This American Life - 839: Meet Me at the Fair

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

Iowa has three million people and a million come to their State Fair, each with their own goals and dreams for the fair. We hang out with some of them, to see if they get what they hoped for. Prologue: A big bull, a giant slide, and cowboys on horseback shooting balloons are just a few sights you can take in at the Iowa State Fair. Some people come for the spectacle, and some are the spectacle. (8 minutes)Act One: Bailey Leavitt comes from a family of carnies. For her, one of the most thrilling things she looks for at the fair is someone who is really good at luring people into spending money at their stand. She takes Ira on an insider’s search for “an agent.” (16 minutes)Act 2: Motley Crue pledged never to play the fairgrounds. Then they did. We wondered what that had been like for them. They agreed to an interview, but then they flinched. (1 minute)Act Two: What life lessons can kids learn at the 4-H rabbit competition? A lot. (11 minutes)Act Three: The Iowa State Fair awarded coveted slots to just nine new food vendors this year. All of them are run by people who already own restaurants or who’ve done other big fairs. All except for an unlikely newcomer: Biscuit Bar. (19 minutes)Act Four: As the ferris wheel goes dark and the fair is closing down, one game is racing to meet their quota. Ira watches until the end.Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. The state of Iowa has a little more than 3 million people. One million come to the state fair. barn and the kids talent show stage and the lemonade shake-up stands and the many many corn dog stands and the central iowa railroad club exhibit building and the chainsaw art and the live snakes and the vast slowly moving rivers of people every one of those million is here on their own personal quest for what they want out of the fair stuff they want to do stuff they want to see everybody has their own mission declanclan and Killian, for instance.

Seven and nine years old. Brothers from the suburb of Des Moines. They want to see the giant bull. Killian, the big brother. Talked to my co-worker, Diane Wu. Why are you excited to see the bull? It's one of my favorite animals. How come?

They can see red, and red's my favorite color. What? You say it looks black, like, every day. That's a little Brother Declan with a fact check about Killian's favorite color being black. Another fact check? Bulls can't actually see red. The boys wander around the outside of the cattle barn, looking for the right entrance. Super size bull. That way.

The bull's name is Teddy Bear, and it weighs 3,060 pounds. Signs duct taped onto the pen say, do not touch the bull, which is like, yeah. What do you think? That's cool. And big. I thought it would be smaller. It would be smaller, okay. A little bit.

When you see a giant animal, if you're a kid or an adult, what is there to say other than, yeah, okay, that's about right. Elsewhere. Elsewhere. Cowboy mounted shooting is one of the fastest growing equestrian sports in the country. It's a timed event where we use two 45 single action long bolt pistols. In the cowboy mounted shooting competition, each competitor is on horseback. And they ride a course shooting burning embers from their guns.

They try to pop five balloons with one pistol. Then they change guns, shoot five more balloons with the other pistol, and gallop to the finish line all without stopping. Some of these runs we're going to be doing today are going to be nine seconds. That's less than a second per shot with a gun change. It's a lot happening all at once. Adam Ross is actually ranked sixth in the world at this sport. But somehow he has never won first place here in his home state of Iowa.

That's his mission for this year's fair, told my coworker, Aix-Rouge Kandaraja. I'm naturally competitive. When everybody else puts their horses away in the winter, me and my wife take our horses to the barn and we ride all winter long. We try to outwork every one of our competitors. And when you survey this room of competitive riders in your level, who's the one you're most keeping an eye on?

I look right in the mirror at myself. I know that I'm the fastest one here. I have the horses the most proven here this year, so as long as I don't beat myself when I go out there and run my match, I know that there's nobody that'll compete with me. with you till we meet again. Keep love's feather floating on you. At a slightly slower pace, I've heard the replica of Iowa's first church. The original was built in 1834. It's a cozy log cabin

where the goal is to reflect on God's goodness right in the middle of a gigantic, noisy carnival. They hold services twice a day during the fair. While Iowans are not officially permitted to pray, but they are, the guy leading the service says, allowed to sing prayers. Thank you. High above nearly everything at this fair,

looking down on everyone, stands Bionda, age 11, on the giant slide for her very first time. It is a massive metal slide that you fly down on a felt mat, and she has a simple goal of her own. So we're going to go on the slide, and I'm very terrified right now because one more move and I'm done. Then she and her sister, Sally, grab their mats and push off. Oh, my God! She and her sister Sally grab their mats and push off. The Varied Industries Building is an enjoyable mishmash of T-shirts and household stuff for sale,

but also expensive devices to help your blood circulation or your horse's blood circulation. Plus, a guy on one of the more surprising missions at the fair, I thought. Marty Golden, in a neatly pressed blue uniform and Navy hat, who's standing in front of a booth promoting the USS Iowa battleship, a World War II era ship that's now a floating museum. This restoration paid for in part by grants from the state of Iowa. We want to make the citizens of Iowa more aware of the battleship Iowa and let them know that anybody that's a resident of the state of Iowa

gets on board the Iowa battleship for free. And if they let us know they're from Iowa, we'll take them behind the scenes to places that are not open up to the general public. But there's a catch. Iowa happens to be landlocked. The ship is docked in Los Angeles. Hence Marty's mission, to get Iowans out there.

Marty did two years in the Navy, 30 years in the Reserves. He served on a ship right off the coast of Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He's also a marine biologist who studied ocean life, retired now. But he loved the Navy enough that now he's a tour guide on the Iowa, which, again, is in the port of Los Angeles. Marty is not an Iowan. He lives out there. I miss the Navy so much that I volunteer

now about once a week down in the battleship Iowa. And they flew you out here? More or less. Oh, you flew 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. It'll be fun. And they're like, great. Yeah, they probably would have covered all of my expenses, but I believe in the ship. The ship is always struggling to bring money in to keep operating.

So you didn't want to take any money away that could have gone to the battleship. Correct. The Iowa State Fair began in 1854, just eight years after Iowa became a state. They hadn't even picked a location to build their state capitol building yet. But they wanted to come together for a fair for reasons that aren't that different

from why we do it today. And what are they? I think at a state fair, so much of what's on exhibit is us. We come. The animals we raise, and our pies and sewing projects, our spelling bee skills,

and our expertise at shooting balloons from horseback, and our love for a Navy Museum battleship. And we think others would love also if we could just tell them about it in person. We take in the exhibits, and we are the exhibits at the State Fair. That's what's 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 of in the fair this year. I'm WBC Chicago. This is American Life. I'm Eric Glass. Stay with us. This is American Life.

Act One. Carney Confidential. So Bailey Levitt has a different relationship to state fairs and carnivals than most of us. It always feels good to be back on a midway. When I come out here, I smell it. It just feels like home to me. Bailey grew up in carnivals.

Comes from a family of carnies. Wait, I'm smelling. What is the smell you're talking about? So I smell turkey legs for sure. I could smell the cotton candy, that burnt sugar smell. And there's always like an underlying kind of grease smell, the diesel smell from the rides and from the generator, which is giving power to all the rides. It's so comforting to me. Bailey wrote on Instagram that we're going to be doing this show about state fairs. And she wrote in, talking about her family's life on the road as carnies, mostly out west.

I thought it would be fun to walk through the Midway with her and see it through her eyes, because she notices all kinds of stuff, big and little, that you and I don't know enough to notice. She grew up with a different vocabulary for everything around us here. She calls all the games joints. Well, it's a four-sided joint, but then three sides. Cotton candy stands are poppers. Food stands are grabs. Prizes are flash. Carnivals themselves are shows.

As in... He's actually still on that show, and I think he's managing rides now. A bunch of different shows. 13 independent companies provide the games and rides for the Iowa State Fair. We walk up to a balloon game that must be, I don't know, 20, 25 feet tall.

A structure made from aluminum scaffolding with flags and prizes hanging everywhere and two giant banners saying, Bust One Wins. Bailey gives it a once-over. She's impressed. You can tell that they take good care of the joint because you see how clean all this stuff is where all those connection points are?

You're pointing to the frame of the stand itself. Yeah, the joints where different pieces link up for this game. All that stuff is really well maintained. Bailey tries to spot who's Greenhout and who's a 40-miler. I mean, it's just there for a bit. And who's a genuine carny. Before I met Bailey, I honestly wasn't too sure if people still use the word carny

or if it has some sort of derogatory, old-timey feeling to it. She told me some carnies hate the word, but she and her family embrace it with pride. These days Bailey works for a little software company that her mom started, but two of Bailey's brothers and her sister are still on the show, and her dad and stepmother run a show in Alaska that her dad tries to pull her back into now and then. Bailey has happy memories growing up, running around carnivals and state fairs. She could ride any ride or play any game for free. Surrounded by adults, her parents' employees who kept their eyes on her.

There were incredibly special days like Stock Day, when the stuffed animals for the fair, the stock, would arrive on a giant semi-trailer truck. And it was a giant pile of toys that I could literally jump in and swim in, like a ball pit, but with stuffed animals. That was my favorite. Bailey started to work in the fair, for real, when she was 10, working on Goldfish Game. A four-sided center joint. Bailey's mom, Tina, joined us for a while in the midway. She was watching Bailey's baby while Bailey and I walked around.

Tina co-managed the family carnival for years and jokes that her kids learned to count by counting money. She says Bailey was great at drawing a crowd, loved the attention, loved performing. When she was little, her flaw as an employee, she did not care about convincing people to spend more money on the game. She would sit there and talk to people, and sometimes she would get in trouble because if she's talking to people, she's not actually making money.

She's just talking to people. But then as she got older, she focused a little bit better. Weird that your child labor didn't pay off like you thought it would. Child labor laws do not apply to family. And they learned that very young. Is that true? It is true. At least that's what I told them. And they believed me.

I'm glad you're right about that one. Something you don't think about too deeply as a civilian fairgoer looking for fun is that for the people working the fair, it really is all about money. How much you can make and how quickly and efficiently you can bring it in. Among other things, the State Fair is a collection of small businesses attracted by the massive crowds. And among the people like Bailey, who work games and rides, the workers who make the most money are called agents. The word agent means different things in different regions of the country among carnies. But where Bailey was a carny, agents were just the best there was. So good at getting families and guys trying to impress their girlfriends,

to throw money at games, the carnival owners would pay them more than anybody else. And they would jump from show to show. They're agents as in free agents. As we walked up at Fairgrounds, the thing that Bailey wanted to show me more than anything was an agent. Yeah, 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 this state where all 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 called putting a mark to sleep. Bailey and her stepdad once watched an agent who put a mark 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're awake and it's done. I wanted to see this. I wanted to see an operator put somebody to sleep. So we headed out in search of an agent. There's going to be a lot of agents here. Come on, I think, come on in, guys. Who else wants to ask the water gun? Find the dam. We head over to a game where there's a row of 14 chairs in front of 14 targets. The way this game works is you sit and fire a water pistol at the target. When you hit the bullseye, the water goes into a tube, filling it up. First player to fill their tube wins the stuffed owl.

All right. You got number one. As long pause as you're hearing, Bailey disapproves. All right. This guy's trying to get people to sit and play the game. Three players sit. All right. Then a fourth.

Ten seats are empty. Last call for this race. At the sound of the bell, the water will start. Everybody ready? In three, two, one. Here we go. Go, go, go. All the way to the top.

Keep your eye on the dot. Don't work up this water race. And the water is chasing the day. Number eight. Winner, winner, winner. So what do you think of him? He's okay. He's not the best I've seen, but he's not the worst.

Like, he's doing good at trying to engage people and make them play, but he's had a lot of pauses where he's not talking at all. Bailey knows this particular game well, the water race. She's been the one on the mic running the water race for her dad's carnival in Alaska. She used to have to do lots of rhyming when you were on the mic, lots of alliteration. Like, watch him race him, watch him chase him.

That's what she did. This guy does not do much of that. Also... He's only getting three to four players each time. Do you think he can be pulling in more people? Absolutely, yeah. 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? No, definitely not. We cross the fairgrounds to find another water race game, and this one's huge and beautiful. 26 seats instead of 14 like the first one. It's what Bailey calls a double-sided joint. There are two rows of chairs facing each other. The guy on the mic stands in the middle on a platform between the two rows. Huge fluffy prizes hanging everywhere. And the guy on the mic? Get ready, get set, go, go, go, go. All right, don't waste a drippity-drop trying to get to the tippity-top. Sound watch and see who's it going to be.

And the winner is? Right there. All that rhyming. The alliteration. Number 18. Winner, winner, winner. He's constantly talking. He's using a lot of alliteration and rhyming and, like, catchy things to draw people in.

Even I can tell. This guy's got charisma. He's a stocky, bald guy with five o'clock shadow. When he's on the mic, you cannot look away. And that great, gruff, rock and roll voice. Get ready, get set, go, go, go. Who's it gonna be? Stop watching. See? Oh, man, it's close.

It's neck to neck, it's toe to toe. Don't waste it. Drippity-drop. Winner, winner, winner, winner, winner, winner, winner, winner, winner, winner, winner. Chicken dinner. Yeah, this setup is great. They've got really, like, hyped-up music, flashing lights. They also got their mic turned up, so his voice is a lot more clear than that other guy.

You want to do that quick, huh? All right, let's see. he's playing off his customers. He's joking around with them. Yeah, he's good at what he does. Bailey's mom, Fort McArnival manager, she's watching him too. He's not a 40 miler, he's a carny. I do get the guy to talk to me and go to snatches of conversation while winners are picking their prizes. His name's Jeremy Bouvier.

How long have you been doing this? 24 years. How many months of a year do you work? All year. You work all year. Do you have a house or apartment somewhere that you... I had an apartment up until January. I got tired of paying for it because I'm always gone. I'm buying a motorhome in November.

So if you have a motorhome, then you just take the motorhome with you as you travel? Yeah. What city was the apartment in? Lewiston, Maine. That's where I'm from. And who do you travel with? I go, I bounce around. So this is, you don't just travel with this ride? No. No. And you're staying in bunks here? No, I stay at hotels. So you're doing good? Yes. What percentage are they paying you of the gross here? I can't tell you that. It's good money though.

So are you an agent? Pretty much. I gotta get back to work though. He's with it. He's an agent. You heard him talking about how he floats around and he just goes to different shows. He doesn't travel with 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 him really do his thing, full force. Because it was after 8pm. This section of the fair, Keddy Land, was dying down. So we never filled more than half the seats in his game. We didn't see him put anybody to sleep

and keep them playing and spending money. But there was one more person Bailey and I watched. He was not, strictly speaking, fellow Kearney. He was a salesman. A traveling salesman. But Bailey and I both watched him mesmerized. And he was in one of the prime spots that anybody could possibly get at this state fair for selling anything.

This was outside the Varied Industries building, next to the door, and also the corner of the building. So you saw him approaching from two different directions. The Iowa State Fair charges a bunch of extra money for that spot, of course. This guy was calmly making bank. Kenny Brunel. He sells nozzles for garden hoses. Well, I have them in any color you want as long as it's green. Some agents, Bailey says, are high energy.

But some are the opposite. They win through calm. That's Kenny. And okay, just to describe his setup, he's standing next to a clear glass box that's maybe two feet by two feet by two feet, spraying water into it with a garden hose, whose nozzle Kenny twists clockwise or counterclockwise to make the spray bigger or smaller. Going from left to right, you're going to have a little soft soak for potted plants. You've got a heavy rinse, you can get the house, the car, the windows. You've got a wide fan.

As you turn it, it will go down to a pinpoint jet spray that will clean the windows, the siding, and the gutters. And last but not least, you've got a fine mist for delicate plants. This guy, he puts people to sleep. He's putting marks to sleep. That's what he's doing. And he's good at it. Like, even his voice is kind of hypnotic. Kind of like getting them in the zone.

We stare at him as he puts people to sleep. And if you guys need a second one for the backyard, we do two for $75. If you guys like the field as well. We bought one, then we bought another, now we're going to buy another. Thank you. I appreciate that. He's got a great visual presentation, but he's just really, like he has really calm energy. And so you feel like this is a comforting guy, safe. So yeah, of course he's going to make the sale. Every new group of customers, Kenny hits the product against the ground, show how durable it is. He makes the same jokes.

And I haven't been any color you want as long as it's green. No purple? When he gets a minute between customers to talk, Kenny Bernal tells me that his grandfather sold at state fairs, and his father. His own first memory of selling is doing a salsa maker demo at the Colorado State Fair one time with his dad when he was five and a half. He enjoyed it. When he was 10, he toured with his parents to state fairs and had his own booth selling radio-controlled cars. As he got older, he learned to demo kitchen products.

And was pretty decent at it. But in my early teens, I was like, my heart's really not into kitchen gadgets. You know, just not something I felt. And then I took a liking to this product, and I was like, I want to sell that. He wanted to sell that because it has a great visual pitch. It's a quick pitch. Also, the water's loud. It's attention-getting.

There's a wow moment when you hit the jet spray. There's another wow moment when you go to the mist. And another advantage of these things? They're tiny. You know, you can fit a whole Ferris wheel of inventory on one pallet. A quick trade show? He can check all the nozzles he needs into a carry-on bag. Way better, he says, than when he sold pillows.

It was 24 years ago when he started selling these. Some of his moves today? Well, of course, he doesn't stop talking. Of course, he puts the product in the customer's hand. That's something he saw his dad do. He's learned that to talk for 12 hours straight for a week and a half for a state fair, to preserve his voice,

he'll consciously pitch it a little higher or a little lower for stretches at a time. Here in the Midwest, and also in certain cities like Seattle, he said, he mostly does not make direct eye contact during the pitch. Yes, I am. I noticed that. I was taught and raised to always make direct eye contact. What I've found nowadays is I'll make eye contact roughly three times a demo.

That's what I aim for. One in the beginning, one in the middle, one right at the end when you're explaining the warranty and how much they are, but not too much because I've done that a few times this fair where I'm demoing and doing it East Coast style. I'm making direct eye contact, and you can see them looking off down looking off down the aisle and they're

intimidated. And I don't want that. It's too aggressive to do the eye contact. It's too aggressive, yeah. Kenny, this is Bailey, who's worked a ton of fairs, a ton of carnivals. I grew up in the carnivals, so. Okay. I just think you're great at what you do. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah. And then they got into a little chat about headset microphones. Bailey wanted to know why I didn't use one. Kenny was like, I usually do, but I had a problem with my mic. And then a problem with my backup mic. Bailey was sympathetic. They liked each other. Game recognizes game.

In my line of work, I have to say putting somebody to sleep means you are not doing your job right. It's one of the worst things you can say to somebody. When I told Kenny that's what Bailey said about him, he laughed and decided to take it as the compliment it was. He ended up selling $33,000 worth of nozzles over the course of the fair. That's 877 nozzles in 11 days. Or put another way, for 12 hours a day, every single day, Kenny sold an average of one hose nozzle every 10 minutes.

Coming up, we go on a roller coaster of sorts, one filled with bunnies. That's a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This is American Life from Ira Glass. Today's show, Meet Me at the Fair. We hang out with some of the 1.2 million people who came to the Iowa State Fair this year to see if they got what they hoped for.

And we'll get back to that in a second, but first, let me tell you a story. Back in 2013, the band Motley Crue was getting older. One of his founding members had gotten a degenerative disease. The drummer, Tommy Lee, was going around saying they wanted to stop doing shows before they had to start replacing bandmates. That's such a bad look. Yeah. Like, bands are still playing the f***ing fairgrounds, you know.

A year later, Tommy Lee said, we are not playing county fairs. But Wednesday night at the Iowa State Fair this year, Molly Crew played. They rocked. Fans partied. Legalize, go. Hell yeah. How was the show? Huh? They rocked. Fans partied. Legalize, go!

Hell yeah! How was the show? Huh? How was the show? Dude, I'm so f***ing drunk, I can't f***ing remember that s***. Curious about what it is like for the band to do this thing that they had sworn repeatedly they would never ever do, we asked for an interview. The band said yes.

And then, a day later, we were told they would still love to talk to us with one condition. They would not discuss playing state fairs. In other words, Motley Crue is chicken. So, I just want to say to the band right now,

our offer is still good. We actually do want to hear what this is like for you to do this. Reach out if you change your minds. And with that, we turn to Act Two of our show. Act Two, How bad is your bunny? So many people who come to the fair arrive with dreams tied to farmyard animals. There are non-stop animal competitions in hundreds of categories all 11 days of the fair. One of our co-workers, Dana Chivas, went to watch the 4-H rabbit competition.

She had no idea what an emotional roller coaster it would turn out to be. The 4-H rabbit program is meant to teach kids lessons about animal science and breeding and caretaking, which they do learn, along with some other lessons. Here's Dana. The rabbit show takes place in an industrial building on the outskirts of the fair. Tin roof, beige metal siding, no frills. Rabbits don't get the respect they deserve. Except from the kids. Hello. Hi. I'm Dana.

I'm Molly Fox. Molly has shown rabbits at 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 Lionhead, named for the poof of mane it's supposed to have around its head. This competition is about presentation skills, demonstrating your knowledge about your animal's breed to a panel of three judges. Molly tells me she's not nervous.

She carries her bunny to the judges' table. All right, you may start whenever you are ready. Hi, my name is Molly Fox. I'm 12 years old, and I'm from Hamilton County. This is Onyx. He is a junior buck lionhead, and his color is black. First, I'm going to check the ears. Let me find the ear tattoo. There's so much fluff. Molly flips Onyx onto his back and opens his little rabbit mouth so his teeth show. Says she's checking for buck teeth, peg teeth, malocclusion, wolf teeth, and broken or chipped teeth.

The goal here is for the kids to look for the things a veteran judge would look for if they were evaluating this rabbit. Molly runs through the checklist she memorized with her dad. Ears, nose, teeth. And then wraps it up with this professional assessment. I would like to see more of I would like to see more of the wool type of fur

on his hind legs. But overall, he is a very he is an excellent rabbit. Molly's learned her 4-H lessons well. The judges have no questions. She gets 94 points out of 100. Most of the kids I meet are proud of their rabbits.

They talk about how soft they are, how nice their markings are. Except for Jillian King, who is 11 and who has absolutely had it with her rabbit. He's molting and he's really ugly right now. If I could get rid of him. Oh, baby. That sounds bad, but it's true. He needs more hair. He doesn't match breed standards. He's just the best rabbit I have for this right now.

The rabbit in question is named Chacho. He's small and brown and has a bad case of bedhead, hair puffed out in all the wrong places, and a look that says he knows he screwed up. Oh, he's so cute, though. He is cute, but not cute enough to be like that. What's his breed again? Lionhead.

Oh, he's a lionhead. I want to see the lionheads. Well, there's a better breed standards ones over here. He is not quite up to the best breed standards. That's how you say it. But the better ones 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-ass looking bunnies, with that kind of calm demeanor that comes with effortless beauty. One is brownish gray with dark brown ears that stick up in a regal way and hair that seems feline. The other one has a classically pretty bunny face, light brown, chubby cheeks, button nose. He's sitting up like a dog or like a bunny, I guess, his eyes locked on the back of Chacho's fuzzy head.

Wow. These two are very up-to-breed standards. They are gorgeous. They have a perfect mane and skirt and saddle and everything that you should see. For the many wrecks in the hall of the best, we know the best opposite. Jillian holds Chacho up in front of these hot bunnies so I can see the difference. Jillian holds Chacho 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'll grow back. He's going through an awkward phase right now, though. Poor guy. 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. They're just better. At the rabbit show, each rabbit is sized up against its breed 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 isn't exceptional enough to get a purple. Next is red, which means your rabbit is a delinquent, and then white enough to get a purple. Next is red, which means your rabbit is a delinquent, and then white, which means you are a delinquent. Jillian and her older sister Jenna are both having a bad hair day. Get it? Chacho is a mess, and Jenna's best rabbit, Martini, just got disqualified. Jenna's sitting in a camping chair, in tears. Hi, Jenna. Can I ask you what happened?

So, I breed Harlequin rabbits. I was told one of my rabbits is sick, that her nose is running, and she's the best color ring I've gotten. I don't know why she's sick. I'm just super disappointed right now. Disappointed and also worried, she loves this snotty rabbit. We walk over to Martini, who's lying across the back of her cage.

That's Martini. She's beautiful. She has black and white bands across her body and a perfect face split, which is to say half her muzzle is white and half is black, a very desirable trait in a harlequin rabbit. To my untrained eye, she seems pissed. Jenna says Martini and her sister, Tequila, don't really like people. She bred them herself, choosing to pair a rabbit named Whiskey with good coloring to a lady rabbit named Fawn, who has a great face split.

Out of that blessed union, Martini was born. It was the week that things got really cold in January, like negative 40. Half of her litter did not make it. It really sucked. But her mom got two of them through, which is good. So she's like a little miracle rabbit. Was that really sad? Yeah. It was my first litter, too, so, you know, that was a little bit rough.

But you can't let it hold you back. I mean, you only get better the farther along you go. You can't really quit in the beginning. Oh, I guess you could if you wanted, but... Jenna and I have a difference of opinion here. I'm totally for quitting, especially if the activity involves frozen bunnies. As we're admiring Martini,

Jenna's mother, TJ, walks up with news. She doesn't... She's what? She's allergic to the sawdust. I just talked to that guy who said, hey, it's an allergy. Martini is not sick. She does not have snuffles, which is rabbit sniffles. She's just allergic to the sawdust they put in all the rabbit cages at the fair.

Jenna doesn't use sawdust at home, so she had no way of knowing this. She's crying again. It's so good to know. Right, I said we're learning things the hard way this year, and that sucks. I suspect the lesson TJ is referring to is don't put sawdust in a rabbit cage. But I could see another lesson appearing on the horizon. One 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 know in your heart that you've got an outstanding rabbit. How's that make you feel? Better? Yeah, way better. I really thought something might have happened and I didn't see it. And they invited us to the show in Boone in October because she's a phenomenal rabbit. Yay. Come here. Come here. They hug it out. I'm glad now that we know it's just an allergy. That makes me feel like, again, 20 times better. Did you just hear what

they said over the loudspeaker? For Harlequins, the best rabbit here today had to be disqualified. Understanding washes over Jenna's face. More tears. Don't cry. I'm going to cry for you. You know what that means? You don't want to make sure Martini again when she's not hay chip sick? Yes, and that your breeding program is exactly on track where you want it 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?

So proud. You be proud of that. And I clean that stuff. I know, me too. I don't have any. Don't cry. That's great. I'm excited to breed her now. I know, me too. I don't have any. Don't cry. That's great. I'm excited to braid her now.

Jenna plans to match Martini with Moe, the rabbit in the cage next door, who's a few months younger than Martini and seems like a doofus, but I'm no expert. And what about poor Chacho, Jillian's discombobulated rabbit? He ends up getting a red ribbon, which is second to worst. Or, if you ask Chacho, third best. Jillian's surprised. It was better than I was expecting. Are you less mad at him now? No, not really. I'm still getting rid of him.

He's cute, but he's not what I'm looking forward to bring into my breeding program. The lesson Chacho takes home from the state fair is show business isn't for everyone. But he has a happy retirement to look forward to. Jillian plans to sell him to a good home, where he'll be someone's pet, or maybe better for Chacho, the young buck, in someone else's probably unsuccessful breeding program. Dana Chivas is a producer on our show. One quick program note before we go any further.

Some of you may have noticed a word usage that you're getting ready to email us about. I just want to say right now, yes, we know that a hare is not the same thing as a rabbit. But, can I say, puns breed around this office like punnies. Act three, Limp Bizkit. So every Iowan that I talk to outside the fair this year,

when I mentioned that I was going to the fair, what we would end up talking about was food and what to eat. Food is a big thing at so many state fairs. News coverage of Iowa's fair always includes the latest stuff, like this year's bacon cheeseburger egg roll. There are nearly 200 food stands at the fair, and they rarely 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. Fair's management says that some vendors earn their entire annual income for the year at those 11 days at the fair. Chris Bender followed one family that tried to jump into 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 food 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 Iowa this year are owned and run by people in the restaurant business, or they've done other big fairs. So how did Jamie and Jennifer end up doing this? Well, for a long time, Jennifer had dreamt of opening her own coffee shop. Then her husband saw this opportunity, not to launch a coffee shop exactly, but to launch an 11-day-long state fair version of it. He heard about a food 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'd do some food on the side. Biscuit sandwiches, they decided, because there aren't many vendors selling breakfast at 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, they each had very different expectations for how much money they'd make. I tend to be more frugal and conservative about finances. frugal and conservative about finances. So I'm just, I'm really just hoping to 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 their costs. But she told me she didn't think they'd do that. The costs were too big. They'd spent $300,000 for the trailer and all the equipment.

And that's before you get to salaries and food costs. Plus the state fair takes 19.5% of every dollar every food vendor brings in. Jamie, her husband, owns a successful trucking business. And when I reached him by phone, he was confident they'd make everything back this first year. It'll work. I guarantee you that it'll work. No doubt about it, it'll work. It's just how much the profit is, you know? My personal thought for this year was

I'd like to do about gross sales of $300, $350 on the minimum side. It's kind of like going to a casino. You go there to win, you just hope you win more than you lose, you know? This kind of confidence, of course, 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 Jamie has a cousin, Joni, who runs two popular, very

successful food stands at the fair. Jamie's helped her out a little in the past. And seeing his cousin's operation made the idea of raking in lots of cash seem way more possible, at least for him. Again, here's his wife, Jennifer. Probably for him, you know, because 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 for sure. Could that be almost a tricky thing because she makes it look deceptively simple? Possibly, yes.

6.30 a.m., August 8th, the first day of the fair. And this, employees scraping cooked food out of pots into storage containers, is the sound of a food stand about to debut itself to Iowa. The gates of the fair don't open until 8 a.m., so let me give you a sense of the place. Right now I'm in the open-air kitchen that's behind Biscuit Bar. This is where all the raw materials, meats and eggs and biscuits are cooked, and then get passed into the trailer where they're assembled into sandwiches. Everyone's calm, They're ready. Can I ask what you guys are doing at this point? Cleaning tubs. Cleaning tubs. We got our stuff made.

The trailer Jamie and Jennifer paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for is gleaming with a green and pink facade, emblazoned with real pictures of biscuit sandwiches, but also cartoons of friendly anthropomorphized biscuit sandwiches. The word espresso appears in four places. And then, at the top, outlined with dots of neon lights in big letters, Biscuit Bar. There are three registers out front, each with a teenager behind it. Lily is the most chipper by far. She's ready to sell.

We're really excited to be here. We've got a couple great new items. We have the piggy and a donut, which won an award, especially for our piggy. Yes, our piggy secret sauce. It's kind of got a kick to it. It's got some chipotle in it. So if you're feeling something a little bit spicier,

definitely that's the way to go. We also have a bubbly latte, which is kind of like a hybrid between your like... It's about 7.45 a.m. Some of the people who are allowed in early, fair staff, people here to show livestock, they start lining up at Biscuit Bar, eager for breakfast and coffee. I find Jamie inside the trailer. He's got a buzzed head, goatee, gruff voice but soft eyes. He's assembling coffee orders alongside one of his new employees.

What do you need? A small iced espresso. Vanilla and ad-whipped coffee. So it's a small iced espresso. Vanilla and ad-wift topping. So it's a small? Yeah. They're both wearing these hot pink 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 sense of shared fortune, of teamwork.

It's almost beautiful to behold. Actually, there's some kind of issue with the espresso drink. See, it looks weak to me. That's what she was saying too. What is going on here? This iced drink looks weird. It tastes weird. Jamie starts inspecting the backside of the large espresso machine. See, I've always been intimidated by this thing. Somebody shut this switch off. That's why it wasn't brewing, because it's not hot. This is never supposed to get shut off, and somebody had shut it off. It's going to probably take like five or six minutes. Let's just see.

When Jamie says it'll take five or six minutes for the water to reheat, he actually has no idea how long it'll take. A couple espresso drink orders are already waiting, and more are coming in. Five minutes pass. The water still isn't hot. Jamie shows Jennifer. The problem is that it's not hot, Jennifer. It's going to take like five more minutes probably. And there's fresh grounds in there ready to go, but the water isn't hot enough yet. So somebody shut the switch off on the bottom. I don't know what they was doing, but...

Jamie leaves Jennifer to figure out the coffee. Meanwhile, the employees assembling the sandwiches inside the trailer are shouting out the window to the kitchen. They need supplies. Brisket for the brisket sandwich won't be ready for 20 more minutes. And there are other shortages. We got sausage gravy. Sausage gravy. the brisket sandwich won't be ready for 20 more minutes. And there are other shortages. We got sausage gravy. Sausage gravy.

Do we have more gravy made? Nope. Okay, well then we need to be making gravy. Wow. Or, a little later. Can we get sausage patties please? What's she want? Sausage patties. Okay, we better put some more on.

Do you know where they're at? Jamie starts rummaging through the fridge looking for more individually wrapped sausage patties. He started the day with just 80, and now they're almost out. Jamie does find a huge bag of raw sausage and gets people to start molding that into patties. His brother Jeff starts grilling them. Jamie feels like these handmade patties are a workable solution. Jeff, who is like a shorter version of Jamie with a dash of Joe Pesci mixed in, does not. We can make them right here. Yeah, them don't cook like the other ones do. They're a pain in the fucking dick. In case you didn't catch that, Jeff said the

handmade patties are a pain in the fucking dick to cook. Because then you've got to check every one of them because they're not the same thickness, not the same shape. It'll be all right. Jamie does have a secret card he can play in this situation. He phones up Joni, his cousin with a successful food stance, to see if she has extra patties. Hello. I think I'm going to run out of pork patties before I can get time to go to the kitchen and get what Josh dropped me. We are busy. We had a few people. Fucking Albert. Albert is the guy who was supposed to deliver the milk. Another problem.

Mr. Nutter brought me whole milk and I'm going to fucking kill him. Told him 12 gallon, 12 gallon of whole milk and he brought me all skim. Another problem. This is a problem. You can't make gravy with skim milk. Meanwhile, out in front of the trailer, there's a semicircle of customers waiting for their orders. They all seem pretty calm, including Erica and Chris, two women who are wearing athleisure wear. We're waiting. Has it been a bit of a wait?

Just a little bit, but that's okay. They're figuring things out. Can I ask how long you've been waiting? Right now we're at eight minutes. Back inside the big green and pink trailer. Hey, we need another, like, three piggies and a hot shake. It's very tight in the trailer. And to assemble sandwiches, people are constantly squeezing past each other. Because the sausage and biscuits and eggs are on one end.

And the sauces and dressings and cheese are on the other. Then they drop the finished sandwiches, wrapped in foil, near the front window. But the problem is, there's 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 this? Did you hear what this was?

Yeah, what is this? It's probably a regular. Yeah, that was a regular. Over and over, the staff have to gently unwrap the corner of the sandwich to check what it is. Of course, there's a simpler solution to this, a way to label the sandwiches. But Jennifer, who's in charge of the trailer, cannot find the one permanent marker that

they had. Oh, and also, some of the orders aren't showing up on the overhead computer screens inside the trailer. So everyone's resorted to just yelling out orders at each other. I need a regular. I need a hot mess. 1107! We get a confirm on that hot mess?

Yes. Okay. Things feel so out of control that just 45 minutes after the fair's gates have opened, Jamie calls for reinforcements. His 12-year-old daughter and his 19-year-old stepson, Alex. Hello? Where you at? Okay, you need to get to work.

I know you're not supposed to start until 10, but we are slammed busy. Just get down here as quick as you can. There's people lined up, flirted the street, and your mom probably needs you on the inside. Back out front, I tracked down the customers, Erica and Chris again. They'd just gotten their food. It's tasty. It's good, but not worth 35-minute wait. 35 minutes?

Yes. And what do you think? It's very good. Yep. Okay. I wouldn't wait again. The whole thing's kind of painful to watch. People are requesting refunds. It's obvious this is not how this is supposed to go.

I was curious how a food stand at the fair is supposed to work, and I didn't have to go far. A couple stands down is an incredibly successful food vendor that's been around for years. Brad and Harry's Cheese Curds have been at the Iowa State Fair since somewhere in the mid-early 90s. Matt Rebar runs three cheese curd stands and one poutine stand here at the Iowa Fair, and the way they operate has been refined over decades. And the biggest difference I noticed from Jamie and Jennifer's biscuit bar? Simplicity, all emanating from this fact. We have one item. One item, it costs one amount. We know they're

in line for cheese curds, right? We know what the change is. We can see in their wallet and know what bill they're going to grab, and we can already have the change ready by the time that transaction happens. Biscuit Bar, by contrast, has 11 food items and 16 beverage choices, many with a bunch of different customizations. It's volume. That's what we're after, is the volume. Quality, but volume. Inside his trailer, it's tightly packed with employees in a smaller space than Biscuit Bar, 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 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. We have enough people where if you needed to take two steps, 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 curd assembly stations. Over at the biscuit bar, employees make complicated coffee drinks and smoothies and poor fountain drinks. At Matt's cheese curd stands, his employees don't make drinks at all. Matt sees that as inefficient. Instead, we've got a self-serve pop. Pop takes a lot of time. So if we can hand them a cup, they can go take their time, fill their ice as much as they want or as little as they want. One last note about the simplicity of Matt's cheese curd stands.

Paper towels. People need them constantly in a kitchen. And Matt has positioned a roll that hangs horizontally from a bungee cord above the workers. They can grab and tear them off effortlessly without taking up any space. Meanwhile, back at Biscuit Bar...

This stupid fucking thing. Jamie had one of those large black mechanite paper towel dispensers that you find in public restrooms, the kind you have to wave your hands under. This morning, it was spitting out only a couple inches of paper towel at a time. The whole first morning, it seemed like Biscuit Bar couldn't catch any luck. Then, in the early afternoon, it finally feels like Biscuit Bar rights the ship.

A piggy? I'll get him a piggy. Everybody's talking at a more normal volume. The wait times are way shorter. And the kitchen is feeding the sandwich makers what they need, when they need it. There's you some more brisket. The lines are shorter now, not exactly 10 or 12 people deep like during the breakfast rush. But there's still a steady flow of customers. People really like Biscuit 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, 10 p.m. She's at the cash registers 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? Um, yeah. Jennifer looks over the receipts, then tucks them away.

Her face is hard to read, maybe a little solemn. Can you tell me, looking at the receipts from the first day, do you have a sense of like, oh, at this rate, if we do this for 10 days, we could break even or get close to my goal? No. We just have so much money in this stand. Really? Even with this big first day, it feels like? Yeah. Yeah.

Just then, Jamie wanders over. He was asking at this rate if we would break even. No. We got a lot invested in the stand, and my guess is it's two years, three years. Two years, three years. Ten days pass. The fair ends, and I check back in with Jamie and Jennifer. They'd both worked from 5 in the morning to 11 at night, on their feet, for 11 consecutive days without a break. It was grueling.

And the money. It was way less than they'd hoped for. Less than half of what Jamie had predicted. After the food costs and operating expenses, and after the fare took its nearly 20% cut, they were left with about $70,000 profit. $70,000. Good money. But all of it would go towards paying back their original investment, which was, remember, $300,000.

At that rate, Jamie and Jennifer will be working for free for four years before they pay off their debts. And after four years, they'd take home $70,000 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, Jamie's estimate would have had them pocketing two or three times that amount. So I just wonder, does that math, like, how does that sit with you?

Does that feel worth it 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. It's a the fact. I think it's worth it. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. Jamie told me he was completely unfazed 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 wouldn't. Wait, really? I mean, you're a really blunt guy, Jamie. But on this one thing, I got to say, I don't know if I believe you. Yeah. No, you can believe me.

I deal with it all the time. My trekking business a couple years ago done right at $12 million in sales, gross sales, and we won't even be $8 million probably this year. I've been in business long enough that I know that just because you made 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 Jamie sees opening a business at the fair as being like a trip to the casino. When he predicted that they'd make $300,000 to $350,000 their first summer, that wasn't because he'd done some careful calculations, counting the number of biscuits you could sell each day. It was just a wish. He was going to put his money down on the table, roll the dice, and hope for the best.

And even though it'll take years before they pay off Biscuit Bar's debts, Jamie is already encouraging Jennifer to open up her coffee shop this upcoming spring. Jennifer isn't so sure if the finances will work. Jamie, though, he feels lucky. Chris Vandereve, he's one of the producers of today's episode. Act 4, last stand. Saturday night, the part of the park with rides for little kids closes down at 10 p.m. I stopped by there a little before that, wondering if I could talk to Jeremy, the agent of the water gun game.

Come on, look, I got a family special here for you guys. Closing special, guys. If I get four people to play, whoever wins gets a big choice prize. That horse, exhausted signing person is Barry, who's doing stock, handling prizes for Jeremy earlier in the day. Now, Jeremy's the one handling prizes, and Barry's on the mic. Right here, you ready? Have a seat. That's one. I need at least two to start. There are a few straggler families left, and they are keeping themselves as far as they can from Barry,

holding a distance of maybe 35, 40 feet. They look beat, and they are not interested in Barry's shenanigans on the mic. Finally, one woman sits down at the game. I got one to the door and at least one more person to start. I see you peeking out there. You can't win it by looking at a girl. Come on, give it a shot. So I was done.

The second woman pulls up in a motorized wheelchair. Barry pleads with people to sit. I want to ask him what this is about. We're like $100 short from our goal tonight. Jeremy tells me that they had a goal to bring in $10,000 that day for the game. And I want to be clear, this was not management that set this goal. Jeremy did, he said. That's the number he wanted to hit.

He and Barry each got a percentage of that $10,000. They decided on how much they wanted to make for the day, and then they were going to use everything they had to make that number, begging people to sit down. I got two in the door, I'm looking for two more. What? I need more than two. Barry ends up running a modified two-person version of the game for a smaller prize

and keeps going with more rounds. Ten o'clock comes. Rides around us start shutting down. Ferris wheel lights go off. That feels weird. This gigantic, multicolored, bright thing suddenly pitch dark. Very tired clumps of people wander past it towards parking lots. But the water gun race is an island of light and noise. Come on, come on. Last race, last race of the night. Have a seat, guys. One more time.

We're going to give another big win away, four minutes after 10 o'clock. Four minutes after this part of the park officially closed. It's toe-to-toe. Go, go, go, go, go. Who's going to be stopwatch and team number? Winner, winner, winner. 22 winning prizes. All right, guys. Have a great rest of your night. Thank you all. Appreciate you. They're done.

Sound system's off. They made their goal, they told me. Jeremy said when 10 o'clock hit, of course they had to keep going. We had a goal. We needed five more dollars. All right, we got a flash. Yeah, we got to do stuff. Got a flash means they're not done for the night.

They have to head over to where the prizes are stored, get some prizes, come back to the game, and put them in place for tomorrow. They said they started to work around 9 that morning. It was 10 at night. They had another hour's work to go. We kept going, Jeremy said, because we like money. The merry-go-round is beginning to slow down. Have I stayed too long at the fair? The music has stopped And the children must go now Have I stayed too long at the fair?

Our program was produced today by Chris Benderiv and Ike's Reese Condoraggio. The people who put together today's show include Bim Adewunmi, Sean Cole, Michael Kamate, Aviva de Kornfeld, Hanny Hawasli, Henry Larson,

Seth Lin, Miki Meek, Catherine Raimondo, Stro Nelson, Ryan Rumery, Alyssa Shipp, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor, Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is

David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks today to Yolanda Stephen, Thank you. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. You can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tori Malatia. Just this week, he turned down Timothee Chalamet's offer to help him and his wife conceive a child. He's cute, but he's not what I'm looking for to bring into my breeding program, so... I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. How

long stay too long at the At the fair Next week on the podcast of This American Life, there's this machine that'll simulate the pain and cramps that women get when they have their periods. And skeptical guys get dragged to it by their girlfriends and wives who want them to understand.

Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Okay, enough. Enough. Sorry. I'm sorry that happens to you. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Okay, enough. Enough. Sorry. I'm sorry that happens to you. But does that change them? Do they act differently after? Answers. Next week on the podcast or in your local public radio station.