The place where you can count on the biggest, the grandest, the most food-on-the-stickest.

I attended the Minnesota State Fair for the first time some twenty years ago. It's like New York City to me, only with a swine barn and food-on-a-stick. I love this place. I know its every building, street, booth, attraction. Ask me where to find it, I can tell you. Ask me how you can tell what the prize-winning oatmeal cookie tastes like just by looking at it in a glass case in the Creative Arts Building. I can tell you. It is not an exaggeration to say that I love this fair as much as I love Rome. And, that's saying a lot!!!

The best time to see the fair is Opening Day with a partner-in-fair who loves it as much as you do. Which, lucky for me, I have. Steve and I are, as we love to say, "professionals". When I start getting agitated that we are running out of time on that opening day, he reminds me: “Remember. We ARE Professionals.”

If it is possible to describe a typical day at the opening day -- which, strictly speaking it's not because it has it nuances of change -- I just experienced it.

At the Fair, if its not in a barn or a booth, it's on-a-stick.

The food is not my favorite feature, but it looms large as a major activity. Everything from pepperoni-flavored Yak sticks to Spaghetti on-a-stick to Walleye in every possible manifestation.

We almost always begin OUR eating portion of the experience (see Q&A) with honey ice cream with sunflower seeds. It is unique to the fair. Apparently, it cannot be recreated for the rest of the year, because the seeds get soggy in mass production. The cone is purchasable at the Bee and Honey wing of the Agriculture Building. Which, at any State Fair, should be regarded as its nexus, given the provenance of most celebrations like this is Harvest Time. At B&H, you can also purchase honey mined from everything from buckwheat to zinnia. There is a bee hive on location and case after case of honey or bee-oriented fairaphenalia. Objects made of beeswax, Ukrainian eggs, collections of products with bee/honey branding. And, of course, baked goods made from honey.

But, I'm just beginning. See what I mean. It's a veritable city on a stick, the Minnesota State Fair. We're not even out of the Agriculture Building yet. There is a room of crop art. Sculptures and paintings made of seeds. For years, one Lillian Colton presided over this room, displaying dozens of her own works. Sitting at her table surrounded by the Seed Art entries, she'd show youngsters how they could do it themselves, armed with Q-tips of Elmer's Glue and bottles of seeds and stems. Ah, the joy of it. I learned this year that Lillian has passed on to the Great Crop Art Cloud in the Sky. I'm sure God could learn a thing or two from Lillian about seed art.

There is the Giant vegetable exhibit, the changing flower competition, every imaginable evergreen that can be made into a Christmas tree.

There are the Grandstand and the Coliseum, chock-a-block with amazing Popeil products. From stain remover that can clean any spot to only-at-the-fair 3-M dustrags. And lots and lots of demonstrations. One year, Steve had to dissuade me from purchasing a $500 flexible ladder that slices and dices. I lived in an apartment, for chrissakes!

There is an art gallery at the Fine Arts Building. There is a Technology building, where you get the best free stuff like super sticky Post-It notes and square yardsticks.

And, of course, the 4-H animals. The Cattle Barn featuring from hairy long-horns to the massive Holstein. And my favorite place in the fair world: the Swine Barn, where you can see the hundreds of pigs vying for the Grand Prize. The state's largest boar. And, the mama with her brood of squealing, hungry, soft-pink piglets. Outside the barn, a booth selling pork chops. That's just wrong.

At one point, we saw a mother changing her baby. In most places, the location for this private act would have been on a changing table. Here, we liked to think of it as a baby-changing booth.

The climax of our day came during the fireworks display, which come at the end of the musical act at the Coliseum. They mark the end of the day for most fairgoers. Stretching high above the fairgrounds is a system of cable cars. This year, we waited for the fireworks to begin. As soon as the pyrotechnics were launched, we ran to the cable car. It took us soaring over the fairgrounds. We watched the fireworks blast at eye level. It was so exciting, it made me cry. I'm not kidding. It was a day at the fair to remember.