Home before 8:00, had breakfast, then took whites and other color-fast clothes to the laundry place. While they dried, I drove to Smart 'n' Final for blueberries and romaine. Retrieved the clothes--I'm always delighted that I can use bleach--I'll do the others when I do the sheets.
Had lunch early, at noon, then rode the bus to town and walked from Main to the fairgrounds. I found the agricultural building and the stage setup where the story-telling contest would be held. Damn, I wish they had had that when I was in it last year.
Richard Senate, a well-known historian whom I've seen many times before, impersonated Benjamin Dudley--ha, that's my former husband, as I was Caroline Dudley last year. He had a wonderful nineties costume on, but I thought his presentation was poor. Benjamin had been in the civil war and had, in fact, been in the party that captured Jefferson Davis, but Richard had too much about that in his talk and not enough about his activities in Ventura. He came in fourth of five and rightly so, I thought.
A woman from the museum told a child's story about the early settlers here, the Chumash Indians and came in fifth and no wonder again. It may have been riveting for nine-year-olds, but not for adults. A woman from the Olivas Adobe historic property came in first and my friend, Fern, representing an historic site in Oxnard, came in second. Fern's topic was Christian Brochard, who was a prominent citizen here in the middle eighteen-hundreds. Incredibly, his second wife was 51 years younger then he was; they had five children, including the youngest, Theresa, who was Fern's mother-in-law. Christian was 82 years old when she was born.
Went from there to two of the thrift stores and bought a beige teddy bear and a smaller blue one. I want to add something to my portrayal of the grandmother and will show Jeff when I have in mind during rehearsal tonight.
When I got home, I found two beautiful lemons and information on an Alzheimer's program coming up soon. These were from Suzanne, of course; I rang her bell and she invited me in to see the pictures of her family reunion in Oregon and her trip with her sister to a shrine in Seattle. We discussed our plans to see the DaVinci exhibit at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. It's on until September 8; not sure if we'll wait until after my show is over or try to fit it in before.
Here's Fern at the fair and her grandfather-in-law, also the other contestants:
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