Fair Day?

So I went to the Fair on Sunday with my family. It was supposed to be on Saturday but it was raining so hard, it would have been a bad decision to go. Going to the State Fair of Texas was going to be a treasure trove of things for me to
“observe” and then come and share with you. There were a lot of crazy things that happened today but only one that really mattered –

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This is “Big Tex” – he is like 14,000 feet tall or something and every hour on the hour he says” Howdy Folks, Welcome to the State Fair of Texas”. It’s really corny but he is an icon and you can’t think of the fair without thinking of Big Tex. (I’m not happy that he’s been branded with all those “Dickies” labels – f’ing marketing/ branding is everywhere.)

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Rest assured there were going to be pictures of steers and cows, cowboys and horses, all that sort of thing.

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There was even this poor guy “Mr. Clean” who seriously has one of the jobs that falls into the category of “worst ever”.

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No, those posts won’t be today because I didn’t want my friend Joel “Detective Theis” to have to compete with anything else. Joel was one of my first neighbors and has been a great friend to me and my family for the last 15 years. I have watched his kids grow up and now he is watching mine. Cops don’t get paid enough which is bullshit so Joel works extra shifts every now and again and this year, he is working at the Fair.

Joel and I had worked out meeting once we all got in this morning and I took this picture of him and my daughter – turned out pretty awesome I think. Well, it’s a good thing it did because about 15 seconds after I took this picture, Joel saved someones life.

We were all sitting there taking pictures and saying our hello’s when a man ran up, said something frantic, and Joel and his partner took off. Turns out there was a woman who either had a seizure and then choked on a piece of candy, or the other way around. I didn’t take pictures and I didn’t follow up with 20 questions, but my daughter was concerned and I wanted to make sure everything was going to be okay.

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This is the medic truck that came and took the woman off – I am told she should be okay. I couldn’t stop thinking how lucky that woman was that Detective Theis was there and was only 30 feet away when things went bad. But they could have been a lot worse for sure, she was lucky.

My normal somewhat non-serious posts should continue tomorrow, like I said it was an interesting day. For now, my hats off to my good friend Joel Theis – I consider myself lucky that I have someone like that in my life that my daughter can look up to and respect. He’s a good guy.

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