Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

We have other things, most certainly, although I generally only ever went to county fairs rather than the state ones, so I don't even know if there was an equivalent at the state fair where I grew up. Mostly I remember lots of exhibits with ribbons attached to them. (That, and we began to joke that Edward Aloysius, having lived in the era when most of these objects on display were in common use, could probably give a guided tour of the exhibit halls, and that if he wasn't careful, he might sit down to take a nap and wake up with a blue ribbon pinned to him.)