Smuggs ’14 Chronicle, Day 7: July 31, 2014—Vermont Country Fair (indoors)

by Frank J. Tassone · 6 June 2019

jewelry box with different color bracelets

The kettle-corn maker stands outside the Meeting House. I catch a glimpse of vendors inside. People pour in and out. We pass through the Welcome sign to the Village Center and continue up the path toward the Village Green. Nothing there. The famous Vermont Country Fair is inside the Meeting House.

Returning there, we make a quick rotation on the floor. Davis Farms sells maple syrup, twelve-year-old girls get their hair braided, and a middle-aged couple receive massages. Table after table of jewelry, scented candles, wood-carved birds. Having seen enough, we depart for the Fun Zone.

Shortly after we get there, Frankie joins a watermelon seed spitting contest. His first nearly hits the gray. His second: not so much. After that, he climbs the suspended rope ladder and rings the bell. Finished, we leave before the dance party begins.

Sunset steam rising from an adult hot tub

Photo by Artem Beliaikin

Frank J. Tassone

Frank J. Tassone lives in New York City's "back yard" with his wife and son. He fell in love with writing after he wrote his first short story at age 12 and his first poem in high school. He began writing haiku and haibun seriously in the 2000s. His haikai poetry has appeared in Failed Haiku, Cattails, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, Contemporary Haibun, The Haiku Foundation and Haiku Society of America member anthologies. He is a contributing poet for the online literary journal Image Curve, and a performance poet with Rockland Poets. When he's not writing, Frank works as a special education high school teacher in the Bronx. When he's not working or writing, he enjoys time with his family, meditation, hiking, practicing tai chi and geeking out to Star Wars, Marvel Cinema and any other Sci-Fi/Fantasy film and TV worth seeing.