MISQUAH — The county fair ended nine days ago. The laundry has not.

At the Vekved farm, white show shirts went through twice before three of them went south again for the State Fair. At First Lutheran, the quilt backing was inspected for rain damage before the “Chain of Lakes” quilt traveled to St. Paul. The Forest Club washed the floor of the wildlife building and, because this is now necessary to specify, washed it after Thistle the porcupine was back in his pen.

Eunice Dahlquist washed every canning jar that came home even though most were already clean.

“Fair clean is not home clean,” she said.

The Northern Tap has a tarp hanging over the fence behind the dumpster. Nobody has claimed it. Deb Pavek says it smells like the demolition derby and should remain outside until it decides what it wants.

Janet Vekved says the real fair laundry is not shirts but towels: barn towels, wash-rack towels, cooler towels, one towel that spent three days under a water bucket and “has entered a different profession.”

At least one family reports mini-donut sugar still appearing in the back seat of a pickup that has been vacuumed twice. Another found a red ribbon in a raincoat pocket Sunday and spent twenty minutes determining whose it was.

Verna Tho says the fair board’s laundry consisted mostly of tablecloths and the new shade fly, which had to be dried completely before storage.

This is ordinary.

The fair does not leave when the rides do.

It leaves one load at a time.