Life Is Just Ducky

A duck is just plain funny. It waddles and says "quack." What's not funny about that? But when I was growing up, ducks meant serious business for my family. In addition to a full-time job in Milwaukee as a copywriter, my father raised ducks and chickens. We have four floor-to-ceiling incubators in our basement. Every Saturday morning, I would go down to the basement and help my dad take the chicks out of the incubators and put them in boxes to ship to the farmers. My dad had a flock of 100-200 ducks of various breeds. He would take the best ducks to the Wisconsin State Fair every year and win ribbons. I grew up at the fair. I would go there every year. It was a family event. So when I had an opportunity in 2010 to go to the Wisconsin State Fair, I was eager to visit. I wanted to see all the buildings and displays, plus I just absolutely had to taste some of those deep-fat-fried, breaded cheese curds people were telling me about.
The Poultry Palace was torn down, and instead, the chickens and ducks were displayed in a Quonset hut. That was a bit of a disappointment, but I loved seeing the birds anyway. I visited the Domestic Arts building and the Cream Puff Pavilion. They were the same as I remembered. The deep-fat-fried, breaded cheese curds looked delicious. They tasted like salt. That's all I could taste. But they sure looked and smelled good. I'm glad I tried them.
It's beneficial to the soul to revisit locations that trigger warm memories. My visit to the Fair after skipping it for 35 years revealed that I didn't have it that bad growing up. The life I had was just ducky.