AT THE FAIRGROUNDS — By Thursday morning, four days after the Pine County Fair closed in rain, the midway was gone.

That is always the fastest part. The rides leave in the dark. The livestock goes Sunday. The exhibit halls empty into minivans and pickups. Then, over three or four days, the fairgrounds changes back from a small city into a collection of buildings behind a locked gate.

The mud remains longer.

Fair-board chair Verna Tho said cleanup crews hauled seven dumpsters, pressure-washed the livestock alleys, stacked temporary gates by ownership and dried the new canvas shade fly before folding it into the pavilion inventory for 2027.

“That fly is the one thing nobody has argued about,” Tho said. “So naturally we are putting it away where we can forget how we folded it.”

The board formally borrowed eleven picnic tables for fair week. A twelfth appeared from the 4-H food stand without authorization and was returned Sunday, also without authorization. That correction ran last week.

A table presently beside the poultry barn is not that table, according to the 4-H food stand.

Roger Tho has checked the Lions inventory. Verna Tho has checked the fair inventory. The city says none of its park tables are missing. The table has a strip of masking tape on it reading WHOSE.

No answer had been written by press time.

The fair board’s postmortem is next Tuesday at 7 p.m. The failed ice machine is first on the agenda. The unidentified table is second, ahead of 2027 entertainment dates and behind approval of the August bills.

Tho said the order is intentional.

“If we put the table last,” she said, “we will still be talking about it in October.”