My mother\u2019s friend once invited me to lead a sing-along for the Pioneer Homestead Society at the Minnesota State Fair.\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s looking for someone young,\u201d my mom said, which should have been a tip-off right there that the event was doomed.\u00a0 Did you ever notice how you can say no to your mother, but you can\u2019t say no to your mother\u2019s friend?\u00a0 I imagined this musty room of old people and some fellow dupe in an arm garter accompanying me on an upright piano.\u00a0 I, singularly qualified thanks to my nineteen years, would stand in front to keep the songs going while the old folks took a break from the August sun and reminisced.\u00a0 Harmless and brief, it couldn\u2019t be that bad, I figured.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/StateFair.jpg\" "\\"StateFair\\"")
So I started brushing up some sure-fire winners like \u201cK-K-K-Katie!\u201d and \u201cDown by the Old Cherry Orchard.\u201d\u00a0 I learned some old-time favorites with lyrics like \u201cPut on your old gray bonnet\/ with the blue ribbons on it\/ while I hitch Old Dobbin to the shay!\u201d\u00a0 My mom exhumed a dress that looked like a cross between Laura Ingalls’ smock and a Lanz nightgown, and her friend pledged a bonnet.<\/p>\n
It is possible I put my hair in braids.\u00a0 With my sweaty list of songs in my apron pocket, I was good to go.<\/p>\n
Arriving at the fair with my mother and littlest sister in tow, I found no musty room awaited me.\u00a0\u00a0 Indeed, no.\u00a0 There was not even an enclosure.\u00a0 Certainly no piano player had been corralled to accompany me, and worst of all, no old folks had been assembled.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s friend pointed me to a tuffet-shaped, waist-high structure on a triangle of parched grass in front of a barn.\u00a0 She indicated that I was to stand on the tuffet and, presumably with my youth and bonnet, entice people to come over and sing pioneer songs with me.<\/p>\n
Streams of cheerful, pre-drunk Minnesotans in search of corndogs were passing on the sidewalk.\u00a0 Tie-dye was big that year.\u00a0 The Midway rides with their whirls and blares were one block over.\u00a0 I stood beside my tuffet, sweating and mortified, and I\u2019ll tell you frankly, getting strangers to sing pioneer songs with me was not something I could do.\u00a0 It was not something anyone could do.\u00a0 Or should, for that matter.<\/p>\n
My sister\u2019s pity made her wise.\u00a0 She retreated to the shade.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s deluded friend sat on the tuffet, smiling at me encouragingly, and my mother sat beside her.\u00a0 An old lady wandered out of the barn looking for the bathroom, and my mother\u2019s friend made her sit, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay!\u00a0 Go ahead,\u201d said my mother\u2019s friend, pointing proudly to me.\u00a0 She dreamed perchance even then that the passersby secretly longed to join our little sing-along.<\/p>\n
They did not.\u00a0 But I, in my bonnet, I sang pioneer songs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My mother\u2019s friend once invited me to lead a sing-along for the Pioneer Homestead Society at the Minnesota State Fair.\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s looking for someone young,\u201d my mom said, which should have been a tip-off right there that the event was doomed.\u00a0 Did you ever notice how you can say no to your mother, but you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[256],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-childhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}