't want .

na take any money way that could have gone to the battleship.

The other state fair began in eighteen fifty four to eight years after I hour became a state and me, picture, location, build the state capital. Voting yet, but they want to come together for a fair reasons that aren't that different from what we do IT today. And what are they going to state fair? So much of what what's on exhibit is us, we come.

The animals we raised in our pies and sewing projects are spelling b skills, expertise of shooting balloons from horseback. And I love for a navy museum, battleship. I think others would love also if we've just tell them about IT in person.

We take in the exhibits and we are the exhibits as state fair. It's just so different about a state fair from everything else today. We hang out with some of the one million people at the fair and see if they get what they wanted and dreamed up in the fair this year.

W. B. S, chicago. This is american life. I'm a glass, say, with us.

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This american, i've at one colony confidential, so bai love IT as a different relationship to state various and carnivals.

And most of us IT always feel good to be back on the midway. When I come out here, I smell IT IT just feels like home to me.

Bai, grab on carnival es from a family of cartney. I'm smelling, what is the smile are talking about?

So I smell turkey legs for sure. I got snow, the cotton Candy that burned sugar smell. And there's always like an underlying kind of great smell, the diesel smell from the rides and from the generator, which is giving power all the rides. It's so comforting to me barely .

read an instagram that we're going be doing the show about state fairs. And he wrote in talking about family's life on the road is, carney must say, at west, I thought I would be fun to walk through the middle with her, see IT through her eyes. He noticed, is all kinds of stuff being a little you and I don't know enough to notice, to grow with the different vocabulary for everything around us here.

because all the games joins, well, it's the first time to join. But then three .

sides and Candy stands or poppers stands are grabs, prizes or flash kind of us. And cells are shows.

as in is managing, right.

a bunch of different shows. Thirteen independent companies provide the games and rights for the I. O.

State fair. Rock up the balloon game. That must be twenty, twenty five, eight, two.

The structure made from a woman of scaffold bags and prizes hanging everywhere. Two giant banners saying best one wins. Bai gives IT once over impressed.

You can tell that they take good care of the joint because you see how clean all the stuff is, where all these connection points .

are pointing to the frame of the stand itself.

the joints where different pieces link up for this game. All that stuff is really well maintained .

about dries the spot, whose Green help, who's a forty mile that is just there for a bit and who's a genuine karnegie for my bailer agency wasn't just sure people still use the work kerney or that has some sort of derogatory old timely feeling to IT tell me some carnies hate the word for you and your family. Embrace IT with pride these days barely works for little software company that your mom started. Two bail, his brothers and her sister are still on the show, and dad and step mother and a shown in alaska, her dad tries to pull back into a mountain barely as happy memory is growing up, running around carnivals and stake pairs should ride any ride or playing a game for free, surrounded by ult employees get the rise on her. They are incredibly special days, like stock date, when the stuffed animals for the fair, the stock, arrive a giant semi or truck.

And IT was a giant pile of toys that I could literally jump in and swim in like a ball pit. But with stuff animals, that was my favorite.

Bai started to work in the fair for real, and he was ten working a gold fish game.

The four sided .

walk around in the command is a family carnal for years. Jokes that our kids learned to count by coming money says barely was great to drawing a crowd of the attention of performing when SHE was little. The floor is an employee. SHE did not care about convincing ing people to spend more money on the game.

He would sit there in, talk to people and sometimes they were get in trouble because if she's talking to people, she's not actually making money, she's just talking about, but then actually got older SHE .

focus .

a little Better.

where that your .

child labor didn't know what you thought I was, while labor laws do not apply to family, and they .

learn that .

very Young.

Is that true? IT is true.

At least that's what I told them and they believed me. So i'm actually .

read about that one, something you don't think about too deeply as a civilian fair go looking for fun is up. The people working the fair IT really is all about money, how much you can make. And I quickly, efficiently, you can bring IT in, among other things, stay fair is a collection of small businesses attracted by the massive crowds.

And among the people like barely, who are games and rides, the workers who make the most money, account agents, the agent means different things in different ways of the country among carney. But where barely was a carney agent? Just the best.

There was so good at getting families guys trying to press the girlfriends to throw money at games. The kind of owners will pay them more than anybody else. And they were jump from show to show their agents.

as in free agents.

as you walk the fairground, they think the belly want to show me more than anything was an agent.

So an agent is someone who can do what we call putting a mark to sleep, where they're going to be able to kind of put you in the state where all as you want to do is continue playing their game. You want to work towards whatever prize they have you working towards, whether it's popping balloons or knocking over milk bottles or whatever, you're going to spend way more money than you planned on at that game. And whenever you get somebody in that state, if you're able to do IT really well, it's not putting a market to sleep .

bAiling er stepped dead once watched in an agent who put back to sleep so well that he spent all of his money, left the game and then came back with more money. I'm getting .

chills as I talk about IT. I've never seen anybody do that. Once a mark leaves your game, usually they are awake and it's done.

I wanted to see this. I want to see an Operator puts him him to sleep. So we head IT out in search of an agent.

There is gonna lot of agent here.

We had over .

two game with zero, fourteen chairs, fourteen targets. When this game works is you sit, fire a water pistol at the target. When you hit the bull's eye, the water goes into a tube building IT up first player to further tube wins the stuff dull.

All right? You have no one.

This one causes your hearing, but we disapproves.

right?

This guys trying to get people to sit and play the game. Three players said, ten seeds are empty.

Water will start everybody ready. And three, two, one, we go, go, go.

那边。

所以 这个 time it's okay。

It's not the best i've seen.

but he's not the worst .

like he doing good to trying to engage people, make and play but he's had a lot of house not talk to at .

all know this particular game well, the water race, he's been the one of the mike running the water race for a dada's kind for in you have to do lot of raining when you're on the mike. Lots of moderation, like watching, raising, watch him chasing. That's when he did. This guy is not too much, but also he's only .

getting three to four players each time.

Do you think he can be pointing and more people?

absolutely. It's a nice game. IT has great stock. The joint looks really nice, really clean, but they could be making a lot more money, in my opinion.

Do you think this guy is an agent?

再 送 一张。

Across the fairgrounds, find another watering ACE game, and this one's huge and beautiful. Twenty exceeds instead of fourteen, like the first one bai cause a double side of time. There are two rows of chairs facing each other. The guy on the mike stands in the middle on the platform between the two roads, huge buffy Prices hanging everywhere.

And the guy on the mike. Oh, right, don't waste a drive drop trying to get to .

all that later.

Yeah, he's constant talking.

He's using a lot of generation and rising and like catchy things to draw people in.

Even I can tell this guys got charisma. He's a stocky, bald guy with five clock shadow. When is on the mike? You cannot look away. And a great .

graph. Rock voice, go, go, go. Who's you gonna be? Stop watching c or man. It's close. It's neck to neck is too to too with the jumpy, just, winter， winter, winter, winter, winter, winter, winter, winter, winter, winter, winter.

Yeah, this set of is great. They've got really like hype up music, flashing lights. They also got there might turn up. So his voice is a lot more .

clear than that other guy and see he's playing .

off his customer.

He's broken around the mom .

for a country manager, she's watching too.

He's not a forty mile. He is a caring. And you get the guy .

to talk to me and got a snatches of conversation while winners are picking their prizes, this named jerrem move here. How long you been doing this twenty four years? How many months of the year here? Do you have a house to apartment?

Summer that I had an apartment up until january? I get tired of paying for. I'm always done. I'm buying a motor home in november.

So if you have a motor home, then you just take the motor hom with you as you travel. Yes, what city was the apartment .

in Louis the main and around from?

And who do you travel with?

I go, I bounce around.

That's so this is you don't just travel with this right now.

No.

and you're staying in banks. Here I stay, hotel .

good.

Person, they playing.

you tell you that it's good money now.

So are you in agents?

Pretty much.

I get back .

to work.

He's with IT. He's age. He heard and talking about how he bats around and he just got different shows.

He doesn't travel any particular show. That's all agent stuff, staying in hotels. Agent, agent all the way. Not talking about money. Agent, that's all agent moves.

So we saw an agent. But the truth is we never got to see. I am really do this thing full force because was after eight pm, this section of the fair Kitty land was dying down.

So I never filled more than half the seats in his game. We didn't seem put anybody to sleep, keep them playing and spending money. But IT was one more person.

Bailly, I watched. He was not, strictly speaking, fellow carney use a salesman, traveling salesmen. I both watch him mize.

And IT was in one of the prime spots that anybody could possibly get at this state fair for selling anything. This was outside the very industry y's building next to the door, also the corner of the building. So it's on approaching from two different directions.

The I will stay church a bunch of extra money for that spot. Of course. This guy calmly making bank Kenny bro, he sells nozzle s for .

garden hoses, if you want, as long as its Green.

the major Bailey says, are high energy, but some are the opposite. They win through calm.

That's kidding.

And okay, just describe this set up is standing next week. Clear glass box is maybe two feet by two feet by two feet. Spring water into IT garden hose with nazis Kenny twist cocoa ze or counter cocoa SE to make this very bigger, smaller.

going from left to right, you're to have a little soft. So proposed plants, you got a heavy range. You can get the house or the windows, get a White ban as you turn IT will go down to a pinpoint degray. It'll clean the windows society and the and last, but not leads to get a fine miss for delicate plants that we disgust.

He puts people to sleep. He's putting Marks to sleep, but is is .

doing and he's good .

at IT like even his voice is kind of kind of like getting them in the zone.

We stare at him as he puts people to sleep.

And because need the second one of the backyard, we do two for seventy five. You guys like the field as well.

We bought one, then we bought another. Never gona buy another.

He's got a great visual presentation, but he's just really he's really calm energy. And so you feel like this is a comforting guy. save. So yeah, what is going to make the sale?

There be a group of customers. Can he hit the product against the ground, show how durable this is. He makes the same jokes.

and I haven't anything you want as lows is Green.

no purple.

and he get some minute between customers to talk. Can you bring now tells me that his grandfather sold at state fair, and his father, his own first memory of selling is doing a self maker demo, the colorado state fair one time with his dad when he was five and a half.

He enjoyed IT. When he was ten.

he told with his parents of state fairs and had his own boot selling radio controlled cars. As you get older, you turn to .

demo kitchen products. But my early teens, I was like, my heart not in the kitchen gadgets. You just not that I felt. And then I took a look into this product. And I else like, I want to sell that.

He wanted to sell that because that this is a great visual pitch. It's a quick pitch. Also the worries aloud, it's attention on getting.

There's a wow moment when you hit jets, ray. There's another wall moment when you go to the mist. And another advantage of .

these things that are tiny, you can fit a whole fairs, were the inventory on one pallet.

a quick tray chell. You can check all the analyses needs into a Carry on bed way Better, he says. But when he saw pillows, there was twenty four years ago when he started selling these. Some has moved today. Course, he doesn't stop talking because he puts the product in the customers hand that something says, dad do.

He learned that to talk for twelve hours straight for a week, to have for a state fair to preserve his voice, or conciousness big, little higher or a little lower for stretches out of time here in the middle st. And also in certain cities like seattle, he said, does not make direct eye contact during the pitch. Yes.

I noticed that I was taught and rise to always make direct eye contact. What I found nowadays is i'll make eye contact roughly three times a demo. That's why aim for one of the beginning, one of the want to write at the end when you explain the warranty and how much they are, but not too much because i've done that a few times. This fair were, i'm making i'm demand and and do IT like, you know, east co style, you know, make a great tag attack and you can seem kind of like, look off down the island and they're intimidated and I know what that is.

too aggressive.

aggressive.

Yeah, can I? This is, this is barely who's worked a ton of fair as a ton of carnivals.

I go up and animal, so OK, I just think you're great .

at what you do. Thank you.

And then they ve got to a little chat, but headset microphones, they want to know why the news. One, like I usually do, but I had a problem with my, my, and then a problem with my back up. Mike, very sympathetic. I like .

each other game.

regnie. This game, I want to work to say, putting somebody to sleep means you are not doing your job, right? So one of the worst things you can say to somebody and he took Kenny, that's what barely said about him.

He left and decided to take IT as the compliment. That was, he ended up selling thirty three thousand dollars worth of nozzles over the course of the fair. That's eight hundred seventy seven nozzles one days, or put another way, twelve hours a day, every single day. Can he sold an average of one hose nozze every ten minutes?

Coming up, we go on a roller coasters of sorts, one filled with bunnies. That's a minute. Chicago, O, B, A, dio, when our program continues.

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This american life, amErica glass today show, meet me at the fair. We hang out with some of one point two million people, again with the IO state fair this year, to see if they got with the hope for. And we will get back to that in second.

But first, let me tell your story. Back in two thousand thirteen, to be a lot like crew was getting older, one of his founding members have gotten the generative disease. The drama, comically, is going around, saying they wanted to stop doing shows for them to start replacing bear mates.

That's such a bad look. Yeah, like a bands are still playing the fairgrounds .

a year later, time said we are not playing county fares, but wednesday night night at the area state fair this year, mac gw played iraq pants party.

I was the show, I was the share。

Curious about what IT is like for the band to do this thing that they had sworn repeat degree they would never, ever do. We ask, interview. The band said yes.

And then a day later, we were told they would still have to talk to us with one condition they would not discuss, playing state fares. No, where madly crew is chicken. So I just want to say to the bed right now, our offer is still good, actually do won't hear what is like to do this. Reach out if you change your mind. But that we turned back to our show.

Like two, how bad is your bunning? So many people come to the fair, arrived with dreams, tie to format animals. There are none stop animal competitions in hundreds of categories or seven days of affair. Coworkers and activist went to watch the four age rabbit competition.

He had no idea what an emotional ball coastal IT would turn out to be before a rabid programme has meant to teach kids lessons about animal science and breeding and caretaking, which they do learn along with some other vessels. Here's dinner. The rabbit hole takes .

place in an industrial building on the outskirts of the fair. Troof beige metal sighting no frills rabbits don't get the respect they deserve, except from the kids. Hello.

hi, i'm dinner. I'm only fox.

Molly has shown rabbits of the county fair before, but this is her first year at the state fair. The big time she's waiting in line to present the incredibly fuzzy black rabbit in her arms. A breed called line in head, named for the proof of mine, is supposed to have around a ted.

This competition is about presentation skills, demonstrating your knowledge about your animals breed to a panel of three judges. Molly tells me she's not nervous. SHE Carries her bunny to the .

judges table, right? You may start whenever you are ready.

Hi, my name is mi fox and twelve years old, and i'm from hails and county. This is honest. He is A G, he is a junior buck line in head, and his color is black.

First, i'm going to check the year.

Let me find the ear tattoo for so much fluff.

Molly flips on econ do is back and opens his little rabbit mouth so his teeth show says she's checking for buck teeth, petie my .

inclusion, wolf teeth and broken or chipped teeth.

The goal here is for the kids to look for the things of veteran judge would look for if they were evaluating this rabbit. Molly runs through the checklist SHE memorised with her dad ears, nose, teeth, and then wrapped IT up. With this professional assessment.

I would like to see more of, I would like to seat more of the the whole type of fur on his pine legs. But overall, he is a very, he is an excEllent rabbit.

Molly learned her for each lessons. Well, the judges have no questions. SHE gets ninety four points out of one hundred.

Most of the kids they meet are proud of their rabbits. They talk about how soft they are, how nice their markings are. Except for Gillian king, who was eleven and who has absolutely had IT with her rabbit.

he's multing and he's really ugly right now. I can get rid of him.

So that sounds bad.

but it's true. Ue, he needs more hair. He doesn't match read standards. He's just the first rabbit I had for this right now.

The rabbit question is named chatou. He's small and Brown and has a bad case of bad head hair pushed out in all the wrong places, and a look that says he knows he screw up. h. He so cute though.

He is cute, but not cute enough to be like that.

What's his reading?

Lie in head.

He's a lion head. I want to see the lion head.

Well, there's a Better breed standards ones over here. He is not quite up to the best, but the best one are over there.

Jillian takes me a few rows over and points to two bunnies. And holy hell, I am telling you, these bunnies are some good as looking bunnies with that kind of calm demeanor that comes with effortless beauty. One is Brown, is grey, with dark Brown ears that stick up in a regal way.

And here that seems fine. The other one has a classically pretty bunny face, light Brown, tubby cheeks. Button knows he's sitting up like a dog or black a bunny, I guess his eyes locked on the back of touches.

Fuzzy head of these two are very up to break standards. They are gorgeous. They have a perfect main and skirt. And sadder and everything that you should see. Um if you compare jillian hopes charge .

up in front of these hot bunnies so I can see the difference.

He should have a lot more hair. His hair didn't grow out as well but he's also molting so he's losing a lot of IT right now. But IT, it'll go back.

Yeah, he's going through an award phase .

right now though parga. But he's still not as good as these guys. These guys would beat him in a regular show. They would just easily beat him there.

Just Better.

at the rabbit show, each rabbit is sized up against the spread standards, and then the judge awards the rabbit handler a ribbon confoundingly. Purple is the best, followed by blue. A blue ribbon says your rabbit is up to breed standards, but is an exceptional enough to get a purple.

Next is red, which means your rabbit is a diluent. And then White, which means you are a delinquent. Jillian and her older sister jenner are both having a bad hair or day get IT. Tota is a mass and Jenny's best rabbit Martini just got to qualified janis sitting in a camping n chair in tears. Can I ask you what to happened?

Ah, so i've read her clean rabbits. I was told one of my rabbit to sick that her nose is running. She's the best cut and i've got him. I don't know why you sick. I'm just super disappointed right now.

disappointed and also worried. SHE loves this slaughter rabbit.

We walk over the Martini .

who's lying across the back of her cage.

That's my tiny. She's .

beautiful.

SHE has black and .

White bands across her body in a perfect face split, which is to say half her muscle is weight and half is black. A very desirable trade in a hurricane rabbit to my untrained die SHE seems pest. Jenner says Martini and her sister to qua don't really like people SHE read them herself, choosing to pair rabbit named whisky with good coLoring to a lady rabbit named fan who has a great facebook out of that lesson. Union Martini was born .

was the week that things got really cold in january, like negative. Thirty half of her litter did not make IT. IT really sucks. But my mom got two of them through, which is going. So she's like a little miracle rabbit.

was that released?

Yeah, was my first litter to sa, you know, that was a little bit rough. We can't let IT holds you back. I mean, you only get Better, the father long you go get really quit in the beginning. I guess you could if you wanted that gender.

I have a difference of opinion here. I'm totally for quitting, especially if the activity involves frozen bunnies. As we're admiring Martini, jen's mother, T.

J, walks up with news to the SaaS guy who said, hey, it's an Martini .

is not sick. He does not have snuffles which rabbit sniffs, just allergic to the saddles. They put all the rabbit cages at the fair.

Jenner doesn't use saw du s at home. So he had no way of knowing this. She's crying again.

learning the hard way. This.

I suspect the lesson tj is referring to is don't put sad s in arabic cage. But I could see another lesson appearing on the horizon. What about the inevitability of disappointment? How disappointment leads to growth? How you don't need some technocrat from the bunny industrial complex to hand you a ribbon to known your heart that you've got an outstanding rabbit because I make you feel Better.

way Better. I really thought something might happened and I didn't see IT. And they had this to the show in boom in october. She's a phenomenal rabbit.

They have get .

out i'm got now that we know is just an ology IT makes me feel like again, twenty times Better. Did you just hear what they set over the loudspeaker for harlequins? The best rabbit did they had to be disqualified.

Understanding washes over Denny's face .

more tears. Don't try. You know what that means? I don't want to marking me again when she's not a ships like, yes, and that your breeding program is exactly on track where you wanted to be.

That is the moment you take away from this, okay, that you did something phenomenal genetically. It's not about the show, okay? You will .

be proud of.

That bit, don't cry. That's great. I'm excited to be here now.

Jenna plans to match Martini with moo, a rabbit in the cage next door who's a few months Younger than Martini seems like a deface, but i'm no expert.

And what about poor choo jillions disabled ted rabbit? He ends up getting a red ribbon, which is second the worst. Or if you ask chatou third best, Julian surprised .

is Better than I expecting.

Are you less mattered him? No.

no, not really. I'm so getting rid of him. So he's cute, but he's not what i'm looking forward to bring into my breeding program. So the lesson .

totta takes home from the state fair is show businesses for everyone, but he has a happy retirement to look ford to Julian plans to sell him to good home, or would be someone's pat, or maybe Better for choo, the Young buck and someone else is probably unsuccessful reading program.

The is is a producer on our show. One quick programme up before we're going further. Some of you may have noticed a word usage they are getting ready to emails about. I just want to say right now, yes, we know that a hair is not the same thing as a rabbit, but can we say puns breed around the office like punny? Three biscuit.

So every I went that I talked to outside the fair this year, when I remenant ed, that I was going to the fair, what we would end up talking about with food, and what to eat food is a big thing at so many state fares, new coverage. I always fair, always enjoy the latest stuff, like this year's bacon cheese ger a girl. There are nearly two hundred food stands at the fair, and they really become available for people who want to try to create the next hit themselves.

Those spots are highly coveted because there's so much money to be made fairs. Management says that some vendors earn their entire annual income for the year. At those eleven days at the fair, Christendome followed one family that tried jumping the game this year of the handful .

of new food stands at the fair this year, IT was obvious which one would be the most interesting to watch. It's run by a couple, Jamie and Jennifer adkins. And as best as I can tell, they're different from the other foods stand managers at the fair in one important way. So you guys have not run a restaurant before, that's correct. And you guys haven't run your own stand at another state fair before, correct?

This is our first big gig.

All the other new food stands in I O this year are owned and run by people in the restaurant business, or they, the other big fares. So how did Jamie and Jennifer end up doing this? But for a long time, Jennifer had dreamed of opening her own coffee shop.

Then her husband saw this opportunity not to launch her coffee shop exactly, but to launch an eleven day long state fair version of IT. He heard a Better foot stand that was withdrawing from the state fair. They could save money by buying its used trailer and equipment.

Jennifer could sell coffee drinks, and they do some food on the side, biscuit sandwich es. They decided, because there aren't many vendors selling breakfast to the fair, and so they jumped in and prepared to launch biscuit bar. But when I talked to them in july before the fair opened, that each had very different expectations for how much money they bank.

I tend to be more frugal and and .

conservative about finances. So i'm just i'm really just hoping to um be able to help pay for some of the expenses that we've had. That's really what i'm hoping for.

Jennifer just wants to break even, cover all the costs, but he told me he didn't think they do that. The cost were too big. They'd spent three hundred thousand dollars for the trailer and all the equipment. And that's before you get to salaries in food costs, plus the state fair takes nineteen in a half percent of every dollar, every food vender brings in. Jay, her husband, owns a successful trucking business, and when I reached in by phone, he was confident the'd make everything back this first year.

IT work again. And that little work, no doubt about that to work. It's just how much the profit is. You know, my personal thought for this year was i'd like to do about girl sales of three hundred, three fifty on the minimum side, it's kind of like going to casino. You go there to win and you've just hope you win more than you lose this .

kind of confidence. Of course, this is exactly what you'd need if you're an amateur and you decided you're going to get into any part of the restaurant business, a notoriously difficult business to make money in. But Jimmy has a cousin, Jenny, who runs too popular, very successful food stands at the fair. Jimmy has helped out a little in the past, and seeing his cousin's Operation made the idea of breaking in lots of cash seen way more possible, at least for him again. Here's his wife, Jennifer.

probably for him, you know, because IT IT really looks effortless for her. She's just so good and there's no way i'd ever be able to get up to her level. And I think for him, SHE really is inspiring future.

Could that be up?

Almost a tRicky thing because IT SHE makes a look deceptively simple.

possibly. yes.

Six thirty A M. August eight, the first day of the fair. And this employee scraping cooked food out of pots and the storage containers is the sound of a food stand about the day you itself to.

I was the gates of the fair. Don't open until eight am. So let me give you a sense of place right now.

I'm in the opener kitchen that behind bisk par, this is where all the raw materials, meats and eggs and biscuits are cooked and then get passed into the trailer, whether assembled in the sandwiches, everyone's calm. They're ready. Can I ask for you guys you're doing at this point.

tops and tubes?

We got our stuff. me.

The trailer, jammy and Jennifer paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for, is gleaming with a Green and pink facade, emblazon with real pictures of biscuit sandwiches. But also, cartoons are friendly anthropy fied to biscuit sandwiches. The word to spread appears in four places.

And then at the top, outlined with dots of neon lights in big letters biscuit bar, there were three registers out front, eat to with the teenager behind us. Lily is the most cheaper by far. She's ready to sell. We're really .

excited to be here. We've got a couple of great new items. We have the piggy and down, which especially piggy, our pig secret sauce is kind got a kick to its ay on IT. So if you are experience something a little bit sphere, definitely that's the way to go. We also have a bubble wallet, which is kind of like a hybrid between .

your it's about seven forty five A M. Some of the people who are allowed in early fair staff, people here to show livestock to start lining up the biscuit bar, eager for breakfast and coffee. I find Jamie inside the trailer. He's got a buz head go tea, graf voice, but soft eyes. He's assembling coffee or orders alongside one of his new employees.

What do you need?

small.

And had with topping such a small.

they're worth wearing these hot pank biscuit bar t shirts. Everyone here is. And in this moment i'm struck by how something as simple as matching t shirts can create a unifying of shared fortune teamwork. So most beautiful to the whole. Actually there's some kind of issue with the .

express gering. See, IT looks weak to me.

but SHE is seeing .

too what is .

going on here.

The eyes drink, looks weird. The taste weird. Jamie starts inspecting the backside of the largest press, the machine .

he ever has been intimated by this.

somebody shut the switch off. That's why I wasn't broom because it's not hot. This is never supposed to get shut off and somebody had shut at all. It's going to a probably take like five or six minutes to see when Jamie says it'll .

take five or six minutes for the water to be heat. He actually has no idea how long it'll take a couple of press a drink quarters are already waiting and more are coming in five minutes past the water. Still isn't like Jimmy shows Jennifer.

the problem is it's not hot jenner er, it's gonna take of like five more minutes probably. And there's fresh grounds in their way to go, but the water is in hot enough yet. So they some they shed to switch off on the bottom. I don't know what they was doing .

bit Jimmy leaves Jennifer to figure out the coffee. Meanwhile, the employees assembling the switches inside the trailer are shouting out the window to the kitchen. They need supplies risky for the brisket sandwich, won't be ready for twenty more minutes, and there are other shortages.

We do.

We have more in eight. No, kay. Well, then when you need to be making grave.

wow.

or a little later.

我 吃 过。 Okay, we never puts some more on. Do you know where they're at? jie?

Start to remaining through the fridge looking for more individually. Rap sausage parties. He started the day with just eighty, and now there almost out.

Jamie does find a huge bag of raw sausage and gets people to start molding that into parties. His brother jeff is killing them. Jammy feels like these hand made paddies are a workable solution. Jeff, who is like a short diversion of Jimmy with a dash of jaci mix.

does not that we can make them right here.

In case you didn't catch that, jeff said the handmade patties are a pain in .

the fuck and deck to cook.

not.

Just that .

will be alright jme .

does have a secret cardy complain the situation. He phones up Johnny, his cousin, with a successful food dance to see if he has extra .

parties .

palloo I think .

i'm onna run out of port patties before I can get time to go to the kitchen. Get what gesture of me. We are busy. We had a few .

people .

fuck in. Albert.

Albert is the guy who was supposed .

to deliver the mail, told him twelve down home milk. And he brought me all skin.

This is a problem. You can't make gravy with skin milk.

ky.

Meanwhile, at in front of the trailer, this is a semi circle of customers waiting further orders. They all seem pretty calm, including Erica and Chris. Two women who are wearing .

athletic wear .

were waiting a bit.

just a little bit. But that's okay. They are figuring things out.

Can I ask how long even waiting right now.

eight minutes .

back inside the big Green and pink trailer.

three people, it's very tightened .

the trailer and to a simple thing, which is people are constantly freezing past each other because the sausage and biscuits and eggs are on one end, and the sauces and dresses and cheese are on the other. Then they drop the finish sandwiches wrapped in foil near the front window. But problem is, is nothing written on the foil. They all look alike. Which is why one of the cashiers sticks his head in and asks me.

what's that?

Did you hear what this one O.

Over and over the staff, after Jenny unwrap the corner of a sandwiches, check what IT is. Of course, there is a simply solution to this, the way to label the sandwich ashes.

Do you have a marker? Jennifer.

who's in charge of the trailer, cannot find the one permanent marker that they had. And also some of the orders are not showing up on the overhead computer screens inside the trailer. So ever one's was order to just yelling out order to each other.

Things feels so at a control that just forty five minutes after the fairs gates of open Jimmy calls for reinforcement is trouble y old daughter and his one thousand nine hundred year old steps on alex.

hello, where are you at? Okay, you need to get to work. I know you're so started to ten that we are slam busy.

Just get down his cooking. You can. There's people lined up, put to the street and your mom finding june inside.

Back out front, I tracked in the customers, eric and Chris again, they'd just gotten .

their food is good, but not worth thirty five minute week.

thirty five minutes.

yes.

And what do you think .

it's very good? Yes, OK, I wouldn't IT again.

the whole things kind of painful to watch. People are requesting refunds. It's obvious this is not have this supposed to go. I was curiously a food stand at the fair is supposed to work and I didn't have have to go far. A couple stands down is an incredibly successful food venture that's been around for years.

Brad hair cheese cards have been at the IOS state first son somewhere in the mid early nineties.

Matt rebar runs, three cheese curd stands and one putin stands here at the eye affair. And the way they Operate has been refined over decades. In the biggest difference, I noticed from Jamie in Jennifer biscuit AR simplicity, all eminent from this fact.

we have one item, one item of cause, one, one amount. We know there are in line for cheese skirts, right? We know what the changes we can see in their wallet and know what build they're going to grab, and we can already have to change ready by the time that transaction happens.

Basic bar, by contrast, has eleven food items and sixteen beverage choices, many with a bunch of different customizations.

It's volume. That's what after is the volume. But volume me inside .

his trailer. It's tightly packed with employees in a smallest st bed and biscuit fire, but somehow it's more orderly.

But as far as workstations and like positions in here, that's another thing. Everybody in there has one job and they are within one foot of what they need to do. They don't have to take two steps to do anything in there. Enough people where if you needed to take two steff, we're going to put another person in there to do that for you just to be efficient as much as possible.

The trailer was custom built, so every step of making the food is laid out in perfectly sequential cheese kr assembly stations. Over the bisk bar, employees make complicated coffee drinks and smoothes and core fountain drinks at math cheese curd dance. His employees don't make drinks at all. Match sees that is inefficient.

Instead, we've got a sell serve pop. Pop takes a lot of time, so if we can hand them a cup, they can go take their time, fill their eyes, much as they want, as little they want.

One last note about the simplicity of math. Cheese curd stands paper tows people need them constantly in a kitchen, and matt has positioned a role that hang hazara I from a bungee court above the workers. They can grab and tear them off effortlessly without taking up any space. Meanwhile.

back a biscuit bar.

Jimmy had one of those large black mechanic paper tot penser that you find in public restrooms, kind, you have to wave your hands under. This morning he was spitting out only a couple inches of paper towel at a time. The whole first morning, IT seemed like biscuit bar could not catch any luck. Then in the early afternoon, finally feels like basketball. E rights.

the ship piggy, I will get my piggy.

Everybody y's talking you a more Normal volume, the way times are way shorter. And the kitchen is feeding the samart makers what they need winning .

yet there's you some more basket.

The lines are shorter now, not exactly ten or twelve people deeply during the breakfast rash, but they're still a steady flow of customers. People really like this good bar. I feel hopeful for them for the first time. I think maybe they could break even.

By the time I catch up with Jennifer again, it's closing time ten P M. SHE. Is that the cash register is printing out the daily totals. Is this like when you print out the totals from the registers? Is that the first time you're seeing the numbers?

Yeah.

Jennifer looks over the receipts, then text them away. Her face is hard to read. Maybe a little solum. Can you tell me looking at the recedes from the first day, do you have a sense of like, oh, at this rate, if we do this for ten days, we could break even or get close to my goal.

Now we just have so much money in the end. And .

really, even with, even with this big first day.

that feels like, yeah, yeah.

Just then Jamie wanders over.

He was asking if we would at this rate, if we would break even.

No, we've got we ve got a lot invested in the stand in my guess sets two years, three years.

Ten days past the fair ends, and I check back in with Jamie and Jennifer, they'd both worked from five in the morning to eleven at night on their feet for eleven consecutive days without a break. IT was growling and the money that was way less than theyd hoped for, less than half of what Jimmy had predicted after the food costs in Operating expenses.

And after the fair took its nearly twenty percent cut, they were left for about seventy thousand dollars profit, seventy thousand dollars good money. But all of IT would go towards paying back their original investment, which was, remember, three hundred thousand dollars at that rate. Jamie and Jennifer will be working for free for four years before they pay off their debt.

And after four years, they they take home seventy thousand dollars every state fair before taxes, a solid chunk of money, for sure. Lots of families would take that deal, but this was still so much less than they talked about earning. Remember, jami's estimate would have had them pocketing two or three times that amount. I just wondered, does that math, like, how does that sit with you? Does that feel worth up to you?

I think so. I mean, like i'm not really bothered by IT. You know now after the fact I think .

it's worth IT a lot of work.

but it's worth IT. Jamie told me he was completely unphased to when he saw the numbers come in. You didn't feel anything about well, I guess we're going to be a little short of kind of half of what I wanted.

No, no.

I think a lot of people would have a hard time adJusting to that reality.

I wait.

really I mean you you're a really blunt guy, jammy but on this one thing I got ta say, I don't know if I believe .

you ah now he you can believe me. I deal that all the time. The my tracking business a couple years ago write at twelve million dollars in sales, your sales, and we won't even be eight million probably this year. I've been a business long enough that I know that just because you make that much money yesterday, don't mean you're going to make IT today, you know.

I didn't appreciate at first just how much js opening a business at the fair as being like a trip to the casino when he predicted that the'd make three hundred and three hundred fifty thousand dollars. The first summer. That wasn't because he done some careful calculations counting the number of biscuits you could sell each day.

I was just a wish he was going to put his money down on the table, roll the days and hope for the best. And even though it'll take years before they pay off bishop's deaths, jie is already encouraging Jennifer to open up your coffee shop this upcoming spring. Jennifer isn't so sure if the finances of work jay me, though he feels lucky.

Christena of he's one of the producers of today's episode, like for last stand .

saturday night.

the part of the park with right little kids close down at ten P. M. I said by there a little before there, wondering if I can talk to jerrem, the agent of the water gun game.

I look, I got a famly special here for guys, especially guys, if I get four people to play, you, whoever wins kids, a big choice Price.

That horse exhausted. Any person is barry, who is doing stock heming prizes for germany early in the day. Now germy is one handling in Prices barriers.

On the mike, you're ready. I will see as what I need at least two to start.

There are a few drag families left, and they are keeping themselves as far as they came from. Barry holding a distance, and maybe thirty five, forty beat, they would beat, and they are not interested in barani. S, on the finally one woman at dam at the game.

I got a one, the at least one more person to start, I see picking out there. You came, went by looking girl show. So second woman.

pull up in a motorize wheelchair. Berry pledge with people to sit. When I asking what this is about.

we're like a hundred dollars short .

from our goal and night germany. They would go to bring in ten thousand dollars that day game. I want to be clear, this was not management that at the school jerrem did. He said that's the number he wanted to hit him very each get a percentage of ten thousand dollars. They have decided on how much they wants to make for the day, and then they're gona use everything they had to make that number, begging people to sit down.

I got to the for two more.

Two never ends up running a modified two person version of the game for smaller prize, and keeps going with more rounds. Turncock comes, rides around us, start shelling down there is well, lights go off. Feels weird, is dorgan's multicolored bright things simply pitch dark, very tired, comes of people wanted pass IT tour parking hot. But the water gun raise is, I want to.

Last ways they finally .

run their last race, four minutes after ten o'clock, four minutes after this part .

of the park finally closed.

Thank 微信 去。

They've done sound systems off. They made them go. They don't make journey, said when telecom, of course.

they had to keep going. We had a goal. We needed five. We got a flash.

got to do stuff.

got a flash is not done for the night. They have to head over over with the prizes store, get some prizes, come back to the game and put them in place for tomorrow. He said.

They started to work around nine that morning. He was ten at night and a lot of hours work to go. We kept going, germy said, because we're like money.

The merry go around. Is beginning to slow now. Have I staying too long?

Has stopped and the children must go. now.

Well, programmes Bruce today by Chris bender and x three kara, the people put together today show and could be at a woman shon cole, Michael committed confed t honey, honey molson, right memory a ship. Marisa Roberts and texter materia and dian wu are managing editing sora and our senior editors vid cause.

Our executive editor is a man of berry of thanks today you've on to Stephen quinton walls judie weeks andy and got chafer Jenny wonder which mdi Williams and Chris jeff Jones ruber our website, this american live dot org, you can stream or archive over eight hundred episodes, were absolutely free. American life is to live in the public radio stations by prox the public radio exchange. This is always to a program's cofounder. This story, many of just this week he turned, ultimately shot his offer to help him and his wife can ceive a child.

He's cute, but he's not what i'm looking forward to bring into my breeding program. So on ara .

glass back next week with more stories of this american life.

Stay too long.

爱的。

Next week on the podcast of this american live, there is a machine that simulate the pain and craps that women get when they have the period. And sceptical guys get dragged to IT by the girlfriends and wives who want them to understand, oh my god, she's just cry. Okay, enough.

Sorry.

sorry.

That happens to you.

But does that change him to be actively after answers next week, the podcast or in your local public radio station?

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