The Altamont State Fair

I am old enough to walk around the corner from my parents’ red bungalow on Lincoln Avenue and cross the street to school by myself, but I admit I am jealous my kindergarten brother gets to ride a school bus to get here. I do love riding the school bus.

I slip on my plastic floral smock for art class.  We don’t paint often, so today feels special. 

I am given a set of brushes, my own egg carton with paints in pink, purple, yellow, blue, green, gold, and more, with a coffee can full of water to wash my brushes when I change colors. Kindergarteners wouldn’t have those in art class.  

I am determined to take my time and be a most careful second-grader.  Then when Daddy sees my report card next time and says, “Did you do your best?  That’s all we ask,” I can honestly answer, “Yes,” instead of shrugging and saying, “I think so.”

I miss the ocean here in Delmar, New York.  We moved from tropical blues and greens, the sea always in view, to this town.  I love the snow we had all winter, and learning to ice skate, and the taste of crisp apples we ate straight off a tree in the fall.  I like my new home, but I think I will paint the fish from my old one, Subic Bay.

I load my flat brush with pink and outline a fish, then fill in its body with slow strokes up and down.  There.  I was very careful and she looks fishy enough.  I’ll give her a friend, a purple friend, like the plush purple cow I cried for when I lost it in a motel on our cross-country move.  I wish I could go back in time, look thoroughly under the covers of the bed, and find her.  I carefully repeat outlining and filling in a purple fish to swim in front of the pink one.

Again, I rinse the brush and watch my pink water turn purplish.  Next, I put a yellow sun in the top right corner, and extend paint outward from the circle to show its rays.  Then layers of water, wave over wave from blue at the bottom to green at the top.  I need an ocean floor and paint a thin brown stripe at the bottom of the paper.  I still have this exciting metallic gold paint.  Air isn’t really golden, but I’ve made the ocean blue so my sky will be gold. 

There is still an awful lot of paper-bag-brown background that needs to be covered.  I change from my flat brush to a round one and fill in lovely golden air bubbles between the blue layers of ocean. 

I step back from my painting and judge.  Is it time to stop or do I need more colors?  I wonder if I can spatter some flotsam and speckles to make the ocean look fully alive.  Oops.  A few speckles look more like streaks.  My art teacher insists there are no mistakes in art, but those streaks might be a little much.

I step back once more and admire my ocean.  I will hang it on the refrigerator with my baby sister’s plastic letter magnets, but the painting never goes home with me, even on the last day of school when I clean out my desk and every leftover paper goes home in my bookbag.  I forget all about it over the summer.  I get to bring home our three classroom turtles, and my only thoughts of school are tied up with their safe return.

After a summer of turtle tending, they are back in my old classroom.  I’ll miss watching them swim in their aquarium in my living room and say a wistful goodbye.   Here comes my art teacher walking toward me carrying a frame.  She holds it out to me and tells me my ocean scene won second prize at the Altamont State Fair.  My picture won a prize?  I didn’t know she was entering my picture at the fair.  Was I not listening when she said we were painting for a contest?

I’ve never had a ribbon for anything before, and I reach out to lightly touch the red satin hanging from the top of the wooden frame.  I’ve won an award. 

“The judge especially liked the effect of the layers of water and sky,” the art teacher explains. “He said it would have won first place if you hadn’t been so messy at the end.”

I remember regretting those last splashes of color.  I had a little too much fun with the paint and didn’t want to stop. I am embarrassed at having gone too far. . . but, I won a prize!  An unexpected flush of pride at this surprise takes over my emotions.  I’m sure I’ll always have trouble finishing my work without making a bit of a mess, but I’ll never lose this lovely red ribbon from the Altamont State Fair.

Your Turn:  Many varied memories went into this story, but the emotions of my messy second place prize were the impetus.  Did you ever have an unexpected win tinged with regret?