Madison Street Fair '08

Although I lived in Madison for several years before moving to Limestone County, I never had the opportunity to attend the Madison Street Fair. That's because it was always held the same weekend as my wife's annual business trip to Germany, a trip I enjoyed joining her on. This year, however, her meetings aren't scheduled until December, so I had an opportunity to see just went on at one of these yearly events.

Predictably, they had the usual assortment of vendors, offering a varied range of home-grown arts and crafts. I have been to enough street fairs to have developed a certain level of expectation. I was not disappointed. There were the usual array of artists, jewelry makers, people selling cakes and cookies, notions and lotions. A number of food vendors kept the crowd satisfied, even though the prices are easily double what you'd pay on any other day. The children were kept well entertained, and along with the traditional face painting, there was hat and necklace making and even an area to create one's own personalized cupcake.

Due to the timing, one thing I did notice unique to this fair was the number of political tents promoting a number of candidates, not only for local office, but for the presidential race as well. I found it a bit disturbing that one had to pay for a bumper sticker or campaign button promoting either the Democratic or Republican candidate. I thought the parties wanted you to have those things to display, and would supply them willingly to anyone who showed the least bit of interest in their candidate. Apparently, those days are over. After all, somebody's got to pay for that 700 billion dollar bailout of those credit markets.

All in all, I'd say that the Madison Street Fair was one of the better attended fairs of this type. The crowds kept building throughout the morning and early afternoon, but I did notice a slight easing up of the number of people as things approached the 2:30 pm kickoff for the Alabama-Kentucky game. That's was to be expected I suppose.

Darrell Osborn, better known as Dr. Osborn mimics the face of one of the hundreds of animal balloons he created for the throngs of kids at the Madison Street Fair.