Breanna Goes To Work For Her Dad

The conference room at Dirks Financial Services corporate headquarters in suburban St. Louis was a cesspool of air pollution and noise pollution Monday morning. More than three dozen employees of the accounts department were huddled in the conference room to watch a training video that the company’s president and founder, John Dirks, requested that they view. But the typically hammy office training video was being drowned out by the annoyed employees who had long ago given up on concentrating on the content of the video. The source of their aggravation sat in the front of the conference room closest to the large-screen TV, a very attractive and shapely late teen brunette female who was tilting her head back in her chair with a gigantic half-smoked Churchill cigar sticking out of her mouth. Massive clouds of filthy cigar smoke were billowing from her face and because of the way she tilted her head back, the clouds were erupting into the air above her face and right in front of the screen for most of the people behind her. But even more annoying than the smoke was the girl’s exaggerated and boisterous cackle, laughing hysterically, presumably at the hamminess of the video but ultimately just making a spectacle of herself for the purpose of being the center of attention. The girl was behaving as if her father owned the damn place…..and for good reason. Her father did own the place!

Breanna Dirks had finished her first year of college in May and got a job in the accounts department of her father’s company over the summer. As always, she went into this summer job with good intentions, but the combination of her cigar smoking in the office and the bad taste of nepotism among coworkers made her instantly unpopular with her coworkers. Rather than trying to mend fences, Breanna responded as she always did when she recognized how despised she was and rubbed their noses in it, going out of her way to disgust and humiliate them. With July coming to a close, and the final weeks of her summer job ahead, Breanna was determined to go out with a bang, milking every possible scenario to avenge her coworkers for what she believed was their unfair willingness to give her a chance early on. At this point, it was more about the power trip than anything else for her, and it was driving her to put on this obnoxious and unseemly display today while watching the training video in the conference room.

Breanna didn’t even turn back to see the faces of her coworkers as she continued cackling with put-on laughter at the top of her lungs, belching bursts of thick cigar smoke skyward with every breath. She knew they were all fit to be tied with annoyance and disgust without seeing a single face amongst the people behind her….and she was right. Nearly everyone in the room was looking at each other with antagonized disbelief at the immature performance from the boss’s daughter who they knew was untouchable, most of them scurrying to wave the giant clouds of cigar smoke out of their faces as it rapidly filled the room after more than 10 minutes of this madness.

As a girl, Breanna remembered seeing the 1991 remake of the movie “Cape Fear”, where Robert DeNiro’s character introduced himself to the family who he spent the rest of the film tormenting by sitting in front of them in the movie theater, smoking a big cigar and laughing hysterically to annoy the family. Even as a young girl, she thought  thatwas just the coolest thing she’d ever seen, and loved to have the opportunity present itself to bring the scene to life, annoying everyone else in the room at least as much as Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange’s family was annoyed in “Cape Fear”. This scene played out for another 10 minutes before the training video ended, and Breanna found it as satisfying as she expected, feeling genuine sexual excitement over the way she dominated the room and the crowd. The room was filled with a London fog of dense cigar smoke and dozens of employees at their wits’ end who got nothing from the video that was ruined by the boss’s daughter’s childish ravings. They filtered out of the smoky room rapidly, desperate for what passed for fresh air in the office ever since Breanna started there and shook the office to its core with her endless cigar smoking. After eight weeks of escalating bad behavior from her that they knew would not receive any discipline at all, morale at the office couldn’t possibly be lower and everybody was just running out the clock at this point till she went back to college. But they had three more long weeks to endure before she would go away, and they knew Breanna was gonna make their lives an enduring hell until she did.

The employees scattered quickly back to their cubicles, both to get as far away as they could from the unbearable stench of cigar in the conference room and to avoid interaction with Breanna who they knew would be exiting the conference room right behind them. At least one of them wasn’t quick enough though as mid-30s Dennis was about to settle into his cubicle when a husky, stunted female voice beckoned from behind, “Hey Dennis!”

Dennis had his back to Breanna and a pained look emerged on his face briefly before he turned around to see the beautiful long-haired brunette approaching him wearing her frequent ensemble of a low-cut red blouse and a black leather miniskirt with a four-fifths smoked Churchill cigar still clutched in her mouth. Breanna stopped right in front of him, invading his personal space on purpose as she said in a muffled voice through the cigar between her teeth “Have that Tompkins Consulting file ready for me, bad boy?”

Dennis nodded affirmatively with intimidation in his eyes, saying “It’s on my desk” before turning around to pick it up inside the cubicle. He quickly retrieved the file and handed it to Breanna who opened it up and quickly looked it over, filling Dennis’ airspace up with her cigar smoke for a few moments before smiling and adding, “Very nicely done. I’m telling my daddy to give you a raise”.

Dennis forced a smile and managed a less-than-sincere “Thank you” before turning around to go back into the cubicle. He knew what was probably coming next and figured right as Breanna smacked him on the ass with her right hand. Dennis, married for 12 years with two kids, had thought he was long past getting attention from a college girl before this summer. Hard as it would have been to believe that a very attractive college girl would be sexually harassing him at work three months earlier, it would have been even harder to believe that this harassment would be a source of acute feelings of violation and shame for him being man-handled by this vulgar girl like several of his other male colleagues. Breanna walked away neither knowing nor caring about Dennis’ comfort level with her physical harassment of him.

Breanna proceeded down the hallway toward her office but had one more stop along the way. She knew the coworkers settled inside their cubicles were listening to her high heels clicking through the hallway hoping she wasn’t gonna beckon them. One of them was gonna be unpleasantly surprised though as Breanna entered her cubicle muttering through the cigar in her mouth, “Oh Alexis…” The middle-aged Alexis looked up from her chair nervously waiting to find out what Breanna wanted before Breanna added “How’s it going with the Carol’s Cosmetics account? I need that by tomorrow morning.”

Of all the employees in the department, the least love was lost between Breanna and Alexis, as Alexis openly appealed the company president’s decision to lift the office smoking ban so that his daughter could smoke her cigars indoors all day.   Alexis’ vocal resistance continued for a few weeks before she realized it was not worth tangling with the boss’s daughter as she knew she was gonna lose. Right now, Breanna’s request for the Carol’s Cosmetics account figures were words Alexis didn’t want to hear because she didn’t have the figures done yet, and knew that Breanna held a grudge against her and would make her life hell if she didn’t produce them.   Carol stalled a couple of moments before finally confessing they’re not done.   A wry smile emerged on Breanna’s face before she said “Well stand up here and show me what you’ve got left”.

Breanna knew how much Alexis in particular loathed her cigar smoking, so she took every opportunity to force Alexis to stand right in the epicenter of her secondhand smoke, as she was doing once again now. Alexis reluctantly stood up and opened the requested file and Breanna hovered as close as possible leaning over her shoulder while puffing copiously from her cigar so that a haze would permeate in front of Alexis’s face as she explained what she had left to do. Breanna shook her head in disappointment when Alexis finished talking saying “That’s a lot for you to get done before morning when I need it. You may have to work tonight”.

The defeated look in Alexis’ face could not have been more transparent as this 19-year-old brat was demanding she work overtime, giving up precious family time for something that could easily wait. Still, the burning rage in Alexis’ watery, smoke-filled eyes cooled for a moment before her ultimate retreat, and through gritted teeth she responded to Breanna, “Whatever it takes”.

Breanna gave her an over-the-top toothy smile in response and closed the conversation with a snarky “Now that’s the attitude this company needs more of” before directing a massive exhale of cigar smoke directly into Alexis’ face and then holding the cigar up close to Alexis’ face and tapping it, leading to a giant ash of cigar smoke falling to the floor right in front of Alexis’ feet. Breanna gave her one more smirk before turning around and exiting her cubicle.

Breanna then proceeded a couple of additional cubicles to the office her father gave her when she asked for it. She sat down in the office chair and put her feet up on the desk, her bare legs on full display up to the hemline of her leather miniskirt. She leaned back in the chair and just relaxed for a moment, her face filled with enjoyment and her body clearly bubbling over with sexual pleasure. Her cigar was down almost to its stub and she savored the last few puffs before crushing it out in a giant glass ashtray overflowing with a few weeks worth of cigar butts she never emptied out just because she knew how many people in the office it grossed out and she got off on that.

Breanna sat there in a state of growing sexual euphoria, briefly putting her hand on her crotch outside of the leather skirt and wanting to keep the momentum going and get some release for it. She opened up the box of cigars in her desk and retrieved another Churchill, using her cutter to snip off the end with a look of renewed deviousness on her face. Once the cigar was cut, she approached her finger to the bell on her desk next to the ashtray and pressed the button three times loudly. The succession of DING! DING! DING! on the bell was immediately followed by the sound of rustling footsteps approaching.

A buff young blond guy in his early 20s entered the doorway with a look on his face that was half terrified and half eager to please. Breanna made eye contact with him and said “Chad, light mama’s cigar would you honey?” as she placed the giant unlit cigar in her mouth. Chad picked up the torch lighter on Breanna’s desk and approached the flame to the end of the cigar. Breanna sucked in and produced the earliest clouds of smoke as fire touched the end of the giant stick of tobacco, one of several she smokes every day. She looked adoringly at Chad who stood there holding the flame to the cigar. After the early resistance to her presence at the office, Breanna dreamed up every possible contingency for getting under her coworkers’ skin while simultaneously enriching her own experience in the office, and the decision she was most proud of was convincing her father to hire her a personal assistant at the office. Hundreds of applicants eager to pursue long-term employment at the lucrative Dirks Financial Services offices applied and Breanna chose Chad as her favorite. The fact that Chad was young, attractive, and built like an ox met her criteria perfectly even though poor Chad had no idea that his job description would be the crudest form of errand boy for the boss’ daughter.

In a few moments, Breanna’s cigar was lit and the room was rapidly filling up with smoke as Chad pulled the lighter away. He never complained aloud about Breanna or the cigar smoke, thinking that putting up with this odious girl would certainly fast-track him to a high-end career at her father’s company. Still, he resented being put in this position and grew to hate everything about Breanna, keeping his fury to himself while waiting out the end of summer in an even more personalized way than the coworkers who also detested her. Breanna released her first massive plume of smoke from the new cigar in Chad’s direction before smiling and making a new request. “Would you take my shoes off and rub my feet, hun?”

Like a trained puppy, Chad obeyed without comment, robotically removing Breanna’s high heels and massaging her feet as she kicked back in her chair with her feet up on the desk, smoking away at her cigar and making increasingly passionate pleasured moans that sounded more sexualized than what one would traditionally feel from a foot rub….and for good reason. The foot rub continued for about five minutes before the relative silence was broken by Breanna once again as she made another new request of Chad. “Close the door and shut the blinds would you hun?”

A look of intensified violation emerged on Chad’s face as he nonetheless did as he was asked, turning around and locking the office door and shutting the blinds, knowing his coworkers outside knew that he was about to once again be the guilt-free plaything of the girl that he despised. He turned around to see Breanna contorting her body to remove her panties, and before long she was holding them up in front of him and even from a few feet away he could see and smell the moisture. He knew she was good and worked up. Breanna stood up, her long and fat cigar clenched in her mouth as she approached him. The burning end of the cigar was mere inches from his face as she began to unbutton Chad’s shirt feverishly, quickly pulling it off and revealing that buff young buck body that Breanna was so hot for. She sighed blissfully at the visual of the shirtless Chad, briefly standing there admiring his shirtless body complete with broad shoulders, bulging biceps, and six pack. The time for merely looking was over though and Breanna rather brashly ordered him to take a seat in her chair.

Chad obeyed, but his body language made it unambiguous was that the last thing he wanted to do in the next few minutes was to be sexually assaulted by his “boss”. What he wanted and what he was about to get were two different things though as Breanna wasted no time sitting on his lap and touching her hands all over his chest. The closer she pressed her face to his, the more he was visually repelled by her cigar breath. She planted her wet tongue on his face and proceeded to lick it from his chin up to his eyebrow, which made him briefly cringe in disgust. She then began kissing his face and then proceeded down to his neck and then to his chest, her cigar held up in her left hand only inches from Chad’s face and disgusting him to no end while also scaring him as Breanna’s intense oral action on his pecks and six pack made her reckless with the cigar. Chad watched frightfully out of the corner of his eye as her cigar shifted to the left and right, inching closer to his face as she worked his chest with her lips, tongue, and teeth. Chad thought it was only a matter of seconds before his face got torched before Breanna pulled away from his chest, smirking passionately and approaching the cigar to her lips for a successive litany of drags which she proceeded to exhale straight into his face while sitting down in his lap.

Chad was used to these obnoxious exhales into his face and while he still hated them, he would have been than happy to withstand them if that was the worst he had to endure in Breanna’s torture chamber today, but looking at the fire in her eyes he doubted it would be. Breanna continued puffing on her cigar and the come-hither look on her face grew more intense before the staring contest stalemate was broken by Breanna approaching the butt end of her cigar to Chad’s lips. Chad began to open his mouth thinking Breanna wanted him to take a puff, but Breanna pressed the index finger from her free hand onto Chad’s upper lip motioning him to close his mouth with a condescending “Ah, ah, ah!” warning. Chad closed his lips and could barely contain his revulsion as Breanna began to encircle the wet cigar butt around his lips.   The smoke rolled out the butt end and some of it was going up Chad’s nose as Breanna outlined his mouth with it. He had all he could do to avoid flinching and wretching from the grossness of it.

Breanna pulled the cigar away from his mouth and reinserted it into her own, taking a lengthy drag and making the butt moist again before returning the butt end to Chad’s face, and lowering it down his chin and his neck leading down to his chest. A faint brown stain was left on Chad’s skin from the residue of the wet cigar, and whenever the stain started to fade, Breanna wrapped her lips around the cigar and slobbered all over the end of it again before taking the cigar back to Chad’s chest, encircling his pecks and nipples and then lowering it to his belly button.   Chad hated himself for getting hard from being used as this vile girl’s sextoy, but his work pants were nonetheless rising and Breanna was definitely noticing as she continued alternating from puffing on her cigar to using it as a paintbrush on Chad’s chest. And despite noticing Chad’s erection, today was about Breanna’s needs….and she could not contain her arousal any longer leaning towards Chad’s ear and giving him an upclose whiff of her cigar breath while half-whispering “Munch my muffin, honey!”

It wasn’t the first time Chad had been called upon to perform this service from Breanna but it never got easier for him. Whatever gut-level physical attraction he had for her early on that summer had been squandered by her outrageous abuse of power over him, but when Breanna climbed off his lap, he dutifully climbed under her desk to do what was requested. Breanna sat back down on her chair and lifted her leather skirt. Chad was briefly turned on getting a full visual of her moist and perky vagina but it didn’t take long to remember whose vagina it was before the feelings of violation again returned. Chad plunged his face into Breanna’s lady parts and started slowly gratifying her with his lips and tongue. Breanna quickly responded to this gratification with soft but passionate moans of pleasure, moans that intensified as Chad worked her vagina more vigorously and often came with bellows of “Oh Chad!” followed by instructions on where to move his tongue next.

Trying to suppress the likelihood of an impassioned scream in an office setting that might even embarrass Breanna, she placed the cigar into her mouth and clutched it tight with her teeth, drawing in smoke with every breath while still muttering pleasured moans following nearly every tongue stroke. The cigar in her mouth was visibly disappearing based on the frequency of her drags, the brown wrapper turning to ash in front of her eyes as she rapidly consumed it with a corresponding sea of dirty smoke almost completely obstructing her face. Breanna could tell she was gonna erupt quickly having gotten herself so worked up, and in a couple of moments even the cigar clenched in her mouth could no longer suppress her screaming. Without a warning, a blast of her juices erupted in Chad’s face and her final passionate moans finally began to wane while feeling Chad lick off the moisture in and around her crotch. But Breanna’s world was about to get rocked by an entirely different male in her life as she heard the door to her office start to open….

Breanna froze in position as she saw her father’s concerned face poke in the just opened door. She clutched Chad’s head and pressed it into her crotch as a signal to be momentarily silent.   “Is everything okay, baby?” John Dirks asked his daughter, having heard the shouts from outside and apparently being so clueless as to not know what was happening.

Breanna attempted to camouflage the sexual ecstasy she just experienced and scrambled for a lame excuse while mustering up the sweet smile she’d been using to charm her father since she was a little girl and speaking with a matching girlish voice that could not have contrasted more with the giant steaming cigar she just removed from her mouth. “Sure, daddy. I was just blowing off some steam here.”

“It sounded like you were screaming! What was that all about?”

“Oh you know how important those accounts are tomorrow, daddy. I was just sounding off to build up some adrenaline for my big day”, Breanna responded, changing the subject to the issue that she knew was the reason her dad was coming to talk to her in the first place and hoping he’d run with it rather than continuing to interrogate her about the screaming.

“It is very important. Carol’s Cosmetics and Tompkins Consulting are both months behind in their service fees and I need you to get through to them tomorrow.”

Breanna gave her father a cute nod while puffing on her cigar and adding “I’ll make you proud, daddy”.

As always, John’s heart melted at his daughter’s put-on sweetness. There were things about Breanna that troubled her father, even though he knew very little about her outrageous behavior in the office and elsewhere, but he loved his daughter and put her up on a pedestal, refusing to believe the rumors he’d hear about her inappropriate conduct from anyone who ever dared to pass the message on to him. When Breanna asked him to put her in charge of recovering unpaid service fees from their derelict clients, he agreed, even though he wondered why she’d request that assignment. John briefly grimaced as he watched his daughter take a puff from her cigar and exhale a billow of smoke skyward, not exactly proud of her very unladylike habit but ultimately supportive in following whatever road she wanted to pursue to find happiness in her life. After a long pause in which John admired his daughter’s initiative while looking at her smile his way, he adds “I know you will, baby”.

Breanna fluttered her eyelashes one more time as her father pulled away and closed the door behind him, breathing a sigh of relief that she didn’t caught with the “personal assistant” she insisted her father hire for her, a sigh that doubled as a delayed discharge of sexual energy after receiving Chad’s oral pleasures. She released her grip on Chad’s head and moved her chair back so he could climb out from underneath, either not recognizing or not caring about the clearly defeated young man who emerged from her lair. Chad was slowly moving his way towards the door, hoping to be dismissed but knowing that he would likely suffer more indignities before he got out of that room. His instinct was right as Breanna opened one of the drawers on her desk and pulled out a pair of fire engine red lace panties.

“Help me out here, hun!” Breanna said, tossing the panties to Chad, before placing the cigar back in her mouth, leaning back in her chair, and hiking up her leather skirt again. The demoralized Chad once again got down on his knees spreading the waistline of the pair of panties thrown at him and began to work Breanna’s feet through the leg holes and sliding the underwear up her legs. Breanna cooperated only as much as she absolutely had to in order for the panties to be pulled over her bottom and crotch. Chad knew how the game was played and was sure to straighten out the folds of her panties to cover Breanna’s vagina perfectly. He thought he was finally done at this point and started heading for the door, but Breanna had one more chore for him, something she’d never requested before.

“Chaaaad”, she uttered in a playful but exaggeratedly annoyed voice as she stood up in the chair. “You gave me a wedgie! Why don’t you fix it…..with your teeth.” She looked at his face for a reaction for a second and noticed a subtle exasperated scream of misery silently emote from Chad’s face before she turned around and lifted the back of her skirt revealing the red panties. Chad knelt down and noticed the panties settled inside her asscrack just as she told him, and then leaned in and clutched his teeth on the fabric to pull the lace out of her ass and dislodge the wedgie. It amounted to three seconds of discomfort, but managed to hollow out the last molecules of dignity Chad had left inside.

Breanna turned around to face him one last time before dismissing him. “Now that’s better!” she said with a sinister smile. “I better get back to work now, hun. I know you have work to do too so I won’t bother you again until tomorrow morning when we go run the errands I was telling daddy about.” She paused one final time as Chad opened the day before blurting out “I’m gonna make both of my daddies proud.”

With Chad’s departure from her office, Breanna took a look at the Tompkins Consulting file she got earlier from Dennis. Between that stop and Carol’s Cosmetics, she knew it was gonna be a very memorable Tuesday.

—————————————————–

About 24 hours later, Chad was driving Breanna’s Mercedes through the boulevards of suburban St. Louis with Breanna in the passenger seat, recently lit cigar in her mouth as always, en route to the destinations planned. She could see the sign at the entrance of the industrial park for Carol’s Cosmetics and could feel her adrenaline build. In moments, Chad pulled into the parking lot and he and Breanna climbed out of the car with Breanna decked out today in her tight black leather minidress, an outfit she found very fitting for the role she was gonna be playing today in the name of her father’s company. The two of them approached the entrance, with Chad going back and forth between a frisky curiousness in wondering what Breanna had up her sleeve and terror at what this sociopath was capable of. Breanna was going in with a minor game plan but also intended to wing it once she got in, not knowing exactly how far she’d let herself go but getting off on the realization that she could probably get away with just about anything.

Entering the front door, the receptionist’s jaw dropped almost to the floor at the sighting of this young girl in a sexually charged leather outfit smoking a giant cigar walk into the office and prance right on past her en route to where she knew the owner’s office was. “Miss, you can’t smoke that in here! Ma’am!” the receptionist shouted twice in a row as Breanna and a smirking Chad ignored her and kept right on going. She got out of her chair and started following the two of them continuing to try to control the situation, adding through a shout “You need an appointment to talk to Mrs. Garner or her staff!” But Breanna pretended to not even hear the hapless receptionist and picked up her pace, thundering down those hallways in her noisy high heels with fire in her eyes and not planning to let anyone or anything get in her way.

Breanna could see there was a business meeting in a conference room with owner and manager Carol Garner going through some figures with what Breanna figured was the sales staff. The room was startled as the door to the conference room was abruptly opened, and their shock persisted as Breanna charged in. The sales staff sat in disbelief as the leather clad girl walked right up to their intimidated 30-something boss, a still-attractive blond in a stylish blue dress that puffed out at the waist and crested well above her knees just as Breanna’s leather dress did. Breanna had heard gossip around her own office that Carol Garner was a stone-cold bitch and that her employees hated and feared her, so Breanna thought it would be fun to give Carol a taste of her own medicine, confident that she could outbitch her in her sleep. And her moment was now…

A bewildered and terrified Carol flinched and pulled backward towards a table as Breanna came to an abrupt stop in front of her, cigar clenched in her mouth and a psychotic look in her eyes. “Didn’t your mama ever teach you it’s bad manners not to pay your debts?!”

“What are you talking about?” Carol fired back with obvious terror in her voice.

Breanna took a big drag from her cigar and pulled it out of her mouth, exhaling a plume of smoke right at Carol’s face before responding. “Your company solicited services from Dirks Financial and apparently decided you weren’t gonna pay for them. I’m here to assure that you will pay your tab!”

“You can’t be serious?!?!?” Carol fired back. “I’ve had a good working relationship with your company and told Steve we’d be paying it back in full by October—“

“You’re not dealing with Steve anymore!” Breanna interrupted in a tone that Carol knew meant business. “You owe my father’s company $750 for four months’ worth of unpaid fees…and I’m not leaving until you pay it!”

“Your father??” Carol responded with genuine surprise.

Breanna smirked and then placed the cigar back in her mouth before closing in on Carol again going for and delivering on extreme intimidation. “That’s right. Now I think you’re gonna pay me what you owe Dirks Financial and get me out of hair, aren’t you?” Breanna asked through a muffled voice through the cigar dangle.

Carol had met her match and surrendered with very little fight, grabbing her purse on the desk right behind her and pulling out her personal checkbook.  Breanna looked to the sales staff in the conference room and could tell most of them were enjoying seeing their bitch boss getting pushed around by a teenage girl, but she never noticed Chad standing behind her fantasizing about doing to Breanna what Breanna had just done to Carol.

Carol had her back to Breanna as she was filling out a check to Dirks Financial as was chillingly requested of her when Breanna got a naughty idea, taking one last look at the dozen or so members of the sales staff still watching in disbelief. Breanna approached her cigar near the ass of Carol’s dress and began to singe the fabric with the smoldering torch of tobacco, watching carefully so she would only burn the fabric and that Carol wouldn’t feel it. A combination of shocked voices and giggling erupting in the crowd as Breanna made sure she kept the cigar moving to spread the burn mark of the smoldering fabric and spent a good 30 seconds burning a softball-sized hole in Carol’s dress and revealing the granny panties underneath.

The giggles among the sales staff grew more sustained and a suspicious Carol began to pull away from the desk having completed filling out the check. As she pulled back, Breanna responded in kind, moving the cigar away from Carol’s ass and placing it back in her mouth before Carol was able to turn around and hand her the check. A guilty look of schoolgirl amusement filled Breanna’s face and Carol didn’t know exactly what the reason was, figuring the snotty girl was just enjoying shaming her in front of her staff. If only she knew!!

Breanna takes the check from Carol and said through her cigar “Very pleased to do business with you and looking forward to doing more, ma’am” before turning with Chad and walking out the door before she burst out laughing. Breanna took a final admiring look at the sales staff, their faces still mostly filled with delight, and gave them a knowing wink as they walked out the door, wondering if any of them would tell the boss they despised that her underwear was showing or if she’d find out on her own when she took it off at home that night. Much as Breanna wished she could stick around to see, she had other business to attend to. Carol’s Cosmetics had paid its debts. One down and one to go.

About 15 minutes passed with an empowered Breanna riding shotgun through suburban St. Louis en route to Tompkins Consulting.  She hadn’t heard much about Craig Tompkins, the owner and CEO of this establishment so she was going in without any conception of a plan on how to intimidate this uncooperative client, but she never had much of a problem just rolling with it when the time came.  And the time was fast approaching as Breanna looked at the more upscale headquarters of this corporate office than what she just experienced at Carol’s Cosmetics, but she knew she was up to the challenge as she placed her two-thirds-smoked cigar in her mouth while Chad parked the car in the lot.  Breanna was riding high from the results of her first challenge, and was prepared to outdo herself with the second.

Breanna walked through the front entrance with Chad walking behind her and attempted to shuttle past the reception desk like she did at Carol’s place, but was briefly thrown off her game when after only a few seconds of the cacophony of receptionists barking at her about “no smoking” and “you can’t see Mr. Tompkins without an appointment”, a muscular middle-aged security guard emerged from out of nowhere to barricade the elevator that Breanna was walking directly towards.

“Ma’am I’m gonna have to ask you to step outside and put that cigar out, and then if you come back in and speak with Deb or April, they can set you up with an appointment with anyone you’d like,” the security guard said in a very cool and professional manner.  Breanna paused for a moment and then smiled and snapped her fingers in Chad’s direction.  Chad dutifully opened up the bag he was holding and started handing over $100 bills to both the security guard and the two receptionists.

“The owner of this fine establishment owes a debt, and I’m just here to keep him honest,” Breanna began making her case while removing the cigar from her mouth, even though she could tell by the look in their eyes that the $100 bribe was probably all it was gonna take to seal the deal.  “Tompkins Consulting has been an excellent client in the past and has a great future, but the first step is paying the bill for services already rendered.  Now I’ll just bet the three of you could come up with a great excuse as to why my assistant and I got through your security to get a little face time with Mr. Tompkins.  Tell me where he is and I should be in and out of here in 10 minutes.  Turn me away and I promise you things won’t be prettier for anybody when I return.  Do I make myself clear?”

The receptionists and security guard looked at each other nervously, deliberating briefly but fearing this young woman could deliver on her threats even though they had no idea who she was.  Finally the security guard broke the silence by saying “Fourth floor…Mr. Tompkins should be in the lunch room right now.”

Breanna flashed him a sinister smile before reinserting the fast disappearing cigar into her mouth.  “You’ve made the right decision…and you’ll probably still have a paycheck in a few more weeks because of it”, Breanna sneered before she and Chad walked into the elevator that the security guard just opened for them.  They were fourth floor-bound.

Out of the elevator and pacing the hallways of the fourth floor, the sound of laughter from mostly male voices towards the end of the hallway gave away the location of the lunch room, and Breanna went full steam ahead before entering the doorway.  The laughter ended abruptly when a room of about a dozen office workers on their lunch break, all but two of them men, saw Breanna standing there.  Through the shrinking cigar still clutched in her teeth, Breanna asked “Which one of you chaps is Craig Tompkins?”

“I am,” said the early 50s man who Breanna figured was the heavy here, wearing the fanciest suit and giving off the most prevalent alpha male aura.  Tompkins startled to chuckle nervously in disbelief as Breanna approached the table where he sat eating his lunch, expecting this was some kind of joke.

“I would think a man that could afford suits like yours would have no problem paying his debts to Dirks Financial,” Breanna said.  Her intimidation tactics that usually worked so well were only instigating an escalation of laughter from Tompkins.

“I only work with Steve Curtis in my dealings with Dirks Financial so why don’t you just back off babycakes,” Tompkins added with dripping condescension from which Breanna had not experienced in quite some time, a condescension which only inflamed her fury.

“Well there’s a new sheriff in town at Dirks Financial.  You’re working with me from now on, and I’m not letting you get by with shirking your commitments the way Steve did.”

Tompkins laughed even harder at this aggressive girl who he still hadn’t figured out, but his condescension prompted additional laughter from his underlings in the room who were still intimidated but figured they were safe to share in the mockery of this surreal situation given their boss seemed to have things in control.  Tompkins could see the escalating rage and uncertainty in Breanna’s eyes and went in for what he thought would be the kill shot when he got his laughter under control, saying “I don’t know who you are, little girl, but if Steve Curtis sent you over here to give me a woody, it worked.  But if he sent you here honestly believing your little circus show was gonna make those service fees make it to his account any faster then he’s in for an unpleasant surprise.”  Tompkins paused for effect and then added, “Now go back to junior high school, you little cunt!”

Breanna was paralyzed with fury but also a little bit of respect for this most worthy challenger who stood up to her in a way nobody else had that entire summer.  The window where he earned her respect was short-lived, however, and she was about to show him exactly who he was messing with.  Breanna invaded his space by taking a couple more steps closer, removing the cigar stub from her mouth and producing a haunting, demonic smile, holding the cigar over the front right shoulder of Tompkins’ designer suit and flicking a giant ash onto it.  The cigar ash rolled down the front of the suit coat and left an ashy stain all the way down to his lap where it fell.  Tompkins leaped violently out of his chair, hovering a good four inches taller than Breanna even in her heels in one final effort to intimidate her.

“Oh, Steve Curtis didn’t send me, Mr. Tompkins.  John Dirks did.  He knew if there was one person at Dirks Financial that could get you to pay what you owe, it would be his baby girl.”

Tompkins eyes opened wide as saucers as Breanna finally revealed who she was, and any lingering defiance left in Tompkins evaporated in an instant.  Breanna could see she had changed the dynamic and had no intention of letting Tompkins off lightly after running off his mouth the way that he did.

“That’s right,” added Breanna, taking one final puff from her cigar before lowering it to the freshly heated plate of food that Tompkins had been eating only two minutes earlier, crushing the cigar out right in the middle of his pasta primavera and continuing to dress him down.  “I’m the boss’s daughter.  If word were to get out how you talked to his baby girl, you wouldn’t be too popular at Dirks Financial.  And if you’re not popular at Dirks Financial AND you don’t pay your debts, you don’t stay in business in this town.  Do I make myself clear?”

A suddenly terrified Tompkins nodded nervously in the affirmative before adding, “Yeah, yeah.  Whatever you say, ma’am.  I’ll have one of my secretaries write you the check on your way out.”

Breanna smirked before snapping her fingers twice behind her ear, the signal to Chad he knew all too well that Breanna wanted him to get her another cigar.  Chad was rapidly clipping the butt of the cigar with a cutter and placing it in Breanna’s mouth while Breanna looked down to Tompkins’ crotch.  The sinister smirk resurfaced on Breanna’s face and she looked back up at him and sarcastically said, “So I gave you a woody huh?”  After a brief pause, she added, “Well let’s just see what you’re made of there, cowboy.”

Breanna reached for his package at the very moment Chad approached with the torch to light her cigar and surprised Tompkins with the force by which she clutched his jewels.  In seconds, Breanna unzipped the fly of Tompkins’ suit pants and then reached inside, pulling his erect penis out of the hole in his boxers.  With the flame at the end of her cigar creating a sea of smoke in front of her face with a little help from her puffs, Breanna looked down to Tompkins’ dick and knew that all of his colleagues were unable to resist looking at this car wreck as well.  Her cigar now fully lit, Breanna gave an exaggerated toothy smile through the cigar while beginning to stroke the unimpressively endowed Tompkins’ manhood, destroying whatever respect he had left among his coworkers with five words.  “Is that all you got?”

Breanna moved her hand away from his crotch for a couple of moments to make sure everybody in the room got a look before stroking his cock for a few more moments, taking frequent puffs from her cigar and exhaling directly into his face each time, the giant freshly lit cigar in her mouth representing a huge phallic contrast to his below-average reproductive unit below the belt.  After about a minute of putting Tompkins through this humiliating indignity, Breanna gave Tompkins a final peek down to his penis and said “Now who’s in junior high school?” with a wink before turning around exiting the room.

Breanna’s “drop the mic” moment, and everything that came before it, left the room spectacularly silent as she walked back out, with Chad following.  Chad enjoyed the spectacle of Breanna’s performance but knew his passive role in it would be short-lived, and as they got back into the elevator it was clear by the look in her eyes how right he was.  The moments waiting for the elevator and subsequent exit from the building past the security guard and receptionist desk were agonizingly long for both Breanna and Chad, for two different reasons.  Once outside, it was a short walk to the parking lot where Breanna was preparing to relieve her sexual frustrations, grabbing Chad by the waist and pushing him firmly against the side of her Mercedes.  Giant cigar hanging out of her mouth, she proceeded to reach to his crotch and unzip his pants, pulling his mostly erect and significantly larger manhood through the flyhole and beginning to stroke it, with a growing lustful hum emerging from her voice.

Breanna gave Chad a shit-eating grin before muttering “No more junior high school for this girl”, before opening the backdoor of the Mercedes and savagely shoving Chad inside and pulling his pants down.  She climbed on top of him in the cramped quarters of the car’s backseat, hiked up her dress, and began to engulf him with her ravenous snatch.  Chad would enjoy the rough sex for what it was worth, despite his correct assessment that he was being violated by her, and hoped he didn’t badly burned by the cigar she was still recklessly smoking as she grinded up and down on him.  Breanna, on the other hand, was gonna savor this moment to celebrate her biggest achievement of the summer for her father’s company while pleasuring herself on her personal assistant’s sex organ.  Her summer there may have been approaching its end, but if the other employees that hated her figured they would see the last of her in a few short weeks, they had a very unpleasant surprise coming.

 

 

Top 4 Mall Sightings of 2014

It’s been an odd year for mall sightings, which on the surface is neither completely good nor completely bad.  Certainly none of this year’s “mall haul” compares with the best of what I’ve scored in years past as my all-time top-10 mall sightings have some truly incredible entries, but this year the limitations of mall sightings that I’ve grumbled about before got the best of me and this year’s entries all feature a taste of top-tier sightings bliss that were regrettably undermined by bad timing and logistical challenges.  With better timing and a more tangible “storyline”, all four of these sightings would be worthy of my all-time top-10 list of mall sightings, but said limitations instead force me to put an asterisk next to them as honorable mentions to my Hall of Fame.  With that said, I think readers will enjoy these for what they’re worth…

 

#4.  The first sighting on this year’s list from a Saturday in late July epitomizes the term “short but incredible”.  I had just begun driving laps around central Iowa’s most upscale mall after spending a couple of hours fetishing and only seconds after firing up my car engine I turned the corner and saw a middle-aged woman and a blond 17ish teenage daughter walking from their car towards the entrance of the Younkers store.  I was temporarily breathless when I observed that the young daughter had a half-smoked cigarette between her fingers.  I made eye contact with both mom and daughter as mom motioned for me to keep driving and that she and the daughter would wait for me to pass before they proceeded.  I only got a modest look at the daughter and while she wasn’t an incredible beauty, she was nonetheless quite attractive for a present-day underage smoker smoking a cigarette publicly in the presence of her nonsmoking mom.  Her long bleach-blond hair went down her back onto her John Deere green tanktop, and a pair of tight black leggings framed her wonderfully slender young lower body.  Having passed in front of them in my car I feverishly looped around to the fairly open parking lot and parked my car in a stall just soon enough to see the blond girl standing near the ashtray and taking a final drag from her cigarette before following mom inside.

Once they were inside, I sprinted into Younkers behind them and they cooperated by hovering near the entrance looking at displays in the front of the store.  There was the cutiepie casually browsing through some female clothing and looking so wonderfully feminine doing so.  She was turning around and we were about to pass next to each other.  I was hoping she would reek of fresh cigarette smoke and suffice it to say the girl didn’t disappoint.  I was genuinely struck by how badly she stunk and was hopeful that some helpful cashier would approach and take note of the foul odor she was emitting too.  I think she may have been the smelliest smoker girl I encountered all year, at least at a close enough range for my olfactory senses to be this offended.  I exited the store to check out her debris and the only cigarette in the ashtray was a Marlboro Red butt.  Pretty hard-core for my wholesome-looking blond cutie.

I went back to my car with the plan to drive more laps around the mall.  After one lap, I got it in my head that a girl of her caliber was worth waiting outside the mall to see again in hopes she’d light up again when she came out.  But as I started to think it through, I didn’t even know which car was theirs and I didn’t want to wait there for hours if that’s how long it took to leave, so I ended up not sticking around.  Still, every time I circled the mall and approached that Younkers entrance for the next half hour or so that I drove laps, I held my breath in anticipation of seeing mom and her stinky daughter exiting the mall again, ideally lighting up another Marlboro Red.  Unfortunately it never happened.

 

#3.  Less than a half hour later on that same late July Saturday at central Iowa’s most upscale mall I scored my first leg of a sighting that was even more frustrating, even though the still had and still has the potential to produce a rock star moment. But as happens far too often with sightings at the mall, logistics screwed me over.  Some young dude was walking near me outside a mall entrance and he spotted an early-20s brunette taking a seat on an obscure bench nestled in a mall crevice where it’s impossible for a stalker to watch.  Great!  The guy apparently knew the girl–a decently attractive brunette in a black blouse and dark jean shorts–and asked if she minded having a smoke with him.  I did the best I could to hover near the edge of the sidewalk to see snippets of a sighting out of the corner of my eye.  From out of the brunette’s purse came a pack of Camel Pink Lights….don’t see that every day!  She proceeded to extract a cigarette and light it up, but then got very distracted in her conversation with the guy and her straightening out the wires on whatever electronic device she was preparing to listen to…quite possibly an iPod.  I assumed this girl was on a work break, but that scenario didn’t match how casually she was dressed, so it just didn’t make sense.

Anyway, it was adorable watching her deftly hold that freshly lit all-white cigarette between her fingers while unwinding the cords on that iPhone/electronic device….and it must have taken her five minutes to get it in working condition.  Once she finally got that straightened out, she began attending to her cigarette more judiciously, with nice long drags and cloudy exhales that came mostly from her mouth.  Unfortunately, I was not gonna be in a position to linger and watch this at my awkward standing position so I walked away for a bit hoping to catch a brief encore in passing a few minutes later.  When I returned, she flung the smoldering cigarette to her right as piggishly as humanly possible and not bothering to crush it out.  Nothing more adorable than cute young smoker girls behaving as rudely as they possibly can.  I lingered just long enough to see her reach for her pack and fire up a second cigarette.  Gah!  Why couldn’t she be sitting at a bench more accessible for stalking so I could see this impressive show upclose for a sustained sighting!??!?!

I was lingering waiting for her to leave so I could see how nice her body was but she wasn’t going anywhere.  The guy smoking with her left, but in a few minutes, another guy came out and sat next to her on the same bench for a smoke break.  Great!  Just great!  It was time to move on, but I never fully left the area and wanted to make further passes in the minutes ahead.  On my first pass, she was silently listening to whatever was coming out of her earbuds sans a cigarette while the dude next to her was still smoking.  But on the second pass, there she was, smoking her third cigarette in the last 20 minutes still listening to her music.

She didn’t seem to be going anywhere as the minutes passed so I ventured on, ultimately driving my laps around the mall.  She was gone from that bench on the first pass but on the second pass, she sat at another nearby bench smoking at least her FOURTH cigarette of the last hour, this time with two middle-aged guys she didn’t know on both sides of her, one seated on the bench next to her and one standing.  Perhaps they were fellow fetishers enjoying a lovely show but given how close they were to her it had to be awkward.  I turned around in the parking lot to make another pass and get a better look, and my timing was good as she was taking the final drag from her cigarette and, once again, boarishly flung the butt to the ground without crushing it out despite the fact that there was an ashtray only inches to her right, then stood up to go back inside the mall.  I finally got to admire a nice female body in jean shorts and was able to follow her ass with my eyes as she went inside.  Obviously a sighting like this at a fairgrounds would have the capacity to really stand out, but unfortunately I didn’t see enough actual smoking with this one to rate it in the top-tier despite her heavy consumption and terrible manners.  Still, it was an excellent appetizer to my county fair which was only two days away.

Fast forward to October when, after a full day of mediocre sightings at this same mall,  I was wrapping up the day driving laps around the mall and took notice of the same bench in the inverted space near Barnes and Noble to see an early 20s dark brunette smoking a cigarette.  I was able to get just close enough of a look on my drive past to discover it was the same girl from July who smoked four Camel Pink Lights during a half-hour period.  She clearly must have some close association with this mall even though she certainly wasn’t dressed in a work outfit.  It wasn’t quite the T-shirt and jean shorts she was wearing in the summer, but it was nonetheless a very casual T-shirt and jeans ensemble, with the medium-blue pair of jeans looking incredibly tight as she sat cross-legged talking into her phone.  The best I could do was take repeated laps around the lanes of the parking lot that led to her bench as even if I parked my car to approach her in person, I still wouldn’t be able to score an extended upclose sighting with her sitting at that inaccessible inverted bench.  So for the next 10 minutes I just circled laps around the lot, catching her in mid-drag on several occasions while chatting on the phone, occasionally releasing her smoke by way of talking exhales but usually just expelling nice streams of straight-ahead smoke from her mouth.  The girl wasn’t gorgeous and wouldn’t stand out in the crowd under normal circumstances, but the combination of her “girl-next-door sexy” outfits and her heavy smoking and obnoxious butt disposal gave her a needed extra sizzle that I couldn’t get enough of.

And I had a feeling I knew what was coming amidst my laps around the parking lot and she came through, obnoxiously flinging her spent butt to the ground next to the bench and making no attempt to crush it out, and then breezily opening her pack of Camel Pink Lights to extract another.  I wasn’t able to see the light-up but by the time my car was back there moments later she was smoking a freshly lit cigarette.  I made a couple more laps around the lot and caught a couple more drags while she continued to chat on the phone, but this pattern was growing tiresome and I wasn’t seeing what I wanted from it so eventually I just kept on driving.  By the time I was back to the spot near Barnes and Noble, my smoker was gone.  I pulled into the nearest parking spot and approached the bench, finding two Camel Pink Light butts that were very recently flung next to the bench by the young brunette cutie who smoked them.

Every time I go this mall now I approach this bench whenever it’s empty and check out all the rudely flung cigarette butts near it, and there are always several.  In the past, it was primarily Camel Pink No. 9s or Camel Pink Lights, but I was surprised when in early December it was mostly Camel Crush butts polluting the area.  I didn’t jump to any conclusions but about an hour into the day I was approaching the area on foot when a familiar face emerged from the bench and was heading towards the mall.  It was the decently attractive early 20s brunette in a blouse and jeans with some ruby red lipstick on her lips that I hadn’t noticed before.  She had clearly just smoked a cigarette at her favorite spot.  I approached the bench and, sure enough, two recently disposed-of Camel Crush butts were sitting next to the bench, both of them with lipstick stains, and one of them still smoldering.  She apparently has changed brands, but hasn’t changed her sociopathically obnoxious smoking style a bit.  With three sightings of this girl in the last few months, it’s a pretty good bet I’ll see more of her in 2015.  Unfortunately the bench she chooses to sit on makes it a longshot I’ll ever get the caliber of upclose sighting needed to catapult this girl into my mall Hall of Fame.

 

#2.  My favorite mall in the Des Moines area for sightings had a pretty weak year.  Part of the problem is the mall was under construction most of the year for a new attraction that just finally opened the week before Christmas, and that probably reduced attendance for much of the year in a mall that’s been in general decline since I moved to central Iowa in 2006.  But the mall did have one recurring player that delivered for me through thick and thin nearly every time I visited the mall in 2014, and she was a worker at the tattoo and piercings store.  Now I’m no fan of tattoos or piercings and I’m sure the visual that comes to mind when I cite a worker at this place is a girl decorated with all kinds of hideous facial jewelry and body ink….but that couldn’t be further from the truth with the girl in question.  She is a 20-21ish light brunette who exudes wholesomeness in every way with a nicely sculpted female body to match.  There are no visible tattoos or piercings on her, so at the very least the most visible parts of her face and body have remain uncorrupted aside from the fact that she seems to be unnaturally tan for the dead of winter in Iowa, undoubtedly the result of tanning beds.  As for the noncorruption of her lungs, well that’s a different story….

It was last January I saw this girl at the rear mall entrance closest to her store out smoking with a co-worker, puffing on a cigarette while decked out in a nice red coat with leggings on the bottom, bending down at her knees while smoking and staying out of the cold winter wind.  I couldn’t believe this beautiful and wholesome girl was smoking and watched from afar as she chatted with the coworker and puffed away, producing generous exhales that were extra cloudy due to the cold weather and the smoke mixing with the frost on her breath.  She flung the cigarette obnoxiously onto the street before heading back into the mall and I walked on over and identified it as a Marlboro Red.  Less than two hours later, she was out again, this time by herself.  My presence didn’t go undetected as I sat on a curb watching from about 25 yards away, but I pretended to be waiting for somebody and largely got away with I suspect as I stole glances of her smoking at key moments, with the same impressive performance and wrapping things up with the same obnoxious butt fling into the street before heading back into the door, disregarding the ashtray no more than 10 feet away from her.  I don’t know what it is with these hot chick mall workers who insist upon defiling their workplace with their tobacco refuse but she is the third mall worker of the last two years whose made my countdown to dispose of their cigarettes this way and it never ceases to be unbearably hot.

Mall workers tend to come and go, especially at a store like this, but this girl has defined 2014 at this mall, and just about every trip I made there this year has produced sightings of her.  The downside is that I’ve become familiar to the point where I have to watch from afar so she doesn’t recognize me and confront me.  I would by no means be opposed to striking up a conversation with her, but if my repeated presence was put into question, I wouldn’t have a good answer.  I often get oil changes and basic car repairs done at the Sears Automotive in this mall but that excuse wouldn’t explain all of my visits there and why I’m hovering in the general area of outdoor entrances where she happens to be. Complicating things further, the construction zone was right at the epicenter of her old smoking area, so she found a different spot that is less accessible for her frequent smoke breaks.  And I do mean frequent!  There have been times I’ve gone to this mall for three hours and she has taken three smoke breaks.  I’m sure her coworkers just love her for abandoning them to run the store while she’s feeding her insatiable dependency on nicotine.

Every time I see her I’m struck by her wholesome beauty, often including headbands holding down her hair.  I’m not sure what is more out of place about this girl’s lifestyle based on her wholesome image….her heavy smoking habit and obnoxious butt disposal or the fact that she spends her days working at a tattoo and piercing store.  At some point mid-summer I saw she switched from Marlboro Reds to Camel Crush and at first when I went to inspect her discarded butt I wondered if I was looking at the wrong girl’s cigarette as I saw the smoldering Camel Crush, but subsequent encounters confirmed she had switched.  It was so hot roaming around the area where she always smoked and seeing her there again less than an hour since I saw her previously.  And making matters even wilder, I saw her later in the summer at the Iowa State Fair!  She was Sighting #72 on Day 3 of the 2014 ISF, chatting with friends and taking the final two drags of her all-white.  After she left, I approached and IDed it as her new brand Camel Crush, confirming it was indeed her.  Pretty sure she’s my first girl to broach two of my primary sightings mediums–malls and fairgrounds–in the same year.  Unfortunately even at the state fair my sighting of her was too brief and lacking in storyline to elevate her to the Hall of Fame where she deserves to be.

The last great encounter I had with her in 2014 was in November.  I saw a white car pulling towards the parking ramp and a hot girl with a cigarette in her hand behind the wheel who I quickly identified as my favorite mall employee of 2014.  I wanted a closer look and took the risk of approaching the ramp where she parked her car.  She was just getting out as I turned the corner, only about 10 yards in front of me and walking my direction, holding a bag of fast food she picked up for lunch in one hand and taking the final drag off of her Camel Crush with other before flinging it to the side.  She didn’t pass me closely enough to exchange greetings (or be confrontational for that matter) but it was spectacular watching her awesome ass in conservative dark jeans approach the rear mall entrance knowing how stinky she would be when she got into the store.  I looked at her Camel Crush smoldering there in the parking lot and wished I could have the kind of up-close inspection of one of her sightings that could catapult her into the upper reaches of my blog where she deserves to be if she produced a sighting with a worthy storyline.

My final observations of her came the weekend before Christmas when I spent several hours at this mall, but unfortunately it was a bust.  The downside of the heavy mall traffic the week before Christmas is that the nicotine-addicted workers don’t get to take smoke breaks.  But as I walked by her store, I picked up on her easygoing rapport with the customers checking out the cheap jewelry selection and wondered how hard it must have been for her to keep up her perky attitude going hours without a cigarette.  Her voice didn’t even have much of a husk to it, which surprised me given that she was clearly a pretty heavy smoker.  It was disappointing to not get a sighting from her on December 20, but it was also kind of cool to see her in this work setting being professional and knowing the only thing she was thinking about was her next nicotine fix. I don’t like getting too attached to these mall workers the way they come and go, but here’s hoping this girl sticks around and produces the sighting she’s capable of in 2015.

 

#1.  I had just arrived at metropolitan Des Moines’ most upscale mall on a steamy early Saturday afternoon in late June, still lacking a mall sighting in 2014 worthy of this year-end greatest hits list.  It wouldn’t take long to get my first truly impressive find for the year, but my heart still breaks for what could have been with this sighting if I had a few more breaks.  Still, the most important break of all was the one I caught…the break that put me near the highest-volume rear entrance of the mall just as I watched an SUV with young two blonds was pulling up.  It was a deja vu moment to two years ago when, at this same mall, I spotted a duo of hot blonds pulling into this same lot in a truck and both were smoking.  I couldn’t get that lucky twice….right?

I watched as the SUV approached with the passenger window down and took note of the genuinely gorgeous blonds inside.  As the SUV was passing right in front of me, I was truly surprised to see a cigarette approach the mouth of the adorable passenger.  It was a split second sighting, but my legs were spinning like the road runner when Wiley Coyote is hot on his tail to make sure I kept tabs on where that SUV went.  But it wasn’t a long chase as they soon turned into a convenient traffic lane and were lucky enough to score a parking spot not too deep into the lot.  The driver struggled to wedge the large SUV into the tight spot and I was approaching from behind hoping to get a closer look.  The driver’s hands were on the wheel and her window was not down, but I knew that passenger would still be smoking as her cigarette looked only about half-smoked.  I approached from a rear angle and while I didn’t see her face, I watched the passenger ash her mostly smoked cigarette out the window.  There was all kinds of potential here and the sky seemed to be the limit if they’d simply cooperate and get out of the SUV…..

But they didn’t.  The vehicle was parked and I found myself bobbing awkwardly (and dangerously) from one lane of the lot to another to get a closer look.  And doing so, I saw the driver now had a cigarette of her own lit.  I watched one drag from my brutally awkward position before realizing I couldn’t do this without risking being caught by any number of people coming and going.  So I did the next best thing and approached one of the benches at the main mall entrance, knowing that’s where the girls would likely go in.  It was killing me sitting on that bench, their SUV just out of my sight range, knowing that both extremely beautiful girls were smoking.  Now it was just a matter of waiting for them to come out, undoubtedly having disposed of their cigarettes, but at least giving me a close-up look of them and the chance to take a photo as they approached.

In a few minutes, they did.  Two beautiful blonds were approaching from the SUV with Starbucks cups in hand….but it wasn’t what I expected.  Like the two blonds from two years ago (Mall #17) who this duo reminded me of, I figured I’d see a couple of 20 or 21-year-old beauties emerging….but instead I saw a couple of high school girls.  The driver was nominally the prettiest, with platinum blond hair, a lacy white top and pink shorts.  She was average height for a young female and I can’t imagine she was a day older than 16.  The friend next to her (the passenger who I saw smoking first) was almost as pretty, but her presentation was arguably even more impressive given that she was petite, a good three inches shorter than the friend, with dark blond hair, a lavender tanktop and tight jean shorts.  Perhaps it was just how petite she was, but I swear this girl looked 14.  And we’re talking about unequivocal mid-teen beauties here….the kinds of girl you’d be shocked to discover were smokers even 20 years ago let alone in 2014.

The girls approached the mall, drinking from their caffeinated beverages and looking like the picture of summer feminine innocence, and I was aghast that both had fresh tobacco on their breath.  Suddenly a sighting that seemed amazing from the get-go had become special in a way that put it in the running for “sighting of the year” qualification.  I’m able to be pretty stealth with my new camera phone and snapped two photos as they approached.  I attempted to follow briefly and snap a rear photo before they went into the mall as well, but the rear photo didn’t turn out and the frontal photos were from further away than was necessary to truly admire their gorgeous mid-teen features.  I had struck out on the photo front but wanted to see if the girls left any tobacco debris outside the SUV.  It was a very windy day and no butts were to be found near the SUV.  I even peaked inside the window as I walked by and saw no signs of tobacco paraphenelia either.  Unlike the aforementioned 2012 blond smoker duo, I wasn’t catching the necessary breaks needed to get this sighting the context it deserves.

I went into the mall and randomly wandered for a few minutes, hoping to see the girls again.  I didn’t, and decided these girls were such rare finds that I should move my car to their lot in search of a parking spot where I could see them get in their SUV when they left the mall.  I was not confident they’d smoke anywhere but inside the SUV given their tender ages so I figured this would be my only chance to see more from them.  Within a few short minutes, I was getting inside my car from a completely different lot, and as I drove towards that rear lot where they were parked, I was contemplating how many things could go wrong here, like not being able to find a spot close enough to see them walk back to the SUV and being stuck waiting for hours for two teenage girls to leave the mall on a Saturday afternoon.  But none of these fears came to pass as I pulled into the back lot and saw the girls were already inside the SUV getting ready to leave.  Oh shit!

No windows were down and no smoking was transpiring, but that’s all I saw as I frantically searched for a parking spot.  I finally found one about a minute later and started racing towards their SUV in hopes of one last look.  They never did light up again, but I did get that final close-up look, walking in their parking lane at the exact moment as they pulled out.  What spectacular beauties they were, and the close-up confirmed they were indeed mid-teen high school girls.  As I watched that SUV drive off, my heart sunk.  At one level, it made my day to see two blond beauties of this caliber were among the shrinking cohort of high school smokers in the year 2014.  But at another level, these girls were worthy of being as high as the #2 all-time mall sighting on my blog (2008’s three generations of nicotine ladies is pretty close to a permanent lock for the #1 spot) but their show was so abbreviated that they will instead languish in the lower rungs of my all-time greatest hits.  I wasn’t able to get this sighting out of my mind the entire day, distraught that the culture has become so challenging for teen smokers that the girls self-censored their smoking performance,  hiding out inside their SUV to smoke, and preventing me from my most satisfying moment of 2014.  Again though, I’m still much better off for having seen what I did.

 

I don’t blame anybody if they’re a little disappointed by this list. I’d say it’s without question the weakest mall sightings list of the four years I’ve done these year-end lists.  But as previous years have proven, if a fetisher logs in enough hours at malls, he’s bound to find that elusive oyster with a pearl in it, meaning the odds aren’t too bad for me hitting pay dirt in 2015 with one or more sightings better than anything on this list.

Top 10 Random and Summerfest Sightings of 2014

Thank goodness for stinky neighbor girls!  I warned last year that with as challenging as random sightings have become, it would only be a matter of time until I would no longer be able to stitch together a list of 10 worthy sightings between Summerfest and random smoker girl encounters over the year.  This would have been that year if not for all the girls who I saw smoking in my neighborhood–including repeated sightings from a couple of girls who live on my block!–who saved my bacon in an otherwise bleak year for random sightings, particularly since Summerfest only yielded a couple of electric moments this year.  I’ve had better top-10 lists in prior years but I believe most regulars will get some enjoyment out of some of these writeups…

 

#10.  It’s amazing how what one believes will be a minor inconvenience turns out to be the catalyst to make one’s day.  I had put in a takeout order for this barbecue joint on my drive home from work one weekday in early December and was getting close to the restaurant when the stoplight was turning orange.  I slowed down, realizing I wouldn’t make the light, and was mildly frustrated that I was stuck at what would probably be a fairly long red light.  In seconds, however, my annoyance was quickly stymied as I looked into my rearview mirror to see a van approaching.  Two young females occupied the front seat, both wielding freshly lit cigarettes.  I was only able to see them through the rearview mirror and wasn’t able to get a good take on their ages, but my eyes were pretty focused on the passenger in this vehicle, a wholesome looking light brunette who from my vantage point looked like a high school girl.  The driver was a darker brunette who was less attractive and who also looked older.  I studied them closely as I remained at that red light and make the call that they were both probably about 21.  I got to see two drags each from the girls in the rearview mirror, and while it was hard to see how good of smokers they were or were not from that position, it seemed like the cuter passenger was the less experienced of the two, frequently ashing and taking more modest drags.

The light turned green and as I sped forward I realized that my turn for the barbecue joint was coming soon which sucked because I wanted to watch these two finish their cigarettes while watching in my rearview mirror.  My right-hand turn had arrived, however, and I grudgingly took it, turning into the barbecue joint parking lot feeling bummed my sighting got cut short.  But a funny thing happened on way towards the front entrance to pick up my food….

As I got out of my car and walked towards the front door of the barbecue joint, I happened to look to my right deeper into the parking lot to find yet another van with two young females sitting inside, and the passenger was lighting up a cigarette at the moment I turned her direction.  I suddenly amended my walking pattern and was heading in the direction of their vehicle.  I had no good reason to be going that direction and had to simply feign ignorance as to the restaurant’s front entrance as I passed their van and took a quick peek inside the window.  The overweight dark brunette 20-something driver was just preparing her cigarette to light but the prettier, lighter brunette passenger was already smoking.  I only got a quick peek but could see she was a cutie, her hair wrapped up in a ponytail and an all-white recently lit cigarette protruding from her fingers.  I had now ventured to the end of the sidewalk as was near the rear of the restaurant and had no choice but to double back, with the added benefit–however awkward–of walking past the van full of smoker girls again, unable to make much eye contact at this point without getting busted.  I grudgingly went inside the restaurant to pick up the food.  I returned in a couple of minutes and was able to make a one-second glance into the girls’ van to see that they were still smoking.

At this point all I could do was getting into my car and look over my shoulder at their van.  It was the drivers side of the van that I had a minimal vantage point of, but I wasn’t overly interested in the overweight driver and all I could see from her were infrequent ashings anyway.  But I was still gonna wait for their exit from the van to see if I could get a better look at that passenger.  In a few minutes, the girls got out and both headed towards the rear exit of the restaurant, clearly employees who were either out on a smoke break or else just starting their shifts.  I barely got to even see the passenger as she went inside the back entrance and felt like I got robbed on this one.  But I approached the rear of their vans and spotted two smoldering all-white butts next to the van that they polluted on the parking lot of their workplace.

While neither of these vans occupied by young smoker cuties delivered me with a particularly memorable sighting, it was still a good feeling to be able to come across four attractive smokers on a two-block radius simply en route to pick up barbecue on a Tuesday afternoon.

 

#9.  It was the first truly cold morning of the new season one day in late November, not quite zero but in the single digits at 6:45 a.m. as I was hitting the streets for my morning commute to work.  Over the years I had a few smoker girls I would routinely see on my commutes if I got the timing right but I saw a new face as I progressed southward through traffic in the hour before dawn that morning.   I saw as I approached from the left lane that the young female driver was holding an all-white cigarette in her left hand.  I hadn’t seen her face yet but had a good feeling based on the presentation I’d seen thus far that she’d impress.  As I pulled parallel to her, she didn’t disappoint, a curly-haired light brunette who looked about 21 or 22 and far too wholesome to have that cigarette protruding from her hand next to the steering wheel yet nonetheless did.  Best of all, she seemed chilled to the bone on that winter drive, her upper body hunched forward and her teeth appearing to be chattering, likely because she just got into her SUV and it wasn’t warm yet.  Now obviously she could have warmed up more quickly had she closed her driver’s side window that was cracked and letting the cold air in, but doing so would mean she wouldn’t be able to ash her cigarette….so that wasn’t an option!

As cold as she was, her nicotine fix was more important than warmth.  Her body needed nicotine relief more than it needed to keep warm!  I got about 30 seconds worth of view time between the red lights and the time I was parallel to her SUV, and saw three average drags and exhales from her during that time.  It was a rare case where it was hotter seeing the girl in that uncomfortably cold posture, leaning forward with teeth chattering and cigarette in hand, than it was actually seeing her smoking!

I lucked out again about 10 days later on another cold morning in late November or early December.  I was once again parallel to the same beauty in the same SUV with the same posture, leaning forward and clearly very chilly, yet letting cold air rush in through her cracked window since she needed to ash her smoldering cigarette somewhere.   Again she dragged with a steady pace and was clearly addicted to her cigarettes, but the smoking style was less of a draw for me than seeing this very wholesome cutie putting herself through cold weather misery in this awkward posture because of her dependency on nicotine.  Hopefully I’ll get the timing right on more chilly mornings in the winter months of 2015 and see her again with cigarette in hand in the only posture I can imagine seeing her.

 

#8.  The afternoon following my first visit to the Iowa State Fair last August found me taking a walk through my neighborhood.  A new apartment complex was constructed on a previously unoccupied stretch along the primary street where I walk….a pet-friendly complex.  I value my privacy as much as is possible on this walk so in general this new building hasn’t been the best news for me, but with new buildings comes the potential for new smokers as I would discover that day walking back.  A young couple in their 20s was ascending the hill separating the new pet-friendly apartment building with the sidewalk holding a black lab on a leash.  The guy was holding the dog and I could see he had a cigarette in hand, so my eyes immediately darted to the attractive dark brunette girlfriend walking slightly behind him.  Sure enough, she had a cigarette in hand too, dressed casually in a matching black top and nice-fitting sweats.  And as I approached the crosswalk, I noticed something else about her….she was at least seven months pregnant….

She had maintained the kind of tight, spunky body that would make just about any pregnant woman envious beyond belief, and I found myself attracted to a late-term pregnant woman in a way I never really have before.  Seconds after I spotted her, she started whistling to the dog and talking to him/her, right around the time I crossed paths with them in the crosswalk and smelled her cigarette smoke.  I watched over my shoulder and caught her taking two drags, both of which were nice with generously cloudy exhales following up the drags.  Almost every year I score a pregnant smoker sighting at my county fair but it’s a rare treat for me to see such a public one anywhere else, especially from a girl this hot.

Less than a week later, I was walking in the same area and although my sighting wasn’t as upclose, I spotted the same couple including the very pregnant hot brunette walking with cigarettes in tow, this time with the girl decked out in a sweatshirt and pink athletic shorts.  Now perhaps they only smoke when they’re outside the apartment but having seen this gal twice, cigarette in her hand both times, it made me wonder how heavily she’s been smoking during her pregnancy and whether the boyfriend has expressed any concern about her pregnant smoking over the past few months.  Clearly neither one of them is concerned with the perception of others seeing her publicly smoking on a regular basis even though few things are as politically incorrect nowadays than smoking by pregnant women.  I haven’t seen the girl since and of course she’d be a mommy by now.  With walking season generally over until next spring, I just have to hope 2015 brings new sightings with her and her baby boy or girl in tow.

 

#7.  As I said in my introduction, if it wasn’t for attractive young women in my neighborhood, my “random” sightings haul for 2014 would be almost nonexistent.  Such was the case at the single-family home on the corner of the street near my apartment cluster, a home that was occupied by a middle-aged couple with two college-age kids just last year.  Not sure how I missed the transfer of ownership completely but when I began going for my walks again in the spring of 2014, I noticed it was now occupied by a light brunette in her mid-to-late 20s with a young son.  She seems to be a single mom and I find it curious that she’s a homeowner in this fairly pricy neighborhood at her age with only one income, but whatever the case, it didn’t take long to discover she was a smoker.  The woman is modestly attractive but just a tick chubby.  She wouldn’t stand out in a crowd at a fairgrounds or anything but as I walked by her place multiple times during “walking season” (roughly April through October) I saw her smoking a couple dozen times.  Sometimes she really came across as a plain jane when decked out in sweats around the house but other times she cleaned up nicely in colorful and dressy outfits that hugged her curves in all the right places and gave her a bit of a glamorous aura.

She has a patio outside her backdoor where I saw most of her sightings in the spring, summer, and fall, often with her sitting outside reading or talking on the phone and almost always with a cigarette in hand.  She had a fairly husky voice that matched my impression that she’s a heavy smoker….I’m guessing at least a pack a day.  I could only score a quick glance, given the logistics of the sidewalk in proportion to her back patio, when I walked past.  Other times I’d see her walking to her SUV en route to leave (often with her boyfriend who I don’t believe lives with her) with a pack of Marlboro Menthols in hand.  On a couple occasions I caught her as she was coming or going in that SUV, with a fresh cigarette in hand either while arriving or leaving.  Then there were a couple of times when what I assumed were her parents coming to visit, and while I didn’t see her smoking in their immediate presence, I knew as I saw her hug them or welcome them in her home that she reeked of smoke.

The moment that stands out most with my brunette neighbor from 2014 came in mid-October as I was returning from a walk and as I approached her place I watched her walking from the house and approaching her mailbox across the street.  I was probably 50 yards away when I first saw her, and shortly after seeing her I watched a pretty cloudy burst of smoke explode out of her mouth.  I continued walking as she picked up the mail and saw two more bursts of cigarette smoke spill from her face as she walked back towards the house with the mail she just retrieved.  She was dressed nicely that day in clothing that matched the fall colors, a blouse and slacks with orangish, tannish hues that looked flattering on her.  But as I walked past her front door I was getting all kinds of excited watching as she stood there dangling her cigarette from her mouth while opening an envelope from the mail and beginning to look at it.  I snuck glances for the next 30 seconds or so as I walked past and the cigarette next left its perch in her mouth the entire time, making it one of the more impressive dangles I saw in 2014.  She’s a serious smoker and while she lacks electric IT factor, I look forward to more sightings from her in 2015.

 

#6.  Most years on my annual June pilgrimage to Sioux Falls, SD, I manage at least one worthwhile sighting, even if it’s just at a red light next to a smoker babe in traffic, but this June’s trip produced the best Sioux Falls sighting since the Arby’s drive-thru brunette babe from 2003.  Coincidentally, this sighting also played out in a fast food parking lot, only this time a Taco Bell rather than an Arby’s.

I approached a traffic light and immediately noticed a flurry of activity in the Taco Bell parking lot, including four college-aged females decked out in extremely flattering and summery flower-print dresses of varying lengths.  The girls were in a cluster than included at least a couple of males but there was a little too much to process to get all the details as I was laser-focused on possible tobacco usage….and I’ll be damned if I didn’t score when I spotted a freshly lit cigarette between the fingers of this long-haired blond in a longer dress.  Her angle was not perfect as her back was mostly towards me but she cooperatively turned to take a drag and I got to see her gorgeous movie star face.  It’s always an amazement to see girls of this pedigree still publicly smoking in 2014.

And there was another brunette in the cluster who jumped out at me most from my vantage point at the cooperatively long red light.  The confirmed blond smoker was still getting the majority of my attention, but this brunette decked out in a summer dress with a similar print style but much shorter than the blond’s was making all the right bodily gestures that led me to believe she might light up too….and sure enough, another cigarette was brought to life by the brunette seconds before the light turned green.  Easily the two most beautiful girls in this cluster were the two confirmed smokers….and again we’re talking beauty pageant-quality looks on the these two.

The only problem was that the light had now turned green.  My original instinct was to just be satisfied with the 60-second show I got, but a couple of blocks down the street I realized how rare a scenario like this is and decided I’d take the risk to see if I could return to Taco Bell and get a closer look.  I made the right-hand turn and spent a good two minutes returning to the location.  As I approached the Taco Bell, the girls were no longer in the lot and I thought I must have just missed them.  But I pulled into the lot anyway and their car was just pulling out, the front and backseat both full of passengers and my favorite blond in the passenger side backseat with her window down and a fast food beverage cup on top of the car.

I managed to pull into a stall and observe this gorgeous blond up-close, and she lived up to the hype and then some, as close to a perfect 10 beauty as I’d seen all year, with the stub of an all-white cigarette in her right hand.  The car came to a brief stop before leaving the lot, acknowledging her “blond moment” by letting her pick up the beverage cup sitting on top of the car at the same time as she tossed her cigarette butt out the window only a few yards in front of me.  The smell of her smoke was wafting my way and I savored it.  I studied inside the car for one final look before they pulled out and sitting next to the blond in the middle of the backseat was the brunette beauty, sandwiched in between two people with a half-smoked cigarette in her hand.  So here was this car where four of out six passengers were apparently nonsmokers, but the four nonsmokers were tolerant enough to let one of the smokers fill the car with smoke seated right in the middle of the backseat.  I would have paid $1,000 to sit in that car at that moment as I watched it drive off.  I stepped out of the car and identified the blond’s discarded cigarette as a Marlboro Light Menthol, which seemed like a perfect brand for her.

Curiously, I then got back on the street myself, heading the direction I was originally going, but a couple of blocks down the road the lights had cooperated enough to where I was parallel to the green car with the smoker girls.  I thought it was really my lucky day that I was poised to get another front-row seat to this eye candy, but the windows were now all rolled up and the backseat had tinted windows that prevented me from seeing inside.  Still, I felt pretty fortunate to have scored as much of this sighting as I did.  Not a bad score from simply being caught at a red light next to a Taco Bell parking lot.

 

#5.  For whatever reason, my successes at Summerfest, the local festival in the town where I currently live, have seemed to occur primarily on odd-numbered years.  2014 is not one of those and the even-numbered year curse seemed to hold up again.  Sightings declined by 20% from my impressive 2013 haul, and three of the four nights were genuine snoozers.  Saturday night, however, was the one night that I walked away smiling at the end of the night.  And the first of my two great sightings came pretty early in the night in the middle of the beer gardens area.

The majority of smoking in the beer gardens occurs in the southwest corner which somehow became a de facto smoking area in the grounds where smoking is officially banned, but you’ll still find some scofflaws who light up in the densely populated center of the grounds.  Rarely, however, do these scofflaws look like the tall, slender, heaven-sent brunette angel I spotted flicking an all-white to life while watching the band perform onstage.  There were actually two sexy long-haired brunettes, and the shorter girl of duo wearing a miniskirt looked by far the most likely of the two to light up, but she never did.  The taller girl (I’d guess she was very close to six feet tall) was the most unlikely smoker of the year at Summerfest, decked out in a black top and long black-and-white striped skirt, and it’s impossible to overstate how gorgeous and wholesome her face was.  Yet not only did she smoke, she smoked with gusto, firing herself up and puckering up her lips for a dangling drag.

Nothing would have been more adorable than if she had carried out an extended dangle after that dangling drag, but she did get around to removing the cigarette from her mouth after a few seconds, exhaling plumes of dense smoke amidst the tight crowd in the no-smoking grounds.  But the beauty part was that her first five drags were all of the no-handlebars dangling drag variety, and it was absolutely precious seeing a face as pretty as hers pucker up around the filter of an all-white cigarette and draw smoke into her temple of a body.  These deep drags were making the cigarette disappear pretty quickly, and once it was less than half-sized, she began smoking it the traditional way, still taking nice drags with beautiful plumes of straight-ahead exhaled smoke blasting from her mouth, and frequently swaying her hips subtly to the music from the band.  A bizarre wide-open circle formed in front of her, perhaps repelled by her smoky stench, and she and the friend walked closer to the stage at the moment she took her final drag and dropped the smoldering cigarette to the ground without crushing it out.  Amazingly, I was able to swoop in and ID the butt as a Marlboro Light, a rarity in the almost always suffocating crowds in the middle of the Summerfest beer gardens.

An hour or so later, I saw this duo of girls talking to a couple of guys they seemed to know.  Nobody was smoking but it was still a trip looking over this tall sweetheart from head to toe and knowing that she’s a hard-core smoker.

 

#4.  I usually take a long-weekend road trip in mid-August, but given that my Augusts are always crowded with fair visits and the 4th of July fell on a Friday this year, I bumped up this year’s travels to the Saturday and Sunday after July 4.  The trip took me to central Wisconsin and an overnight stay in Green Bay.  There was no single sighting that lit my world up, but there were four sightings that cobbled together were easily worthy of my year-end top-10.

The first sighting came as I was at a stoplight after picking up my fast food in Green Bay.  A truck with two young and attractive blonds in their early-to-mid 20s pulling out of Wal-Mart set off my smoking radar as high as it possibly could despite no evidence of tobacco use at that moment.  Fast forward about a minute and here was the duo of blonds approaching a trio of those God-forsaken roundabouts in the lane next to mine, with both the driver and the passenger wielding freshly lit cigarettes.  Even under ideal circumstances I hate trying to figure out which lane I’m supposed to be in while driving in a roundabout, so I was really living on the edge trying to navigate three consecutive roundabouts while looking over my shoulder to see two hot blonds smoking.  After getting past the roundabouts, I was able to stay relatively parallel to the gals for a good six blocks before they turned off, enjoying a couple of drags and a couple of ashings each.  The driver was attractive but had tattoos on her arms which are a turnoff for me.  Luckily, the passenger, who I saw more of given that she was closer to my lane, was prettier and had no visible tattoos.  I figured I had probably seen the best sighting Green Bay would have to offer that night, but I was wrong.

I wanted to check out Lake Michigan as close as I was so I took a 25-mile drive east of Green Bay to Kewaunee, a small blue-collar town along the Lake Michigan shore.  I spent a few minutes at the lake shore and then turned back for Green Bay to spend the night, but driving the downtown blocks of Kewaunee I saw a bar with a young couple featuring an attractive brunette standing out front who looked to be in possession of tobacco.  I looped around the block and returned to find a parking spot right in front of the bar, where the young couple was indeed smoking.  Unfortunately, they watched me pull up and were eyeballing me just closely enough that I wasn’t able to watch much of the show from the very attractive working-class brunette who was decked out in a black top and tight white capris.  I stole a couple of brief glances but could tell I wasn’t gonna get any more out of it than that without being spotted, so I pulled out and headed back to Green Bay.

I’m not a Wal-Mart fan but I’ve found the best place to troll for sightings on a summer evening in a town I’m not familiar with is the Wal-Mart parking lot, especially if you’re lucky enough to get a parking spot near the front to track the comings and goings closely.  A handful of my all-time best random sightings have occurred in Wal-Mart parking lots across the Midwest.  Couple this setting with the fact that I was on the western edge of Green Bay and in the Oneida Indian Reservation where smokers come from afar to buy cheaper cigarettes and it seemed like a golden opportunity.  I was chatting on the phone with a friend for a good two hours while sitting there and had a front-row seat for the first of my parking lot sightings.  A car containing an unattractive, overweight middle-aged mother, a decently attractive, slender, and dark blond mid-20s daughter wearing a silvery top and dark jeans, and a toddler boy who looked about two in the backseat who I assumed was the grandchild pulled into a stall right in front of mine.  The 20-something gal lit a cigarette after getting out of the car and only took a few drags while preparing the son to go inside.  She dropped the cigarette to the ground and mom crushed it out for her, which was kind of cute, before they retreated into the store…..

I kept them in mind for the 45 minutes or so that they were inside the store and when they came out, was a little disappointed when no cigarettes were immediately lit.  I figured since the younger gal waited to get outside to light up when she got out of the car, it probably meant outside was the only place she smoked in deference to the young child.  But the women placed the cart behind their car and must have gotten distracted as they climbed into the car next, lingering there with the dome lights on for a good five minutes, possibly looking over the receipt of their recent purchases.  I suspected they had forgotten to unload the groceries from the cart into their trunk and was waiting for them to back out and find that out the hard way.  Sure enough, a few minutes later, they did exactly that, tapping the cart with their car.  Instantly recognizing the problem, the daughter climbed out of the passenger seat with a bemused smirk on her face, at least as much of a smirk as was possible to muster with the barely lit cork filter cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth….

I was surprised she was smoking inside the car but apparently that’s where she had lit up.  The girl wasn’t a knockout beauty in a general sense, but attractive and shapely enough to get me all excited watching her finally getting around to loading up that trunk with groceries and carrying on with a long-distance dangle that lasted a good minute as she finished loading the groceries.  The cigarette finally came out of her mouth as she took the cart to a cart bay and got back into the passenger seat of mom’s car, cigarette in hand.  I watched as the car pulled out of the stall, and just as I hoped, mom the driver was not smoking.  Only the daughter was exposing her infant son to cancerous secondhand smoke in that car.  Not a bad random sighting for the Wal-Mart parking lot, but for my taste, I managed one better about a half hour later….

It had only been about 30 seconds since I got off the phone with my friend when I looked over my shoulder to see a foursome of kids who looked about 17 walking towards the Wal-Mart entrance, pretty much appearing out of nowhere.  Three of the four were dudes, but the one girl of the group blew my mind.  She was a long-haired dark blond who was pretty but seemed accessible and low-maintenance….very much like she was one of the guys just as her presence as the only female of this group indicated.  But helping her really stand out was her outfit of a black tanktop and tight-fitting white shorts.  I can’t really put a finger on why, but tight white shorts simply raise a young girl’s sex appeal through the roof.  I wait all year for the summer months when they are prolific and every time I see a girl wearing a pair, I remember why.  And this girl’s white shorts were a special kind of spectacular as I watched her shapely young body approach, her legs working those tight shorts beautifully and the tight fabric hugging and exposing every crease of her vagina with each step.  And then, the group of four cooperated by being distracted by the bikes on display in front of the store, briefly turning towards them and allowing me a front-row seat of my white-shorted teen cutie’s incredible ass, and the show lasted a good 60 seconds before they proceeded inside.  One of the guys put his arm about the cute girl’s waist as they walked in, indicating to me he was her boyfriend.  The boy had the right idea groping her, but he definitely should have moved his arm a few inches lower to feel up that world-class posterior of hers.

I waited in my car about 20 minutes for their departure when out they came.  The odds were against it, but I just had a feeling tobacco use would transpire here.  The group walked out and I admired my favorite girl’s body one last time as she walked past towards a vacant corner of the lot where they parked their truck.  As they proceeded, I saw a plume of cigarette smoke emerge from one of the guys.  Score!  This was at least partially a smoking group.  Now it was just a matter of waiting for the girl to light hers up.  But the group did something unexpected, huddling just outside the truck and passing the cigarette around, regrettably just among the boys.  Now it was still a hot scene as the girl was holding the truck keys.  There was just something sexy as hell about this adorable girl in white shorts chaffeuring around these boys in her truck.  Sexy as that was, I really wanted her to smoke, but was losing hope as all three of the guys got their hands on the cigarette while she hadn’t yet.  But alas, it was her turn.  The guy that was her boyfriend handed her the cigarette and she took three successive shallow drags.  Her minimalist exhales made it clear she was a beginner but I was very impressed with how quickly she fired off two drags before tossing the cigarette to the pavement and climbing into the ticket.  Mama has finished her cigarette….and it’s time to go!  As she drove off with the truck full of male passengers, it really struck me how impressively a night in Green Bay, WI, had delivered.  It was a windy night so by the time I got there in hopes of identifying her butt, it had blown away, but damn if I wasn’t riding too high at that point to even sleep for a couple more hours.

 

#3.  It was a brutally long winter in the Upper Midwest so I was more than ready to slip into my springtime routines by early April, and that includes my frequent walks in my neighborhood. Last April, I had just left my building one early Sunday afternoon when I looked across the street to see a working-class cluster in the front lot of that apartment complex that included an early 20s couple and what I presumed to be their young children. I couldn’t get a great look at the blond, ponytailed mother from where I stood but she sure looked like a cutie from what I could make out, and as a fetisher I had no problem identifying that she was holding a cigarette by the positioning of her right hand by her side. Sure enough, in a few seconds she raised that hand to take a drag. While I didn’t see that much, I was able to discern that she was the only one smoking of the four adults, including the guy I presumed to be her husband/boyfriend/baby daddy. It was just enough to whet my whistle but not enough for me to dwell on the awesomeness of the sighting for the duration of my walk and beyond.

About three hours later I embarked on a second walk in the mid-afternoon. I almost always take the exact same walking path but for whatever reason that day I felt compelled to take a different route back to my place, instead proceeding down the bike path and then crossing the bridge over the creek leading to a park on the west side of my complex. Turns out fate had a reward for me as the first thing I noticed as I crossed that bridge was a familiar-looking couple hanging out with their two young children inside the tennis court. And the blond, ponytailed mommy was again wielding a half-smoked cigarette. I got to see a decent drag as I approached, and as luck would have it, the couple and the children were leaving the tennis court and approaching the playground equipment where I would cross paths with them directly and get my first close-up look at the nicotine-addicted mommy. The blue-collar, good-ol-boy looking baby daddy was in front of her and greeted me with a friendly hello, meaning I had to be reasonably stealth in turning the direction of blondie to get a good look at her. She wasn’t a perfect 10 but suffice it to say I would have loved to switch places with the boyfriend at that moment as I admired her smiling face and exchanged brief pleasantries while taking in some of the cigarette stench emitting from her person. I kept on walking and looked over my shoulder to make sure I stealthly scored a view of one drag from her, and she delivered. She took a nice, solid drag from which a cloud of smoke hovered in front of her mouth and nose for a few seconds before a beautiful plume of smoke was exhaled in a straight line from her mouth. She migrated out of view at that point, but I finally scored my first noteworthy random sighting of 2014 and held out hope I’d see more of this gal exposing her children and the presumed nonsmoking baby daddy to her secondhand smoke in the months to come.

And I did….and the reason I said “presumed” nonsmoking baby daddy was because in subsequent sightings of this family over the summer months I saw the boyfriend smoked too. But I rarely paid much heed to him because his blond girlfriend became all the more glamorous when summer arrived and her wardrobes got skimpier. There were a couple of early Saturday evenings during summer when I remember driving back to my apartment and looking across the street to their cluster and seeing this cute, petite blond in her summer wardrobes wielding a freshly lit cigarette and swore it was a 16-year-old girl for a couple short moments before it registered that it was my mid-20s blond neighbor. Whenever I was in any position to watch her smoke I admired her impressive style of deep drags, lengthy hold times, and cloudy downwardly projected exhales which left a very identifiable haze of smoke in front of her cute face. Unfortunately I caught her in her best summertime outfit one afternoon when she wasn’t smoking, decked out in a black top and white shorts with badass sunglasses. She drives a sleek black car and watching her climb into her car in that outfit was unbearably sexy, especially knowing she would probably light a cigarette within moments after getting behind the wheel.

I’d have one more interactive smoking encounter with blondie in late summer/early fall, unfortunately also including the boyfriend/husband who was walking with her. I was on my walk and the couple with their kids were crossing paths with me, both wielding cigarettes. Blondie was decked out in an adorable pair of pink sweatpants and was engaged with the kids, giving her only a brief second to flash a smile my way in passing while the boyfriend/husband said hello. Obviously I couldn’t be too bold in checking her out given this circumstance but still snuck a glance over my shoulder as I walked past and was able to admire one of her cloudy, downwardly fired exhales. Between the two heavy-smoking neighbor girls on my block who had repeated observations of in 2014, blondie was the better of the two.

 

#2.  Summerfest is a pretty small event, with a barbell-shaped grounds featuring the beer gardens, a carnival, and a walkway in between occupied by food vendors.  I often wander into the parking lots as a means of occupying some time and space rather than lurking in the exact same spaces during evenings there.  But in general, my time breakdown is about two-thirds of the time spent in the beer gardens and one-third around the carnival.  While the quality of young girls hanging out in this carnival area is out of this world, there is virtually no smoking there, and that’s generally been the case dating back to my first Summerfest in 2006.  But on Saturday evening around 10:30, the carnival area served up a genuinely pleasant surprise and my best Summerfest sighting of 2014.

I was walking on the periphery of the carnival’s north side, where there’s a street and a bunch of port-a-potties.  Whenever I see smoking near the carnival, it’s in this general area.  Nothing seemed likely to materialize based on the pass I was currently taking so I instead took an interest in a group of college-age girls heading towards the north side parking lot.  As I was preparing to follow them, I caught out of the corner of my left eye this pair of young Summerfest babes walking towards a curb just outside of the carnival, with the brunette of the duo messing around with her purse.  It was too dark to pick up on anything specific but it looked like she was wielding an unlit cigarette in her right hand.  I followed them to the curb where the girls sat down and walked past, and sure enough, both girls had unlit cigarettes.  This was a first for me in nine years at Summerfest….two prototypical “carnival babes” at Summerfest stepped out for a smoke break!  I had seen young mommies and some early 20s gals smoking across the carnival here and there, but for years I had fantasized about one of the shapely, scantily clad young princesses of the carnival to smoke a cigarette, and tonight I was getting it in duplicate!

By their size and the way they carried themselves, my first instinct was that they were about 14, even though closer inspection would amend that perception.  It would be inconvenient given their isolation to see this sighting out, but I was willing to put myself in whatever situation necessary to do so, crossing the street from them and sitting on the curb pretending to be waiting for somebody.  It wasn’t perfect, but I had a very good seat for a very nice show.  Both girls had plenty to offer.  The brunette on the right who caught my eyes first was sitting in the shadow but I could tell she was absolutely gorgeous, with long smooth legs coming out of either a pair or shorts or a skirt that was hard to completely make out from my vantage point.  It was likewise hard to fully appreciate her smoking style which seemed pretty straight forward with no bells and whistles.  The blond to her left, however, dominated most of my observations.  She was sitting to the brunette’s right in a short, summery flower-print dress and smoked with serious style, taking frequent long drags, tilting her head up with a look of nicotine pleasure on her face, and exhaling gorgeous plumes of smoke skyward.  This was a moment I had been waiting for years to see as I sat there on the curb at Summerfest, sneaking as many glances as I could!

It was still hard to fully determine the girls’ ages as I sat watching, but suspect they were probably 17 or 18.  The show carried on a good five minutes though and the oddest dynamic played out as both girls seemed to take long drags, but the blond’s were by far the most impressive.  Yet curiously, the brunette finished hers first, carelessly and adorably tossing her cigarette a few feet to her left when finished.  The blond who seemed to drag as hard as the brunette did, continued to smoke hers for a good six more drags, always releasing those nice skyward exhales when she did, and then tossed her cigarette back into the grass.  It was clear they had noticed me at least to a degree but not to the extent that they felt stalked.  In a couple of moments, they stood up and started walking directly towards me, which was actually inconvenient because it made it harder for me to get the closer look I wanted lest I tell on myself by gawking too closely, but from what I did see, I discerned that the brunette who was thus far hiding in the shadows was even more gorgeous than the blond, and she was indeed wearing a pair of short black shorts, with a tanktop and a good two inches of exposed midriff up top.  They walked directly past me back into the carnival and I looked over my shoulder to watch their hot backsides press forward.

My first order of business now was butt identification, so I crossed the street and pinpointed the brunette’s butt which I had my eye on for a good two minutes at that point.  It was a Camel Crush, and I was surprised how close to the filter it had been smoked considering how seldom she dragged compared to the friend.  I had to forage a bit to find the smoldering remains of the friends in the grass, and unsurprisingly it too was a Camel Crush.  Next I headed back into the midway hoping to spot them for a risky “final look” but couldn’t locate them.  This annoyed me a bit for the next hour, but just as I was leaving the grounds for the evening, the duo was walking towards me on the sidewalk near the food vendors, not smoking but giving me one more opportunity to admire their youthful faces and nubile bodies in passing.  It was a real rush to have finally scored Summerfest carnival girls smoking cigarettes, and especially given the extended smoke show the girls put on for me.

 

#1.  I had a classic fetisher’s instinct one Saturday afternoon in early June and had the sense and luck to follow it to sightings gold.  I was in the final moments of my walk around the neighborhood when I saw two hot young things turning the corner a block ahead of me to walk southbound down a heavily trafficked street.  I didn’t even see their faces as their backs were to me but immediately got that vibe that tobacco consumption was on the horizon.  Even this distant and limited rear view was satisfying as I admired the girls’ shapely figures.  One girl was a dark brunette in a black top and those unfortunate athletic shorts that are catching on but are completely lacking in sex appeal.  The shorts were pink, which was cute, but he outfit didn’t grab me the way her friend’s did.  The friend, who clearly had the better figure, was decked out in a tight pink T-shirt with a far more flattering pair of tight jean shorts that just seemed like a vintage summer outfit for a shapely young girl.  All too soon, I had to turn westward down the residential block leading to my place.  And as I walked that remaining block, I debated whether it was worth driving in my car to see if they were headed to the destination that would be the most fruitful.  It was an obvious longshot, but I had nothing else to do and decided to take it.

I got in my car and headed down the thoroughfare, and sure enough, the girls were still walking and only a block or so away from the gas station that I hoped would be their destination, ideally on a cigarette run.  The beauty part of this gas station, especially on a late Saturday afternoon, is that there are empty parking lots on both sides of it to park your car and observe entrances, and I took the wide open funeral home lot with a perfect vantage point of the gas station’s entrance.  I was still watching them from across the street as they passed in front of me so I had yet to get a sufficiently close look at their faces, but they looked in the 19-20 range and thus old enough to buy cigarettes, and with bodies like that I had a hard time believing I could go wrong.

Right on cue, they walked into the gas station and I patiently awaited their exit.  In about three minutes, the girls came out with bags in their hands.  My expectations deflated a bit when I saw those mostly-full plastic bags, thinking it was probably more likely to have been a junk food run than a cigarette run.  But they kept hovering in front of the entrance, tossing a couple things from their purses into the garbage can and the more shapely girl began attending to something in her hands.  In seconds, a white cylendrical object was dangling from her lips and my instinct was confirmed.  Moments later, a flick from a lighter brought her cigarette to life….and a few seconds later, she extended her lighter to the friend’s dangling unlit cigarette and fired her up as well.  It was gonna be an increasingly rare random sighting that I was positioned to watch in near entirety.

The girls started walking northbound on the same street they came from and having not been seen by them, I planned to follow across the street and watch the show.  I sat in my car for a couple more moments as they walked by and got the first sense of their style.  The shapely girl in the pink top and tight shorts was the better smoker with longer drags and very cloudy exhales.  The darker brunette friend in the pink shorts took more frequent drags but her exhales weren’t nearly as cloudy.  I got out of the car and began to follow, pleased with my positioning to observe them from behind at an angle, allowing me to see their faces and admire their style while remaining under their radars.  The pattern continued of the shapely girl being the better smoker who took less frequent but more impressive drags while the friend–herself quite shapely but advertising it less gratuitously–kept taking shorter drags with thinner exhales.  The girls were walking agonizingly slowly so I really had to drag my feet to keep my positioning behind them.

They walked past a driveway where a working-class family was hanging outside.  The family may not have noticed anything, but it was still pretty hot that these barely legal girls were smoking cigarettes as they walked right in front of them.  Towards the end of their smoking show, the girls stopped to take selfies in the middle of the sidewalk and I could no longer hang behind them, complicating my plans to cross the street and ID their butts when they disposed of them.  Now I had to improvise and decided instead to walk ahead and then cross the street and head back in their direction, allowing me to finally get a closer look at them and possibly still get an ID on their butts if they disposed of them in a spot I could detect.

I made good on the plan at the next crosswalk and started walking towards the girls, now done with their selfies and their cigarettes.  They barely made eye contact as we passed each other and my opinions on the girls’ appearances changed.  The shapely girl was cute, but had a pair of nerdy glasses I had missed that reduced her sex appeal some.  The darker brunette friend, on the other hand, was a wholesome knockout, far more beautiful than I expected, looking almost like a young Disney actress.  After passing them, I paced the sidewalk slowly looking for cigarette butts.  I was losing hope as I didn’t see any recently extinguished butts nearby but at one point got a whiff of cigarette smoke and figured the disposed butt had to be closeby.  I peaked in the grass on both sides of the (thankfully) empty sidewalk until I saw the smoldering remains of a cork filter which I was able to identify as a Camel Blue.  I didn’t know which girl had smoked it and didn’t find the other girl’s butt, but getting that brand ID was a final trophy of a sighting that had delivered way beyond expectations already.

From there, I headed back to my car and drove home.  The girls’ slow walking pace was an asset once again as I took the long drive around the block–just in case–and found them heading to the cluster of apartments a block to my west.  They weren’t smoking additional cigarettes, but I was able to get one final look at their sexy bodies and at the dark brunette’s adorable face.  The most likely scenario is that these girls were a one-hit wonder, but suffice it to say I continued looking for them every time I approached the neighborhood gas station the rest of the summer, unfortunately never seeing them again.

 

Again, not my best list of random sightings over the years and of my three year-end lists it’s reasonable to expect this will be the one to see the most decline year to year.  Then again, there’s a decent turnover of hotties in my neighborhood because of the community college so many of them attend, meaning addicted girls from the neighborhood could continue to be a primary source for this list in the years ahead.  I certainly hope so because scoring nearly all of my good sightings of the year at my August fairs leaves me seriously unfulfilled the other 11 months of the year.

 

 

Top-25 Fairgrounds Sightings of 2014

When you look at the dire statistics of smoking these days that suggest tobacco use is in absolute collapse, it’s pretty incredible that I continue scoring quality sightings of young female smokers to the extent that I do at my fairs.  While there is some evidence of a general trajectory of decline and a modest (and annoying) presence of electronic cigarettes, traditional old tobacco cigs continued to rule the world at my three main fairgrounds venues, all of which delivered again this year.  In the previous two years, I began to worry about the Iowa State Fair as it was beginning to slump as a venue, but it came roaring back with a vengeance this year delivering a flurry of great sightings.  I even squeezed in a third day at the Iowa State Fair this year due to a scheduling anomaly, the first and likely only time in the foreseeable future I’ll have that much Iowa State Fair time.  The extra day helped me score an all-time high bounty of sightings during the 2014 fair season with 790.  And it’s a pretty solid list throughout as well as I had no problem singling out 25 sightings worthy of year-end recognition, and frankly had a couple of sightings to spare that in a lesser year would also have made the list.  I had three grand slam homeruns among the 2013 list, but only had one this year that I would give that tip-of-the-upper-tier designation to, but it’s an unforgettable sighting of the kind you’re very happy to get once a lifetime let alone once a year.  With that said, let’s get to the best of 2014…..

 

#25.  Minnesota State Fair Day 1, Sightings #20-22

My first day at this year’s Minnesota State Fair got off to a very slow start.  A good four hours had passed and it was early afternoon when I finally scored my first extra base hit  on a triple-bang sighting.  I always encircle the beer gardens block multiple times a day as it usually accounts for a good quarter or more of overall Minnesota State Fair sightings on any given day, but only in the last few years have I bothered with the alleyway that separates the square block of restaurants and bars on the beer gardens block and the sheep building.  While the alleyway has delivered a couple of modest sightings in years past, it exploded that day with three great sightings that played out simultaneously.  As I ventured onto that block, I immediately noticed a dark blond early 20s girl in the company of a guy, both in costume probably for some dance show they put on inside one of the bars.  The girl’s costume had a fully exposed midriff and a solid 10 inches of her bare belly was on full display.  Unfortunately, she was not positioned in a place where I was able to watch from closeby but I was able to see a few nice drags from afar.   But the real action in the alleyway was still yet to come….

I noticed an unattractive 20-something brunette smoking along a cement ledge on the alley where dozens of people were sitting to rest across the entire block.  But standing next to her was a wholesome-looking blond with a ponytail and a headband….and she was smoking too!  My first impression judging from her face, body type, and presentation was that she was about 16, but a closer look and the fact that she had a stroller with a one-year-old inside confirmed to me she was probably at least 20.  Still, what a profile with the girl’s pretty and wholesome face combined with her Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt (seriously!) and her dark blue capris sucking on a freshly lit cigarette…..

And she was a big-time smoker as well, taking very nice and long drags followed by absolutely tremendous 6-7-second hold times.  The exhales suffered for this as with most smokers who hold the smoke in for a long time, the smoke clung to her lung tissue rather than coming out of her face in force, leaving fairly shallow trickles of smoke to empty out of her mouth and nose in the distant aftermath of her drags.  And she was also a chronic spitter, dropping no fewer than five lugies during the course of her cigarette and always shortly after drags.  I tried to discipline myself to snap fewer photos given how risky they are but couldn’t resist snapping one of her at a reasonably close distance and in mid-drag.  There were two other young boys in close proximity that seemed like they knew the blond smoker even though they didn’t leave with her.  Whatever the case, what an incredible role model she was for them and the baby in the stroller who gets to see mom smoking so unapologetically and constantly spitting while doing so.  These are some young lads well on their way to having a smoking fetish….

And while blondie was smoking and spitting her way through her all-white, I looked to my right to find another gal taking a smoke break.  And not just any gal, a very hot early 20s brunette who just might have been the biggest babe of the day.  I suspect she was another worker at one of the bar and grills as she was wearing a ball cap that most likely identified the name of her employer on the fairgrounds.  The rest of her outfit was a black tanktop and black leggings that framed a perfect young female body.  Her smoking style was more traditional and less ferocious than the blond spitter, still with very nice drags but with much cloudier exhales.  For a good two minutes, I was standing in the middle of them (I figure they were about 20 yards apart) and literally turning my head back and forth, to the left to watch blondie take a drag and hock up a lugie, and then to the right to see the beautiful brunette standing all by herself and taking a drag while monkeying around on her phone.  After more than four hours of drudgery thus far in the day, it was the first time I felt alive on August 23, 2014.

Unfortunately, the brunette cut her cigarette short, crushing it out and leaving the final third for later, denying me the butt ID, before walking off.  But the blond was still smoking and ended up dropping her cigarette to the pavement and preparing the stroller to head back into the fairgrounds.  Oddly, the young boys who were talking to the blond didn’t go with, but the unattractive brunette with her did tag along, the two women and the baby wheeling into the busy crowd with no indication except perhaps a residual tobacco stench signifying that such a wholesome young gal had just defiled herself with a cigarette.  I had no problem IDing her all-white discarded butt as a Camel Crush.

 

#24.  Iowa State Fair Day 1, Sighting #95

After two disappointing years in a row, my first day at this year’s Iowa State Fair was an unqualified success and one place that was really a gold mine this year, particularly after dark, was the east side beer garden area.  I made a pass through the area around 9:30 p.m. and when I saw an open bench across the street I thought it was a good opportunity to put those gel-filled inserts into my shoes that lessen the impact on my feet late in the day. As happens almost every year at every fair, this choice brought about a great sighting. At the bench next to mine was a mother with a stroller, and from out of nowhere this early 20s brunette hottie in short shorts comes running over and lowers her face into the stroller to make baby talk with the child she referred to as “little buddy”. It took a couple of seconds but I noticed a partially smoked cigarette in the hand of the girl and I almost needed a diaper change of my own based on my bodily response. She talked to the mediocre-looking mother for a minute and never did take a drag from her cigarette while in the presence of the baby, but before leaving once again leaned over to make baby talk with the infant, and surprisingly the baby didn’t scream a fit after being exposed to her ashtray mouth from such close range…..

Up to that point it was too dark for me to fully appreciate this girl’s features until she cooperatively walked back across the street closer to the beer gardens and relit the cigarette that apparently went out. She also met up with two nonsmoking female friends, also in the 21-22 range and both attractive, but my smoker girl was the hottest and very obviously the alpha female of the group, doing the vast majority of the talking as she attended to her cigarette. Her presentation was killer, in a country girl blouse and daisy dukes that gorgeously framed her chiseled ass and crotch, with a pair of smooth legs and cowgirl boots that were just the perfect touch to complement her image. Her smoking style complemented her demeanor as well….high-strung and a little flaky. She would say something to the friends and then start looking around with a confused look on her face. Perhaps she was halfway intoxicated or perhaps she’s just this way no matter what, but whatever the case her ADD-style drags were followed up by disorganized and sloppy exhales that drifted wherever they may, once into the face of one of the nonsmoking friends. I got to see about five of these drags before she dropped the cigarette and crushed it out. When it came to ID it I figured I stumbled into a Marlboro Red, but there was some lines on the filter that aren’t consistent with Reds, even though the light black Marlboro print above the filter sure suggested it was. Must be one of the dozens of Marlboro Red variations floating out there these days. Whatever the case, the east side beer gardens delivered again, and not for the last time that evening!

 

#23.  Local County Fair, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday Nights

Back in the summer over the nights this girl’s sighting played out, I was frustrated with my bad luck and bad locations that prevented me from scoring the caliber of sighting I knew she was capable of, and for that reason didn’t expect I would include her in the year-end top-25 fairgrounds list.  But then I realized after the fact that girl whose storyline played out primarily over Wednesday and Friday nights also had a cameo on Tuesday night, and when adding together her body of work over three nights, I just had to include her despite the inconvenient logistics…

I was really on a tear around 10:30 on Tuesday night, the opening night of the local county fair, and scored another of a string of quality sightings when I exited the midway area and spotted a trio of late teen dudes in the company of a hot blond.  The blond was a beauty and her gray tanktop and dark jean shorts covering a perfect ass was my kind of summer outfit and when I noticed she was holding an unlit cigarette in her hand, she just gave off the irresistible aura of a good girl corrupted.  I followed the foursome to an isolated seating area outside a closed-down-for-the-night 4-H food stand where the girl and one of the guys sparked up their cigarettes.  It was adorable seeing her put her legs up on the barrier in front of her as she sat on the bench smoking, and smoking very nicely producing very cloudy exhales visible even amidst the dark backdrop.  Unfortunately, I strongly suspect I was spotted early and often glaring at this group as I caught them making eye contact with me several times.  After a few moments of this they got up and left.  I stealthly walked around a building and kept tabs on them for a bit, but eventually they walked out of sight.  The logistics just weren’t good enough on this one which was unfortunate because the girl was impressive.

Fast forward to Wednesday night around the same time of evening and I was keeping tabs on a girl who I had just seen smoking who migrated just inside the carnival with her friend and at one point I noticed there was a gorgeous 18-ish blond in a light blue blouse and short white shorts lingering with them and brandishing a freshly lit cigarette.  I just had to get a closer look at this!  But when I got to a decent vantage point, the cigarette was no longer in her hand.  What happened?  Some shrimpy black kid who looked about 14 was standing next to her and held a cigarette of his own, and he presumably let her have a drag of his.  D’oh!  And the girl was an knockout to boot, frustrating me that I missed however brief of a show as it was.  At the time I didn’t even realize it was the same girl from the previous night, but her more colorful presentation this evening managed to up her sex appeal even higher.   Thankfully, I hadn’t seen the last of her on Wednesday night…

The county fair’s final treat for me on an extremely successful Wednesday night came in the final moments before I left, a girl who I got the briefest of appetizers from about 45 minutes earlier.  It was the hot blond in the blue blouse and skimpy white shorts who was briefly in possession of a cigarette but apparently relinquished it to a shrimpy black male.  Only now she was standing amidst a crowd of males her age (right around 18) and had a freshly lit cigarette all her own between her fingers.  The good news is that she was positioned in between two food stands in the center of the grounds and there was an open bench I was able to sit and get a pretty good look.  The bad news is she kept drifting in and out of my line of vision, either getting obstructed by one of the guys or walking off in front of one of the stands where I couldn’t see her.  The even worse news is that she was an agonizingly slow smoker, going an eternity between drags.  But amidst all this waiting I was still able to have my heart positively broken admiring her wholesome blond beauty (it would be hard to construct a more perfect Midwestern girl) in those snug white shorts showing off so much beautiful leg.  I finally got to see one drag–sort of–but I caught most of a hugely cloudy exhale positioned skyward.  I had assumed this girl was probably a social smoker up to that point, but was starting to question that now.  And further developments on the sighting would cause me to question my first impression even more….

There was an old man smoker who I thought worked one of the food stands who came out for a smoke several times that evening and throughout the fair.  He was hovering near those food stands with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and happened to make eye contact with my gorgeous blond smoker.  Blondie warmly said to him “Good night.  We’ll see you tomorrow!” as if she knew him.  Maybe she did, but either way it was adorable to have this delicate flower of a smoker girl communicating with another smoker old enough to be her grandfather.  After the old timer faded from the scene, it was more of a mangled mess with excrutiatingly long wait times between drags, but a blond guy that may or may not have been her boyfriend who was also smoking a cigarette put his arm around her shoulder, the two of them standing there with cigarettes protruding from their fingers.  Honestly, my hands would instead have been all over her ass in those white shorts, but hey, that’s me.  Anyway, I kept waiting for a drag to transpire but it just never did…and then the girl walked in front of one of the food stands and drove me absolutely nuts as all I could see was the cigarette held between her fingers while she was there.  I did get something else fascinating though….the name.  The same blond guy who had his arm around here was talking some kind of jive amidst the group and then shouted her direction, “Isn’t that right Sarah?!?!”  Since the blond beauty was the only girl around, “Sarah” had to be my favorite cigarette-wielding hottie.  And the same guy quickly afterwards talked to another guy in the group who had lit up and asked “So you’re smoking cigs now too?” indicating to me this whole group was more than mere social smokers….

But it became clear I wasn’t gonna get to see anything else from my vantage point on the bench and I also had no realistic chance of getting a butt ID amidst this giant crowd, so I decided my parting shot would be to linger in a standing posture parallel to the food stand she was standing in front of in hopes of catching one more drag.  Good choice.  Only seconds after I arrived, I finally got my first direct view of this babe smoking…and she delivered in spades.  She took a nice rich drag, puckering her lips around that all while filter and ingesting the poisons into her perfect body before tilting her head skyward and releasing a spectacularly cloudy exhale.  This girl was the real deal without question.  Much as I wished I could linger, I just couldn’t and the best I could do was walk directly past her en route to the exit hoping she reeked of smoke, but I didn’t really get an identifiable odor off of her and simply called it a successful night on the almost completely emptied-out fairgrounds en route to my car.

Two nights later I’d get one more painfully imperfect encounter late on Friday evening after they shut the carnival down and limited the amount of territory I had to navigate.  But the last girl who had anything good to show me Friday night was sweet Sarah wearing an outfit very similar to Wednesday night’s, a blue top and crazy sexy white shorts.  Unfortunately, just like Wednesday, she was immersed in a thick huddle of teenagers in the middle of the grounds where I had no hope of getting a prolonged sighting.  Grrrr!  When I saw she had an all-white cigarette lit, smoldering only inches away from those exceptional white shorts, I really pushed my luck and made two or three passes by their group hoping I’d time it right and catch one of her infrequent drags.  The best I could do was look from afar and see a plume of smoke rise from their group, knowing it came from her black lungs.

Oh Sarah!  Why can’t you smoke in a place where a fetisher can actually see you?!?!  If you did, I promise you that you’re good enough to be immortalized forever in my blog Hall of Fame!  On my final loop around the area, however, Sarah was not smoking again but checking out her ass I took note of something I missed on previous passes.  While her cell phone was clearly in the right back pocket of her shorts, her unidentifiable pack of cigarettes was in the left back pocket.  Never have I been more jealous of a pack of cigarettes.  Sarah’s inaccessibility kept her from being much higher on the list, but her overall body of work over three nights this year nonetheless qualified her for year-end acclaim.  I’m hopeful I’ll be able to get a comprehensive sighting from her next summer though.

 

#22. Minnesota State Fair Day 1, Sightings #49-50

It’s sometimes frightening to look back and realize how close I can come from missing a great sighting, and in many cases probably have.  But in the generally mediocre mid-afternoon hours of my first day at the Minnesota State Fair, a very savvy and timely observation helped me avoid missing one of my top-five sightings of the day.  As I was heading to the northwest corner of the grounds to the new Heritage Center area just renovated this past year, I was crossing paths with two couples that included an early 20s blond in a black tanktop and white shorts with what looked like a lighter cupped in her right hand.  I took a second look upon passing and felt certain that it was indeed a lighter, leading me to do a 18o-degree pivot and follow them.  Now I’m a sucker for white shorts and I’m sure that’s what drew my eyes to that blond as I approached her, but as I turned around I noticed that the other girl in the foursome already had a cork filter cigarette going…..

She was an attractive 22ish light brunette in a blue blouse and jean shorts with smooth legs coming out from underneath.  I didn’t have to wait long until she took a drag and I was in heaven to be following a scofflaw smoker girl in a smoking-forbidden part of the grounds.  But just as I was getting settled in for her show, the blond cupping the lighter sprung my eyes back her way as she inserted an all-white cigarette between her lips and let it dangle for a few seconds while approaching her lighter to it.  I got an uncharacteristically perfect snapshot of her with the cigarette dangling from her lips, along with a guy approaching her giving her the evil eye for smoking a cigarette where she wasn’t supposed to.  I just get the feeling that neither blondie nor her friend much cared about his opinion or anybody else’s though….

Now both girls were about even in attractiveness, with neither being bombshells but both being above-average among modern smoking coeds.  But based on presentation and smoking style, the blond won the round as far as I’m concerned, looking spectacular working those tight white shorts.  She also took longer drags and produced much cloudier exhales than the friend, and no doubt a number of people who hate cigarette smoke were forced to wade through her smelly steam blasts in this very busy part of the grounds.  I followed from the side, admiring both girls and capturing them both in mid-drag on a couple of occasions, adorably walking next to their nonsmoking boyfriends who are clearly both ready, willing, and able to endure these ashtray-mouthed young females up close and personally….

A weird pivot took place as they got about halfway towards the grandstand, and the foursome turned around and headed the other direction.  I continued to follow when, unsurprisingly, the harder-smoking blond in the white shorts finished her cigarette first, dropping the all-white to the pavement which I easily identified as a Marlboro Light.  I then found myself walking behind the light brunette who was still smoking, and at one point she turned around and made eye contact with me.  I feared I had been busted but she didn’t say anything and pressed forward finishing off her cigarette while weaving through the large crowd.  About a minute after the blond finished off hers, the light brunette littered hers on the pavement as well.  I could tell by the markings while she was smoking that it was a Camel Menthol and confirmed that after she dropped it.  It was such a relief to score my first sighting of the day worthy of my year-end favorites list, particularly since I came so close to walking right past it without noticing the smoking.

 

#21. Minnesota State Fair Day 2, Sighting #176

The biggest downside of the Minnesota State Fair is that I ride up (and back) with my parents so I have to operate to some degree on their timetable, which means a rigid departure time of 10:30 p.m. every visit.  On this year’s second day at the MNSF, time was closing down on me and I was on the final quarter lap of the grounds with just a few minutes to go when I struck gold near the Heritage Center and the fair entrance on the northwest side of the grounds.  In the previous two years, I’ve gotten a cigar sighting at my fairs worthy of my year-end best lists, but I waited until the literal last seven minutes of fetish time during the 2014 fair season to score one in 2014 as this wholesome-beyond-imagination 22-ish blond sat there Indian-style next to her boyfriend in a tanktop and jean shorts smoking a Black ‘N’ Mild cigar.  And when I say wholesome-beyond-imagination, we’re talking a girl whose long blond hair flowed down her back in a braid!  And the face matched the presentation.  Just like last year’s 18ish braided cutie smoking a cigar at the Iowa State Fair, I was aghast to see a girl of this pedigree publicly smoking a cigar.  She had yet to take a drag as I was making these early observations, so I was curious how she’d deliver when she did….

The half-smoked plastic-tipped cigar entered her mouth and she ingested a healthy snootful, creating an early stream of airborne cigar smoke just with her drag.  But it was about five seconds later when she exhaled that the real cloud surfaced, mushrooming from her mouth into the night sky.  I was positioned so perfectly that I was able to walk right through her exhaled cloud and smell the cigar stench, but as I was doing so, I almost missed her take a second drag from it, only a few seconds removed from exhaling the first one.  Damn girl!  The whole presentation was spectacular, with a wholesome boyfriend not smoking anything to her right and a family with young children to her left who had to have smelled her cigar odor as ripe and dirty as it was.  I kept looking at the clock on my camera watching the minutes tick by, agonizing about having to walk away from this in a couple short minutes, and I savored the visual of this perky and innocent-looking blond with this smelly cigar in her hand talking to her boyfriend…..

The plan was to stick around for a couple more drags, and she delivered with a repeat of her first, an intense ingestion of cigar smoke into her lungs through that plastic tip, a good five seconds of compression time inside of her, and then a mushrooming exhale that exploded out of her face.  I was ready to walk through it but learned my lesson from last time, waiting two seconds and watching her take a second drag immediately following, and then walking through her sublimely stinky exhale.   What happened next was a semi-buzzkill.  It seemed too good to be true that this wholesome blond was sitting there smoking a cigar by herself, and she confirmed my cynicism by handing the cigar to the boyfriend.  Nooooo!  The storyline was so much cooler when it was just her smoking the cigar in front of the boyfriend.  The upside was that I now had a guilt-free escape from a sighting that would have destroyed me if I walked away from it while the girl was still smoking.  And, of course, the more obvious upside was that I spent the final minutes of the 2014 Minnesota State Fair watching a gorgeous, wholesome blond girl with a giant braid going down her back smoking a cigar.

 

#20. Iowa State Fair Day 3, Sighting #62

Because of a fluke of the calendar and the fact that I moved some stuff around this year, I was able to go the Iowa State Fair for a third visit on a Saturday afternoon, and it was another excellent day.   The grandstand entertainment for the evening was Lady Antebellum and Billy Currington and their concert was scheduled to start around 8.  About a half hour before the show began, lots of country girls in short shorts were hovering around the grandstand entrances and I was looking for some with cigarettes between their fingers and was lucky enough to find one.  Standing just off of the curb on the concourse and jumping out at me from a distance was a girl with a freshly lit cigarette between her fingers who was surrounded by nonsmoking elders.  I hustled on up for a closer look as she was foraging through her wallet/purse where a visible pack of Marlboro Lights was front and center.  And getting a closer look at her, she was at most 18, most likely a year or two younger with long, curly light brown hair, a black Lady Antebellum T-shirt (no mystery where she would be going in mere moments) and a nice pair of dark blue cutoffs cresting over smooth young legs and an unusual pair of boots.  Typical country girl look right?  Well, sort of….

The features of this girl and the nonsmoking younger girl next to her both struck me as at least partially Hispanic.  Yet the cluster of nonsmoking adults the girls were standing with were as middle-aged white Iowan as they come, all joined together standing off the concourse curb so that the teenage girl in their company could smoke a cigarette.  Now it’s vaguely possible that these girls were not Hispanic but I got a couple of photos and have studied them carefully and it seems almost certain to me the smoker girl has some Latina in her.  Perhaps the daughters are adopted.  I have no idea but whatever the family dynamic, it was an adorable smoking show….

The adults mostly talked to themselves but my Latina Marlboro teen was slowly enjoying that cigarette, taking nice enough drags but making that thing last a long time.  She usually turned her head to the right when exhaling, avoiding the cluster of nonsmokers that almost certainly included her parents.  And the sighting had one oddball little wrinkle as well that gave it additional character.  Her cigarette wasn’t burning properly, which I noticed right away but which she didn’t seem to notice for a few minutes, with a long stretch of black paper that had burned but was clinging for its life onto her smoldering cigarette and refusing to come off.  At first she showed the cigarette to the gal to her right who I assumed was her mother and how the burnt paper was clinging to it, and I’m sure mom was absolutely fascinated to see the deformity on her teenage daughter’s cigarette.  After multiple aggressive attempts to ash the paper off, girly finally had to kneel down and rub the burnt paper onto the pavement and then stood back up and resumed smoking….

It was a nice long show and I wasn’t going anywhere until she finished it.  Finally she did, and I waited another few minutes for them to head back into the grandstand when I stepped up and definitively IDed her butt as a traditional Marlboro Light rather than one of its offshoots.  As I turned and watched the family enter the grandstand, knowing somebody was gonna be forced to sit next to that smelly daughter during the show, I speculated that this may have been the second girl adopted across racial/ethnic lines who I had seen smoking that day in the company of nonsmoking parents.   I wonder if there’s something to that….greater likelihood of girls from adopted parents taking up smoking.  I can imagine an increased permissiveness in such households for various reasons, but then again, it may just be a fluke.  Fluke or not, said scenarios made for two of my favorite sightings on August 16, 2014, with this one by far the better of the two.

 

#19. Iowa State Fair Day 1, Sighting #73

I kept encountering detours of the best kind as I attempted to enter the midway on the first day at the Iowa State Fair right around 8 p.m. and made another shot at entering when I looked to the bathroom area at the edge of the midway on the southwest side that I was once again detoured in the best possible way. Yet another group of three guys and two girls were hovering there and I saw from afar that the epic beauty of the group was taking a pack of Newport 100s out of her purse. Iowa State Fair midway, you are gonna have to wait again!

I hustled into a perfect stalking post only a feet few in front of the group against the wall and watched this gorgeous brunette extract a cigarette from her pack.   She was the most beautiful girl of the day, probably about 23 with very dark features to the point that I wondered if she had some Middle Eastern heritage despite looking generally caucasian. She was the shortest in her group at about 5’4” and the only smoker, decked out in a neon pink top and dark blue jeans. She had the look of a long-time heavy smoker and her technique matched the look as she placed the long Newport in her mouth and lit up. If there was any lingering doubt that there was something special about this girl, it vanished when she fired up and did an astounding triple pump dangle off of the light-up, gulping down three shots of tar and nicotine into her lungs before removing the cigarette and cutting loose with a skyward exhale that was cloudy as all hell….

There wouldn’t be any other drags quite that incredible, but her second drag also consisted of a dangling drag and as the shortest person in the group, her skyward exhale managed to whack one of the nonsmoking dudes squarely in the face. I couldn’t have been more content with my location here and settled in for a long show. It was approaching dusk so the two photos I took are a little blurry, and she was on the inside of her group and both photos were a little too crowded, but I did capture her in mid-drag in one of them. Her drags were all substantial, were all nicely paced, and her exhales all above-average in cloudiness, but there was one thing that didn’t fit…..the cigarette just kept on keeping on. I have no idea how she made it last as long as she did as her drags were hard and frequent, but she kept hitting that cigarette for yet another nicotine jolt every 30 seconds or so for an astoundingly long time.

She eventually dropped the cigarette and crushed it out in front of her, right in the middle of this mixed-gender friends group where she was the only smoker. It’s a good thing I saw she was smoking a Newport 100 before she lit up because the group wasn’t going anywhere for quite some time. I finally gave up and made that long-delayed midway run, and finally about three-quarters way through I saw this group inside the midway, especially that unmistakable dark brunette beauty in the memorable neon pink top, ready to enjoy the midway after filling her body with the nastiest chemicals she can legally consume.

 

#18. Iowa State Fair Day 1, Sightings #123-124

It was the manic late evening hours of the my first day at the Iowa State Fair, and I had spent a lot of time in the last hour focusing on one special sighting, but took some detours from that sighting and even those proved hugely productive.  With time winding down for the evening as the clock approached 11:30,  I had to take one last voyage past the east side beer gardens area, a block that had already delivered in spades that day but had one more magical moment in store for me before quitting time. The moment began with the evening’s final genuine “discovery”, a knockout 18ish dark brunette standing sans an adult beverage (good indication that she was as young as she appeared) near the beer gardens entryway smoking a cigarette in the presence of two nonsmoking guys.  She was one of the half dozen or so smoker girl faces of the day that just leaped out at me that day because she was so beautiful and didn’t look like a smoker.  Raising the stakes of this profile was her black tanktop and ultrafeminine pair of skimpy white shorts with a mesh, lace pattern on the front.  It was quite a contrast to the freshly lit and stinky cigarette between her fingers….

Did her substance match her style on the smoking front, you ask?  Yeah buddy!  Her drags were intense and her exhales some of the cloudiest of the day, the drags featuring a trait I’ve only seen a few times before from hot young smoker girls….the gulp!  After every drag, her cheeks inflated like a blowfish with inhaled smoke that she then gulped down before exhaling.  This beauty was no amateur, and most adorably, there were two occasions where the taller nonsmoking guys she was with were on the receiving end of vicious secondhand smoke attacks as she looked up and talked to them while spewing her cancerous exhaust…..

Even after more than 12 hours of watching girls smoke that day, I was still capable of getting genuinely excited watching a performance like this, and had a nice vantage point to watch her consume nearly the entire cigarette, with long succulent drags she gulped down followed by giant cloudbursts of exhaled smoke that expelled the contents of her black lungs.  The sighting ended with a flourish as well as the bar was playing some sort of dance music and my girl started to shake her booty with the music in a well-choreographed groove that made her feminine assets wiggle in the sexiest imagineable way, those feminine shorts of hers being particularly impossible for me to take my eyes off.  She approached a food stand when she took her final drag and obnoxiously dropped her butt to the curb and I had no problem approaching it and identifying it as a Marlboro Black.  Naturally, I figured she was gonna order food at the stand as most people do, but she was apparently just socializing with whoever was working there for a couple of moments.  Why can’t I get smoker girls of her pedigree to start socializing with me?!?!?   This girl and the two guys she was with started walking the same direction as I was headed and I followed for a couple of minutes admiring that ass, and got particularly intrigued when I saw her fidgeting around in her purse, expecting that perhaps another cigarette would be smoked.  It never happened though and we parted ways soon after.

Now I chose to tell the narrative of the last girl in full because she was the highlight of my final walk to the east side beer gardens block, but there was oh so much more going on during that five-minute stretch.  Right in the middle of watching the brunette, I spotted another smoker girl across the street approaching the entrance of the beer gardens in the company of a guy.  She looked like she was in her mid-20s, dark blond, wearing a pink top and jean shorts.  She was attractive but I had a choice to make to cross the street and pursue her or continue to watch my teen brunette and I chose the teen brunette.  Still, I was able to witness from afar the nasty tricks this little hottie had up her sleeve.  She was right on the precipice of the beer gardens with cigarette in hand, but she and the nonsmoking boyfriend stopped for a moment before going inside, and I presumed it was to let her finish her cigarette.  So when they walked inside about a minute later, I took one more close look to confirm my suspicion that the cigarette was gone….but it wasn’t.  Here was this adorable blond scofflaw walking deep inside the beer gardens building still criminally brandishing a cigarette.  If only a sighting like this had transpired when I wasn’t distracted by an even hotter girl!

 

#17. Local County Fair, Wednesday Night

In the last couple of years, the smoking area outside the grandstand at my local county fair hasn’t delivered the way it routinely did five years ago, and the Wednesday night concert by country singer Craig Campbell had been another case in point until the last 15 minutes or so of the concert before I finally hit pay dirt, and boy did I ever, with one of the most confusing sightings I’ve ever gotten.  This cute and petite little blond in a tanktop and jean shorts wandered out of the grandstand and lurked in the smoking area.  She looked about 13 so I figured she was just waiting for somebody or preparing to send a text.  Imagine my utter disbelief when about five seconds later an unlit cigarette was inserted into her lips and sparked up….

I continued to be skeptical though as her back was now towards me and I figured I must have just missed her face.  She had to have simply been an older girl who looked really young, but she cooperated nicely and took a seat on a bench in the smoking area, sitting in the light and letting me have as good of a look at her face as I could possibly get.  And sweet Jesus I could still swear she was not a day over 14.  But that’s when the confusion started.  Two much older guys followed her onto the bench and it was clear they were part of the same group.  I didn’t get a good look at the guy who sat across from her with his back to me, but figured he was in his 30s.  But the guy who sat next to her was this bearded, thuggish-looking young guy who looked about 22.  All three of them were smoking cigarettes and I was carefully studying this odd dynamic for clues as to their association with one another…..

What I got was a contrasting litany of clues that continue to leave me scratching my head months later.  The girl carried herself like a very new smoker, everything from the way she held her cigarette to her extremely shallow one-second drags and minimalist exhales.  And adorably, she had a jug of Gatorade in front of her that she was taking sips from in between shallow drags on her cigarette.  Everything about her smoking style screamed that she was exactly what she originally seemed, an early teen girl who just picked up the smoking habit.  But right when I thought I had this situation figured out and was leaning back to enjoy a rare show of an adorable beginner early teen smoker, the thuggish bearded guy leaned over to give the girl a quick peck on the lips.  I had dismissed the prospect of this guy being her boyfriend because he looked at least eight years older than she did, but the evidence was now pointing to him being just that.  Was she considerably older than she looked?  I just kept looking at that tender face right in front of me and simply couldn’t see it.  There was just no way she was older than 14!  But I couldn’t imagine this guy being any less than 21 and would be pretty shocked if he was carrying out a public relationship with a girl as young as she seemed given the obvious legal implications….

I never quit trying to figure this sighting out but it only got more confusing.  After several minutes she crushed the cigarette out on the edge of the bench she was sitting on and dropped it to the grass.  Show over right?  Not by a longshot.  I wasn’t paying as close of attention in the moments after she finished her cigarette but lo and behold when I looked over again she was already smoking another one, her smoking style continuing to consist of the shallowest imaginable drags and exhales.  The presumed boyfriend smoked another as well, and also pulled in for another quickie kiss.  But things just got insane after she finished the second cigarette and she reached to the pack of L & M and lighter in front of her to fire up a THIRD cigarette.  Even with all the ambiguity about the girl’s age, I had still grown comfortable with the idea that she was a rookie smoker based on her rudimentary style, but now even that was in question.  After all, how many rookie smokers smoke three cigarettes in a row over a 15-minute period.  The confusion was killing me, but it was a good kind of killing to be sure….

In the moments to come, two hot smoker girls on the other side of the fence inside the beer gardens had lit up as well.  It was darker on the other side of the fence so I didn’t get as excellent of a vantage point of the new girls as I did with the would-be 14-year-old cutie in the smoking area, but I was able to see that the girls were both hot and much more skilled smokers than the teenager with long, deep drags and cloudy exhales.  It was not uncommon for me to be able to dart my eyes from the young girl outside the fence to the two 20-somethings inside the fence and see three consecutive drags, the cherries of their cigarettes glowing red one after another with a cloud of smoke spewed from their respiratory systems that were as black as the evening sky.  It was far and away the highlight thus far of the smoking area from the two nights of concerts…..

And the show ended right around the same time as the two 20-somethings wrapped up their cigarettes and crushed them out while the younger girl who had by now smoked as many cigarettes combined as the two older guys in her company finished her third cigarette soon after.  The concert was wrapping up and the trio got up to leave moments before Corey and I would depart, giving me one last look at this girl’s body which, again, looked like that of an early teen girl.  So what was the most likely scenario here?  Perhaps it was exactly as it seemed and a much older guy was dating this jailbait girl and corrupting her into being a smoker.  But honestly I suspect he may have been a few years younger than I suspected and she may have been a few years older.  You’ll occasionally run into girls, especially really petite girls, who look much younger than they are, but damn if this girl didn’t look like she was just getting ready to start the eighth grade next month.  I didn’t see her on the grounds again Wednesday night and thus never got any more context to understand her story.  Even with the confusion, it was my one of the better sightings at the local county fair this year.

 

#16. Minnesota State Fair Day 2, Sighting #21

My second day at this year’s Minnesota State Fair was a record attendance day, meaning the crowds were absolutely suffocating, especially by mid-afternoon, which was the time of day I headed east on Dan Patch Avenue where the first electric moment of the day awaited me.  I made it a block east of the grandstand when I saw an early-to-mid-20s blond with a beer opening up her purse and taking out a pack of Marlboro Lights, wasting no time inserting a cigarette into her mouth.  As crowded as the foot traffic was, I still was able to successfully pivot and keep up with her, and was in for one epically obnoxious show…..

She was adorable, with shoulder-length blond hair falling mostly on bare flesh as there wasn’t much fabric holding up her low-cut brownish tanktop.  But I’ve always been more of a South America kind of guy and she dazzled down under with a pair of pale pink shorts.  Now the girl had a little bit of meat on her bones….not chubby enough to be a factor for the overwhelming majority of guys but with her body type she’ll probably struggle to keep the weight off as she gets older.  At age 22-23 or whatever she was, however, I was licking my chops at her presentation especially as I watched her take her first drag from her cigarette amidst this dense crowd.  There were a couple of guys walking behind her who were with her, at least at the time not smoking.  The density of the crowd had the potential to be a huge problem on the photo-taking front, but in this case I snapped the best photo I’ve ever gotten with the cigarette dangling from her lips.  I had no need to attempt any additional photos after that masterpiece, which was good because I was about to be treated to the dangle of the year….

I kept pace with her after the photo and couldn’t help but notice that cigarette stayed perched in her mouth for a very extended period, at first seemingly out of convenience but eventually she began foraging through her purse for something and that dangle just continued and continued and continued.  At least 30 seconds in, I was walking directly parallel to her and watched her pucker up her lips for a dangling drag.  One would think the smoke would be rising into her nose and becoming uncomfortable but this girl clearly can handle however much smoke the tobacco companies can throw her way.  Finally, after at least 45 seconds of dangling, the cigarette was removed from her mouth.  How I would have loved to have kissed her to taste her ashtray mouth seconds after a dangle like that!  Her group proceeded to the line for ears of sweet corn and asked some guy if where they were standing was really the end of the line.  He responded that it was, and they decided against standing in line that long and proceeded back the direction they came from down Dan Patch Avenue.  With the stifling crowds of humanity pressed together like pigs in a livestock barn, I knew it was only a matter of time before her thoughtless and unlawful smoking behavior would produce a casualty, and I was about to get one of my best reactions ever from someone on the receiving end of a cute girl’s exhale….

I watched from a rear side angle as blondie took a deep drag and as she prepared to exhale, this middle-aged guy literally cowered in anticipation of the exhale to the face he knew he was about to get.  For whatever reason, seeing his face for that split second before he got whacked made me think of “Cringer”, the wimpy tiger from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoons in the mid-80s.  Something tells me this “Cringer” will never transform into the Mighty Battle Cat like He-Man’s did, however.  I marveled at the power of cigarettes that made this middle-aged guy cower in fear of what was spewing from the mouth of a short blond girl in pink shorts.  As I pressed forward, girlie was in the final throes of the all-white she was making such quick work of, and by now one of the guys in her company had lit up in forbidden territory as well.  In another minute or so, she dropped the cigarette to the pavement without crushing it out.  I already knew it was a Marlboro Light having seen her remove it from the pack but I confirmed it again as I walked past the smoldering remains.  This was easily the best sighting from early in the day and the best of the year in terms of a girl ignoring the designated smoking area rules.  For the first time that day, I was genuinely feeling some adrenaline.

 

#15. Iowa State Fair Day 1, Sighting #40

In the previous two years, the daytime hours during my Saturday visit to the Iowa State Fair had been struggles, with quality material few and far between, but this year I scored three top-tier sightings during those daytime hours, all of which made this countdown, and set the stage for one of the best Iowa State Fair days ever.  The middle of the Big Three sightings came on the south side of the grounds near the livestock buildings. As I was proceeding south, I crossed paths with an absolutely gorgeous early 20s ponytailed dark brunette walking with a female friend and holding a freshly lit real cigarette in one hand and an e-cigarette in the other. Huh?  I immediately turned around and followed, admiring from behind her utilitarian, girl-next-door ensemble consisting of a white T-shirt and a pair of navy blue cotton shorts (not jean shorts), but the most adorable part of her ensemble was a pink baseball cap on her head from which her ponytail came out the back. She was an absolute knockout, and while it was sexy to see her in this everygirl outfit, I thought to myself how insanely hot this girl would look in her nightclub clothes….

Anyway, it was time to get to the bottom of this cig in one hand, e-cig in the other situation. She resolved it quickly by taking her first drag from the real cigarette, and it was a solid one with a nice long draw time and a cloudy, skyward-directed exhale that looked so incredible coming from such a pretty face.   The e-cigarette situation was quickly resolved too as she handed it to the friend walking next to her who began “vaping” on it shortly after. Now the friend was a looker herself, a light brunette in a matching lavender top and spotted shorts, but it was definitely the right girl of the two to be smoking the real cigarette as the dark brunette was a much more classic beauty.

The girls continued to walk northward, and it was only after a couple of minutes that I realized they were walking with three guys in their group, none of whom were smoking. I was snapping pics left and right, some from behind and some from the side, all the while admiring the walking smoking show which always impressed, accompanied by healthy drags and cloudy, skyward exhales. The only blemish on the dark brunette’s beauty was an ugly tattoo on her left arm. Now I try not to let tattoos get in the way of my appreciation of a smoker girl sighting, but certainly if I’m trying to judge top-tier sightings and rate which one I like better, a lack of tattoo is a good tiebreaker. I heard one of the girls mention “stopping for a gyro” as they walked, and the sighting took its final stand near the gyro stand where the two girls stopped with the three guys and chatted as the brunette finished her cigarette….

I enjoyed a couple more drags while waiting, admiring her body in those shorts and especially that legendary face. And the sighting kept its best moments for last as she was about to take a swig of water from her bottle, but had to free her hands first which required her to hand the cigarette to one of the two nonsmoking guys. Here stood this guy, holding this moist, three-quarters smoked cigarette straight up and you could tell by the look on his face he was pretty grossed out by it. In a few seconds, the dark brunette reclaimed the cigarette and took her best drag yet, this intense six-second behemoth in which her face lit up with squinty-eyed pleasure as she inhaled a giant snootful of smoke into that wonderful young body. I was so caught up in the moment watching this that I almost missed my chance to snap a frontal pic of her dragging. Thankfully, the drag lasted so long that I got the snapshot in while her lips were still wrapped around the cork filter. The lighting on the pic isn’t as perfect as I’d prefer but it was still one of my best photos of the day. A couple more modest drags wrapped up the cigarette before she stomped it out on the pavement and everybody got in the nearby line for the gyro. It was a cinch for me to ID the discarded butt seconds later…..a Marlboro No. 27.  I no longer had any cause to complain about this day’s sightings haul compared to the last two years at this time of the day, and little did I know I was just getting warmed up.

 

#14.  Minnesota State Fair Day 1, Sightings #80-81

In the late afternoon hours of my first day at the Minnesota State Fair, I made one of my usual walking scans along the east side of the Coliseum building where a lot of smokers take a break in the afternoon shade but every attempt I was making to leave the area was sidetracked by the revelation of a new smoker girl.  I had already tried and failed at my first attempt to leave the area and explore elsewhere and I was about to try and fail again.  This time, as I headed northward I spotted two pretty young 18-19-year-old girls holding unlit cigarettes approach the back wall of the Coliseum to smoke their cigarettes in as isolated of a location as possible…

The girls wasted no time resting against the Coliseum wall when the brunette in the tie-dye T-shirt and short jean shorts got out her lighter and flicked her cigarette to life.  The dark blond in the black tanktop and white shorts next to her, who already had her greedy hand sticking out, wasted no time taking the lighter and flicking her own cigarette to life.  While neither girl would be “the hottest girl on campus” per se, they were both sexpots in their own way, pretty girl-next-door types who you’d never expect to smoke this day and age in the brutally inhospitable smoking climate of Minnesota.  The relatively small numbers of young smoker girls I saw yesterday made them all the more scrumptious and I wasted no time snapping pics.  After taking two pics that included both girls in the process of lighting up, however, I got a message that my photo album had reached its capacity and I’d have to delete existing photos to take additional ones.  This was my cue to simply cross the street and take a bench overlooking them to enjoy the show, and what a show it was….

The girls were fast-paced and accomplished smokers, both hitting their nicotine targets copiously and feeding their fresh young bodies with cancerous tobacco and tar.  The brunette was a slightly better smoker, producing cloudier exhales that burst out of her mouth and exploded like fireworks in front of her face.  But the blond had more IT factor, smoking almost as nicely but winning me over with her more perfectly slender figure and her skimpy white shorts, which for me will always be a tiebreaker in favor of the white shorts wearer.  Less than a minute into the sighting, a young mother added some color to the sighting by wheeling her baby by in a stroller.  I was now across the street and couldn’t see how little the baby was, but the smoker girls went into full internal clock-ticking mode, oohing and aahing over the baby, with the mother making brief small talk with the foul-smelling teen girls as she walked past them, exposing her baby to the immediate presence of the girls’ carcinogenic exhales.  After that sideshow passed, the girls kept smoking at a refreshingly fast pace, a haze of smoke hovering in front of both of their faces, especially the brunette’s whose exhales were heavier in general.  I would have loved to have been sitting in front of them with my face right in the middle of that haze, but doing so would have prevented me from experiencing the upside of my long-distance view, which also produced something very special….

The proliferation of really short shorts has been one of the best developments of humankind in the last decade or so, and rarely was that more obvious than with these girls, who were both leaning up against the wall with their legs bent at the knee to form an upside-down V.  From my vantage point, this positioning combined with the microscopic nature of their shorts gave me a perfect view of their calves right up to their ass dimples, and their well-toned teenage flesh couldn’t have looked more perfect.  With both the brunette’s jean shorts and the blond’s white shorts, it felt like I was mere centimeters from a peep show of their girly parts, which was extremely exhilarating…

The girls wrapped up their cigarettes in less than five minutes, scaring me as they stubbed them out against the cement and proceeded towards the garbage can to dispose of them.  I watched their perfect asses drift away but crossed the street to check out that trash can in hopes of butt identification (other type of butts!).  I had thought I saw blond filters on the girls’ cigarettes as they approached, and sure enough right on top of the trash were two Camel Turkish Royal cigarette butts, albeit with slightly different coloring on the butts indicating there are different variations on the Turkish Royals and each girl smoked a different type.  I sped up my walking pace in hopes of catching up with them but they were a little too fast and I lost them, breaking my heart.  It was a little worrying how few girls their age were smoking that day, and it made me nervous that Minnesota’s high cigarette prices were having an effect in slashing smoker rates among this demographic, particularly wholesome-appearing girls like these.  But it was refreshing to see girls like these two keeping the tobacco tradition relevant and dressing as sexy as humanly possible while doing so.

 

#13. Minnesota State Fair Day 1, Sighting #61

It was the late afternoon hours on my first day at the Minnesota State Fair, and I was perusing near a fairly desolate and heavily shrubbed smoking area on the east side of the fairgrounds where I had scored a decent sighting about an hour earlier.  Well it delivered again as I saw this beautiful dark brunette seated on a bench next to a building all by herself smoking a cigarette.  She was a knockout, a classic beauty with shoulder-length dark brown hair who didn’t look at all like a smoker.  Venturing a guess, I’d say she was 21 give or take a year.  I only had one problem with watching this sighting play out but it was a fairly serious one.  The bench she was seated on resembled a patio attached to a building and there was a landscaping fence surrounding her.  If I went inside the “patio” I’d really be encroaching upon her space, especially since she was the only one in there.  But by standing outside looking in I was also awkwardly positioned and unable to get close enough to take a decent photo or watch her entire body at work while she smoked.  I stayed outside and leered in, not without being noticed of course, but it was entirely worth it for the show I was about to get….

As beautiful as this girl was, she was even more beautiful with a cigarette in her mouth, and for the next five minutes she cooperated beautifully with fierce and well-timed drags followed by monstrously cloudy exhales that filled the sky around her with a stinky haze.  Everything about her presentation was the epitome of feminine until she shook it up–twice–with something I didn’t see coming.  She leaned to her right and let a big juicy lugie drip from her mouth once in the middle of her cigarette and once toward the end.  Between the lighting and the awkward positioning, I only managed a distant, mediocre photo that failed to capture her uber-feminine essence, meaning I went out of my way to savor the live version, watching drag after delicious drag followed by those steamy exhales….

I was hoping for a butt ID but had a bad feeling, and the bad feeling was vindicated as she leaned down and crushed out the cigarette on the pavement, and then proceeded to insert the butt into an empty black pack.  I always thought it was a little odd that this girl was all by herself and figured she must work inside the building that she was sitting just outside, and as she headed towards the side entrance I figured my instinct must be right, but she was just dropping the empty pack of cigarettes into the trash can right by the entrance.  Nonetheless, my other observation of how odd it was for this beauty to be at the fair by herself was about to be vindicated….

In the biggest surprise turn of any sighting in quite awhile, the smoker then proceeded three benches down and met up with two nonsmoking gals sitting there that I figured must be her mother and younger sister, who are apparently too embarrassed to be seen publicly with their flesh and blood, no matter how beautiful she is, when she’s doing her stinky smoking and spitting routine.  I was so turned on that a girl this gorgeous was being ostracized by her family for her vulgar smoking behavior, and only now that she was done with it were they willing to be seen with her.  I just couldn’t get a decent photo to save my life and finally had to quit trying because she was wise to me having seen me lingering the whole time she smoked.  I still enjoyed seeing her interact with the family though and to see her standing up, finally allowing me to see what she was wearing, an oddball combination of a grandmotherly white shawl covering some sort of tanktop and a pair of cutoffs below.  Seeing her from behind was especially odd because the shawl covered almost her entire ass except for the frayed fabric of the cutoffs exposed below….

As the family pressed forward I took a peek inside that trash can and confirmed my suspicion from the black pack that the empty pack she threw away was Camel Crush Bold.  After confirming that, I briefly followed them to the International Bazaar, hoping that just maybe I could score a frontal photo, but ultimately balked having recognized how close to the sun I had already been flying with her.  This sighting would have been one of my best of the day even without the revelation at the end that she was persona non gratta with her family while she was smoking, but the hotness level went off the charts when the sighting played out that way and I felt like I finally had some real momentum going.

 

#12. Iowa State Fair Day 3, Sighting #8

It was early afternoon on my “Day 3″ at this year’s Iowa State Fair and I was walking around this alleyway that leads around one of the buildings and has a bathroom area and a big hill leading up to the east side of the grounds.  A lot of times in this area you’ll catch a couple of hotties sitting on the hill for a smoke break, and yesterday as I walked by I saw this impossibly wholesome couple where the girl had just gotten up off the grass and was approaching a garbage can.  She was the picture of Midwestern wholesomeness with a beautiful face, her dark blond hair in a ponytail, and wearing a nice white blouse and black shorts.  As she stepped up to that garbage can, I watched her toss two cigarette butts into it.  D’oh!  I had just missed a great sighting, but at the same time watching her toss those butts into the trash at least confirmed to me she was a smoker.  It was the first time ever that a girl throwing her butt into the trash worked to my advantage.  I walked away annoyed that I missed it, never imagining this was poised to become my second-best sighting of the day….

Less than an hour later I was walking past the tables behind The Depot and saw a familiar wholesome blond cutie with her boyfriend sitting at one of the tables with a beer in front of her, a freshly lit cigarette between her fingers, and a pack of Marlboro Menthols right in front of her.  This most unlikely smoker who teased me less than an hour earlier was finally gonna give me a show, and the nearly empty lineup of benches was perfect to position myself for a front-row seat, complete with action shots of her smoking.  There was an odd haze to the photo quality that left them less than perfect, but I was still satisfied, and even more so when I sat back to watch her smoke as it was just spectacular to see a cigarette approach that perfect wholesome face and draw in smoke.  And most curiously, the boyfriend wasn’t smoking.  Would this change?  I’d have to wait and see but for now I was mesmerized watching her solid, well-timed drags and cloudy sexualized exhales.  Looking down underneath the table I could see those nice black shorts of hers and I’ll just bet I was unconsciously licking my lips at the entire presentation.  She made pretty quick work of the cigarette and crushed it out on the ground before sitting the butt on the seat next to her, clearly planning to toss it in the garbage later.  I knew she dropped her butts into the trash can so that didn’t surprise me, meaning I was lucky to have seen the pack in front of her and ID her brand…..

I just had a feeling this sighting wasn’t done yet, and she confirmed my suspicion by taking out another cigarette and lighting up a couple of minutes later.  This was a face I would never have imagined to have had one cigarette touch its lips, but here this girl was on at least her third cigarette of the last hour.  The show was once again beautiful, with a solid smoking show that should be taught in schools to young girls on how a pretty young gal should properly smoke a cigarette and exude the highest level of femininity while doing so.  I watched her smoke the entire cigarette, pleased with every drag as I’m sure her black insides were, and continued to be intrigued by the fact that the boyfriend didn’t light up at all.  Up until now, when I saw her drop two cigarettes into the garbage can when I saw her an hour earlier, I figured she and the boyfriend each smoked one.  While that’s still possible, anecdotal evidence was now pointing to wholesome blondie having smoked two in a row by herself then and now!  What a spectacular find!  She crushed this cigarette out like the first and, living up to her goody-two shoes presentation in every way expect for her insatiable nicotine dependency, went to the nearest dumpster to dispose of the butts in the most environmentally friendly fashion.  I snapped a couple rear photos of her in her black shorts as they walked off, feeling perky now and knowing she’d be one of my better sightings of the day.

 

#11. Iowa State Fair Day 1, Sightings #18-19

The first few hours of my first day of this year’s Iowa State Fair seemed likely to be a repeat of the previous couple of years, with sightings few and far between, but in the mid-afternoon I got my first indication that the day was gonna be different than those early hours indicated.  I was walking down the main stretch of the concourse behind the grandstand when I spotted this sexpot 19ish duo approaching a garbage can. My radar was definitely not buzzing with anticipation as these two looked like the sort of upscale coeds who would never be smoking in the year 2014. The ponytailed light brunette in a skimpy bare midriff flower print top with jean shorts drew my attention first as I approached, and I was shocked when I saw she was holding a freshly lit cigarette in her hand. I quickly changed positions to get a better look and then I noticed she had a second cigarette which was all bent and busted up that she was tossing into the garbage. But then I noticed the equally gorgeous light brunette friend in a conservative gray top and tight white pants was also holding a cigarette, still unlit. As crazy as it would have seemed when I approached these two, they were indeed both smokers. I got a honey of a photo of the girl in white pants lighting up her cigarette before the two wandered off down the concourse. My first pursuit was to take a peek inside that garbage and see if I could get a brand name off of the discarded half cigarette, and I did. Sitting right atop the trash pile was a cork filter cigarette with the unmistakable markings of a Marlboro Red. Who woulda thought?!?!?

From there I quickly caught back up with the girls, walking mostly behind them and taking in their stinky exhales while admiring the spectacular body of the bare-midriffed babe in jean shorts, taking a few photos of her awesome body and capturing the cigarette between her fingers in most of them. I also wanted a risky frontal shot and managed to walk around them and score a pretty decent one. It was now time to settle in for the rest of the smoking show as the girls sat on a curb to finish their cigarettes and I crossed the street to watch the second half of their show. I had spent most of my time admiring the bare-midriffed sexpot with her hair up in a ponytail because of that amazing presentation, but watching the girl in white pants, whose long hair flowed over her shoulders, I had to acknowledge that she was just as pretty as the friend….and she was the better smoker of the two to boot, taking more frequent drags and producing cloudier exhales. Her smoking style was a little more masculine than I’d prefer but she still pulled it off, averaging two drags for every one the friend took as they sat there chatting, oblivious to the fact that they were being watched by at least one guy. Some random middle-aged woman stopped in front of them to either ask something or make a statement. I couldn’t hear it, but was kind of hopeful they were being lectured about their smoking….

After a good 5-7 minute show that consisted of walking and sitting, the girl in white pants crushed out her cigarette on the pavement and let it sit there while the bare-midriffed friend finished hers off about a minute later, unfortunately crushing it out and taking it to the nearest garbage can. I crossed the street when they left to check out the butt crushed out onto the pavement by the girl in white pants, and while I already knew it was a Marlboro Red based upon what was thrown in the garbage moments earlier, I couldn’t really tell from what was left on the cigarette so I’m lucky I got the butt ID from the trash can or it would remain a mystery. I took one final look at these two and briefly wondered if they were sisters as much alike as they looked despite the dramatically different presentations. I still suspect they were just friends, but it’s hard to ask for a better sighting than this in the year 2014, the public consumption of tobacco by exactly the kind of girls who most of us fetishers get most excited about seeing light up. The fact that I got to see the entire cigarettes get smoked by both of them made it that much more special. Even if I didn’t get a single other decent sighting that day, it was already worthwhile for having seen these two.

 

#10. Iowa State Fair Day 1, Sightings #50-51

I scored three spectacular sightings during the mid-to-late afternoon hours on my first visit to this year’s Iowa State Fair.  The final of those Big Three sightings chronologically took place just before 6 p.m., and a little longer of a show for this one could have been truly legendary but even the limited show I got ensures its Hall of Fame stature and my second-best sighting of the day. I was walking westward down the concourse when I saw a family of five that I presumed included a mother, father, two teenage daughters, and a teenage son walking my direction. Right away I noticed what looked to be the older daughter, a long-haired bleach blond in a little blue dress, smoking a cigarette. She was very pretty and looked about 18 or 19, and I caught her in mid-drag, the only drag I would end up seeing from this girl as she extended her hand to her right in the direction of what I presumed was her mother, a 40-something bleach blond gal who was undoubtedly attractive in her day but had a bunch of tattoos in particularly ugly places on her person. Only it wasn’t mom who was gonna claim possession of the cigarette….

Taking the cigarette instead was the younger sister, another bleach blond who reached in front of mom and grabbed the cigarette from the older sister. And she was a knockout dressed in a way that only made her more impossibly sexy. My guess is she was about 17, her shoulder-length hair resting on her pink, bare-midriffed top with slits on the back revealing her bra and well-toned teen female flesh. And below the bare midriff was a very tight and sexy pair of white shorts, my favorite thing a young girl can wear besides leather. She was no rookie either, taking very nice drags and releasing cloudy, obnoxious exhales that drifted right back into my face. I was doing everything I could to take a perfect photo, which is not easy while in motion. I caught her in mid-drag and thought I absolutely nailed it until I looked at my camera and realized the photo cut her head off. Four incredible drags transpired from this adorable teenage face before the cigarette would find yet another owner….and this time it was mom who I suspect was the original smoker in the first place but was courteously passing the cigarette around to her addicted daughters while the males in the family kept their lungs pink….

Painful as it was to see the youngest daughter give up the cigarette, it was pretty damn hot to be witnessing a mother-double daughter sighting, which I think may be a first for me. I was able to get in front of them and snap my best pic yet of the family, with a particularly precious frontal photo of the youngest teen daughter in her pink top and white shorts. Mom finished off the cigarette and crushed it out on the pavement. When I identified the cork filter I was taken aback to see another Marlboro Red.   Haven’t seen this many Marlboro Red smokers since the 80s! I hoped like mad I’d see this family again later in the day but I never did. Still, I no longer had any reason left to complain about the way my day was going.

 

#9. Local County Fair, Thursday Night

As I so often do at my county fair, I was preparing for my “final loop of the night” on Thursday evening but managed to keep getting sidetracked and/or talking myself into yet another “final loop of the night”, but I am so damn glad I held out for one last walk through the nearly empty midway at about 11:20.  At the back of the midway I caught from behind the image of a girl I just knew was gonna be magic.  I saw this dark rear image of a girl with straight dark blond hair going all the way down her back, held down up top with a head band that had a little white bow on top.  A black sweatshirt and nice-fitting pair of dark jeans completed the conservative ensemble but there was one thing that didn’t fit at all with the rear silhouette image I was observing….an unlit cigarette protruding from the girl’s right hand….

A wide-open bench gave me a perfect vantage point of the sighting that would transpire….and I approached it giddy as a schoolgirl to get a look at the face and see if it lived up to the profile.  I thought I had prepared myself for the caliber of wholesomeness I was plunging head-first into but she exceeded my wildest expectations.  This girl was not only beautiful beyond belief, she ranks among the top two or three most unlikely smokers I’ve ever laid eyes on.  I’d put her at about 19 or 20 years old and her animated face just radiated sunshine and warmth.  I kept thinking this girl looks like she should be a counselor at a youth camp for Christ because her beaming, glowing presence just seemed naturally inclined to do something wholesome at all times, absolutely never including being at the county fair midway holding a cigarette in her hand….

And while it took me a while to collect myself after seeing a face this beautiful (she vaguely reminded me of actress Amanda Seyfried….only prettier), it took her more than just a while to light that cigarette.  She was cheering on a male and female friend preparing to ride the “Ring of Fire” thrill ride which hangs upside down.  She was giving her encouragement from the sideline so I was still confident of getting her to myself for the entirety of the ride the friends took.  Finally, after a good three minutes of holding the unlit cigarette in one hand and the lighter in the other, it was time to get to the part where she ingested carcinogens.  Her light-up was drama free but it still sent tingles throughout my body when her cigarette consumption became real.  The friends were just getting on the ride in time for her second and best drag, which was average in length but where a delayed exhale came out in the form of a sloppy smoky blob even as her face was more lit up than ever with a toothy grin as she watched the friends climb aboard the Ring of Fire.  And the exhale still wasn’t over as a residual puff escaped her nose a couple of seconds later.  A “smiling exhale”…I suppose I’ve seen one before but never one as animated as this.  Now more than ever it was hard to reconcile this saintly looking girl with the cancerous filth her body was addicted to.  The next drag was a little more traditional, with her exhale blown completely out of her mouth in a straight line…..

Another duo of girls who I’d hoped to see smoking again that night was walking by with cigarettes but I wasn’t going anywhere as even a tow truck couldn’t pull me away from what was easily my best find of the night.  But of course my best find of the night couldn’t possibly follow the preferred script without a complication either.  Suddenly, some random overweight dude her age or slightly older approached her and she seemed to know him.  After taking a drag I couldn’t see, she suddenly handed the guy the cigarette.  NO!!!!!!  This led me to believe she was probably just a social smoker who didn’t need more than half of her cigarette and was looking for someone to take it away.  It was a letdown as the guy got his hands on the not-even-half-smoked cigarette and never returned it.  Still, I wanted to identify the brand this gorgeous dark blond was smoking.  The two friends who went on the thrill ride had just gotten off and the three of them, combined with the new smoker dude and a friend of his, were walking eastward out of the midway.  I followed, doing something I never suspected I would….waiting for a dude to finish his cigarette so I could get a butt ID.   After about three walking drags, he did finish it and drop it.  I looked down to see it was a white filter Marlboro with a little blue dot on the filter, which I believe are those Marlboro Nxts, the Marlboro version of Camel Crush….

I was a little disappointed with that last sighting and began what ultimately was my final loop of the night, and stumbled into none other than the 2012 “woolly beret girl” (FCF #15) just as she lit up, and I was prepared to get a delicious sighting from her.  But that’s where the story took a surprise pivot.  It would take a lot for me to abandon my first sighting of the year of the old reliable woolly beret girl, but “a lot” was exactly what I was in store for……

At the exact moment the “woolly beret girl” lit up, I looked past her to find another group crossing paths with them.  It was the “Ring of Fire” midway group……and I was shocked when I saw the insanely wholesome hottie placing another unlit cigarette in her mouth.  This was her second in the last 15 minutes, and keep in mind I had written her off as a social smoker when she handed half of her cigarette to the fat guy moments earlier.  But now that seemed far less likely as “my greatest find of the night” raised her stakes dramatically by being the only member of her group of five to light up another cigarette.  She paused her walking briefly to light up and I could barely control myself from shouting for joy at the top of my lungs.  They were heading to the north side exit of the fairgrounds, the exact same exit I take on the way back to my grandma’s parking lot and I would be able to follow.  This couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.  She was more attentive in smoking this one as well, taking more frequent drags as she walked.  Unfortunately I had a mostly rear view and was usually only able to admire the exhaled smoke I saw flowing from her gorgeous face, but on a couple of occasions she turned her head while dragging and I got to see her lips pucker around that all-white filter and the cherry glow bright red.  While walking, the two guys (including the one that smoked half of her first cigarette) that seemed to come out of nowhere on the midway were hanging back, apparently not riding home with them….

I continued to follow as just the original three from the “Ring of Fire” ride progressed to a red sports car in a private lot in a guy’s yard.  The guy and girl who rode the Ring of Fire climbed into the front seat and I was waiting with baited breath to see what stinky girl would do.  I didn’t know if it would be sexier for her to drop her Marlboro Nxt butt into some stranger’s yard or to bring it inside the red sports car driven by obvious nonsmokers.  It could have gone either way as she opened the back door and took a deep drag…..but she broke the tie by closing the car door and bringing the cigarette with her.  Not only do the friends have to deal with her residual ciggy stench, but she’s actually going to smoke a cigarette inside a stranger’s likely expensive car.  I watched the car drive out of the lot….with the back window cracked and a smoldering cherry held between the fingers of a truly gorgeous young woman as it did.  An otherwise modest Thursday night ended with a grand slam.

 

#8. Minnesota State Fair Day 2, Sightings #83-84

The morning hours were dragging on as they so often do during my second day at the Minnesota State Fair, and with things so slow I took an interest in a few girls that teased me with tremendous potential and gave off a vibe of tobacco usage being a possibility.  My strongest instinct came as I walked down the street with the huddles of smokers on the east end of the Coliseum.  I got all the way to the southeast corner and in the exact same place where my two sexpot late teens were smoking in previous week’s third best sighting of the day (the #14 sighting on this list), a very suspicious duo of mid-teen cuties was sitting there again, wearing similarly short shorts as the previous week’s girls and seated with their legs in a similar upside-down V pattern bent at the knees while leaning against the building.  One girl had a beautiful face with an artificial reddish-tinted shoulder-length hair coupled with a pale pink tanktop and tight-fitting jean shorts covering a shapely lower body.  She looked about 16.  Her friend was probably the same age but looked younger.  She wasn’t as hot as the other girl but had a girl-next-door cuteness to her, her brown hair up in a ponytail and wearing a black sweatshirt with matching black shorts.  The girls couldn’t possibly have looked more suspicious sitting there and I was certain tobacco usage had either already taken place or was about to.  I went back to the same spot a couple more times in the next few minutes but never did see them smoking, and managed to forget about them after they vacated that spot….

Fast forward about six hours when I was again walking down the east side of the Coliseum, scanning the entire block along the building for smokers.  And as I looked ahead to the southeast side, who did I find but those same two mid-teen girls who were occupying the exact same spot with guilty looks on their faces in the morning.  Oh this was very interesting, I thought to myself as I kept approaching from a good 30 yards away.  My eyes were focused on them like a laser and in seconds, my moment of vindication arrived as I watched a half-smoked cigarette approach the lips of the artificial redhead who was the prettiest and had the hottest body, followed by the expulsion of smoke that traveled several inches in front of her adorable face.  She was far and away my trophy of the day given how I fell in love with her the second I laid eyes on her that morning, my “smoke detector” sounding off loudly but failing to yield the answer I sought until hours later.  The spot where the girls were sitting would be perfect for me to sneak a photo and then watch from close range, but just as I was approaching, they stood up and began walking behind the Coliseum.  I’m 99.9% sure it wasn’t because of me since they would not have likely seen me yet or remembered me from earlier.  They must have just been getting paranoid about the smoker girl being so obviously underage yet smoking so publicly.  Unfortunately, this would only be the first obstacle that would prevent this sighting from reaching its full potential….

Nonetheless, I rounded the corner and watched the girls settle into an isolated cement pillar on the back side of the Coliseum, which almost serves as the building’s loading zone for all the commercial vendors.  The girls were definitely gonna get their privacy here, but it wasn’t gonna work to my advantage as the best I could do was take a bench that was about 10 yards away from them and outside the range at which I could take too detailed of a picture.  The upside was that both girls were standing and I was able to admire the exceptional curves of that teen smoker.  While her reddish hair gave her a mildly unfortunate alternative look (her natural color appeared to be dark blond), everything else about her was pitch-perfect teenage girl from her well above-average boobs in her pale pink tanktop to the tight and short medium-blue jean shorts that hugged her hips in a perfect sexually charged way that only a shapely mid-teen girl is capable of pulling off.  But it was that face that got me most, an understated beauty with a hint of naughty girl that helped convince me right away that this girl was a cigarette smoker….

I watched in pure ecstasy as she plugged away at the second half of that cigarette with a decent style….about what you’d expect from a girl who probably hasn’t been smoking that long.  The sighting took a surprise turn though when the taller girl, who I figured was 16, handed the cigarette to the friend, who may have been the same age but looked like she was at most 14!  Now she was very cute but lacked the smoldering IT factor not to mention the sensational curves of the taller girl, as her upper body was trapped in a black sweatshirt that had to have been hot as hell on top of lacking sex appeal.  But while I always expected the first girl was a smoker, it had never occurred to me the other girl was too, especially when I didn’t see her with a cigarette upon that first approach a couple of minutes earlier.  Her smoking style was considerably more fledgling than the first girl’s and it was unbearably cute at the same time that it was unbearably frustrating that I couldn’t watch these future emphysema patients from a closer vantage point….

The frustration was far from over though as I touched earlier upon the oddball obstacles that got in the way of this sighting being the grand slam it had the potential to be.  Along the uneven sidewalk next to the bench I was seated on, a teenage girl was struggling mightily to wheel this top-heavy cart of pastries from Point A to Point B, nearly tipping the damn thing every time she hit a crack in the cement, of which there were many on this sidewalk.  She made eyes with me as she was passing me, as if beckoning me to help her.  I would have done so in a snap if it wasn’t for my being in the middle of what I figured was my best sighting of the day.  But as she proceeded a few more feet and continued to struggle, I felt obliged to help, hoping I could do two things at once, moving the cart and wheeling past the smoker girls from a slightly closer vantage point.  Even with two of us, moving this cart along this cracked up pavement was very hard, with the cart nearly tipping on a few occasions.  I kept one eye on the smokers as I slowly passed them, and saw my favorite girl was in possession again for the final couple of drags and was crushing the cork filter cigarette out and dropping the butt to the grass at almost the exact moment I wheeled past them….

From there, I watched the two girls come my direction and I was praying that they would offer to help as well, exposing me to their fresh cigarette stench from close range.  They didn’t, but they walked right past me and my favorite girl looked my direction with a flirty smirk.  Not sure if she was amused at my efforts to help this damsel in distress or if she was aware I had been stalking her earlier and was returning the favor.  Either way, I inhaled as strongly as I could as she and the friend walked past only a couple of feet in front of me, hoping to smell her stench, but unfortunately not capturing any of it.  I continued to help the girl with the cart for another minute or so, and would have volunteered to assist her further, but when she said she thought she was good to go as she approached the building entrance with the pastry cart, I didn’t hesitate to go on my merry way, looking to the west and seeing those hot teenage asses still wiggling towards the horizon and within range for me to still catch up….

And so I did, hustling to make up ground and succeeding, watching the girls going into a rear Coliseum entrance.  I got a decent photo of their asses before they got inside and I’m lucky I did because the lighting in the building was such that subsequent photos would be blurry.  These photos are gonna be what get me in trouble, which I’m fully aware of, but the impulse to capture a snapshot of my favorite smoker girl’s adorable face was impossible to resist, so I kept trying a daring frontal snapshot as we all maneuvered inside the densely packed crowds of the Coliseum.  I took a couple of pics as the girls walked up to some fruit-flavored slushie stand to sample their wares but both were blurry and I decided it wasn’t worth the risk to press forward since they were by now well aware of my presence from when they were smoking.

I reluctantly left the Coliseum, hoping against hope I’d see them again that day, which I would not.  And when I returned to where they smoked, there were too many other butts lying around from other smokers who’d been sneaking cigarettes behind the Coliseum for me to successfully identify which was theirs. While I didn’t get everything to go my way with this one, what a ride nonetheless, and I felt vindication for predicting my favorite girl was a rare breed of a mid-teen smoker in Minnesota circa 2014 yet being pleasantly surprised at the same time to learn the other girl was as well.   For the first time that day, I was genuinely buzzing and feeling damn glad I made it to the fair on August 30, 2014.

 

#7. Minnesota State Fair Day 1, Sighting #141

As I vacated the smoking area near the beer gardens and bathroom after 9 p.m. on my first day at the Minnesota State Fair, I had every intention of going a different direction but something was pulling me to head back north where I came from, and am I ever glad I did because doing so led me to my best sighting of the day by far.  On the curb just north of the beer gardens, I spotted a fast-moving trio exiting the area minus any adult beverages but two of them holding unlit cigarettes in their hands.  The eclectic trio included some hipster-looking mid-20s guy, an early 20s brunette girl, and the girl who locked in my attention and kept it for the next several minutes, a petite, fresh-faced mid-teen blond in a flower-print tanktop and dark jean shorts who was only about 5’2″.  When I saw her face, my heart briefly stopped because it was just so innocent and the rest of her presentation matched that innocence.  But based on her company it took awhile before I allowed myself to accept that she was only about 15 years old….

As rare as it’s become to see mid-teen smokers, I always come up with reasons to talk myself out of believing they’re as young as they look, and I kept telling myself she had to have just been a young-looking late teen.  My early skepticism about her youth notwithstanding, I was still preparing myself for a fantastic sighting as I watched the guy light up his cigarette and made sure I positioned myself parallel to girly so I could see her light-up when he handed her his lighter.  When she did, I finally began to accept that she was about the age that I instinctively suspected as she placed that unlit cork filter between her lips and fired up, briefly struggling to work the lighter before bringing that cigarette to life in a way that just screamed 9th grade girl.  Interestingly though, that light-up would be the only part of her smoking routine that resembled the work of a 15-year-old girl….

I had to work hard to keep up with this trio as they hustled their way down an oddball, out-of-the-way path to get from the beer gardens to their midway destination, and I hauled ass through the crowd attempting not to miss a thing or God forbid lose them.  And whatever midway rides they were about to go on couldn’t hold a candle to the ride I went on watching this little girl’s smoking performance.  She must have set a goal before she arrived to exhale cigarette smoke into the faces of very fairgoer on the grounds as it seemed impossible for it to be a mere coincidence if she hadn’t.  Her drags were impossibly accomplished for a girl so young, frequently done in the form of brief no-handlebars dangling drags, and her exhales were very impressive combination nose-and-mouth missiles that repeatedly nailed their targets, assuming the targets were innocent bystanders of all ages who kept getting nailed in the face by this adorable cutie’s air pollution.  The only downside was that with everybody else getting whacked by her exhales, I wasn’t getting the opportunity to get splashed in the face with as many of her stink bombs as I’d hoped.  It continued to be a challenge keeping up with this trio as they weaved through huge crowds of mostly teenagers at the edge of the midway, with my girl never amending her aggressive and criminal smoking behavior a bit even in the densest of crowds.  At one point she even walked right past a fairgrounds cop with cigarette in hand and didn’t bat an eyelash….

Now I appreciated the fast pace of this sighting for what it was but as the trio got into the midway, I was rewarded with a needed respite as they got into the ticket line and I had a conveniently located bench to enjoy a front-row seat for the second half of her cigarette.  It was such a treat to watch this sweet-looking young thing smoke her cigarette while standing in this line, especially in the company of the guy and the nonsmoking brunette.  Was she the younger sister of one or both of them?  It was impossible to know but there was zero doubt in my mind as I watched that this girl was younger than the other two by several years.  I had one snapshot left on my camera phone so I had to make it count, and since it was after dark my prospects for a quality photo weren’t great, but I got as close as I could and waited for her to take a drag before snapping that shutter just as her face was partially turned my way.  It’s too blurry to fully appreciate but I couldn’t have possibly done better given the circumstances…

She had about three drags left for me to just sit back and admire at that point, with generous missiles of smoke always flowing from her nose and mouth that repeatedly reassured me she was no rookie.  There’s a teen celebrity, past or present, that she reminds me of but I can’t put a finger on who.  But the past-tense rolodex girl that her gentle mid-teen features immediately brought to mind was the early teen “strawberry blond” (FCF #5) smoking with her family back in 2008, although obviously this girl was a straight blond without any strawberry.  Without a shadow of a doubt, she was my top find of the day and she was approaching the end of her cigarette just as her group was buying tickets, but walked off with it still smoldering after making the purchase, giving me confidence that I’d get a butt ID.  Unfortunately, this would have an unhappy ending as I watched her take her final drag and then squeeze the filter to crush out the cigarette.  As I was bemoaning the prospect of her tossing the butt into a trash can rather than merely littering it, she sped up her walking pace to toss the butt into a dumpster full of garbage bags that some fair worker was hauling in front of her.  Damn…wasn’t gonna identify that one, but for what it’s worth I think I saw Camel markings on it when she lit it up at the origins of the party for my eyes that this sighting was.  I watched her perfect little petite smoker girl body migrate west deeper into the midway as the adrenaline from having scored my best sighting of the day pulsated through my otherwise weary body.

 

#6. Local County Fair, Wednesday Night

Wednesday was far and away the best night at this year’s local county fair, the kind of night where I’d be in pursuit of one great sighting and get sidetracked by another.  That’s exactly what happened with the evening’s best sighting as I was walking past the edge of the midway and spotted a guy and an adorable ponytailed blond cutie who looked about 18 or 19 standing in front of a food stand.  The girl had a freshly lit cigarette in her hand.  She was probably the purest and most distinguished beauty of the night with a face that was in one sense quite wholesome, but in another sense, she also didn’t look out of place in possession of her cigarette.  She was wearing a black sweatshirt (this is Minnesota and after dark it gets cool even in July) along with a skimpy pair of medium blue jean shorts that shaped her ass gorgeously and showed off her slender, perfect legs beneath them….

I hovered in the general area hoping to see something that impressed but nothing prepared me for the show I was about to get, which began with the appetizer of a long, deep drag followed by a monstrously cloudy exhale.  Then the sighting took on another player as another blond of the same age who was apparently in the company of this couple emerged from the food stand, and she was wielding a cigarette too.  Now this girl was definitely chubbier than I’d prefer but very pretty, and decked out in a conservative plaid blouse and jeans.  And as I was acclimating myself to her added presence to the sighting, the unlikely main event of this sighting came next as the original girl was stepping up to the front of the food stand and quickly walked away carrying a gigantic bag of cotton candy!  The trio then began to walk into the midway and I giddily followed….

I had already gotten some anecdotal evidence that the ponytailed blond was something special but I was about to get much more as I watched the cigarette go into her mouth and could have sworn I saw both of her hands free while she did (remember I was following from the rear), and the exhale that followed flowed out of her mouth and must have caught the slightest breeze as it then flowed right back to her face and the smoked rolled past her cheeks and drifted my direction.  Much as I enjoyed seeing her gorgeous ass from the rear, I needed to position myself parallel to her to see this smoking style a little more directly.  When I did, she confirmed that I had seen what I thought I had from the rear….a lengthy no-handlebars dangling drag.  The cigarette was placed in the right corner of her mouth and remained perfectly straight as she puckered her lips around the filter and took a long, deep drag, followed by a thundercloud exhale.  The chubby friend was a decent smoker too, but she was definitely playing second fiddle to the main event here.  But it was then that my favorite girl started opening that bag of cotton candy…..

Now smoking-while-eating sightings have always been near the top of my list of triggers, but I don’t think I ever anticipated I’d stumble upon a smoking-while-eating sighting that included cotton candy.  I really can’t imagine the two tastes blending together well!  But apparently the tastes suited each other just fine to my adorable blond as she proceeded to alternate between stuffing her palate with a giant glob of cotton candy and a deep, intense drag from her cork filter cigarette, almost always in the form of her very distinctive no-handlebars dangling drags where the erect cigarette extended from the right corner of her mouth for a good five seconds.

The trio of friends eventually migrated to the back of the midway and settled in a larger group of mutual acquaintances made up mostly of guys, several of them who were smoking.  This was a doubled-edged sword as I was able to find a bench with a great vantage point of the group, but I also knew that my chances of a butt identification would be very long now that there were so many smokers hovered in this one area and not likely to go anywhere for awhile even after finishing their cigarettes.  But I had about three more minutes of enjoying my front-row seat of the show, occasionally catching glimpses of the chubby blond friend but mostly focusing my attention on this beautiful baby-faced blond doing one after another dangling drags in between eating big chunks of cotton candy.  At one point she even stuffed her mouth with cotton candy before the exhale from her last cigarette drag exited her mouth.  This girl was clearly very well-practiced as a smoker and the contrast between her extreme style and her girly girl face was getting a big old rise out of this boy’s pants.  She dropped the cigarette to the ground and I could see again that it was a cork filter but as expected, the crowd of smokers hovered there and I simply couldn’t wait them out for a butt ID.  I grudgingly got up to leave but it wouldn’t be the last I’d see of this girl or her friend.  In fact, I saw the chubby friend two more times within the hour, smoking both times.  But despite her chubbiness, the girl was pretty enough and a solid enough of a smoker that I would unequivocally bed her down if given the chance.

And about an hour later, I was departing the midway at the same moment my favorite cotton candy blond of the night and her chubby friend did.  They migrated into a huddle of friends on the main street of the grounds and had just lit up another round of cigarettes.  This was the FOURTH cigarette I had seen from the chubby blond in the last hour or so and the second from the cotton candy beauty.  Positioning was terrible for this one as all I could do was lurk from a standing posture and do so for a couple of drags.  But as expected, the drags didn’t disappoint as this striking beauty defied her feminine image again by placing that cork filter cigarette in the far right corner of her mouth and carried out a dangling drag with the cigarette in a straight-line of erection the entire time.  Even after decades of fetishing, I don’t recall seeing a smoking style quite like this before, and I was reminded again why I fell in love with this girl an hour earlier.  But as I said, my positioning was terrible and I had to take a quarter loop elsewhere and return to minimize my exposure.  Sadly, when I got back less than a minute later, the two smoker girls were gone, not to be seen again.  I was kicking myself as I really wanted a butt ID and had I not departed for that single minute I could have probably followed them out of the fairgrounds and spotted her butt when she discarded.  Butt or no butt, she remained the high point on a night full of high points.

 

#5. Iowa State Fair Day 2, Sighting #8

I had only been to the fairgrounds a little over an hour on my after-work evening-hours-only Wednesday visit to the Iowa State Fair when I got my sighting of the night.    There are two small flights of stairs on the eastern end of the fairgrounds’ south side seating area that lead up to a circle of international flags and a fountain, an area where I don’t ever recall scoring a quality sighting before.  Sitting on a bench atop the first flight of stairs was a mid-teen couple that thankfully grabbed my attention walking by, even in this remote spot where I don’t often look.  I ascended the stairs to see the sweetest little blond angel one could ever expect to see with a cigarette.  She wasn’t “beautiful”….she was just wholesome beyond words, the classic stereotype of a bubbly, innocent 16-year-old cheerleader type with a mouth full of braces and her blond hair up in a bushy ponytail.  She could have been an extra of one of Stephanie Tanner’s friends on “Full House” back in the 90s.  Yet there she was, holding a freshly lit cork filter cigarette in her hand and couldn’t have possibly looked more out of place doing so wearing a conservative gray shirt and a tight pair of leggings with a busy, colorful pattern.  I was in love!  Now the boyfriend next to her was a pretty wholesome-looking fellow himself, also right around 16 with a bushy hairdo, and I’m 90% sure when I got there he was smoking a cigarette himself, although it was disposed of quickly.  The entire show that I was about to get consisted of this fascinating girl’s smoking show, and what a show it would be…..

I sat down on a bench across from them, and while a little too exposed for my preference, had a great vantage point of her smoking.  And almost immediately after I sat down a middle-aged couple walked past them, and the guy began talking to them in a joking way, with the boy responding equally lightheartedly.  I couldn’t make out a word of it but since there was little else that made sense for them to talk about, I suspect the conversation revolved around the teenage couple’s smoke break.  The innocence of this couple, especially the girl, is impossible to overstate, so it was just heartbreaking whenever she inserted that cork filter into her mouth for a precocious drag.  The drags were surprisingly long and adorable, but the exhales were what always got me, her innocent face expelling sloppy little cloudbursts from her mouth and nose that always seemed to drift right into the boyfriend’s face.  There was no wind to speak of that day so it must have just been fate that directed her exhales to flow straight into his grill over and over and over.  And I got one other surprise that came all-too-frequently after her sloppy, blobbish exhales, and that was spitting.  I know not everyone is into sloppy exhales and especially spitting in smoker girls, but this girl was chronic, dropping juicy lugies straight in front of her onto the pavement after her drags on four different occasions.

Normally I would have had a wide-open lane to take some direct frontal photos of this madness, but I had a big problem.  The bright sunshine that boosted my morale so high when I entered the grounds was now at the angle where it was producing long shadows and interfering with my shots.  I tried from a few different angles, drawing major attention to myself doing so, and just couldn’t get the sweet spot where I captured her face and the cigarette.  I sat back down so I could watch the end of the show, watching the once-long cigarette grow shorter and shorter as it was consumed by this most innocent face.  She took her final drag and crushed out the cigarette on the pavement in front of her.  Watching that last exhale drift into the boyfriend’s face, I thought to myself that he must be relieved her cigarette was finally gone so he could breathe again, but he still had one more decidedly unfeminine display from his little girlfriend to watch before they pressed on….an unprecedented double lugie drop, with a giant ball of spit dropping from her mouth followed by a second, slightly smaller dribble a split second later.  I thought to myself this guy had to have some level of fetish himself for the girl to feel so comfortable being so gross in front of him. Either way, I couldn’t have been more jealous.

I had two orders of business as the couple got up to leave.  The first was to ID her butt.  I maneuvered my way around four pools of her slobber to find the butt I presume to be a Marlboro Red Special Blend as its markings are similar to the Marlboro Light Special Blend except with a cork filter.  I even took a photo of the pavement where all of her lugies were dropped.  From there I needed a better photo of the girl, even though her cigarette was gone.  The couple was going up the hill towards the east side and I found a walkway parallel.  I was really pushing my luck here as this couple was definitely aware of me at this point, and I would need luck on my side to pull off the direct frontal photo I was going for.  But luck was on my side as they turned left exactly as I needed them to and I snapped the shutter on my camera phone getting a photo that will preserve her memory forever.  I obviously would have preferred a better smoking photo, but I’ll still be able to look at this snapshot at any time in the future and recall the chronic spitter with the innocent mid-teen face and remind myself that this girl does indeed smoke.  I thought there was a very good chance I’d run into these two again that night given the smaller weeknight crowds, but I never did.  Nonetheless, the visit was already worthwhile after receiving the gift of this sighting before dark.

 

#4. Iowa State Fair Day 3, Sighting #80

I had been having a pretty great day of sightings by the 9 p.m. hour on my third day at this year’s Iowa State Fair, but I hadn’t yet scored a future first-ballot Hall of Famer yet.  That was about to change as I made my fateful journey into the midway and worked my way towards the back when I spotted a trio of teens (two guys and a girl) and spotted one of the guys lighting up.  My eyes veered towards the girl in the group as I passed them and sure enough, she already had a cigarette lit.  I didn’t get a very good look at her while walking past but was following from behind now and admiring a perky, petite young body in a girlish red tanktop and very short jean shorts with a long, freshly lit cigarette next to it.  It was quite a sight, but having gotten a closer look only at the guys in the group up this point and seeing they were in the 17-18 range it never crossed my mind she’d be younger than that….until they all sat down in a X-shaped arrangement of metal benches next to another dude who was apparently waiting for the trio, and this allowed me to take a seat parallel to them, no more than five feet away from the girl who sat on the inside of her all male counterparts on the bench.  Sweet Jesus!  Hers was the purest young face I’d seen all day, arguably for the entire fair.  I looked at all the guys around her and some of them even had facial hair.  They were clearly in their late teens.  It just didn’t make sense that they’d be hanging out with this 13-14-year-old girl, I kept telling myself, but as I studied her face and looked over her body, there was just no way this girl was anything other than a middle school girl!!

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect vantage point, leering over my left shoulder unbeknownst to everybody as she sat there on that metal bench, holding her cigarette to the right and as out of sight as possible except when she lifted it to her lips to take delightful drags.  And they were very impressive, easily putting to shame the majority of the adult women smokers I came across that day with nice long drags, four-second hold times, and turning her head to the right (that would be my direction) to exhale volcanic eruptions of smoke that rocketed out of both her mouth and nose.  Oh and she was just so precious to look at even when the smoke wasn’t flowing from her little face.  She had long dark brown hair flowing down her back and such a slender young body inside that tanktop.  But it was below the waist where that slender body sparkled best, with smooth legs that were just curvy enough that she didn’t look “too thin” flowing out of the tiniest pair of jean shorts I think I’ve ever seen.  I felt sorry for how cold those legs must have been because a good six inches of her upper legs were touching the metal seat on the bench with as short as her jean shorts were.  But that face was her key feature, brimming with youthful innocence while also evoking a big of a naughty side.  Unlike a couple of the other teen smokers I saw at the fair this year, it didn’t surprise me to see this girl with a cigarette.  She looked cute beyond belief with the petite frame and precious face to match, but she didn’t necessarily look wholesome.  And I was reminded of that every time the cigarette approached her lips and was followed by a meaty, cloudy expulsion of smoke from her mouth and nose that were all generally headed my direction….

It still wasn’t adding up as I sat there watching though as everything about the way she carried herself from the way she sat to the way she touched her hair to the way she held her cigarette screamed “eighth grade girl”, but why on Earth would this group of older guys be with her unless the facial-haired guy sitting next to her I assumed was her boyfriend was dating someone four years younger?  That scenario was certainly possible, but I was cynical enough at this point to simply believe she had to have been older than she looked.  I’d get excellent additional context on this later in the night, but for now was just enjoying my best smoking show of the day and enjoying the exhales that me and the middle-aged lady sitting next to me kept choking on….

She dropped the cigarette to the ground next to her bench but the group didn’t leave.  I really wanted a butt ID here but agonized as I looked down to see the cigarette smolder down to the filter in the five minutes or so that the group kept sitting there BSing with one another, with the girl doing the least amount of talking.  On the other hand, it was kind of hot looking at that cigarette smoldering down there with smoke still rising from it at a pretty good clip minutes after it last touched human lips, knowing that it was the lips of this sweetheart of a young girl that were responsible for that continued rising smoke.  Finally the group got up to leave and I quickly claimed her spot, looking down at the discarded cigarette with nothing left but a cork filter and a smoldering few centimeters of ash, denying me the brand identification that I coveted.  I somehow managed to lose them in the midway after I got up but as I said, I would see the girl again and would get some clarity on the sighting’s biggest mystery.  But even if the sighting had ended right there, it still would have been my best sighting of the night, and I’ll be haunted in my dreams for months at that adorable early teen face turning my direction and exhaling combination mouth and nasal blasts for a heavenly 5-7 minutes.

That sighting ended up being the catalyst for a flurry of extra base hits in the next half hour, but it was when I was returning from the south side that I struck gold and spotted a family moving northeast.  The family in question included my sighting of the night, the brunette who looked like an early teen but whose presence with a group of older teen guys made me question my impression of her age.  But watching her slender little body walk in tandem with two of those three guys now–behind a middle-aged couple–the puzzle piece finally fell into place.  She wasn’t the girlfriend of any of those older guys she was smoking with on the midway….she was the kid sister of at least one of them.  Now nobody was smoking on the long walk to the east side gate where they apparently parked their car, but it was fantastic to study them as I followed, finally realizing this young smoking prodigy WAS as young as I first believed, a revelation that made the sighting I saw earlier that much more delicious.  I hoped that somebody would light up on that long walk back to the car but it wasn’t meant to be and once they exited the gate I conceded defeat.  I was still extremely grateful for this revelation though as I now knew she almost certainly was 13 or 14 as I suspected all along, and a whole new set of questions arose.  Did the parents smoke?  Do the parents know their baby girl smokes?  The possibilities are endless and I only wish I was able to find out how the story ends.

 

#3. Local County Fair, Tuesday Night

My friend Corey attended all the evening grandstand concerts at the county fair with me this year, but he got tired in the middle of the low-energy Tuesday night show and left about 20 minutes before the concert got over.  I was feeling under the weather myself that night, drug down by a stomach bug, but definitely not sick enough to forgo fair sightings week!  When Corey left early, I decided to start my sightings exploration of the grounds a little ahead of schedule as well and one of the first places I went was the midway. Quickly after entering the midway, I took note of this family that included a very sweet-looking mid-teen light brunette daughter wearing a below-the-belt ensemble that grabbed my attention…..a skin-tight pair of medium-blue jeans worn in a way that only a mid-teen girl can with a pair of black leather boots with a high heel that snugly wrapped around her lower legs.   I stopped to admire for a few moments because she stood out even amongst a fairgrounds full of hot teen girls both because of her beauty and because of that jeans and boots ensemble, but the thought of smoking never even crossed my mind so I pressed on into the midway….

About 10 minutes later after scoring a couple decent sightings, I ventured back the direction I came from in the midway and saw the sighting of the night…and she was a familiar face and a familiar lower body.  The mid-teen girl in the tight jeans with the form-fitting black leather boots was actually smoking….in the company of her family!  I was kicking myself for not being around for the light-up on this one, but as sick as I was it was probably for the best or my poor feverish body might have collapsed if I had been present to see this most unlikely mid-teen light brunette cutiepie, whose face was every bit as adorable and as unlikely to be a smoker as her tight and relatively petite young body, light up a cigarette.  What made this sighting most fascinating was the family dynamics.  On the bench was the 15-16ish daughter and the nonsmoking dad.  Mom was lingering to the side, and in front of the bench was a lanky, awkward 18-19ish older brother who was also smoking a younger sister who looked about 10 who was not.  Neither parent was smoking yet the two kids publicly were, including the underage daughter.  She had yet to take a drag but just seeing her sit there with the half-smoked cork filter so close to those tight jeans almost made my knees buckle….

But then she did take that first drag and it was spectacular, ingesting a good four seconds worth of smoke before tilting her head up with a pleasured look on her face and exhaling skyward….straight into the face of her baby sister who was standing there.  I’m assuming that was an accident, but nothing was said by way of disgust by the younger sister or of apology by the smoker girl.  Any doubt that I had stumbled into an FCF classic was now removed.  It was dark and I didn’t want to tell on myself by turning my camera flash on, but I still had to get a snapshot of this.  The photo is blurry but it will nonetheless preserve this moment in time forever more.  The family began noticing my awkward lingering presence so I had to venture a small distance away to an open bench that still provided me a nice vantage point to her remaining drags.  Nobody got it in the face from her subsequent exhales but they were still a pure joy to watch, especially knowing she had the freedom to smoke in the immediate presence of her parents.  All too quickly, the show ended with a final drag.  She bent over and stubbed out the cigarette for a few seconds on the pavement below the bench, and only then sat upright again, tilted her head skyward with a look of pleasure on her face, and released another beautiful smoke missile into the night sky.  As down as I sometimes get about the decline of smoking in modern culture, the fact that a sighting like this can still play out at my county fair in the year 2014 means I’ll still have a few good days to come in this life.  The family got up and left a few moments later and I zipped on over to check out her discarded cigarette butt.  It was a full-flavor Marlboro Menthol.

And while the smoking part of this sighting was done, I’d see the brother and sisters several more times Tuesday evening and it filled in a couple blanks regarding the context.  The brother and sister were sitting on a bench quietly outside the beer gardens the next time I saw them, and I figured they must have been waiting for the parents inside the beer gardens.  It was such a joy to see that innocent-looking girl in her tight jeans and boots sitting there and knowing she was an addicted cigarette smoker.  On my next pass, all three kids were lingering near the beer gardens entrance and the dad was talking to them out the door, asking about “their mother” and confirming that this was a family dynamic as suspected.  The dad then proceeded to fork over some money to the kids, with my favorite girl en route to picking up a “walking taco”.  I wouldn’t see them again that night but hoped for sightings later this week that I unfortunately would not get.  I stayed sick for the next couple of days but didn’t notice one symptom during those erotic moments I watched her smoke.  Even for just a few minutes, she was enough to make a sick man well again.

 

#2. Minnesota State Fair Day 2, Sightings #142-144

If one is patient enough, rarely do the evening hours at the Minnesota State Fair pass without a blockbuster or epic sighting materializing, and such would be the case during evening of my second day at this year’s MNSF as I was heading south from the grandstand towards the beer gardens block and wandered into what would become my sighting of the day.  An aura of neon white temporarily blinded me as it was now after dusk and there were dark would-be storm clouds overhead, but when my eyes adjusted to the light, I was able to determine the source of that bright white was an 18-19ish long-haired blond sexpot in a pair of outrageously tight and shiny white shorts that seemed like they might tear if she tried to sit down (and interestingly, she never did), caressing a spectacular ass with perfect legs coming out the bottom.  She was no less subtle up top with a very low-cut black and silver blouse advertising the upper half of an awesome set of tits, and with several inches of exposed midriff separating her scantily clad feminine assets.  Oh, and there was also a very freshly lit 100 mm cigarette protruding from her fingers.  I knew I had found something very special……

I was so consumed by this epic blond discovery in those first 30 seconds that only the passage of time allowed me to recover enough to recognize the others in her group.  Front and center were two other young girls, one a solidly attractive long-haired dark brunette in a white tanktop and black shorts who also looked in the 18-19 range and was also brandishing a freshly lit 100 mm cigarette, and the other a sweetheart of a light brunette with shorter, shoulder-length hair who was wearing a kiwi-green tanktop and very short medium-blue jean shorts advertising an even better pair of legs than the blond.  The third girl wasn’t smoking, which made sense as she looked younger (I was assuming 16 at most) and far more wholesome than the two smokers.  She would have been a coup if she had smoked too, but I couldn’t get too greedy and she really didn’t look the type anyway.  The other two members of the group were two young black guys in their late teens, one of whom was smoking a Black ‘N’ Mild cigar, but the guys seemed disconnected from the girls throughout the sighting and appeared to be tagging along more than actively experiencing the fair with them.  Anyway, back to the blond….

What a hot construction the progression of human development had presented in front of my face!  And she was a serious smoker too, taking deep lung-penetrating drags followed by herculean hold times and understandably modest exhales given how much smoke was undoubtedly clinging to her blackened insides.  Plus that face was just the perfect picture of a beautiful young girl who has been smoking heavily for a long time, and I had on the tip of my tongue from the get-go who she reminded me of but I wouldn’t figure it out until later, which I’ll get into then.  While the sighting in motion for the first two minutes would have been satisfactory given the caliber of girls, I’d catch a bigger break as the trio settled onto a bench across the street from the beer gardens.  As I said, blondie’s shorts were too tight to sit down in, so she stood in front of the bench, but her dark brunette smoker friend sat on the top of the bench with her feet hanging where people are meant to sit, as did the younger nonsmoking light brunette who I assumed was somebody’s baby sister, putting their feminine bodies on full display in an unusually well-lit area.  The black guys hovered behind them talking to other people.  I hovered effortlessly watching the show and was now able to enjoy some of the dark brunette’s show as well, who was no less than an 8.5 and would have easily gotten a writeup even if she was the only smoker of the three, but amongst this group she was the ugly duckling.  But 80% of my attention went to the blond in the white shorts and her stylish performance and sexy profile.  In fact, so much of my attention was directed her way that I missed the sighting’s most stunning development yet….

I looked up to the two girls sitting atop the benches and from out of nowhere, the younger girl now had a freshly lit 100 mm cigarette between her fingers as well.  How did I miss that?!?!  I was kicking myself that I missed what had to have been an adorable light-up, but if I was expecting a beginner smoker performance, she was about to let me down in the best possible way.  Her drags were concise, long, and well-practiced, and her exhales were thunderclouds, the cloudiest exhaler of the bunch with triple-jet missiles firing out of the mouth and nostrils of this wholesome teenage face.  As amazing as that blond was, the main attraction of this sighting had very abruptly switched girls….

It was way past dark and a photo was not going to turn out, but the spot they were sitting in gave me a glimmer of hope I could capture something worthwhile on camera, and I took a nicely centered snapshot featuring all three girls with cigarettes visible between their fingers.  It’s too dark to fully appreciate, at least without the assistance of some FBI-quality image enhancing, but I couldn’t have possibly done better given the circumstances.  With the photo out of the way, I just stood back and enjoyed the show, changing positions occasionally to get a better vantage point of one of the girls as rarely did more than a few seconds pass when one of them wasn’t illegally polluting the fairgrounds with her cancerous exhaust.  The blond finished her cigarette first, dropping it to the pavement below her feet and crushing it out.  I would stay until 2 a.m. if I needed to identify that butt, and it would indeed take awhile as she remained at that spot for a while.  The dark brunette in the black shorts finished her cigarette about a minute later and tossed it to the grass in front of the bench, far enough away that I was able to seize a moment of distraction and approach the butt for an ID.  It was a Newport 100 smoked down to the filter.  I hung back again for the second half of the teen cutie’s cigarette.  I swear each of her drags was followed up by the same thunderclouds fired out of her adorable little face.  I had been worried about the storm clouds overhead, but the most dangerous clouds on these fairgrounds were coming out of the face of a teenage girl in microscopic jean shorts with flawless, folded legs hanging over the bench she sat atop…..

And this sighting would have one more incredible surprise in the moments before the light brunette finished her cigarette.  The two black guys had been disconnected from the three girls for a good 3-4 minutes at this point, but suddenly they were chatting again, and the black guy with the plastic-tipped cigar was suddenly engaging with the blond sexpot in the white shorts, and holding his cigar towards her.  Was this really about to happen?  Damn straight!  She took the cigar out of his hand and took a drag just as deeply as she was taking from her cigarette moments earlier.  And just like after one of the drags from her cigarette, the cigar smoke rented a condo inside her lungs before being released in the form of a stinky exhale.  She seemed to like the cigar, and the fact that the black guy was beckoning her to give it a try reaffirmed my suspicion that they probably weren’t that closely connected.  The guys most likely just have exceptionally good taste in hot girls and were trying to see if they could land some of the hottest asses at the fair.  Whatever the case, she handed it back to him and everyone returned to business as usual.  The light brunette soon finished her cigarette and tossed the butt to the grass in front of her much like the dark brunette did, allowing me to approach and ID it without too much difficulty.  It was also a Newport 100 smoked almost to the filter, indicating the girls were probably sharing from the same pack.  But I still needed an ID on the blond’s cigarette just to make sure, and the group didn’t appear to be going anywhere….

I wanted to do a final midway run of the day, but wasn’t gonna abandon these girls for that long without getting a butt ID, so I just walked across the street to explore the beer gardens block for a few minutes and then returned to their spot, hoping they’d have left….but they still hadn’t.  I was mildly frustrated, but my frustration was short-lived as blondie was in the middle of a full-body stretch, her arms raised above her head and her perfectly proportioned body on full display.  My eyes centered on the odd 45-degree angle at which her flat stomach was bending out of those tight shorts as she stretched, and I would have paid $1,000 to bed her down at that exact moment.  I did another short walk around the half block and this time, by the time I got back, the girls were gone and the bench was open where blondie had been standing.  Sure enough, her discarded butt was a Newport 100 as well, confirming my suspicion that all three girls were smoking from the same pack, even though I wasn’t sure which girl possessed the pack.  Whoever it was, they made my night at the Minnesota State Fair.  I’m glad it never did rain, but even if the skies had opened up at that moment, I would had walked out of the fairgrounds happy as a goldfish in a fresh bowl.

About an hour later, I was getting down to the last half hour of the day and was frustrated by the fact that numbers did not seem poised to approach the 200 threshold that they usually do on Labor Day weekend at the Minnesota State Fair.  If anyplace was gonna boost numbers, it was the beer gardens block and I encircled it again looking for quality smoker gals.  As I proceeded down the block to the north of the beer gardens, I laid eyes on this blond in white shorts wielding a freshly lit cigarette who had literally launched a pheromone missile my direction, but this was no newcomer to my sightings list for the day.  This was an old favorite.  It was the gorgeous blond in the bare midriff top and the tight white shorts who was part of my best group of the day and was smoking another Newport 100 only about an hour after her last (and who knows if she smoked more in between).  While it was gift enough to get an encore act from her, I figured her partners in crime would be closeby and I was right.  The younger light brunette sexpot with the gentle face and the tiny jean shorts was close behind her and right behind her was the dark brunette in the black shorts.  Both of them were brandishing cigarettes as well as they traversed the crowded street en route to the midway illegally exposing innocent fairgoers of all ages to their secondhand smoke and their irresistible sex appeal.  Only this time the roles were reversed.  It was the little girl whose cigarette was two-thirds smoked while the blond and the dark brunette had freshly lit ones in their hands.  Given that someone in this group likely possessed the community pack, did this younger girl get a craving before the other two and demand a cigarette first?  It seemed entirely possible.  The younger light brunette looked back and beckoned the friend who was lagging behind with a “C’mon Nicole!”  I’d have preferred to have gotten a name for either of the other two, but was still happy to put a name one of these beautiful smoky girls…

I watched from as close as I dared to get while following the three of them into the midway, seeing all the familiar features of their previous sighting.  The light brunette was still producing thundercloud exhales in jet streams out of her mouth and nose, and leaving hovering smoke in her path for passersby to choke on (including me!) while the blond kept up with her long drags and longer-yet hold times before her nice exhales.  The dark brunette was the least distinctive smoker of the three but that’s hardly a pejorative description with this trio.  The light brunette finished hers first, dropping it to the pavement and not bothering to crush it out, while the other two still had more than half of their cigarettes left as they got in line for carnival tickets….

Unfortunately, the blond made me and I was not in a position to lurk without standing out like a sore thumb.  Given that I had been lurking around them not that long earlier, I felt I had to depart sooner than I’d have preferred.  But getting one final look at the blond’s beautiful but weathered late teen smoker’s face, it hit me who she looked like….another late teen with a beautiful but weathered smoker’s face who I dated last November named Cami, who for all intents and purposes looked like a lot like the late suicidal country singer Mindy McCready and who, coincidentally, also smoked Newport 100s.  Having just turned 37 myself in August, I’m pretty sure Cami will be the last teen smoker I’ll ever get to date, but if I could score just one more, I’d kill for it to be her blond Minnesota State Fair lookalike.  And since the two black guys from earlier were nowhere in sight at this point, there’s a good chance she’s available!  Reluctant as I was to walk away here, I was elated to have gotten an encore from this trio which secured their standing as my best sighting of the day and indeed the best sighting of the 2014 Minnesota State Fair.

 

#1. Iowa State Fair Day 1, Sighting #99

My day and evening during my first visit to this year’s Iowa State Fair was already going very well even before I journeyed down the block on the concourse that separates the teen huddle that forms at the center of the fairgrounds after dark and the east side entrance to the midway.  It was there that I spotted a group of teens (two guys and two girls) with an adorable petite blond as the only attractive one of the bunch, decked out in a white top and short jean shorts.  I took a seat on a berm just outside the midway and watched her take the last couple of drags from her cork filter, featuring fairly modest draws, hold times, and exhales. As she dropped her cigarette to the ground and crushed it out, the thought even crossed my mind that she might just be a social smoker out smoking with her friends. Even so, that face was just precious, and she even had braces on her teeth that, when coupled with her diminutive size and soft facial features, made her look like she was about 15 even though the friends group helped convince me she was probably 17. As they drifted just a short distance away, I swooped in and IDed her discarded cigarette as a Marlboro Red. This was without question a memorable sighting and I was annoyed that I didn’t get to see more, but little did I know this sighting would shortly escalate into my best sighting of the day and one of my best Iowa State Fair sightings of all-time.  To be continued…and continued….and continued….

About a half hour later, I was drifting to that seating area on the south side of the grounds. After dark, it tends to empty out almost entirely but it wouldn’t be the first time I came across underage teens sneaking a smoke in the area, and sure enough, there was a familiar-looking foursome hovering that night that included my petite blond Marlboro Reds smoker with braces who I had last seen about a half hour earlier. And what an eclectic foursome it was upon more isolated inspection. In addition to the adorable blond, there was a hip-looking black guy, a shirtless and muscular white guy, and this unattractive brunette female. Not sure what brought a group like this together in life but as I watched three of the four (the two guys and blondie) insert cigarettes in their mouths, it was bizarre how prophetic that common denominator would prove to be….

An unlit cigarette dangled in blondie’s mouth and it took about 30 seconds after I arrived and took a wide open bench before her lighter illuminated the dark corner of the grounds. The light-up itself was odd, with blondie producing a flame halfway between her and the shirtless white guy who both proceeded to lean forward into the flame until their cigarettes were lit. From there, the group started leaving the dark area, headed towards the main south side street. As I began to follow I noticed that the cigarette hadn’t left my little blond’s mouth since it was lit, and she was approaching the black guy with the lighter to fire up his cigarette. Her dangle, complete with at least two dangling drags, lasted at least 30 seconds before she finally removed it from her mouth. When I first saw this girl smoking up near the midway entrance, there was no indication there was anything special about her. That long distance dangle was the first evidence that proved my first impression was wrong, but it certainly wasn’t gonna be the last….

As they started walking down the south side, I thought it was the best-case scenario as it would allow me to watch from an inconspicuous side angle as they progressed, but I could never have imagined what weirdness was about to transpire. Blondie waved to the guy inside one of the food stands as if she knew him, and after walking about 15 yards down the block, decided she was gonna go back and talk to him. I didn’t know if she was gonna order food or not, but she didn’t. She just stood there talking to him and smoking her cigarette. It was just so cute seeing this 5’2” little blond with that cigarette in her hand, and as she took her first drag while standing there, the thought crossed my mind that her exhale might go inside the food stand, but if I was preparing myself for a homerun, what I got was a grand slam. Her exhale went straight into the food stand to the point that I could see the waves of smoke rolling inside even from across the street. Blondie realized a second after she exhaled what she had done and began waving her hand in front of her face in attempt to brush the smoke away, but the damage was done and her little boyfriend inside the food stand was being asphyxiated. I wish at that point I was closer so I could hear if she was apologizing to him or not. Whatever the case, her subsequent exhales were all directed to the side as she kept conversing with him for a couple more minutes before heading back to her friends group without making a purchase…

Finally I figured this sighting was gonna have some stability and predictability, but that wasn’t gonna happen. She began running back in the other direction again, and the shirtless guy playfully tried to stop her, racing her way and grabbing her by the waist as she held her cigarette out in front of her so she wouldn’t burn him.   He let her go after a few seconds and she drifted, all by herself, back to the dark and empty seating area where this sighting had originated, sitting on a berm and texting furiously. The unpredictability worked to my advantage in this unusual situation though as I found a wide-open bench parallel to her to watch her smoke the rest of the cigarette in solitude…..

As I observed, I was struck that her style was generally pretty average, with medium-length drags and medium-sized all-mouth exhales, and certainly nothing like that long-distance dangle that began this second cigarette of hers for the evening, but she more than made up for the lack of stylistic flourishes with what the rest of the evening held for me. Her female friend finally showed up just as she was wrapping up the cigarette, which she flung in front of her in the dark without bothering to crush it out while wrapping up whatever oddball texting business she had to do all by herself in the dark. End of sighting right? Hardly. Not 10 seconds after this microscopic little blond princess stood up, she was foraging in her little purse again. She wouldn’t….would she? Unbelievably the answer was yes, as another cigarette came out and was placed in her lips. She fired up and confirmed my feelings that there was indeed something very, very special about this girl, the likes of which I had still just scratched the surface of even after a good 15 minutes invested in her at this point….

She was now out of the darkness and sat in a nearby bench with her group, smoking at least her third cigarette of the last half hour. I sat across the street on a bench of my own watching her smoke yet again, admiring that adorable face and racking my brain trying to think of who she reminded me of. It wasn’t until the bus ride home that it occurred to me that it was the mid-teen country singer Lila McCann who had a few hits in the late 90s before fading into oblivion. This girl’s features were just as wholesome as a 1998-era Lila McCann, right down to the braces, except this girl also had an adorable petiteness to her that lifted her above her country-crooning counterpart. Her group was hovering in front of her so I wasn’t seeing much….and I wanted to do some exploring elsewhere anyway so I finally proceeded down that south side block as far I could go, scoring a couple of mediocre sightings and then heading back the direction I came from, fully mindful of what I left behind but thinking for sure by this point the show had played out….

Sure enough, the foursome was still on that bench that they were on 10 minutes or so earlier when I abandoned the scene. And almost immediately when I got there, blondie was rummaging through her little white purse again. No way, I thought to myself! She can’t possibly be about to do it again. But out came an empty pack of Marlboro Reds that she tossed into the nearby trash can…..followed by a brand new pack of Marlboros that she starting packing against her wrist for the next 30 seconds ago. I nearly collapsed as I watched in awe as she opened the pack and started distributing cigarettes to her friends, offering one to the unattractive brunette girl as well who was the only one who took a pass. And then of course, blondie got a cigarette for herself, at least her fourth of the last 45 minutes, and lit up. Once again, I reclaimed my bench and watched her smoke at least half of the cigarette before the usual high risk of familiarity compelled me to leave. Besides, I wanted to make one more run down the midway tonight anyway with the 11:00 hour approaching….

I walked past the teen huddle and the beer gardens block and then into the midway, stitching together a few sightings but nothing particularly memorable over the course of the 15 minutes or so since I had migrated out of the south side. But when I exited the midway, I came out at the same area where I originally saw the teen foursome commandeered by the little blond about an hour ago….and they were back again….with my favorite blond on the final couple of drags of her FIFTH cigarette of the night, and that was just the ones I witnessed. I took a seat on the very berm in which I saw her take her first drag on that first cigarette, and she dropped this Marlboro Red to the ground and crushed it out. By this point I grew to expect the unexpected from this girl and while I didn’t want to jinx it by openly allowing myself to hope for yet another cigarette, I would barely have time to ponder the thought before her little white purse was opened again. My little cigarette Santa Claus opened that pack of Marlboro Reds and was again trying to corrupt her friends by handing them out….

The shirtless white guy (whose shirt was now on again) took it, but placed it behind his ear. He may be a smoker, but there was no way he was even gonna attempt to keep up with this tiny blond girl lest he be taken to the emergency room for nicotine poisoning. My little blond ashtray mouth was now lighting up her sixth cigarette in barely an hour…and that was just the ones I had witnessed. She did share a couple of drags off of this one with the brunette friend, who I hadn’t seen smoke at all up to this point, but blondie claimed most of the cigarette and got a couple of pics taken with the girl that made me wonder if those two were more than just “friends”. My blond certainly didn’t look like a stereotypical lesbian, but the brunette sure did. Either way, as soon as the photos were finished, the group zipped right on through the teen huddle, with the blond and at least one of the guys brandishing cigarettes as they did, and migrated to yet another isolated area in the dark where they sat by themselves and smoked. The isolation they sought validated my suspicion that some if not all of them are underage….

This was a sighting where everything just seemed meant to be, because as isolated as their location was, there was a series of mostly empty benches next to a food stand with a perfect vantage point to overlook them. The foursome kept chatting and horsing around as blondie finished off her sixth cigarette, the cherry glowing a bright red every time she took a drag in this dark location. She pitched the cigarette a good five feet to the side when she finished it this time, and sat waiting with baited breath if it was humanly possible for yet another encore. In less than a minute, I’d get my answer. As she prepared her seventh cigarette of the last hour and a half to light up, I was numb with a combination of elation and disbelief. How could I have ever imagined at 10:00 when I saw this girl smoking the last few drags off of that Marlboro Red near the midway that it would have snowballed into this. A real-life teenage girl chain smoker in the year 2014, a creature I had no idea even existed anymore, and an absolute adorable pint-sized one at that. As I watched her take her early drags off of this seventh cigarette, seated on that berm with her jean shorts so short that plenty of bare upper leg was touching that cement, I also found myself thinking that her standing on my all-time ISF greatest hits list was rising with each new cigarette list, and she was now positioning herself for the very upper reaches of my all-time list.

I was nonetheless getting anxious sitting here, wanting to see what this girl was capable of but also wanting to tick off more sightings. Given how close I was to the fairgrounds’ main sightings arteries, I decided to do small loops around to pick up some additional sightings but to be sure to come back to this spot every few minutes to see how high her cigarette number for the evening would go.  And the craziest thing happened with blondie the chain smoker. After that seventh cigarette, she actually took a break. I hovered for about five minutes and she didn’t light up again yet remained sitting there BSing with her friends. This was my cue for another detour that would hopefully get my numbers up some, and I had already exceeded last year’s haul of 114. Had I not spent a good half hour at this point focused like a laser on this stinky little sexpot, who knows how high my number would have gone?!??!

After completing this latest loop and stitching together a few more modest sightings, it was back to my favorite cluster of benches yet again overlooking the isolated spot where Lila McCann’s chain-smoking baby sister was sitting. She was still sitting there, and before you even ask, the answer is YES! She was indeed in the middle of her eighth cigarette of the last hour and a half….and that was just the ones I saw. Remember a half hour passed between when I saw her smoke her first and her second, and she could have easily smoked three more cigarettes during that time. But alas, it was the eighth I had witnessed and I got there right before the two guys in her group were parting ways with the two girls, and I continued to get the lesbian lover vibe whether true or not just based on their body language around each other. Blondie’s cigarette continued to glow bright red in the darkness with her subsequent drags until she polished off that cigarette to her satisfaction and proceeded to spike it like a football on the cement. That in itself was cool enough but things got weirder when the brunette, who had taken no matter than three or four drags from any cigarette that evening, proceeded to jump off from the berm, pick up the still-smoldering cigarette off the ground and take another drag off of it. This was the oddest group of smokers I think I’ve ever come across, but I wouldn’t change a thing. A couple of minutes later, they both finally got up to leave, heading to the south side once again, and as 11:30 approached, I was prepared to abandon blondie for the night and make one loop through the main arteries of the grounds before leaving for my midnight shuttle bus.

I had a game plan for my final lap of the day about 10 minutes later, and the plan was going swimmingly as I proceeded down the south side but the evening would have one more detour from the day’s most familiar little blond.  It would be one thing if I was consciously following this chainsmoker around all night, but I wasn’t…..I just kept randomly running into her with that ever-present cigarette in hand, and this time would be no exception.  Standing right in front of the entrance to the horse barn next to her brunette friend, my adorable little blond was polishing off her NINTH Marlboro Red of the last two hours (again, her ninth that I had seen…there was plenty of opportunity for her to have smoked a few more that I missed).  I would catch her right in the middle of her final drag before she dropped the smoldering butt to the ground and walked inside the horse barn with her friends.  Once inside, she met back up with the two guys who must have gone in in front of her while she had to stand down to smoke her latest cigarette.  And once inside, the guys were taking more pics of the two girls which set off a light bulb in my own head.  I hadn’t even thought about trying to get a photo of my own up to that point given that it was dark and I didn’t want my flash to go off, but with my girl now inside a well-lit horse barn, this could be my chance.  Unfortunately, there was no way they missed my lurking presence in the last two hours and I’d really be pushing my luck trying to score a photo, even as stealth as I’m able to be snapping pics with this camera phone.   I opted to dance close to the sun and try to score a couple of photos from just outside.  Neither of them ended up being close enough to truly capture this girl, but one at least gave a general sense of her size and pedigree.

I crossed the street to the south side beer gardens and foraged through the crowd to score another couple of modest sightings, but then migrated back to that horse barn to see if my favorite Iowa State Fair girl in years was still there.  She was, lingering with the friends towards the back of the horse barn.  Adorably, the little blond appeared to be talking to one of the horses inside the stall, and I felt sorry for the horse as his own manure had to have smelled better than being face-to-face with this chain-smoking little girl for an extended period.  Seriously though, seeing her talk to this horse really got me to thinking about how erotic it would be to make out with this girl after she had just smoked nine Marlboros in two hours….

Was this a special occasion “partying at the fair” thing or does this girl really smoke at a comparable clip day in and day out?  I’m inclined to believe it’s more likely the latter, and assuming she was going back to her senior year of high school in a couple of weeks, I can only imagine what a torturous adjustment it will be for her to struggle through a full day in class without the nicotine her body demands in such massive quantities.  I once again strongly considered going inside and snapping a pic but it was just too risky with her friends right there with her.  A close-up photo would have been the perfect icing on this multi-tiered cake, but even without one, how could I ever forget the face of the most prolific chainsmoker in my two-decade history of state fair fetishing?  A sighting that started so unassumingly only two hours ago had morphed into an all-time classic, and if I walk away from state fair season with one “classic” on any given year, I feel like I’ve achieved a major victory.  To have scored it on this day that I began with such limited expectations only made the victory that much sweeter…..

Now obviously as I left the Iowa State Fairgrounds that Saturday evening, it seemed certain that I had seen the last of my favorite new chain-smoking teen girl, but the damndest thing happened four nights later when I showed up on Wednesday night for my second day at the fair…..

It was approaching dusk as I ventured to the south side and slipped by the seating area once again that has been so rewarding this year.  And I could see from afar that it was about to be again as I saw from behind two teenage girls with cigarettes sitting by themselves on a berm.  And lucky me, I had my choice of benches across from them to get a front-row seat.  I planted my ass on a bench directly across from them to get as close as possible, about to get one of the biggest pleasant surprises in the history of fair fetishing.  Even though there were two girls smoking, I was only going to be able to count one of them as a sighting, and that was the decently attractive brunette in a red top and dark jeans.  Now the reason that I didn’t count the other girl was not because she wasn’t attractive….she was in fact the more attractive of the two.  I couldn’t count her because I never count a girl I’ve already counted before as a sighting earlier in the same year.  In this case, it was a girl from Saturday night…..THE girl from Saturday night.  I was staring right back at that innocent face of a petite blond who looked like 90s country singer Lila McCann….a face I couldn’t forget even if I got a full frontal lobotomy.  As very close to unprecedented as it is for me at least in state fair sightings, I was seeing this same Marlboro Reds-chaining cutiepie again who smoked nine cigarettes in two hours on Saturday night.  It was surreal enough to keep running into her on Saturday night, but now I was running into her yet again four days later!!

She was distracted on her smartphone when I sat down and since I knew she’d recognize me from Saturday, I quickly got up and moved a couple of benches away.  The brunette friend, who by the way was a different and more attractive friend than the brunette she was with on Saturday, was just finishing her cigarette, crushing it out on the berm and that was the cue for the duo to get up and walk away, with my blond still clutching on to a couple of remaining drags on her cigarette.  I followed at a bit of a distance, not wanting to get called out for two nights of familiarity, but I also wanted to get a couple of photos.  After two more drags, she dropped the butt to the pavement, burning ash scattering all over as she halfheartedly crushed it out with her foot.  Unsurprisingly, another Marlboro Red, now my 10th from her in two nights…..

I had one objective and that was to get photos of her since it was too dark to get good ones on Saturday night.  Unfortunately, it was approaching dusk and I was at the danger zone where my photos start getting blurry without the flash.  I managed a couple of rear photos that aren’t too bad, capturing her sexy body which tonight was draped in a more revealing black tanktop that exposed quite a bit of bare flesh on her back and a pair of very tight dark jeans.  Now I preferred her short shorts from Saturday, but these jeans were sexy too, and the presentation made her look even more like Lila McCann circa 1998.  I tried to take a couple side photos of her walking but they didn’t turn out, and I saw her looking my way both times and making awkward eye contact.  I would definitely have to hang back at this point as the girl turned down the concourse and then headed into the midway….

I kept a distance as I followed, hoping she’d at least light up another cigarette.  Instead, she met with her guy friends, at least one of them the same from Saturday night, and they stopped at some junk vendor in the midway and lingered long enough that I couldn’t risk hovering any longer and vacated, hoping and expecting I’d see her again later in the evening.  As is the story all too often with this girl, to be continued…

Fast forward to 11 p.m. when I had an hour to go on the evening and was heading to the south side of the grounds.  By this point in the night I had all but forgotten about her, thinking she had to have left early or I certainly would have seen her, but as I walked down the middle of the street on the south side and looked to my left, there she was…..my chainsmoking Marlboro Reds girl with the same friend as before…..and she was smoking another cigarette even though the friend wasn’t.  This was the second cigarette I witnessed from her tonight and the 11th of two days at the Iowa State Fair, a record I suspect will hold for the rest of my life and for however short her life is likely to be.  Once again, we made eye contact, which meant I had to tread carefully as I followed.  Her cigarette looked recently lit so I should be in store for quite a show, and it turned out to be vintage unpredictability from my Lila McCann clone, who walked pass this cluster of middle-aged guys looking at this new statue of the couple from the American Gothic painting that was erected in the last year.  For whatever reason, my smoker and her friend were prompting high-fives from these guys in their 50s .  The guys awkwardly cooperated, touching the free hand of the teenage girl with the smelliest and most nicotine-stained fingers of anyone on the fairgrounds.  She pressed forward on a near identical path that they took earlier in the night, on a direct line to the midway, as Miss Chainsmoker kept taking her modest drags and modest exhales from the cigarette…

Once in the midway, the girls continued their immature little game of high-fiving everyone they came across from random midway people to the carnies operating the rides and games.  In between high-fives, she predictably attended to her cigarette.  Finally, she finished off the cigarette and crushed it out right before high-fiving a guy with a jumpshot basketball game, who let her take a shot after the high-five, which she missed.  The girls pressed on and I felt I was so exposed that I only dared to follow for another minute or so, in hopes she’d smoke another cigarette.  When she didn’t, I turned around to fetish elsewhere, still hoping and fully expecting to run into her again with as empty as the grounds were becoming.  Sadly I wouldn’t and her 2014 Iowa State Fair saga came to an end. But what an unbelievable ride with this girl who seemed next to impossible to beat for the for 2014 Sighting of the Year, and indeed it played out that way.

 

 

So there’s my 2014 top-25 list, a list I’m quite proud of and believe holds up with previous years’ lists of favorites.  Hopefully, nobody’s favorites from the writeups were overlooked.  Last year, I tried posting my top-25 fairgrounds sightings in late November rather than clustering it with my other year-end favorites lists and felt it worked out great, giving more exposure to all three of my lists.  After Christmas, I will post my other two favorites lists from 2014, neither of which is entirely complete at this point as I still have my holiday tour of the malls coming in December.

2014 Minnesota State Fair, Day 2

I expressed concern last week after Day 1 of the 2014 Minnesota State Fair that my days there each year seem to go pretty much in pairs, so when I had a somewhat below-average day there last week, I feared I’d have another this week.  I wasn’t completely right as yesterday was a couple of ticks better than last week in terms of the sightings patterns and scoring a few more extra-base hit sightings than last week.  Don’t get me wrong….it wasn’t a “great” day compared to some of the legendary days of years past but as moments of sightings euphoria were few and far between, but the pacing was generally better and I scored a few more sightings with fun storylines than last week.   Still, the real action this year was at the Iowa State Fair, a substantial reversal from the previous two years.  Numbers-wise, I underperformed yesterday, scoring 182 sightings.  That’s up only four from last week’s 178-sighting haul, and typically I score sightings in the 200 range on Labor Day weekend (I got 196 last year) when there’s almost always more fairgoers.

A shortage of fairgoers was definitely not the problem this Saturday.  Even though the weather was uncertain to a degree as it almost always is anymore, the forecast predicted it would be the best day of the weekend, and I knew that would mean a suffocating crowd.  I wasn’t wrong, and attendance figures revealed this afternoon showed a crowd of 252,000 yesterday, shattering the previous record of 236,000 from just last year.  Generally speaking, the larger the crowd the better for sightings, but there’s a tipping point where you’re packed in like sardines and aren’t able to see as much territory when you’re walking, and certainly we were at that point by those mid-afternoon hours.  We got there shortly before 9 a.m. again and the sun was already peaking through, which helps for morale, but it was still more clouds than sun until around 4:00.  There have been a few years in the not so distant past where I’ve had a decent sightings haul in the morning hours but it’s been a struggle the last couple of years.  I was there at least an hour before I finally scored…

Sighting #1 took place at the large smoking area by the beer gardens block and the bathroom.  I heard this attractive mid-20s brunette say “designated smoking area” to her boyfriend with a bit of peculiarity in her voice as she looked that direction after coming out of the bathroom.  The boyfriend responded “yeah you can’t smoke anywhere anymore”, and this exchange led me to suspect a very good chance tobacco was about to be smoked.  My instinct proved right as within the next 30 seconds a pack of Camel Lights came out of her purse (I should mention I think the brand I’ve been calling Camel Lights for years now are really Camel Menthol Lights).  Anyway, the girl was slender and attractive, with a ball cap on her head covering her long dark brown hair, and she was wearing a black tanktop and a pair of nice-fitting jeans.  She and the boyfriend were in the company of a middle-aged couple that was probably either his parents or hers, but they were all chatting as the younger couple lit up their cigarettes.  The sighting was a “long single” but after such a long dry spell I was savoring it, snapping a couple of pics and enjoying her every drag and exhale until she finished.

It was at least 20 minutes until my next sighting, but it was also above average, at least managing to give me some high points amidst this otherwise smokeless Saturday morning.  Sighting #2 took place at the smoking area to the northwest of the food building.  A young couple was sitting on a bench next to a middle-aged couple, and it was pretty clear they had just met moments earlier as all four were smoking cigarettes.  The girl was a long-haired blond who looked about 22-23 and was an unusual combination of gawky and sexy sitting there in her flattering pink blouse and black shorts with her legs crossed.  Her features weren’t perfect but there was just something about her that oozed sex appeal.  That sex appeal soared when the cork filter cigarette between her fingers approached her mouth.  She closed her eyes as she drew smoke into her lungs, a look of genuine physical pleasure overcoming her body that coupled with her smiley demeanor really got me excited.  I sat at a convenient vantage point watching the whole sighting play out, her have this mini-orgasm with every drag and staying mostly quiet while the boyfriend was chatting away with the older couple.  I’m pretty sure I heard him mention my hometown, although I didn’t recognize him or the girl if they were from there.  At the end of the cigarette, she leaned down and crushed the cigarette out.  I wanted a butt ID but it didn’t appear likely to happen as they weren’t going anywhere so I had planned to walk away, but as I walked past them I got lucky and saw the green pack of Marlboro Menthols poking out of her purse.  About a half hour later, I saw this couple again by the beer gardens and getting another couple to take a selfie of them, the girl boasting that same sexy figure and the same sunny demeanor….with the same pack of Marlboro Menthols poking out of her purse.

I had a few sightings yesterday that had the weirdest short circuits.  One of them was Sighting #5, which took place along a series of benches leaning against the grandstand.  Sitting on one of them was a young couple, both of whom were smoking.  The bearded guy had some kind of hipster vibe going and it wasn’t a surprise to see him with a cigarette, but the mid-20s brunette girl was a knockout beauty without any alternative leanings at all. her long black hair flowing over her shoulders onto a black tanktop with dark jeans below.  She didn’t look at all like a smoker but there she was puffing on her all-white, and with a baby stroller in front of her no less, indicating she probably smoked while pregnant.  The short circuit came as I prepared to sit down on a bench next to her and watch the show and was caught off-guard by a middle-aged black lady shouting “Don’t sit down there!” in a lighthearted voice.  Turns out the bench was wet and muddy from the previous night’s rain and she had already sat there and gotten a wet butt out of the deal.  I didn’t really care about that for myself, but now found myself distracted while the black lady’s friend came to wipe down the bench.  I had to awkwardly stand there to get a decent look at the gorgeous smoker hottie who was also making small talk with the lady wiping down the bench.  Far sooner than I had hoped, the MILF leaned down to crush out her cigarette and then proceeded to walk up to the nearest garbage can and throw the butt away.   This one definitely could have gone smoother.

The morning hours continued to drag on, and with things so slow I took an interest in a few girls that teased me with tremendous potential and gave off a vibe of tobacco usage being a possibility.  My strongest instinct came as I walked down the street with the huddles of smokers on the east end of the Coliseum.  I got all the way to the southeast corner and in the exact same place where my two sexpot late teens were smoking in last week’s third best sighting of the day, a very suspicious duo of mid-teen cuties were sitting there again, wearing similarly short shorts and seated with their legs in a similar upside-down V pattern bent at the knees while leaning against the building.  One girl had a beautiful face with an artificial reddish-tinted shoulder-length hair coupled with a pale pink tanktop and tight-fitting jean shorts covering a shapely lower body.  She looked about 16.  Her friend was probably the same age but looked younger.  She wasn’t as hot as the other girl but had a girl-next-door cuteness to her, her brown hair up in a ponytail and wearing a black sweatshirt with matching black shorts.  The girls couldn’t possibly have looked more suspicious sitting there and I was certain tobacco usage had either already taken place or was about to.  I went back to the same spot a couple more times in the next few minutes but never did see them smoking, and managed to forget about them after they vacated that spot.

I was well behind schedule and it was approaching 1 p.m. before I got my next sighting of relevance.  In the smoking area on the west side of the grandstand, I saw a late teen cutie seated by herself smoking.  As I approached, I could tell the facial piercings would render Sighting #15 to be “not my type”, but I must say her overall presentation won me over, decked out in a black tanktop and jean shorts and sporting a pair of glasses that gave her a “cute nerd” vibe.  She looked a lot like the sister of my ex-girlfriend Courtney.  The metal in her face was an unfortunate distraction but she was young enough (I’d peg her for 18 or 19) to where she could overcome the hideousness to an extent.  She was distracted by her phone as she puffed away on her cigarette, taking nice drags and producing worthy exhales.  I was able to snap a pic and watch the show, but she got up and tossed the cigarette in the community ashtray as she walked away, denying me the butt ID.

The east side smoking area delivered several times yesterday, despite being a mudhole from the three inches of rain that hit the fairgrounds on Friday afternoon.  Sighting #20 was a slender 19-20ish brunette cutie sitting in the dead center of a bench in the smoking area, surrounded by older smokers who were decidedly less adorable.  She wore a baseball cap with her long brown hair coming out the back in a ponytail, her skinny body covered in a white T-shirt and jean shorts with sexy, slender legs below.  She wasn’t the most surprising smoker I saw yesterday but I definitely wouldn’t have pegged her as a smoker from the crowd. I got a photo in of her in mid-drag, looking so awkward being this cute young girl smoking amidst a bench full of unattractive older people.  Her style was decent as well, lacking any bells and whistles but still looking sexy exhaling cigarette smoke.  She stood up and deposited her butt into the standing water of the ashtray where I had zero chance of getting a butt ID.  Interestingly, less than an hour later I saw her pushing around a mentally challenged young man in a wheelchair.  Apparently she’s either a volunteer or that’s her job.  Either way, it seems like it would be a situation stressful enough with the size of this crowd that it likely triggered the need for further smoke breaks as the day pressed on, even though I didn’t see them if she did.

I headed east on Dan Patch Avenue next where the first electric moment of the day awaited me.  I made it a block east of the grandstand when I saw an early-to-mid-20s blond with a beer opening up her purse and taking out a pack of Marlboro Lights from her purse and wasting no time inserting a cigarette into her mouth.  As crowded as the foot traffic was, I still was able to successfully pivot and keep up with her, and was in for one epically obnoxious show.  Sighting #21 was adorable, with shoulder-length blond hair falling mostly on bare flesh and there wasn’t much fabric holding up her low-cut brownish tanktop.  But I’ve always been more of a South America kind of guy and she dazzled down under with a pair of pale pink shorts.  Now the girl had a little bit of meat on her bones….not chubby enough to be a factor for the overwhelming majority of guys but with her body type she’ll probably struggle to keep the weight off as she gets older.  At age 22-23 or whatever she was, however, I was licking my chops at her presentation especially as I watched her take her first drag from her cigarette amidst this dense crowd.  There were a couple of guys walking behind her who were with her, at least at the time not smoking.  The density of the crowd had the potential to be a huge problem on the photo-taking front, but in this case I snapped the best photo I’ve ever gotten with the cigarette dangling from her lips.  I had no need to attempt any additional photos after that masterpiece, which was good because I was about to be treated to the dangle of the year….

I kept pace with her after the photo and couldn’t help but notice that cigarette stayed perched in her mouth for a very extended period, at first seemingly out of convenience but eventually she began foraging through her purse for something and that dangle just continued and continued and continued.  At least 30 seconds in, I was walking directly parallel to her and watched her pucker up her lips for a dangling drag.  One would think the smoke would be rising into her nose and becoming uncomfortable but this girl clearly can handle however much smoke the tobacco companies can throw her way.  Finally, after at least 45 seconds of dangling, the cigarette was removed from her mouth.  How I would have loved to have kissed her to taste her ashtray mouth seconds after a dangle like that!  Her group proceeded to the line for ears of sweet corn and asked some guy if where they were standing was really the end of the line.  He responded that it was, and they decided against standing in line that long and proceeded back the direction they came from down Dan Patch Avenue.  With the stifling crowds of humanity pressed together like pigs in a livestock barn, I knew it was only a matter of time before her thoughtless and unlawful smoking behavior would produce a casualty, and I was about to get one of my best reactions ever from someone on the receiving end of a cute girl’s exhale….

I watched from a rear side angle as blondie took a deep drag and as she prepared to exhale, this middle-aged guy literally cowered in anticipation of the exhale to the face he knew he was about to get.  For whatever reason, seeing his face for that split second before he got whacked made me think of “Cringer”, the wimpy tiger from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoons in the mid-80s.  Something tells me this “Cringer” will never transform into the Mighty Battle Cat like He-Man’s did, however.  I marveled at the power of cigarettes that made this middle-aged guy cower in fear of what was spewing from the mouth of a short blond girl in pink shorts.  As I pressed forward, girlie was in the final throes of the all-white she was making such quick work of, and by now one of the guys in her company had lit up in forbidden territory as well.  In another minute or so, she dropped the cigarette to the pavement without crushing it out.  I already knew it was a Marlboro Light having seen her remove it from the pack but I confirmed it again as I walked past the smoldering remains.  This was easily the best sighting from early in the day and the best of the year in terms of a girl ignoring the designated smoking area rules.  For the first time of the day, I was genuinely feeling some adrenaline.

By this point in the afternoon, the crowds were so dense that I thought it was a good opportunity to revisit the north side of the fairgrounds where the crowds are typically at least a little bit lighter and you have some breathing room.  The downside is that you can frequently make the 20-minute round trip up and down the north side blocks and get zero sightings.  That’s not always the case though, and it wasn’t yesterday as I scored a delicious two-for-one sighting heading south from the grounds’ northernmost point.  I crossed paths with a similarly dressed duo of early-to-mid 20s babes and got weak in the knees from the stylish presentation that Sightings #24 and #25 brought to the table as both girls were dressed in bright orange T-shirts and tight blue jeans with belts and both illegally wielding freshly lit cigarettes as they progressed northward.  They were either both genuine country girls or doing a good job of faking it.  One girl was a short-haired brunette that from a distance had a sort of 1994-ish Martina McBride look about her, but her IT factor was pretty modest and so was her smoking style.  The girl who stole the show was the long-haired blond, easily the most shocking face I saw yesterday with a cigarette sticking out of it.  Blondie was distracted on her phone, very obviously in discussion to meet up with somebody on the grounds, but I still found it challenging to take a photo without drawing attention to myself.  The two I got are fair but from further away than I’d prefer.  But with the pics out of the way, it was just time to hang back and enjoy the show from one of my top-five sightings of the day….

I walked behind them for a bit hoping to catch the headwind of their exhales.  The brunette was slow and mediocre as a smoker and quickly began to lose me entirely in the company of this blond.  My friend Dan (the one close friend who knows about my smoking fetish) has a very specific type of girl…..the long-haired blond with soft girl-next-door features.  Ordinarily when I show him photos of smoker girls I plan to date, he always says “looks like your type” with the subtext that they wouldn’t be his type because they’re “too hard”.  If not for the cigarette in her hand, I could imagine him melting in the company of this beautiful and wholesome blond.  I know I was, especially whenever she took a drag from her cigarette and released a cloudy exhale that I had the good fortune of walking through on a few occasions.  And those tight jeans combined with the bright orange tanktop were working for me too, especially when combining her slender waist with the perfect curvatures of her hips and ass in those jeans. Mmmmm!  But the show would come to a literal road block as we found ourselves in the pathway of the daily Minnesota State Fair parade, the location where the girls happened to meet with two guys who were either their boyfriends or just dudes they were hanging with, and one of the guys was smoking too.  This gave me a chance to hover back and watch some of the parade, but mostly watch blondie finish that cigarette.  She dropped it the pavement when she finished and was a little too aggressive in stomping it out.  I stood there lusting a butt identification but knew I wouldn’t get one until the parade ended and they left.  It would be about five minutes until it did, giving me more time to admire the beauty of this most unlikely blond smoker.  Finally when the parade did end and everybody parted, I was able to get the butt ID.  It was the variation of cork filter Marlboros that have Marlboro written in red cursive on the filter.  I’ve seen it a couple of times before but am not certain which Marlboro variation that is.  The north side of the fairgrounds came through for me yesterday!

I went back to the grandstand area next and while the sightings count was progressing slowly up to that point in the day, I was about to hit a productive patch that temporarily surged my numbers.  As I encircled the seating area east of the grandstand I came across a cluster of 20-somethings chatting amongst each other and spotted one of the girls, a decently attractive light brunette, smoking, and thus becoming Sighting #27.  But it was another girl in the cluster with a cigarette who stole the show.  Sighting #28 was a tall, slender, long-haired blond in a bare-midriff white tanktop with a pair of tight leggings below the waist that perfectly advertised every curvature of her spectacular lower body.  I watched her take two impressive drags from her all-white before handing it to the guy standing next to her at which point I lost interest.  About an hour later, I’d see just the shapely blond and that guy standing in the same general area and smoking again.

Less than a minute later, I approached the smoking area on the east side of the grandstand and from a distance thought I struck gold as I saw a petite blond with a cigarette in the company of a middle-aged couple I presumed were her parents.  Did I finally find the sighting I’d been hoping for since the advent of the “designated smoking area”?  The smoking parents with the smoking teen daughter all publicly exhaling carcinogens?  Apparently not as I got closer and noticed the Sighting #29 petite blond who I figured was 16 as I was approaching was holding a beer in her hand.  I never remember having this problem of not being able to tell the 16-year-old girls from the 21-year-old women in the past and am not sure if I’m the problem or if young women are just looking more like young girls than they did in the past.  I think it’s probably a combination of both.  Either way, whatever age this girl was she was a cute smoker, decked out in a tanktop and jean shorts and putting on a rock solid smoking performance.  I wouldn’t doubt if I wasn’t the only one who figured this girl was much younger as they walked by and noticed her with a cigarette.  I watched several drags and then drifted back to the nearby seating area to see if I was missing anything there….

I wasn’t missing anything per se, but as I ascended the three steps to investigate two early 20s blonds sitting there eating, I quickly noticed that both girls had packs of Marlboro Reds sitting in front of them.  Did this mean that they had smoked one before they started eating their junk food or that they were simply preparing themselves to enjoy one after eating?  I was definitely gonna stick around to see, and doing so allowed me to look the short distance to my right to the official smoking area and watch the petite #29 girl finish her cigarette with the middle-aged couple I assumed were her parents.  My eyes darted about while waiting and I saw another 20-something brunette light up in the seating area and become Sighting #30.  Still, I really wanted to confirm my suspicions about these two blonds.  It should be mentioned these blonds fit the “hard” look that buddy Dan wouldn’t go for and while scoring points on presentation with their bleach blond hair, tanktops, and shorts, were not the prettiest girls at the fair.  They were pretty enough to invest some time in though given the situation and when they finally finished eating, they picked up their packs of Marlboro Reds and walked eastward clearly on a mission.  I followed and sure enough, the packs of Reds were being opened.  The taller and chubbier girl with curly hair, a green and black tanktop, and jean shorts was the first to become Sighting #31 while the prettier friend in the neon green tanktop and white shorts lit up second to become Sighting #32.  I got a fair snapshot as the second girl was lighting up.  It was amusing that the girls had just drifted away from the smoking area they were close to where smoking was allowed and were now progressing eastward with cigarettes in hand down crowded Dan Patch Avenue where it most definitely was not.  I followed for a short distance to see if their styles were worth a full pursuit but they didn’t prove too inspiring so I turned around.  The last girl smoking publicly on Dan Patch Ave. put on a more memorable show but I still found it amazing that so many hot girls either don’t know about or choose to ignore the designated smoking areas and rudely force their smoking upon such a tightly packed crowd in the busiest parts of the fairgrounds.

The pace of sightings was definitely picking up some by mid-afternoon but I still had a ton of ground to make up after such a slow morning.  I always made sure to hit the smoking area near the beer gardens and bathroom a disproportionate amount of times, so much so that on a couple of occasions I doubled back from the Coliseum and then took a shortcut to avoid some of impossibly crowded Judson Avenue.  It was doing this that allowed me to catch Sighting #40, one of the coolest storyline sightings of the day.  From a distance, I could see a sexy ponytailed light brunette in a pink T-shirt and white shorts leaning against the cement just outside the beer gardens with a freshly lit cigarette.  She seemed like a top tier babe and looked quite a bit younger than I suspect she probably was after I got a closer look.  Anyway, as I got there, a guy who looked at least 10 years older than she was who I figured was a boyfriend/husband was standing there with a photographer’s camera preparing to shoot a few snapshots of her (interestingly, I had the same goal in mind!).  But the damndest thing happened and I could tell by his hand gestures as I approached that he was requesting she hold her cigarette up to her face in a bent-elbow pose.  She smirked and cooperated, posing with the cigarette held inches to the left of her pretty face.  He took a photo of it and then requested she do it again.  I was dumbfounded.  Was this just some silly pose or did the boyfriend have a smoking fetish and was requesting her indulgence in his fairgrounds photo-taking?  I’ll never know but I wasn’t quite close enough and didn’t have my camera phone prepared when she was posing so I could piggyback on his photo.   Even when I did get my chance I had a helluva time getting the photo right and it took me three attempts before I got her entirely in the shot.  After the boyfriend/husband was done taking photos he lit up a cigarette of his own but was masterfully outsmoked by the girlfriend who was a maestro with that cigarette as one would suspect.  I had made a spectacle of myself with all that photo taking so couldn’t stick around for more than a couple of drags, but studying the photo today I’m struck by how beautiful she was.  She had some lines on her face, most likely from years of heavy smoking, but looking at the photo I’d be shocked if she was even 30.  If I had gotten a little more of a show with additional context regarding the boyfriend/husband’s photos, this had the potential to be one of my stronger sightings of the day.

Another weird one came about 45 minutes later on the other side of the beer gardens block.  Generally speaking I run up my numbers pretty nicely on this west side of the beer gardens block but don’t run into too many unforgettable girls who really stand out.  That sure wasn’t the case when I came across Sighting #56, another of yesterday’s more oddball standouts.  Standing there with a young daughter in a stroller who was probably two years old and with a four or five-year-old daughter standing next to her was this late 20s long-and-curly-haired light brunette young mommy with a freshly lit cork filter smoldering between her fingers.  Even if she had been wearing traditional State Fair garb, this wholesome-looking mommy wouldn’t have been on my radar to have a 100 mm cigarette between her fingers, but the outfit she was wearing really made this one unusual…..a white sleeveless top with a long flower print purple, white, and black skirt that hung only inches from the ground.  It was the most unusual outfit I saw wore by a smoker girl yesterday…or for the entire fair season that matter, and by itself made this cute mommy a standout.  But her lengthy, rapist drags on that long cigarette and the warm relationship she seemed to have with her daughters, especially the older one who kept talking to her, made my heart melt even further, and I licked my lips at the awesome role model she was being to the next generation of smokers that were her daughters.  I noticed a couple of others walk by giving a second look of surprise to this wholesome mommy-and-children presentation that was corrupted by a cigarette which mom was dragging from frequently and laboriously.  I scored a couple of fair snapshots, one from the front and one from the side.  Finally, “dad” came over and had a beer for himself and mommy and after a couple more drags from mommy’s cigarette, they began to wheel the stroller away.  I began to follow but mommy quickly dropped her less than half-smoked cigarette to the ground.  Considering how hard she was dragging on it and how many times she hit it over the course of the three or four minutes I was observing, I was surprised so much of the cigarette was left.  Either way, I got my butt ID and it was a Marlboro Red 100.  Again, way to go, mom!

I circled the beer gardens block and got a few more sightings on the way and then headed south for the Coliseum area.  As I progressed along the east side of the building and didn’t find anything, even towards the southeast side where I scored last week and had a curiosity earlier in the day yesterday, I decided it might be worth my effort to turn the corner and see if anyone was smoking on the remote south side of the building.  Not sure why it never occurred to me before to do this, but this isolated area was perfect for a stealth smoke break and sure enough a couple that appeared in their early 30s was sitting on a bench just around the corner with the still-very-attractive brunette wife in a nice blouse and white pants smoking a cigarette and becoming Sighting #60.  Unfortunately I got there in time for the final drag and for the wife to crush out her cigarette.  I was jealous of the guy whose wife was so shapely and attractive even though she was probably not far from my age and is a smoker.  Anyway, I had now added a new location to scope out sightings to my itinerary after my epiphany immediately yielded a success story.

I then doubled back to the smoking area by the beer gardens and bathroom, a very wise decision as a flurry of activity awaited.  Right in the middle of the smoking area I caught the tail end of a sighting from an extremely glamorous and attractive mid-20s dark brunette in a skin-tight black and white-striped dress finishing off the final drag of a cigarette.  I felt robbed having missed 99% of her show, but it was still one helluva contrast to be looking at Sighting #61, this glamorously dressed socialite standing immediately in front of a filthy overflowing ashtray.  And while this brunette would have been the main attraction had I seen more of her smoking show, there was a more casually dressed young couple a few people to my brunette’s right where the wholesome-looking brunette girlfriend was smoking while sitting next to her boyfriend.  Not much of a storyline for Sighting #62, but they were a cute couple made cuter by the fact that she was smoking and he wasn’t, and the fact that the designated smoking area brought together this young couple and the brunette sexpot who looked like she was dressed for an evening at the nightclub, both in service to their three-inch tobacco slavemasters.

I began to migrate away from the smoking area but gave a second look to the hordes of people lurking outside the women’s bathroom only a few yards away.  Standing in the back corner near the fence was a sexpot bleach blond in a tiny blouse with a fully exposed midriff and short medium-blue cutoffs on the bottom.  There was a stroller beside her but this blond, even from a distance, didn’t look like anybody’s mother.  Right away it looked as though she was taking an all-white cigarette from a pack that looked like Marlboro Lights, and sure enough, she lit up seconds later to become Sighting #63.  And moments after lighting up, she actually climbed the berm she was leaning against to take a look at the “Birds of Prey” show just outside the DNR building on the other side of the aforementioned mini-fence.  Since the line for the women’s bathroom was on one side of her and preventing me from approaching her on that side, I would have to walk by that fence on the other side.  Ordinarily that would have been an easy task, but the rainfall from the day before left the walkway to get her direction in front of that fence a big mudhole.  I nonetheless made the journey, however, and found myself standing in front of her as she looked ahead to the Birds of Prey show (ironically, I HATE large birds so this would ordinarily be the last place I’d be if it wasn’t for stalking a sexy cigarette smoker).  She was probably late 20s but had a worn face, the look of a long-time heavy smoker without question.  I was close enough to get one cloudy exhale blown pretty close to my face, and I was preparing my camera for a risky photo but the timing sucked as her kid in the stroller started acting up and she began to lean over the ledge to attend to the kid, holding her cigarette hand to the right.  I tried to capture the photo of her bent over with cigarette in hand but it’s not a great photo and misses the cigarette entirely.  Still there’s a lot of sexy bare female midriff and those skimpy cutoffs in the photo to remember her by.  My presence at this spot was not gonna be sufficient for an extended tour, so I had to abandon and walk through the mud again.  Still, this successful little visit to the beer gardens/bathroom smoking area still had one more special delivery for me as I prepared once again to depart…

As I was poised to walk away from the smoking area, I found myself behind a trio that included two girls and a guy with the guy pushing a stroller.  The brunette girl of the duo had a freshly lit cigarette between her fingers and became Sighting #64, and she had a presentation almost identical to the last girl aside from the differing hair colors.  Her top was a microscopic black piece of fabric that left her entire perfectly proportioned midriff exposed right up until the waistline of her jean shorts.  Hard to know what was sexier as I walked behind her between watching all that exposed well-toned female flesh or the cigarette in her right hand.  I watched her take a couple drags and snapped a photo as I walked behind, but as I was beginning to get comfortable with the optics of the sighting, the brunette smoker approached the blond friend and held the cigarette out.  I wasn’t expecting this but was very happy to get it as the Sighting #65 blond, who was wearing a casual but flattering black minidress, lacked the electric presentation of the bare-bellied brunette, but she was a knockout beauty and the prettier of the two.  Both girls were pretty, but the blond really impressed and I just loved seeing the cigarette approach her lips for two drags before she handed it back to the brunette who would keep it for the rest of the cigarette, adorably excluding the guy in their company (my hunch is that he was the blond’s boyfriend as the brunette certainly didn’t have any stretch marks on that belly of hers) from enjoying the girls’ smoky bliss even as he pushed the stroller with the baby in it.  Anyway, I watched from the rear as the brunette continued to smoke, putting on a pretty impressive performance as she illegally consumed her cigarette in the middle of the dense crowd and exhaled her cigarette smoke randomly without concerning herself about the comfort level of passersby.  I couldn’t help but notice that her cigarette, which looked like a Parliament from my vantage point, was burning kind of strangely, but I was amused by the more-than-inch-long granny ash at the end of her cigarette at one point.  Finally I looked below to see a giant ash had hit the pavement when she finally decided to ash.  The trio was about to enter the Coliseum but the brunette still had to finish her cigarette.  I figured I had a very good chance of IDing the butt but was aghast when I saw her drop it in a puddle of standing water near the curb.  I nonetheless walked over to that curb to investigate and quickly found out it was not the Parliament I suspected but a cigarette with the logo “Winner”.  Given the odd shape of the butt, the fact that it was a brand I had never heard of, and that it burned so unusually while she was smoking it, I figured it must have been a roll-your-own cigarette, which was definitely not what I expected from a 21ish brunette sexpot with about eight inches of exposed midriff, but certainly better than her not smoking at all or sucking on one of those awful e-cigarettes/vaporizers which were sadly still far more abundant than I’d have preferred yesterday.

There were two places that really delivered yesterday.  One was the corridor from the beer gardens/bathroom smoking area I’ve already talked about at length and the other was the smoking area on the east side of the grandstand which delivered a flurry of sightings in one big gulp for me in the early afternoon and was about to again as the 5:00 hour approached.  A cute, shaggy-haired light brunette who looked early 20s was standing in the middle of the smoking area with some friends puffing away and was Sighting #73, but she was just the appetizer for a younger girl with a more wholesome presentation on the edge of smoking area.  Two friends who looked 18 or 19 were standing on the cement and one of them had just lit up a cigarette.  Sighting #74 was a very cute long-haired brunette with a long white blouse covering a matching pair of zebra-striped top and shorts.  She had soft, gentle features and a mouthful of braces to match.  Now the friend, a redhead in a white tanktop and a long colorful skirt, was just as cute but she didn’t smoke.  Mildly disappointing, but the brunette was a spectacular find even by herself.  I snapped a couple of photos and watched her worthy smoking technique as she talked to her friend, bringing a smile to my face every time I witnessed those braces in her mouth that were undoubtedly getting stained by tobacco.  But a few drags in, this sighting would inherit a couple of new players, complete strangers of a middle-aged couple who approached the girls to chat while they smoked.  The woman in the couple greeted them warmly and said she thought she’d stop and chat with “fellow smokers”, adorably establishing kinship with a teenage girl less than half her age…..

I hovered in the general area as she smoked her entire cigarette and chatted with this older couple who were treating her as equals.  As she wrapped up the cigarette, she turned around on the edge of the cement where she was standing, clearly not wanting to step in the muddy grass where the ashtray was and instead just tossing the cigarette that direction, coming several inches short of the ashtray and falling to the grass where it would lie smoldering.  I licked my lips watching it smolder there and was waiting for the guy standing right in front it smoking to walk away.  Instead, he broke my heart by stepping backwards….right on top of the cigarette that I really wanted to identify.  D’oh!  I began focusing again on the girls and the couple, with the girls just about to walk away and the woman they just met five minutes ago extending her arms to give her a hug.  When the hug ended and the girl began to walk ago, the middle-aged woman wished her a “happy birthday”, and I was curious which birthday it would be for her.  18?  19?  I can’t imagine it would be any older than that, but really wished I had overheard the conversation in which she revealed it.  Anyway, I still hadn’t given up on getting an ID from her discarded butt even though it was under a guy’s bootheel in the mud presently….

Still, there was another girl in the smoking area who provided me an excellent distraction while I waited for an opening.  Sighting #75 was a pretty and sexy late 20s blond sitting on a bench by herself in a zebra-striped summer dress with her legs crossed, oozing sex appeal as she held that cigarette in her right hand.  It took me three attempts to get a centered photo but I got a nice one of her.  She was a slow smoker which ordinarily would have frustrated me but I was waiting around at the moment anyway so I just enjoyed the show, enjoying her nice relaxed smoking performance and admiring her elegant beauty, her sunny natural blond hair glistening with the now clear skies shining down up on it.  But when the guy by the ashtray finally walked away, I migrated to that ashtray and IDed the #74 brunette’s discarded butt, which was a Newport Red (don’t see too many of them).  The blond was still smoking slowly so I decided to split rather than hold out for a butt ID from her, still trying hard to boost my numbers which were still a little behind schedule.

The day was progressing decently but I find myself disappointed whenever I’m going several hours without seeing any sightings poised to qualify for a year-end favorites list and which really get the adrenaline spiking.  That was about to change as I was walking down the east side of the Coliseum, scanning the entire block along the building for smokers.  And as I looked ahead to the southeast side, who did I find but those same two mid-teen girls who were occupying the exact same spot with guilty looks on their faces in the morning.  Oh this was very interesting, I thought to myself as I kept approaching from a good 30 yards away.  My eyes were focused on them like a laser and in seconds, my moment of vindication arrived as I watched a half-smoked cigarette approach the lips of the artificial redhead who was the prettiest and had the hottest body, followed by the expulsion of smoke that traveled several inches in front of her adorable face.  Sighting #83 was far and away my trophy of the day given how I fell in love with her the second I laid eyes on her a few hours earlier that morning, my “smoke detector” sounding off loudly but failing to yield the answer I sought until hours later.  The spot where the girls were sitting would be perfect for me to sneak a photo and then watch from close range, but just as I was approaching, they stood up and began walking behind the Coliseum.  I’m 99.9% sure it wasn’t because of me since they would not have likely seen me yet or remembered me from earlier.  They must have just been getting paranoid about the smoker girl being so obviously underage yet smoking so publicly.  Unfortunately, this would only be the first obstacle that would prevent this sighting from reaching its full potential….

Nonetheless, I rounded the corner and watched the girls settle into an isolated cement pillar on the back side of the Coliseum, which almost serves as the building’s loading zone for all the commercial vendors.  The girls were definitely gonna get their privacy here, but it wasn’t gonna work to my advantage as the best I could do was take a bench that was about 10 yards away from them and outside the range at which I could take too detailed of a picture.  The upside was that both girls were standing and I was able to admire the exceptional curves of that teen smoker.  While her reddish hair gave her a mildly unfortunate alternative look (her natural color appeared to be dark blond), everything else about her was pitch-perfect teenage girl from her well above-average boobs in her pale pink tanktop to the tight and short medium-blue jean shorts that hugged her hips in a perfect sexually charged way that only a shapely mid-teen girl is capable of pulling off.  But it was that face that got me most, an understated beauty with a hint of naughty girl that helped convince me right away that this girl was a cigarette smoker.  I watched in pure ecstasy as she plugged away at the second half of that cigarette with a decent style….about what you’d expect from a girl who probably hasn’t been smoking that long.  The sighting took a surprise turn though when the taller girl, who I figured was 16, handed the cigarette to the friend, who may have been the same age but looked like she was at most 14!  Now the Sighting #84 girl was very cute but lacked the smoldering IT factor not to mention the sensational curves of the taller girl, as her upper body was trapped in a black sweatshirt that had to have been hot as hell on top of lacking sex appeal.  But while I always expected the first girl was a smoker, it had never occurred to me the other girl was too, especially when I didn’t see her with a cigarette upon that first approach a couple of minutes earlier.  Her smoking style was considerably more fledgling than the first girl’s and it was unbearably cute at the same time that it was unbearably frustrating that I couldn’t watch these future emphysema patients from a closer vantage point….

The frustration was far from over though as I touched earlier upon the oddball obstacles that got in the way of this sighting being the grand slam it had the potential to be.  Along the uneven sidewalk next to the bench I was seated on, a teenage girl was struggling mightily to wheel this top-heavy cart of pastries from Point A to Point B, nearly tipping the damn thing every time she hit a crack in the cement, of which there were many on this sidewalk.  She made eyes with me as she was passing me, as if beckoning me to help her.  I would have done so in a snap if it wasn’t for my being in the middle of what I figured was my best sighting of the day.  But as she proceeded a few more feet and continued to struggle, I felt obliged to help, hoping I could do two things at once, moving the cart and wheeling past the smoker girls from a slightly closer vantage point.  Even with two of us, moving this cart along this cracked up pavement was very hard, with the cart nearly tipping on a few occasions.  I kept one eye on the smokers as I slowly passed them, and saw my favorite girl was in possession again for the final couple of drags and was crushing the cork filter cigarette out and dropping the butt to the grass at almost the exact moment I wheeled past them.  From there, I watched the two girls come my direction and I was praying that they would offer to help as well, exposing me to their fresh cigarette stench from close range.  They didn’t, but they walked right past me and my favorite girl looked my direction with a flirty smirk.  Not sure if she was amused at my efforts to help this damsel in distress or if she was aware I had been stalking her earlier and was returning the favor.  Either way, I inhaled as strongly as I could as she and the friend walked past only a couple of feet in front of me, hoping to smell her stench, but unfortunately not capturing any of it.  I continued to help the girl with the cart for another minute or so, and would have volunteered to assist her further, but when she said she thought she was good to go as she approached the building entrance with the pastry cart, I didn’t hesitate to go on my merry way, looking to the west and seeing those hot teenage asses still wiggling towards the horizon and within range for me to still catch up….

And so I did, hustling to make up ground and succeeding, watching the girls going into a rear Coliseum entrance.  I got a decent photo of their asses before they got inside and I’m lucky I did because the lighting in the building was such that subsequent photos would be blurry.  These photos are gonna be what get me in trouble, which I’m fully aware of, but the impulse to capture a snapshot of my favorite smoker girl’s adorable face was impossible to resist, so I kept trying a daring frontal snapshot as we all maneuvered inside the densely packed crowds of the Coliseum.  I took a couple of pics as the girls walked up to some fruit-flavored slushie stand to sample their wares but both were blurry and I decided it wasn’t worth the risk to press forward since they were by now well aware of my presence from when they were smoking.  I reluctantly left the Coliseum, hoping against hope I’d see them again yesterday, which I would not.  And when I returned to where they smoked, there were too many other butts lying around from other smokers who’d been sneaking cigarettes behind the Coliseum for me to successfully identify which was theirs. While I didn’t get everything to go my way with this one, what a ride nonetheless, and I felt vindication for predicting my favorite girl was a rare breed of a mid-teen smoker in Minnesota circa 2014 yet being pleasantly surprised at the same time to learn was as well.  Emotionally this was my favorite sighting of the day, but since I didn’t get the timing completely right, I’m rating it as my second-best of the day as I’d score something else later where I did get the timing right.  For the first time yesterday, I was genuinely buzzing and feeling damn glad I made it to the fair on August 30, 2014.

After that, it was back to hitting singles for quite some time, but the next sighting to stand out took place on the east side of the grandstand where a trio of 20-somethings stood there.  The prettiest of the three was a light brunette in a gray T-shirt and cutoffs covering a slender body and she was the one smoking.  Sighting #92 was a real looker and had a nice smoking style with some cloudy exhales coming out of her face.  Unfortunately I only got to see two drags because she handed it to the chubby brunette across from her who was too overweight and too ugly to count as a sighting.  I had really been hoping the pretty light brunette would be the only smoker of this group but at least I knew she smoked.  And after a few drags by the fat girl, the blond got the cigarette last and she was pretty attractive as well, certainly good enough to count as Sighting #93, dressed in a white tanktop with sexy black leggings below the waist.  She had an annoying lip ring that took away from her some, but she was definitely closer to the beauty level of the first girl to smoke than to the second.  She only took two quick drags before handing it back to the fat girl, ending the show disappointingly as the three of them headed towards the gates of the grandstand, presumably to get inside for the show which was some oddball “Music on a Stick” variety show that didn’t seem likely to be too major of an attraction, certainly not compared to Macklemore who was there Saturday night on Labor Day weekend last summer.

It had been sunny much of the afternoon and by the time 6:30 arrived, the sun was in my eyes on the western horizon to the point where I was a little relieved when it went under some clouds….until I looked closer at those clouds and saw how dark they were.  It wouldn’t be a day at the Minnesota State Fair without a rain scare, no matter how small the threat seemed only moments earlier.  Thankfully it never did happen save for a few very minor sprinkles, but I was nervous at the 7:00 hour was arriving and I was supposed to meet my parents.  For a while I had been running ahead of my sightings pace from the previous week but that advantage was disappearing with a soft 6:00 hour.  I was on the beer gardens block trying to boost my numbers in the 10 minutes before meeting the folks, and that’s where I saw Sighting #106, a girl who certainly didn’t look old enough to be partaking in any of the beverages for sale on the beer gardens block.  Indeed she wasn’t holding a beer and when I got there she wasn’t even holding a cigarette.  There was a middle-aged guy that I presumed was her father on one side and 19-20ish dude on the other side smoking a cigarette.  But the girl was such a perfect little female specimen with long brown hair flowing down her back and decked out in a bare-midriff flower print tanktop and tiny cutoffs, her slender body and this outfit for some reason giving off a vibe from a girl in a country music video.  Having just seen her without the boyfriend, I would have presumed she was only about 16 given her height and girlish features, but I figure she was probably more like 18 given the entirety of the situation I was witnessing.  And while the boyfriend was still in possession of the cigarette after about 45 seconds of observation, I just had a feeling this would have a happy ending….and it would.  He passed the cork filter cigarette to girlie who proceeded to take three consecutive drags, killing every one of them with an impressive technique that made me very glad I held out for her, risky of a gamble as it was given that I was already short on time before having to meet the parents.  She gave the cigarette back to the boyfriend and only then was I able to snap a photo worth saving that at least captures her stellar presentation even after she gave up the cigarette.  Would have loved to have gotten more from this one but was still pleased as punch to see she was a smoker.

I only had a few minutes left before it was time to meet the parents and zipped past the grandstand areas on my way.  On the west side of the grandstand sat an early 20s nonsmoking guy and his cute light brunette girlfriend dressed in a matching black blouse and shorts who was smoking a cigarette.  Had I seen this sighting at 11 a.m. I’d have been studying it like a hawk and snapping photos left and right, but I was fast running out of time and could only make a mental note that Sighting #108 was worthy of a small writeup.  She got a brief encore act about an hour later when I saw the same couple again, with the girl again being the only one of the two smoking a cigarette.  She was very cute and smoking an all-white, but at that point it was too dark for a photo.  She didn’t get the attention she deserved but I’m trying to pay homage as best I can given the unfortunate time constraints that prohibited a longer show.  Those 7:00 meet-ups with the folks come with the risk of cutting short a great sighting, and that’s exactly what happened here.

And another sighting would get cut short only seconds later as I progressed eastward alongside the grandstand wall.  A duo of 21ish girls were leaning up against a tree, with the pretty girl of the two, a long-haired blond in sunglasses with a skin-tight and uber sexy pair of leggings advertising every curve of her lower body, being the girl smoking a cigarette.  The friend was chubby and unattractive so my Sighting #109 girl was the right one of the two to be the smoker.  I stood there watching her taking a couple of drags while leaning against the tree, but when she saw a bench open up nearby she and the friend walked over there and took it.  The blond struck me as a solidly pretty girl, but interestingly, she got much prettier when she sat down and took the sunglasses off.  Sunglasses often give a girl a badass vibe that heightens her sex appeal, but with this girl the sunglasses were preventing her undeniable beauty from radiating out, and suddenly I was really kicking myself for not being able to stick around and watch this sighting play out.  I stayed for a couple of nice drags and exhales and took a quick snapshot that ended up blurry, but then I had to split.  Interesting little encore on this coming ahead shortly though….

I met the parents only a minute or so late at the information booth and we ate some cookies my mom picked up and I drank some $1 Dr. Pepper from a nearby stand that sells “discount” soda pop.  I was at the exact number of sightings as the previous week at 109, a little disappointing since I was at one point two hours earlier poised to exceed that pace and was a far cry from the 125 sightings mark I was on the previous year at 7:00.  Plus there was a real possibility of rain in the very near future, which made my visit with the parents even briefer than usual before I got back on my feet to press forward with the final 3 1/4 hours of the 2014 fair season, hoping it wouldn’t be cut shorter than that because of weather.  It wouldn’t be and I was walking past the grandstand as I did just moments earlier and on a bench behind the grandstand I saw two 21ish girls sitting there with cigarettes who became Sightings #111 and #112.  One was a mediocre brunette but the other was a solid dark blond with very tight black leggings who adorably held the cigarette hand between her legs only a few inches in front of her shapely crotch advertised so nicely in those leggings.  The blond was on the phone trying to help friends on the grounds find them, and it became clear by the conversation that the friends were closeby.  Within about 20 seconds, the friends were on their way….and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the Sighting #109 blond from about 15 minutes earlier with her unattractive chubby friend, although the blond wasn’t smoking this time.  Over 250,000 people on the fairgrounds and two of my sightings intersected paths less than a half hour apart.  Small world!  The blond and brunette friends waiting for her were still smoking on their cigarettes though and I finally got a chance to see the #111 blond take a drag after spending so much time on the phone and not smoking.  She was a decent smoker, but smoking too slowly for me to stick around for the entire show.  Frankly, the #111 blond was a couple pegs down beauty wise from the #109 girl who unfortunately was no longer smoking but still had her sunglasses off and really looked hot.  They both sizzled in their respective pairs of tight leggings, which I’m shocked have become this accepted casual female attire considering they leave absolutely nothing to the imagination about a female’s curves.  Nice to get some additional storyline out of the #109 girl considering she left quite an impression on me during her original sighting which had unfortunately gotten cut short.

While I was piecing together some decent numbers in the lead-up to 8:00, very few of the sightings were proving memorable.  It wouldn’t be until early in the 8:00 hour when I was hovering near the smoking area by the beer gardens and bathroom that I’d score my next extra base hit.  There was a cluster of early 20s guys and gals on the edge of the smoking area and I didn’t see any evidence of tobacco use but as I looked into their huddle from a few yards away, standing out at me was this absolutely perfect female ass decorated in an equally perfect pair of tight red shorts that framed her form as nicely as any clothing item I had seen on a girl yet that day.  And while all I could see from my current vantage point was that glowing red ass and hips in those shorts, I had to change vantage points to get a closer view.  Imagine my surprise when I did and found that the girl who owned this ass was a long-haired early 20s blond in a black tanktop with a freshly lit all-white cigarette between her fingers, the only smoker in the mixed-gender group of about seven.  My Sighting #132 girl was pretty but not a stop-traffic knockout comparable to the way her lower body was decorated, and there was a deja vu factor to her look that I wasn’t able to put my finger on until later.  Anyway, I would have to change my position again to find the sweet spot, walking on the other side of the makeshift fence and looking down from above with camera at the ready.  It was after dusk now but as close as I was when I snapped the shot, the photo turned out pretty nicely.  It was now just a matter of watching the smoking show, but this girl was unfortunately afflicted with the worst case of Slow Smoker Syndrome of anybody I came across all day.  I must have stayed there five minutes and took in all of three drags, all of which were impressive on the intake but produced shallow exhales, indicating to me a lot of smoke was clinging to her insides.  I was close enough to see by the rings that the all-white was either a Marlboro Light or a Marlboro Ultra Light, and there was one cute moment while I waited endlessly between her drags.  A chubby female friend stood next to her and at one point, the blond smoker with the hot body pretended like she was gonna touch the burning end of her cigarette to the friend’s butt.  The friend flinched a little and my blond smoker said she was going for the “hot ass” metaphor with her pretend attempt to burn the nonsmoking friend.  The conversation soon changed, but it was amusing how the blond was imposing her smoking habit on her less attractive nonsmoking friend in about every way possible.  I couldn’t take the waiting anymore with so much other activity undoubtedly going on elsewhere on the grounds, so I began to walk away….

But as I walked away, I was briefly sidetracked again before I broke free from this smoking area as an early 20s couple was just sitting down with a modestly attractive light brunette holding a cigarette in her hand.  She seemed an odd combination of regretful and exasperated sitting there, the boyfriend consoling her as much as possible although it seemed like she might have been being hamming up the “drama queen” angle.  She inserted the unlit cigarette into her mouth backwards and after a few seconds of being clueless about this, the nonsmoking boyfriend took it out of her mouth and turned it around.  It was a cute gesture, but the girl continued to yammer on and drag out the process of lighting it up for well over a minute before the flame from her lighter FINALLY hit the right end of the cigarette and she became Sighting #133.  It might have been worthwhile to stick around a bit and see if this bizarre couple would generate a deeper storyline, but these incredibly slow smoker girls were getting on my nerves and I had to press on in hopes of green pastures ahead.

It turned out my instincts were right.  If one is patient enough, rarely does an evening at the Minnesota State Fair pass without a blockbuster or epic sighting materializing, and such would be the case last night as I was heading south from the grandstand towards the beer gardens block and wandered into what would become my sighting of the day.  An aura of neon white temporarily blinded me as it was now after dusk and there were dark would-be storm clouds overhead, but when my eyes adjusted to the light, I was able to determine the source of that bright white was an 18-19ish long-haired blond sexpot in a pair of outrageously tight and shiny pair of white shorts that seemed like they might tear if she tried to sit down (and interestingly, she never did), caressing a spectacular ass with perfect legs coming out the bottom.  She was no less subtle up top with a very low-cut black and silver blouse advertising the upper half of an awesome set of tits, and with several inches of exposed midriff separating her scantily clad feminine assets.  Oh, and there was also a very freshly lit 100 mm cigarette protruding from her fingers.  Sighting #142 was upon me and I knew I had found something very special.  I was so consumed by this epic blond discovery in those first 30 seconds that only the passage of time allowed me to recover enough to recognize the others in her group.  Front and center were two other young girls, one a solidly attractive long-haired dark brunette in a white tanktop and black shorts who also looked in the 18-19 range and was also brandishing a freshly lit 100 mm cigarette to become Sighting #143, and the other a sweetheart of a light brunette with shorter, shoulder-length hair who was wearing a kiwi-green tanktop and very short medium-blue jean shorts advertising an even better pair of legs than the blond.  The third girl wasn’t smoking, which made sense as she looked younger (I was assuming 16 at most) and far more wholesome than the two smokers.  She would have been a coup if she had smoked too, but I couldn’t get too greedy and she really didn’t look the type anyway.  The other two members of the group were two young black guys in their late teens, one of whom was smoking a Black ‘N’ Mild cigar, but the guys seemed disconnected from the girls throughout the sighting and appeared to be tagging along more than actively experiencing the fair with them.  Anyway, back to the blond….

What a hot construction the progression of human development had presented in front of my face!  And she was a serious smoker too, taking deep lung-penetrating drags followed by herculean hold times and understandably modest exhales given how much smoke was undoubtedly clinging to her blackened insides.  Plus that face was just the perfect picture of a beautiful young girl who has been smoking heavily for a long time, and I had on the tip of my tongue from the get-go who she reminded me of but I wouldn’t figure it out until later, which I’ll get into then.  While my sighting in motion for the first two minutes of the sighting would have been satisfactory given the caliber of girl, I’d catch an even better break as the trio settled onto a bench across the street from the beer gardens.  As I said, blondie’s shorts were too tight to sit down in, so she stood in front of the bench, but her dark brunette smoker friend sat on the top of the bench with her feet hanging where people are meant to sit, as did the younger nonsmoking light brunette who I assumed was somebody’s baby sister, putting their feminine bodies on full display in an unusually well-lit area.  The black guys hovered behind them talking to other people.  I hovered effortlessly watching the show and was now able to enjoy some of the dark brunette’s show as well, who was no less than an 8.5 and would have easily gotten a writeup even if she was the only smoker of the three, but amongst this group she was the ugly duckling.  But 80% of my attention went to the blond in the white shorts and her stylish performance and sexy profile.  In fact, so much of my attention was directed her way that I missed the sighting’s most stunning development yet….

I looked up to the two girls sitting atop the benches and from out of nowhere, the younger girl now had a freshly lit 100 mm cigarette between her fingers.  How did I miss that?!?!  I was kicking myself that I missed what had to have been an adorable light-up from Sighting #144, but if I was expecting a beginner smoker performance, she was about to let me down in the best possible way.  Her drags were concise, long, and well-practiced, and her exhales were thunderclouds, the cloudiest exhaler of the bunch with triple-jet missiles firing out of the mouth and nostrils of this wholesome teenage face.  As amazing as that blond was, the main attraction of this sighting had very abruptly switched girls….

It was way past dark and a photo was not going to turn out, but the spot they were sitting in gave me a glimmer of hope I could capture something worthwhile on camera, and I took a nicely centered snapshot featuring all three girls with cigarettes visible between their fingers.  It’s too dark to fully appreciate, at least without the assistance of some FBI-quality image enhancing, but I couldn’t have possibly done better given the circumstances.  With the photo out of the way, I just stood back and enjoyed the show, changing positions occasionally to get a better vantage point of one of the girls as rarely did more than a few seconds pass when one of them wasn’t illegally polluting the fairgrounds with her cancerous exhaust.  The blond finished her cigarette first, dropping it to the pavement below her feet and crushing it out.  I would stay until 2 a.m. if I needed to identify that butt, and it would indeed take awhile as she remained at that spot for a while.  The dark brunette in the black shorts finished her cigarette about a minute later and tossed it to the grass in front of the bench, far enough away that I was able to seize a moment of distraction and approach the butt for an ID.  It was a Newport 100 smoked down to the filter.  I hung back again for the second half of the teen cutie’s cigarette.  I swear each of her drags was followed up by the same thunderclouds fired out of her adorable little face.  I had been worried about the storm clouds overhead, but the most dangerous clouds on these fairgrounds were coming out of the face of a teenage girl in microscopic jean shorts with flawless, folded legs hanging over the bench she sat atop…..

And this sighting would have one more incredible surprise in the moments before the light brunette finished her cigarette.  The two black guys had been disconnected from the three girls for a good 3-4 minutes at this point, but suddenly they were chatting again, and the black guy with the plastic-tipped cigar was suddenly engaging with the blond sexpot in the white shorts, and holding his cigar towards her.  Was this really about to happen?  Damn straight!  She took the cigar out of his hand and took a drag just as deeply as she was taking from her cigarette moments earlier.  And just like after one of the drags from her cigarette, the cigar smoke rented a condo inside her lungs before being released in the form of a stinky exhale.  She seemed to like the cigar, and the fact that the black guy was beckoning her to give it a try reaffirmed my suspicion that they probably weren’t that closely connected.  The guys most likely just have exceptionally good taste in hot girls and were trying to see if they could land some of the hottest asses at the fair.  Whatever the case, she handed it back to him and everyone returned to business as usual.  The light brunette soon finished her cigarette and tossed the butt to the grass in front of her much like the dark brunette did, allowing me to approach and ID that without too much difficulty as well.  It was also a Newport 100 smoked almost to the filter, indicating the girls were probably sharing from the same pack.  But I still needed an ID on the blond’s cigarette just to make sure, and the group didn’t appear to be going anywhere….

I wanted to do a final midway run of the day, but wasn’t gonna abandon these girls for that long without getting a butt ID, so I just walked across the street to explore the beer gardens block for a few minutes and then returned to their spot, hoping they’d have left….but they still hadn’t.  I was mildly frustrated, but my frustration was short-lived as blondie was in the middle of a full-body stretch, her arms raised above her head and her perfectly proportioned body on full display.  My eyes centered on the odd 45-degree angle at which her flat stomach was bending out of those tight shorts as she stretched, and I would have paid $1,000 to bed her down at that exact moment.  I did another short walk around the half block and this time, by the time I got back, the girls were gone and the bench was open where blondie had been standing.  Sure enough, her discarded butt was a Newport 100 as well, confirming my suspicion that all three girls were smoking from the same pack, even though I wasn’t sure which girl possessed the pack.  Whoever it was, they made my night at the Minnesota State Fair.  I’m glad it never did rain, but even if the skies had opened up at that moment, I would had walked out of the fairgrounds happy as a goldfish in a fresh bowl.

The last trio delayed my visit down the midway by at least 15 minutes, but I was finally on my way now, at some point around 9 p.m.  And as it turned out, the girls set me up for a perfectly timed walk down that crowded midway.  About five minutes in, I could see a decently attractive blond on the horizon who would be Sighting #150.  She wouldn’t have been good enough to qualify for a writeup if not for the company she was keeping….and one person in that group in particular.  Standing there in her sexpot tight red shorts was my Sighting #132 blond from less than an hour earlier….and she was smoking another cigarette as well.  Jackpot!  I stopped to watch primarily her but her tragic affliction with Slow Smoker Syndrome kept me from sticking around as long as I would have if doing so hadn’t required my entire evening for one cigarette.  I saw two more drags, both of which were nice and featured the same thin exhales as before.  Adorably, the two guys in the group were still smoke-free as were two of the other girls.  Looking at blondie, the deja vu feeling from before persisted and it wasn’t until I looked at the photo the next day that I realized this girl is the spitting image of actress Katee Sackhoff, who was on TV’s “Battlestar Gallactica” update and the final full season of “24” from a few years back.  Now I know Katee Sackhoff’s character on Battlestar Gallactica” was a cigar smoker.  No sign of that from her real-life red shorts girl doppelganger, but at least she’s keeping the tobacco tradition alive in her own way.  She sure could have kept it alive at a more agreeable pace for my timetable though!  If this had been a mall or neighborhood walk setting, I would have saw this cigarette and her last one through till the end, but in the sightings-rich environment of the Minnesota State Fair, I had too many other targets to pursue and pressed forward.

And red shorts girl wouldn’t even end up as the marquee moment of the midway.  That came when I laid eyes upon Sighting #151, an adorable and very playful 21ish long-haired dark blond in a group with two guys and two girls, all of whom looked like potential smokers.  But the only one of the four who was a smoker was the girl who looked by far the least like one, and that was this cute little thing standing there in her aqua tanktop and white shorts with a freshly lit all-white between her fingers.  How hard-core could this girl possibly be, I asked myself before I saw her first drag.  It turns out pretty hard-core.  Her lips wrapped around the filter of that all-white and she took a drag so hard that the cigarette pointed upward at a 45-degree angle while she pulled the smoke in for five seconds.  The cigarette was released from her mouth and plenty of smoke was hovering in front of her adorable face before she turned her head skyward and exhaled as considerately as possible into the sky to spare her less attractive friends of her toxic air pollution.  Every drag was like this, with her prime stylistic flourish being that deep draw that lifted her cigarette to a 45-degree angle in mid-drag, and it was just infectious watching this perky young beauty with such a sexy body and outfit playing with her friends, and one male friend in particular who put himself in real danger of getting burned as mercilessly as he was tormenting her with cigarette in hand, while putting on such a first-rate smoking show.   The show lasted a good five minutes before a couple of other guys approached who had apparently just gotten off a midway ride.  None of them were smoking either, and greeted the holdout group including my smoker before they pressed on.  The smoker took one more drag before dropping her all-white to the pavement and crushing it out.  As I suspected from the coloration of the markings I saw from afar, it was a Camel Light (or a Camel Menthol Light….I’m confused which is which I guess!).  Definitely another high point from an evening that was suddenly going very well.

The midway would have one more delight for me as I pressed forward.  There’s a seating area and a bathroom in the north-central part of the midway and I didn’t even remember it until I walked past it, so I turned around to explore.  I waded past the seating inspecting the females for tobacco but it was when I was about to walk away without seeing away that an 18ish cutie with curly red hair was approaching a garbage can with an empty pack of Newports.  Did I miss it?!??!  I did not, as she was headed back to her bench to sit next to a friend and in seconds, lit up her cigarette.  Now my Sighting #152 redhead was cute and young enough to where I definitely took notice, but the friend next to her was cuter, a brunette who looked at least half Asian wearing a red Twins baseball cap.  I kept hoping for the redhead to hand her cigarette to the friend but it didn’t happen.  Even without the handover, she was fun to watch smoke, taking nicely timed drags and releasing cloudy, beyond-her-years exhales.  There was no place good to hover and the smoker girl made eyes with me a couple of times so I decided since I already knew her brand I’d bolt, having now given up on the cuter Asian friend smoking.   Still, that was by far my most productive journey down the Minnesota State Fair midway in a few years.

If you want to really run up your numbers the best place to do it after 9 p.m. in particular is the square block of beer gardens.  Doing so after I departed the midway, I kept one eye in front of the beer gardens storefronts and another across the street where smokers often go to have a cigarette in peace.  And of course this year, one of the designated smoking areas has been moved there.  It was at that designated smoking area where I spotted three women smokers and a guy.  The smoker who captured my imagination in the group was a mid-20s dark brunette hottie in a white tanktop and black shorts standing next to her boyfriend, who was also smoking, directly in front of the community ashtray.  My Sighting #155 girl had clearly had her share to drink already as her speech was a little slurred, but that made this sighting’s payoff all the more cute.  On the other side of the ashtray smoking was a middle-aged black woman who was conversing with the younger couple, and the guy was teasing about how “she should buy me a new truck” based on something said prior to that without the necessary context for me to get the punchline.  But the smoker girl didn’t really seem to be in on the joke or else was just playing along in her own way as she took a deep drag from her all-white cigarette and then looked at the chuckling middle-aged black lady and said in mild irritation through a wispy talking exhale that “I don’t see why I should have to get him a new fucking truck because….”.  I lost the final words as my eyes were laser-focused on the wisps of smoke adorably leaking out of her mouth and nose as she spoke, the content of her lungs very slowly escaping her blackened respiratory system.  I stuck around for two more nice drags and exhales, both of which were very nice but lacked the talking exhale dramatics, but I missed their additional banter as there were now people behind me talking loudly.  She was obviously gonna deposit her all-white butt, which looked like a Marlboro Light, into the community ashtray and deny me a formal butt ID anyway, so I pressed on in search of the next shiny object, with less than an hour of stalk time remaining.

With time slipping away, I would only have time for one more pass down Judson Avenue, past the Space Tower, and food building, along with other hotspots on the eastern half of the grounds which tend to be the first places to empty out in the evening.  With yesterday’s crowd though, there was still a lot of people to be found, including a smoker in a place I didn’t anticipate finding one…in the seating area in front of the food building.  Sadly, Sighting #161 was the heartbreaker of the day.  I approached this isolated bombshell of a mid-20s blond at the far back of the seating area, catching her bending down to crush out a cigarette on the pavement with the residual haze of her final exhale hovering in the air in front of her face.  As she stood up and I got a look at the face, I almost hit my knees in despair as she was a knockout beauty, a girl-next-door blond wearing a flower-print top and jean shorts who I never would have believed would smoke.  She walked towards the nearest garbage can to toss her butt into, and then started migrating back towards this nearby berm where a very ordinary-looking guy sat.  He couldn’t possibly be her boyfriend, could he?  Apparently so as she sat sound next to him while he finished eating his junk food, a maroon pack of cigarettes resting next to her purse that I couldn’t confirm but suspect was a generic brand like L & Ms.  It blew my mind that not only was this gorgeous blond going out with this average joe, but she felt the need to walk away when she smoked a cigarette to spare him from her stench.  Where do I sign up for a hot blond smoker with self-esteem issues to that degree?!??!  I took one more look at her face to confirm that she was really as good looking as I suspected when I first laid eyes on her, and she unequivocally was one of the top-five faces of the day.  As I took a look, she was putting the cigarettes away in her purse, confirming that the guy wasn’t just waiting until after he finished eating to have a cigarette of his own.  I would have killed to have gotten there just one minute earlier to see her smoking technique.

I migrated towards the east side of the grandstand.  Without any top-tier musical entertainment, the crowds were a little smaller around there by this hour, but it was still a hotbed of smoking activity as it always is.  The best sighting I got up there on that pass was Sighting #164, another wholesome dark blond who looked about 20 or 21, in a group of three young ladies but with her being the only smoker.  The friends were cute too and would have been great to see smoking, but they were the silent and odorless wallflowers of this sighting as the dark blond smoker was making all the noise and producing all the stench, talking on the phone and clearly giving directions to friends to meet them.  She was wearing another of those white cotton shawls that hung down past her jean shorts in the back to where I couldn’t even see the shorts until I changed positions and saw her from the front.  Clearly this is another female fashion trend that has gone over my head.  Whatever the case, she looked cute in it and definitely didn’t fit the pedigree of a smoker, even as she did just that, nervously dragging from the final third of her cigarette while talking on the phone as her friends stood silently to her side.  She got off the phone and took one final drag from her cigarette, dropping it to the pavement  sooner than I expected and walking away with the other two girls.  Her cigarette butt was a Marlboro Light.

I was getting down to the last half hour and was frustrated by the fact that numbers did not seem poised to approach the 200 threshold that they usually do on Labor Day weekend at the Minnesota State Fair.  If anyplace was gonna boost numbers, it was the beer gardens block and I encircled it again looking for quality smoker gals.  As I proceeded down the block to the north of the beer gardens, I laid eyes on this blond in white shorts wielding a freshly lit cigarette who had literally launched a pheromone missile my direction, but this was no newcomer to my sightings list for the day.  This was an old favorite.  It was the gorgeous blond in the bare midriff top and the tight white shorts who was amongst my best group of the day and was smoking another Newport 100 only about an hour after her last (and who knows if she smoked more in between).  While it was gift enough to get an encore act from her, I figured her partners in crime would be closeby and I was right.  The younger light brunette sexpot with the gentle face and the tiny jean shorts was close behind her and right behind her was the dark brunette in the black shorts.  Both of them were brandishing cigarettes as well as they traversed the crowded street en route to the midway illegally exposing innocent fairgoers of all ages to their secondhand smoke and their irresistible sex appeal.  Only this time the roles were reversed.  It was the little girl whose cigarette was two-thirds smoked while the blond and the dark brunette had freshly lit ones in their hands.  Given that someone in this group likely possessed the community pack, did this younger girl get a craving before the other two and demand a cigarette first?  It seemed entirely possible.  The younger light brunette looked back and beckoned the friend who was lagging behind with a “C’mon Nicole!”.  I’d have preferred to have gotten a name for either of the other two, but was still happy to put a name one of these beautiful smoky girls…

I watched from as close as I dared to get while following the three of them into the midway, seeing all the familiar features of their previous sighting.  The light brunette was still producing thundercloud exhales in jet streams out of her mouth and nose, and leaving hovering smoke in path for passersby to choke on (including me!) while the blond kept up with her long drags and longer-yet hold times before her nice exhales.  The dark brunette was the least distinctive smoker of the three but that’s hardly a pejorative description with this trio.  The light brunette finished hers first, dropping it to the pavement and not bothering to crush it out, while the other two still had more than half of their cigarettes left as they got in line for carnival tickets.  Unfortunately, the blond made me and I was not in a position to lurk without standing out like a sore thumb.  Given that I had been lurking around them not that long earlier, I felt I had to depart sooner than I’d have preferred.  But getting one final look at the blond’s beautiful but weathered late teen smoker’s face, it hit me who she looked like….another late teen with a beautiful but weathered smoker’s face who I dated last November named Cami, who for all intents and purposes looked like a lot like the late suicidal country singer Mindy McCready and who, coincidentally, also smoked Newport 100s.  Having just turned 37 myself last week, I’m pretty sure Cami will be the last teen smoker I’ll ever get to date, but if I could score just one more, I’d kill for it to be her blond Minnesota State Fair lookalike.  And since the two black guys from earlier were nowhere in sight at this point, there’s a good chance she’s available!  Reluctant as I was to walk away here, I was elated to have gotten an encore from this trio which secured their standing as my best sighting of the day and indeed the best sighting of the 2014 Minnesota State Fair.

I had time for only one more half loop around the fairgrounds and was distraught at the prospect of fewer sightings this week than the previous, which would have been unprecedented had it happened.  It wouldn’t, and the evening still had a couple of last-minute revelations for me.  Along a bench outside the south wall of the grandstand sat three young smoker girls who I saw from a distance and thought I hit the jackpot.  But as I approached I began to recognize a couple of faces.  The first was the redhead with the empty pack of Newports I saw smoking in the midway only an hour or so earlier.  Looks like she had another pack of Newports in that purse of hers after all!  And sitting next to her was the same cute half-Asian friend in the red Twins ball cap…..but unlike last time, she had a cigarette in hand this time just like her friend!  Among my 182 sightings yesterday, I bet 10-12 were of Asian girls, but Sighting #174 was by far my cutest Asian smoker girl of the day, sitting there in her T-shirt and jean shorts smoking her cigarette and looking absolutely adorable.  But I said there was a third smoker on this bench as well.  Sighting #175 was a blond wearing a leather jacket sitting to the other girls’ right and also smoking.  That was one stinky bench!  Despite the sexy presentation in a leather jacket and black leggings, this girl was at best a 7 beauty wise and was not the sighting’s main attraction.  Still there was a mystery as to whether she just happened to be sitting at the same bench illegally smoking with the two friends or if she was another friend they met.  She never spoke to them over the course of the minute or so I was observing so I suspect it was just three cute girls united by nicotine dependency sharing a bench and 80 millimeters of tobacco.  Time was running very short so I could only watch this trio for about a minute, once again leading me to shake my fist in frustration about being stuck on my parents’ 10:30 timetable.

Hard as it was to walk away from a bench full of three teen smoker girls, I’m glad I did because it led me to Sighting #176 up near the new Heritage Center and fair entrance on the northwest side of the grounds.  I’ve gotten a year-end best worthy cigar sighting at my fairs in the previous two years, but waited until the literal last seven minutes of fetish time during the 2014 fair season to score one as this wholesome-beyond-imagination 22-ish blond sat there Indian-style next to her boyfriend in a tanktop and jean shorts smoking a Black ‘N’ Mild cigar.  And when I say wholesome-beyond-imagination, we’re talking a girl whose long blond hair flowed down her back in a braid!  And the face matched the presentation.  Just like last year’s 18ish braided cutie smoking a cigar at the Iowa State Fair, I was aghast to see a girl of this pedigree publicly smoking a cigar.  She had yet to take a drag as I was making these early observations, so I was curious how she’d deliver when she did….

The half-smoked plastic-tipped cigar entered her mouth and she ingested a healthy snootful, creating an early stream of airborne cigar smoke just with her drag.  But it was about five seconds later when she exhaled that the real cloud surfaced, mushrooming from her mouth into the night sky.  I was positioned so perfectly that I was able to walk right through her exhaled cloud and smell the cigar stench, but as I was doing so, I almost missed her take a second drag from it, only a few seconds removed from exhaling the first one.  Damn girl!  The whole presentation was spectacular, with a wholesome boyfriend not smoking anything to her right and a family with young children to her left who had to have smelled her cigar odor as ripe and dirty as it was.  I kept looking at the clock on my camera watching the minutes tick by, agonizing about having to walk away from this in a couple short minutes, and I savored the visual of this perky and innocent-looking blond with this smelly cigar in her hand talking to her boyfriend.   The plan was to stick around for a couple more drags, and she delivered with a repeat of her first, an intense ingestion of cigar smoke into her lungs through that plastic tip, a good five seconds of compression time inside of her, and then a mushrooming exhale that exploded out of her face.  I was ready to walk through it but learned my lesson from last time, waiting two seconds and watching her take a second drag immediately following, and then walking through her sublimely stinky exhale.   What happened next was a semi-buzzkill.  It seemed too good to be true that this wholesome blond was sitting there smoking a cigar by herself, and she confirmed my cynicism by handing the cigar to the boyfriend.  Nooooo!  The storyline was so much cooler when it was just her smoking the cigar in front of the boyfriend.  The upside was that I now had a guilt-free escape from a sighting that would have destroyed me if I walked away from it while the girl was still smoking.  And, of course, the more obvious upside was that I spent the final minutes of the 2014 Minnesota State Fair watching a gorgeous, wholesome blond girl with a giant braid going down her back smoking a cigar.

It was 10:27 and I still had time for a final loop around the beer gardens block, boosting my numbers in the clutch with a flurry of (and I say this with as little disrespect as is possible) beer gardens hood rat sightings.  I made one final pass by the smoking area near the beer gardens and bathroom area to find a modestly attractive blond in a blouse and jean shorts sucking on a cigarette.  As I walked past Sighting #182, my last of the day, she belched out a very impressive burst of smoke that really seemed to explode into the night sky like a firework from my vantage point.  I walked through her exhale and gave her one last admiring look before progressing the last 100 yards or so to the bench by the Coliseum where my parents predictably sat waiting for me.  In years past, I could always count on catching two or three final sightings while leaving the fairgrounds into the parking lot, and even when driving out of the fair and seeing the departing crowds walking back to their cars.  There would be none of that yesterday, but curiously just as we were pulling onto the main thoroughfare heading home, I saw two familiar faces walking the sidewalk home….the redheaded Newport girl who I saw smoking in the midway along with the sexy Asian friend in the Twins cap who was smoking with her only about 20 minutes prior to my watching them walk home.  Neither of the girls was smoking now, but I did at least confirm that the blond in the leather jacket I saw smoking with them earlier was not with them….just another random stinky young smoker girl who happened to be sharing a bench with them while she smoked.

Particularly after reliving yesterday through this writeup, I definitely feel like Day 2 of this year’s Minnesota State Fair was better than Day 1.  The long dead periods you go through on your feet as you experience the day sometimes lessens the impact of everything you did see over 14 hours, and I definitely feel better about August 30, 2014, the day after than I did the day of.  The fact that the 2014 Minnesota State Fair didn’t yield any grand-slam-in-the-7th-game-of-the-World-Series-quality sightings also lessened its impact, but I really need to lower expectations on those types of sightings because they’re really rare, and I definitely did get one this year at the Iowa State Fair.  It seemed clear that smoking was probably down some this year though, which was unfortunate after I lulled myself into a false sense of security about last year’s MNSF, where the output shined even in the immediate aftermath of a massive tax hike in Minnesota and the fair’s installation of the designated smoking areas.  And I haven’t yet breathed a sigh of relief regarding the e-cigarette either, as I still see far too many of those ugly ass things in girls’ mouths.  Sadly, the 2014 fair season is behind me and it’s gonna be a tough adjustment as always going back to a world with 98% fewer sightings than the month of August always delivers for me.  September has always been my least favorite month of the year, but that’s been reinforced ever since I’ve gotten so heavily into fairgrounds fetishing in the last 10 years.  Eleven months will go by quickly I guess, as mild of consolation as that is right now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2014 Minnesota State Fair, Day 1

The preferred scenario during my fair safaris has more often than not played out, with an escalation in numbers and quality in each of my three main venues starting with the local county fair, progressing to the Iowa State Fair, and wrapping up with my two consecutive weekends of the Minnesota State Fair, the latter of which is by far my most cherished and storied smoking fetish venue of all-time.  But it doesn’t always work out that way and yesterday was a good example.  My first day at the Minnesota State Fair was a below-average day.  Now it wasn’t as bad as a couple of those hot messes at the Iowa State Fair in 2012 and 2013.  I scored one smash homerun worthy of some of my best finds at this year’s Iowa State Fair and a few other strong moments, but there weren’t many extra base hits and I’d rank this as my weakest Minnesota State Fair day since 2009.  Now you’re gonna have a bad day once in a while and I get that, but I’ve noticed these things often come in pairs which concerns me about next week’s final Minnesota State Fair run of the year.  I can’t complain about the numbers though as I wrapped up the day with 178 sightings, two fewer than the first day last year.  As I said though, there was an oversized contingent of mediocrity among this sample.

As usual, I went with the folks on the drive up to St. Paul, which came with its usual balance of upsides and limitations.  Lately, they’ve been heading up there early and we tend to arrive right around 8 a.m. so I was surprised when they decided to go a bit later this year and we got there at 9 a.m.  Given how unproductive the morning hours tend to be for sightings, I was more than fine with that.  As has been the case for the last few years, the weather was a question mark.  For years and years and years, the one thing I could count on was a perfect day for the Minnesota State Fair.  That’s no longer the case, but I definitely avoided calamity.  The unyielding gloom was a bummer on my energy level when I walked through the gate, but there wasn’t a drop of rain all day and the gloomy conditions kept it from being a jungle given the high humidity level even without the sun.  I always follow the same path at the beginning of the day, weaving down a series of streets that lead me to the grandstand a few minutes after arrival.  On the east side of the grandstand, a bunch of fair workers were having a smoke, but only one of them was attractive enough to become Sighting #1, a late 20s dark brunette in a long black blouse and shorts who appeared to be a vendor under the grandstand.  She was decent but wasn’t destined for Mark’s Smoke Blog history by any stretch, but served her purpose in landing that first sighting of the day fairly shortly after my arrival.  I’d see her on two more smoke breaks during the daytime hours.

The morning is a good time to explore the north side of the grounds, the fairgrounds’ most remote area that has yielded a number of great sightings over the years but generally delivers less frequently than the core streets on the grounds’ southern half and requires a 20-minute round trip walk to explore.  It was up there that I scored Sighting #2, a mid-to-late-20s blond walking with her nonsmoking parents and later gathering with a group of kids, all of whom seemed too old to be hers.  There were a couple of early teen girls in the group who I hoped would smoke but didn’t.  The blond herself wasn’t a bombshell by any stretch but was nicely adorned in a tanktop and shorts and was a solid smoker, particularly striking amidst a group of eight where nobody else was smoking.  Since nothing else was going on, I kept pace with them and watched her smoke the whole cigarette, and the hardest part was keeping pace, and definitely not because they were moving so fast.  It sometimes blows my mind how people are capable of walking so slowly in a given setting and this was one of them.  Anyway, she finished the cigarette and I identified her butt as a Marlboro Light.  While Marlboro Reds were all the rage last week at the Iowa State Fair, Marlboro Lights and a few other brands were definitely the top brands yesterday in Minnesota.

I trudged around the fairgrounds for a particularly unproductive morning, lapping block after block, designated smoking area after designated smoking area (yes, they were back this year in Minnesota) and stitching together only a couple of mediocre sightings per hour.  I finally found a decently cute girl just before noon in Sighting #8, a very girl-next-door mid-20s brunette decked out in a conservative light green top and jeans and puffing away on a cigarette at the smoking area outside the beer gardens and the grounds’ most popular bathroom structures.  Again, nothing about this girl is gonna be making any top-25 lists at the end of the year by any stretch, but she did look good sitting there all by herself smoking a cigarette and was a sighting I really needed at that bleak time of the day.  I’d see her smoking again in the same general spot a few hours later.  My goal is to get 20 sightings before noon and I only had 9 yesterday by noon, so I had some catching up to do.

One other thing I need to mention in that beer gardens area is the girl with the hottest ass of the day.  All morning whenever I passed the area, a hot brunette in an orange sweatshirt and insanely tight and short jean shorts with cowboy boots was sitting on a bench next to her family.  Every time I walked past I admired that body, never getting a good look at her face because of sunglasses, with the combination of the sunglasses and her body type making her look about 16 even though I’d later find out she was older than that.  For a good hour, she was laying down on the bench next to a friend, her ass and those smooth legs on full display in the most vulnerable imaginable pose.  Not sure who goes to the State Fair and takes an hourlong nap but I’m sure glad she did.  Anyway, I’m sure you know I’m bringing this girl up for a reason, so to be continued….

Sightings picked up some in the early afternoon hours but the quality continued to fail to impress as I was going on four hours of fetishing hitting nothing but singles, several of them bloop singles!  That wouldn’t change as I headed north again to one of the smoking areas about a minute’s walk up the north side where I otherwise didn’t venture again after the early morning.  Anyway, standing there was a young couple in their mid-to-late 20s with a decently attractive blond in a tanktop and jean shorts who became Sighting #11.  She may not have even warranted a passing writeup at last week’s Iowa State Fair given how many great sightings with fun storylines I scored there, but she nonetheless passed as sightings bliss by this point in the day for me yesterday.  I’d see her in the boyfriend smoking again only about an hour later at another one of the designated smoking areas.

It was after 1 p.m. when I finally scored my first extra base hit yesterday on a triple-bang sighting that will go down among my top-five sightings of the day.  I always encircle the beer gardens block multiple times a day as it usually accounts for a good quarter or more of overall Minnesota State Fair sightings on any given day, but only in the last few years have I bothered with the alleyway that separates the square block of restaurants and bars on the beer gardens block and the sheep building.  While the alleyway has delivered a couple of modest sightings in years past, it exploded yesterday with three great sightings that played out simultaneously.  As I ventured onto that block, I noticed Sighting #20 right away, a dark blond early 20s girl in the company of a guy, both in costume probably for some dance show they put on inside one of the bars.  The girl’s costume had a fully exposed midriff and a solid 10 inches of her bare belly was on full display.  Unfortunately, she was not positioned in a place where I was able to watch from closeby but I was able to see a few nice drags from afar.   But the real action in the alleyway was still yet to come….

I noticed an unattractive 20-something brunette smoking along a cement ledge on the alley where dozens of people were sitting to rest across the entire block.  But standing next to her was a wholesome-looking blond with a ponytail and a headband….and she was smoking too!  My first impression judging from her face, body type, and presentation was that my Sighting #21 girl was about 16, but a closer look and the fact that she had a stroller with a one-year-old inside confirmed to me she was probably at least 20.  Still, what a profile with the girl’s pretty and wholesome face combined with her Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt (seriously!) and her dark blue capris sucking on a freshly lit cigarette.  And she was a big-time smoker as well, taking very nice and long drags followed by absolutely tremendous 6-7-second hold times.  The exhales suffered for this as with most smokers who hold the smoke in for a long time, the smoke clung to her lung tissue rather than coming out of her face in force, leaving fairly shallow trickles of smoke to empty out of her mouth and nose in the distant aftermath of her drags.  And she was also a chronic spitter, dropping no fewer than five lugies during the course of her cigarette and always shortly after drags.  I tried to discipline myself to snap fewer photos yesterday given how risky they are but couldn’t resist snapping one of her at a reasonably close distance and in mid-drag.  There were two other young boys in close proximity that seemed like they knew the blond smoker even though they didn’t leave with her.  Whatever the case, what an incredible role model she was for them and the baby in the stroller who gets to see mom smoking so unapologetically and constantly spitting while doing so.  These are some young lads well on their way to having a smoking fetish….

And while blondie was smoking and spitting her way through her all-white, I looked to my right to find Sighting #22, another gal taking a smoke break.  And not just any gal, a very hot early 20s brunette who just might have been the biggest babe of the day.  I suspect she was another worker at one of the bar and grills as she was wearing a ball cap that most likely identified the name of her employer on the fairgrounds.  The rest of her outfit was a black tanktop and black leggings that framed a perfect young female body.  Her smoking style was more traditional and less ferocious than the blond spitter, still with very nice drags but with much cloudier exhales.  For a good two minutes, I was standing in the middle of them (I figure they were about 20 yards apart) and literally turning my head back and forth, to the left to watch blondie take a drag and hock up a lugie, and then to the right to see the beautiful brunette standing all by herself and taking a drag while monkeying around on her phone.  After more than four hours of drudgery thus far in the day, it was the first time I felt alive on August 23, 2014.  Unfortunately, the brunette cut her cigarette short, crushing it out and leaving the final third for later, denying me the butt ID, before walking off.  But the blond was still smoking and ended up dropping her cigarette to the pavement and preparing the stroller to head back into the fairgrounds.  Oddly, the young boys who were talking to the blond didn’t go with, but the unattractive brunette with her did tag along, the two women and the baby wheeling into the busy crowd with no indication expect perhaps a residual tobacco stench signifying that such a wholesome young gal had just defiled herself with a cigarette.  I had no problem IDing her all-white discarded butt as a Camel Crush.

I carried this momentum to the designated smoking area by the beer gardens where I ran into Sighting #24, a memorable redneck early 20s blond in a camouflage ball cap and a ponytail wearing a black tanktop, jean shorts, and an odd pair of colorful sneakers that didn’t fit the rest of her profile sitting next to a nonsmoking boyfriend while girly puffed away on her cork filter cigarette.  I was able to sit close enough to tell the markings on her cigarette were that of a Marlboro Red, but of course my observations were helped by the empty pack of Marlboro Reds on the ground near her feet.  The girl wasn’t “beautiful” per se, but she reminded me of a character on a crappy reality TV show I’ve been watching this year.  “Party Down South” is on CMT and is like a redneck version of “Jersey Shore”.  It’s a terrible show but three of the four girls on the show smoke regularly so I watch for that.  My blond looked like the blond version of Maddie from that show, even though Maddie smokes Marlboro Lights!  Anyway, she was a very good smoker, taking long, deep drags and releasing tight, cloudy exhales.  It was already adorable that the boyfriend didn’t smoke, but about halfway through her cigarette it got even more adorable when she laid her stinky head on his shoulder, apparently looking at photos on his camera phone as he rummaged through them while still smoking on her cigarette.  I couldn’t tell from my angle whether she was exhaling straight into his face, but certainly if she was taking drags that close her smoke had to be floating right into his face in some capacity.  She made that cigarette last a long time before crushing it out against the berm she was sitting on and dropping it to the pavement below her feet, right next to the empty pack of Reds and next to another expired Marlboro Red, indicating to me that she had smoked two in a row while sitting there.

The smoking areas on the west and east sides of the grandstand were less productive than usual yesterday, but I nonetheless scored a sighting that completely blew my mind in the east side smoking area.  It seemed like every time I walked up to this area there was nobody under 40 to be seen with a cigarette, but on this approach I could tell from afar that there were three young girls leaning up against a tree.  When I finally got there, I couldn’t believe it when the three girls in question were girls I had seen on a bench near the beer gardens all morning.  One was a mediocre blond and another was a decently cute Asian girl, but the main attraction was a brunette in an orange sweatshirt with the best ass of the day in tight jean shorts…the same girl who had been lying on a bench taking a nap and showing that ass off to the world.  But there were two issues.  When I first got there, the blond was the only one smoking, and she was just barely good enough to qualify as Sighting #29.  But the brunette had a big purse that she was fishing around in, leading me to hope she’d light up too.  When nothing happened, I checked out another area very close by but returned in less than a minute….and as I approached my hot-assed brunette was in the middle of a drag and became Sighting #30.  Sweet!  I settled myself in on a nearby bench to take pictures and enjoy the show, but by the time I was fully settled, she had handed the cigarette back to the blond.  Grrrr!

The second problem is that this brunette had her sunglasses off and I could tell she was considerably older than the 16 I had pegged her for when I first saw her.  She was probably 22 or 23 and looked a lot like a heavy smoker girl I dated last year named Emilie.  Now that’s not a bad thing as Emilie was attractive and so was this girl, but it was amazing how she lost her innocence simply by taking off her sunglasses and burying that perfect ass in the dirt with friends on both sides of her so I couldn’t see it.  Still, it was hot seeing those bare legs of hers on full display.  The blond regrettably smoked the majority of the cigarette, but on two more occasions she handed it to the brunette who took back-to-back drags both times, neither being particularly memorable but it was still hot as hell seeing this girl with a cigarette.  The last time she took her final two drags, I couldn’t see how there was anything left of the cigarette as she must have smoked it right down to the filter.  My brunette went out with a further bang when she took those badass sunglasses out of her purse and put them on before all three girls stood up.  I got a close-up rear view advertising that sensational ass of hers in those short jean shorts as the three of them walked into the grandstand, and adorably, the semi-muddy spot where she parked that ass left some residual imperfections on her other perfect backside, which actually managed to enhance the sex appeal for me.  I then checked out the area where they sat and found no fewer than four cork filter cigarette butts with identical markings and all smoked down to the filter with just a flick of ash hanging on.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that the girls sat there and smoked four consecutive cigarettes (or perhaps they each smoked one before sharing another).  Had I been there to witness that it would have been a much more spectacular sighting, but I ended up mildly disappointed that I got to see so little actual smoking from a girl who was well-positioned to be a Minnesota State Fair legend.  I wouldn’t see her again yesterday after that.

The early afternoon hours continued to plod along from there but when I went back to the same beer gardens area designated smoking area where I had scored quality material before, I came across a girl that brought a smile to my face in Sighting #33, a very wholesome-looking mid-20s brunette with a classic girl-next-door presentation in a turquoise tanktop and jean shorts with flip-flops below her smooth legs.  To her left was the giant overflowing ashtray in the designated smoking area and to her right was a boyfriend who was about to go into the bathroom but leaned down to kiss her on the lips and taste her ashtray mouth first.  Now the boyfriend wasn’t smoking at any point when I saw him, but since the girlfriend was on the final three drags of her own cigarette it’s entirely possible that he finished his before I got there.  Either way, it was hot, and I also liked being able to stand there and watch her final two drags, capturing one on my camera phone.  Unfortunately, the aforementioned overflowing ashtray in the designated smoking area worked to my disadvantage as she crushed out the cigarette into that along with hundreds of others, concealing the evidence of her brand.  I nonetheless stuck around and waited for the boyfriend to come out of the bathroom in case there might be an encore.  When he returned, he wisely treated this cutie to another mild display of public affection, but they quickly left without smoking again.

One of my weirder sightings of the day came about 15 minutes later as I was leaving the smoking area west of the grandstand.  A short girl with blue and purple hair was smoking a cigarette next to her boyfriend as they walked.  Now ordinarily weird hair colors like this are a turnoff for me, but my Sighting #39 girl was pretty cute and looked younger than I first imagined when I saw her face.  She might have been 18 but possibly even younger, wearing a white blouse with fringes barely covering her midriff, and a pair of black shorts below.  I was able to see a couple of drags and she wasn’t bad, but the sighting lost me when she handed the cigarette to the boyfriend who proceeded to finish it off.

Moments later I was venturing westward and saw a young girl with a cigarette approaching me.  Sighting #41 was a pretty modest and otherwise unmemorable plain jane light brunette, but looked only about 18 or 19 with a nice figure draped in a tanktop and jean shorts, and given how few girls under 21 I was seeing smoking yesterday, she was a sight for sore eyes, particularly since she was smoking publicly and walking through forbidden territory to do so with a cigarette in hand.  The big bummer of this sighting was that her friend didn’t smoke.  Now the friend wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous or anything, but she was a dark blond with a long braid and a very wholesome face and would have been absolutely adorable to see with a cigarette.  I kept hoping the smoker would hand the friend the cigarette before it was finished but she kept it to herself taking nicely timed drags with impressive exhales.  She dropped the all-white to the ground and I had no problem IDing it as a Camel Light.

There’s a very remote smoking area on the east side of the grounds that is surrounded by bushes and generally had very few people hovering about over the course of the day.  But when I passed by mid-afternoon and spotted a duo of nicely dressed younger girls sitting on a back bench in the area, I migrated back there to see what was up.  Doing so, I stumbled upon Sighting #46, one of the unlikeliest smokers of the day.  She was a moderately attractive, long-haired light brunette wearing a flower-print dress sitting next to a nonsmoking friend.  Perhaps it was mostly the dress but this did not look like the face of an addicted smoker in 2014, yet there she sat holding her cigarette about six inches above her dress in a rather amateurish pose.  Unfortunately when I say she “sat there holding her cigarette”, that’s about all she did with it as she was an incredibly slow smoker which made life challenging for me as theirs was the only bench back there so I was standing in the general area hovering like a nut and standing out like a sore thumb while waiting for her to finally approach that cigarette to her mouth.  She finally did and it was a modest delivery for such a long wait.  Both of the girls had beers so it’s entirely possible she was just a social smoker, but listening from afar I heard her talking about “classes” confirming my suspicion that she was a college-aged girl, my guess about 21 or 22.  I would have loved to have seen more from this one but given my positioning I had to retreat after seeing only her second drag….and even that took about five minutes of my day!

I had so many edge-of-glory moments yesterday where I was on the cusp of potential greatness but came up short because of bad timing.  Sighting #48 was a classic example as I approached the east side of the grandstand and saw a 20-something couple where the guy wasn’t smoking but his perky blond girlfriend was.  She was a tiger too with a memorably pretty face and an even more memorable outfit of a maroon top and hot pink capris.  Unfortunately, the sighting lasted all of one drag before she knelt down and crushed the cigarette out on the ground despite there being at least three drags left, and then tossing the butt in the garbage and denying me the butt ID.  The girl was hyperactive and appeared full of life, giddily moving along with the boyfriend back towards the grandstand after losing the cigarette.  Sadly, about 30 seconds was all I was gonna get of this one from beginning to end.

But I made up for that last one with a very savvy and timely observation that helped me avoid missing one of my top-five sightings of the day as I came close to doing.  As I was heading to the northwest corner of the grounds to the new Heritage Center area just renovated this past year, I was crossing paths with two couples that included an early 20s blond in a black tanktop and white shorts with what looked like a lighter cupped in her right hand.  I took a second look upon passing and felt certain that it was indeed a lighter, leading me to do a 18o-degree pivot and follow them.  Now I’m a sucker for white shorts and I’m sure that’s what drew my eyes to that blond as I approached her, but as I turned around I noticed that the other girl in the foursome already had a cork filter cigarette going.  Sighting #49 was an attractive 22ish light brunette in a blue blouse and jean shorts with smooth legs coming out from underneath.  I didn’t have to wait long until she took a drag and I was in heaven to be following a scofflaw smoker girl in a smoking-forbidden part of the grounds.  But just as I was getting settled in for her show, the blond cupping the lighter sprung my eyes back her way as she inserted an all-white cigarette between her lips and let it dangle for a few seconds while approaching her lighter to it.  I got an uncharacteristically perfect snapshot of Sighting #50 up close with the cigarette dangling from her lips, along with a guy approaching her giving her the evil eye for smoking a cigarette where she wasn’t supposed to.  I just get the feeling that neither blondie nor her friend much cared about his opinion or anybody else’s though….

Now both girls were about even in attractiveness, with neither being bombshells but both being above-average for attractiveness among modern smoking coeds.  But based on presentation and smoking style, the blond won the round as far as I’m concerned, looking spectacular working those tight white shorts.  She also took longer drags and produced much cloudier exhales than the friend, and no doubt a number of people who hate cigarette smoke were forced to wade through her smelly steam blasts in this very busy part of the grounds.  I followed from the side, admiring both girls and capturing them both in mid-drag on a couple of occasions, adorably walking next to their nonsmoking boyfriends who are clearly both ready, willing, and able to endure these ashtray-mouthed young females up close and personally.  A weird pivot took place as they got about halfway towards the grandstand, and the foursome turned around and headed the other direction.  I continued to follow when, unsurprisingly, the harder-smoking blond in the white shorts finished her cigarette first, dropping the all-white to the pavement which I easily identified as a Marlboro Light.  I then found myself walking behind the light brunette who was still smoking, and at one point she turned around and made eye contact with me.  I feared I had been busted but she didn’t say anything and pressed forward finishing off her cigarette while weaving through the large crowd.  About a minute after the blond finished off hers, the light brunette littered hers on the pavement as well.  I could tell by the markings while she was smoking that it was a Camel Menthol and confirmed that after she dropped it.  It was such a relief to score my first sighting of the day that will definitively make my year-end favorite’s list.

Heading west around the beer gardens block and down Judson Avenue, I was picking up sightings more regularly, but unfortunately with way too many unmemorable third-tier gals making up the majority of them.  But the girl who would be Sighting #57 was anything but unmemorable or third-tier as I spotted her sitting on a curb across the street from the International Bazaar next to her boyfriend and wielding a cigarette.  I sat a couple of yards to their left and positioned myself for what I figured had the potential to be one of my best sightings of the day, admiring this very pretty 20-21ish blond whose hair was up in a ponytail over her headband and who was wearing a white tanktop and pale blue jean shorts that were so short that some of her bare upper leg was touching the cement on the curb, one of my favorite profiles for a hot girl.  I snapped a photo and settled in for the show, dismayed at how short it would be as I only got to see two drags before the remainder of the two-thirds smoked cigarette was then handed to her boyfriend.  Gahhh….why were so many potentially great sightings being sabotaged for me yesterday!??!  A few seconds later, another couple approached them from the Bazaar where they both bought beer, leading me to believe my smoker couple was not old enough to buy beer yet.  Whatever the case, they got up shortly after and the boyfriend disposed of the cigarette someplace I didn’t even see, and it broke my heart watching this petite cutie with such a nice ass walking away only having taken two drags in front of me.  Definitely another sighting that didn’t live up to its tremendous potential.

Fortunately, I’d make up for it moments later with a much better timed sighting that would go on to be my second-best sighting of the day.  Remember how I talked about that fairly desolate and heavily shrubbed  smoking area on the east side of the grounds where I scored a decent earlier sighting?  Well it delivered again the next time I walked past there and saw this beautiful dark brunette seated on a bench next to a building all by herself smoking a cigarette.  My Sighting #61 girl was a knockout, a classic beauty with shoulder-length dark brown hair who didn’t look at all like a smoker.  Venturing a guess, I’d say she was 21 give or take a year.  I only had one problem with watching this sighting play out but it was a fairly serious one.  The bench she was seated on resembled a patio attached to a building and there was a landscaping fence surrounding her.  If I went inside the “patio” I’d really be encroaching upon her space, especially since she was the only one in there.  But by standing outside looking in I was also awkwardly positioned and unable to get close enough to take a decent photo or watch her entire body at work while she smoked.  I stayed outside and leered in, not without being noticed of course, but it was entirely worth it for the show I was about to get….

As beautiful as this girl was, she was even more beautiful with a cigarette in her mouth, and for the next five minutes she cooperated beautifully with fierce and well-timed drags followed by monstrously cloudy exhales that filled the sky around her with a stinky haze.  Everything about her presentation was the epitome of feminine until she shook it up–twice–with something I didn’t see coming.  She leaned to her right and let a big juicy lugie drip from her mouth once in the middle of her cigarette and once toward the end.  Between the lighting and the awkward positioning, I only managed a distant, mediocre photo that failed to capture her uber-feminine essence, meaning I went out of my way to savor the live version, watching drag after delicious drag followed by those steamy exhales.  I was hoping for a butt ID but had a bad feeling, and the bad feeling was vindicated as she leaned down and crushed out the cigarette on the pavement, and then proceeded to insert the butt into an empty black pack.  I always thought it was a little odd that this girl was all by herself and figured she must work inside the building that she was sitting just outside, and as she headed towards the side entrance I figured my instinct must be right, but she was just dropping the empty pack of cigarettes into the trash can right by the entrance.  Nonetheless, my other observation of how odd it was for this beauty to be at the fair by herself was about to be vindicated….

In the biggest surprise turn of any sighting in quite awhile, the smoker then proceeded three benches down and met up with two nonsmoking gals sitting there that I figured must be her mother and younger sister, who are apparently too embarrassed to be seen publicly with their flesh and blood, no matter how beautiful she is, when she’s doing her stinky smoking and spitting routine.  I was so turned on that a girl this gorgeous was being ostracized by her family for her vulgar smoking behavior, and only now that she was done with it were they willing to be seen with her.  I just couldn’t get a decent photo to save my life and finally had to quit trying because she was wise to me having seen me lingering the whole time she smoked.  I still enjoyed seeing her interact with the family though and to see her standing up, finally allowing me to see what she was wearing, an oddball combination of a grandmotherly white shawl covering some sort of tanktop and a pair of cutoffs below.  Seeing her from behind was especially odd because the shawl covered almost her entire ass except for the frayed fabric of the cutoffs exposed below.  As the family pressed forward I took a peek inside that trash can and confirmed my suspicion from the black pack that the empty pack she threw away was Camel Crush Bold.  After confirming that, I briefly followed them to the International Bazaar, hoping that just maybe I could score a frontal photo, but ultimately balked having recognized how close to the sun I had already been flying with her.  This sighting would have been one of my best of the day even without the revelation at the end that she was persona non gratta with her family while she was smoking, but the hotness level went off the charts when the sighting played out that way and I felt like I finally had some real momentum going.

There was never a single point in the day where I felt a blistering tide of momentum but things did go well for awhile in the mid-to-late afternoon.  The next sighting to impress was Sighting #66 on the east side of the grounds which consisted of a group of three girls and a guy, all in their early 20s.  There was only one smoker and it was the Asian girl.  I always report on seeing a disproportionate number of attractive young Asian girls smoking at my fairs and yesterday was no exception with five Asian girls among my sightings.  This girl was the best of the bunch though, and was the prettiest girl in her group decked out in a tanktop and jean shorts.  She didn’t have a strongly ethnic look the way most of the Asian smoker gals I saw yesterday did and perhaps that “accessibility” factor for a Midwestern white guy was what made her stand out the most if that doesn’t sound too racist.  Whatever the case, it was delightful to follow this group for a couple of minutes and enjoy the dynamic where the only smoker in the group felt so at ease puffing away on her all-white with her friends group, and vice versa.

Moments later, the area near that new Heritage Center delivered again.  As I was walking away from that block, I spotted another somewhat exotic-looking dark brunette beauty wielding a cigarette.  Sighting #68 looked to be in her mid-20s and was sporting long dark brown hair cresting over a denim vest with a black and white striped tanktop underneath and a pair of cutoffs covering perfect legs below the waist.  It was another stellar presentation and her beauty was an easy draw for the eyes walking past even without spotting the cigarette.  It wasn’t for a few moments before I realized she was in the company of others that I assumed were family members, including the older couple I figured were probably her parents.  Needless to say, she was the only smoker and I got absolutely giddy as she and her group approached the Heritage area as I figured she was gonna blast right past the designated smoking area out in front of the center and continue illegally smoking her cigarette inside the densely packed area.  Unfortunately, she dropped the half-smoked cigarette to the ground and stepped on it before proceeding inside.  This allowed me to ID the butt as a Camel Crush Bold  but I would have preferred to see her smoke inside the large crowd.  I nonetheless just had to get a pic and she conveniently stepped up to a stand to purchase a food item and as she turned around to rejoin the family, I got my snapshot of the smiling brunette beauty, and I was giddy that her breath still probably reeked of fresh tobacco.

The square block of beer gardens almost always delivers at least a quarter of my Minnesota State Fair sightings every year and this year was no exception.  The best beer gardens smoker at least during the daytime hours was Sighting #75, a gorgeous early-to-mid 20s blond in a gray tanktop and dark jeans standing next to a nonsmoking female friend and talking to a couple of dudes standing across from them, my blond being the only smoker of the four.  Hers was the face you hope to see smoking a cigarette in the beer gardens area, beautiful and confident and glowing with good times, completely secure with the cigarette between her fingers.  This confidence made her a pleasure to watch smoke as well, her cheeks partially collapsing from her fierce drags and generously cloudy exhales pointed skyward after those well-timed drags.  I got a nice snapshot of her in mid-drag that really conveys the extent to which she was pulling that smoke into her body with all the might her facial muscles could muster.  But a little over halfway into the cigarette, she surprised me when she and the friend cordially said “Bye guys” to the dudes they were chatting with. I had been under the impression that they were boyfriends or at least part of the same social group but now was wondering if they were simply random studs flirting with the hot blond smoker until she had her fill with them.  Whatever the case, blondie crossed the street with the friend with cigarette in hand through the dense crowd and further into smoking-prohibited terrain, dragging copiously and exhaling skyward as she went.  She stopped a few yards in front of a stand and finished off the cigarette, dropping it to the pavement and allowing me an easy ID of her discarded pollution and not being at all surprised to see it was a Marlboro Light since I could see it was an all-white as she smoked it.  As a bonus, I’d see this girl and her friend again only about a half hour later outside the grandstand, and blondie was lighting up another Marlboro Light in another smoking-prohibited area next to a tree.  I could only watch this one briefly but was once again very impressed with her show.

The smoking area by the Coliseum near the south side gate didn’t seem to be delivering much quality material yesterday but at some point during the 5 p.m. hour the area delivered two extra base hits back to back.  I had ventured to the far south side of the building to see if any smokers were hiding there and while there weren’t on the first pass, I turned around to head back north and found a couple approaching where both guy and girl were in possession of cigarettes.  And the girl who would be Sighting #79 had easily the most memorable presentation of the day, looking like a caricature of a human Barbie doll.  Her blond hair flowed over her shoulder and her face was a unique kind of beautiful.  She wore a pink bare-midriff top and on the bottom had a short black and white plaid skirt that looked like a “naughty schoolgirl” outfit you’d expect to see a girl wearing on Halloween.  And the naughty schoolgirl vibe was certainly helped by the half-smoked cigarette in her hand.  I followed the couple as it became clear they were heading for the exit gate.  I saw a couple of drags from her as she progressed and they were both pretty nice, and I felt  confident that she’d lose the cigarette before she got to the gate and allow me to ID her butt.  Neither she nor the boyfriend did but that ended up being even hotter and they were both getting stamped on the arm, planning to re-enter the fairgrounds later and of course forcing the middle-aged gal stamping them to be exposed to their secondhand smoke while they did.  The couple walked out the gate and disappeared into the crowd, and I was a little disappointed that I missed a great show.  Interestingly though, this one would have an encore.

But back to the south side of the Coliseum, I had already tried and failed at my first attempt to leave the area and explore elsewhere and I was about to try and fail again.  This time, as I headed northward I spotted two pretty young 18-19-year-old girls holding unlit cigarettes approach the back wall of the Coliseum to smoke their cigarettes in as isolated of a location as possible and become my third-best sighting of the day.  The girls wasted no time resting against the Coliseum wall when the brunette in the tie-dye T-shirt and short jean shorts got out her lighter and flicked her cigarette to life, becoming Sighting #80.  The dark blond in the black tanktop and white shorts next to her, who already had her greedy hand sticking out, wasted no time taking the lighter and flicking her own cigarette to life to become Sighting #81.  While neither girl would be “the hottest girl on campus” per se, they were both sexpots in their own way, pretty girl-next-door types who you’d never expect to smoke this day and age in the brutally inhospitable smoking climate of Minnesota.  The relatively small numbers of young smoker girls I saw yesterday made these all the more scrumptious and I wasted no time snapping pics.  After taking two pics that included both girls in the process of lighting up, however, I got a message that my photo album had reached its capacity and I’d have to delete existing photos to take additional ones.  This was my cue to simply cross the street and take a bench overlooking them to enjoy the show, and what a show it was….

The girls were fast-paced and accomplished smokers, both hitting their nicotine targets copiously and feeding their fresh young bodies with cancerous tobacco and tar.  The brunette was a slightly better smoker, producing cloudier exhales that burst out of her mouth and exploded like fireworks in front of her face.  But the blond had more IT factor, smoking almost as nicely but winning me over with her more perfectly slender figure and her skimpy white shorts, which for me will always be a tiebreaker in favor of the white shorts wearer.  Less than a minute into the sighting, a young mother added some color to the sighting by wheeling her baby by in a stroller.  I was now across the street and couldn’t see how little the baby was, but the smoker girls went into full internal clock-ticking mode, oohing and aahing over the baby, with the mother making brief small talk with the foul-smelling teen girls as she walked past them, exposing her baby to the immediate presence of the girls’ carcinogenic exhales.  After that sideshow passed, the girls kept smoking at a refreshingly fast pace, a haze of smoke hovering in front of both of their faces, especially the brunette’s whose exhales were heavier in general.  I would have loved to have been sitting in front of them with my face right in the middle of that haze, but doing so would have prevented me from experiencing the upside of my long-distance view, which also produced something very special….

The proliferation of really short shorts has been one of the best developments of humankind in the last decade or so, and rarely was that more obvious than with these girls, who were both leaning up against the wall with their legs bent at the knee to form an upside-down V.  From my vantage point, this positioning combined with the microscopic nature of their shorts gave me a perfect view of their calves right up to their ass dimples, and their well-toned teenage flesh couldn’t have looked more perfect.  With both the brunette’s jean shorts and the blond’s white shorts, it felt like I was mere centimeters from a peep show of their girly parts, which was extremely exhilarating.  The girls wrapped up their cigarettes in less than five minutes, scaring me as they stubbed them out against the cement and proceeded towards the garbage can to dispose of them.  I watched their perfect asses drift away but crossed the street to check out that trash can in hopes of butt identification (other type of butts!).  I had thought I saw blond filters on the girls’ cigarettes as they approached, and sure enough right on top of the trash were two Camel Turkish Royal cigarette butts, albeit with slightly different coloring on the butts indicating there are different variations on the Turkish Royals and each girl smoked a different type.  I sped up my walking pace in hopes of catching up with them but they were a little too fast and I lost them, breaking my heart.  It was a little worrying how few girls their age were smoking yesterday, and it made me nervous that Minnesota’s high cigarette prices were having an effect in slashing smoker rates among this demographic, particularly wholesome-appearing girls like these.  I got cocky at last year’s Minnesota State Fair when I saw a lot of under-21 girls smoking, convincing myself the price increase wasn’t dramatically impacting youth smoking rates, but this year’s anecdotal evidence suggested there was some impact.  Still, it’s refreshing to see girls like these two keeping the tobacco tradition relevant.

I was finally able to leave the Coliseum area and began encircling the fairgrounds’ sighting hotspots during the primetime hours between 6 p.m. and sunset when sightings numbers tend to spike.  That happened once again, albeit producing mostly single-base hits and nothing of the caliber of what I just saw from the teens in the short shorts.  It would be about 6:45 before my next great find across the street from the beer gardens at a designated smoking area that moved from where it was last year.  I only discovered it there for the first time when I spotted Sighting #97, an early-to-mid 20s light brunette with a killer body in a navy blouse and pale blue jean shorts that exquisitely framed her lower body assets.  She looked like a smoker too, and thus didn’t look at all out of place standing right in front of an overflowing ashtray spewing filth of her own, with nicely timed drags and cloudy exhales.  I stood there enjoying the show and in a couple of minutes, two friends showed up and joined the party, and while this was playing out, I watched a mediocre Sighting #98 walk by who was unconnected to the existing smoker girl and her friend.  Another big distraction played out to my right as a mother pushing a stroller got into a screaming match with an older lady on a motorized scooter.  Myself and the smoker girls were looking that direction taken aback by how heated things got, but when it cooled down, the main event continued and the smoker girl put down her beer on the ridge of the ashtray and extracted the pack of cigarettes from her purse to pass to the friend, and I still managed to not see the brand even though I was standing right there.  Before I knew it, the cuter of the two friends with her, a wholesome slender brunette in a black top and skimpy camouflage-print shorts lit up her own cigarette to become Sighting #99.  No sooner did she get hers lit before the third friend, another attractive brunette in a white summer dress, took the cigarette for the single drag she’d get and became Sighting #100 before handing it back to #99.  Now the best smoker of the trio continued to be the original girl, who sadly was almost finished with her cigarette, and I was kicking myself for missing that pack she took out of her purse as she crushed out her cigarette into the overflowing ashtray she was standing in front of and denied me the butt ID.  The friend was a slower smoker with a less accomplished style but was still looking damn fine with that cigarette smoldering next to her tight lower body draped in those camouflage shorts.  I got a photo of the girls in front of the ashtray but with the 7:00 meeting time with the folks looming, couldn’t stick around to see her finish her cigarette.  I’d get minor restitution about 45 minutes later though when I saw the two main smoker girls hovering near the grandstand, this time minus their cigarettes but still decked out in their skimpy outfits, and snapped a more direct frontal photo of them.

I had about five minutes to get from where I was to the information booth where the folks were waiting for me to meet up at 7 p.m., which is kind of a nice built-in period of rest in some ways but which at some point is gonna cut short an incredible sighting.  Thankfully, that didn’t happen yesterday as I zipped past nine mediocre sightings while walking towards them in that prime sightings period, none of whom I felt like kicking myself for walking past in a hurry.  This left me with 109 sightings at 7 p.m., just barely short of the 110-125 baseline I usually set for 7:00.  After about 15 minutes sitting there chatting with the folks with my eyes wandering every which way looking for smokers and stealthly deleting some older photos on my camera phone to increase my capacity since I reached my limit, I stepped away agreeing once again to meet at 10:30 to leave, which is a good hour before I’d prefer to leave and probably keeps me from scoring at least 25 additional sightings each year.  I keep saying that some day I’ll go up there on my own and fetish on my own schedule, but it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen this year, next week included.

At around 7:20, I was bouncing around from one smoking area to another again and scored my only truly memorable sighting of the day at the usually prolific area to the west of the grandstand.  Seated up the small flight of cement steps against a railing was Sighting #112, a wholesome 21-22ish dark blond in a blue blouse and brown shorts seated there smoking a cork filter, her bare legs stretched out in front of her and looking pretty vulnerable.  There were only two drags left on the cigarette by the time I got there and I was bummed to see her crushing the cigarette out on the pavement so quickly after my arrival, but pleased that she left it sit there so I could get a butt ID when she left.  It was an open question how long that would be, however, as she got on her phone at that point to tell whoever was on the other end where she was, and I figured it could be several minutes until they arrived to meet her.  Instead, a presumably nonsmoking boyfriend who was seated only a few yards away but down the nearby steps stood up and approached her, apparently not willing to sit by her when she was stinking up her surroundings with cigarette smoke.  Now this girl was by no means gorgeous but really defined girl-next-door and in no way looked like a cigarette smoker, so it was cute to see her with this guy that apparently couldn’t tolerate her smoking habit in such close proximity.  The couple left the spot in moments and I swooped in to ID her butt as a cork filter Camel.  I had marked exactly where she left her discarded butt and noticed a similarly disposed of Camel butt right next to it, indicating that she smoked two in a row while sitting there and leaving her pollution behind for others to deal with.

I somehow forgot to make a mental note of Sighting #118 when it came about as whoever the girl was would be my 3,000th Minnesota State Fair sighting dating back to 1993.  So many of the “single-base hit” girls become a blur with so many sightings in one day that I can’t for the life of me remember which girl was #118, but it was right around this time that I stumbled into a promised encore from a girl I saw earlier in the day, albeit a brief encore.  There are four water fountains in front of the information area where I met the parents about 45 minutes earlier and I often take a good drink when walking past.  I looked up from the fountains and saw a hot blond illegally smoking a cigarette right near where my parents had recently been.  I hustled on up there to identify the living Barbie in the black-and-white plaid schoolgirl skirt seated there puffing on the final throes of her cork filter.  Dusk was approaching so my otherwise perfectly positioned photo ended up blurry, but it was a hoot seeing her finish off the final drag from her cork filter cigarette before the now-shirtless stud who was her boyfriend approached from behind and beckoned her.  She dropped the cigarette to the ground without crushing it out and followed him out of the area.  A group of three teenage boys sitting nearby watched her walk away and were chattering amongst themselves after seeing her in that outfit.  My priority was identifying her discarded cigarette butt, which was a Marlboro Red.

There are 18 or 19 designated smoking areas on the fairgrounds and after much hype last year when they were introduced, elicited virtually no follow-up discussion this year.  This led to a mix of more ignorance and more civil disobedience about the smoking areas, and in general they had fewer young ladies even compared to last year.  With that said, most of the primary designated smoking areas delivered in some way at least once during the day, but it took until dusk for the smoking area to the northwest of the food building to finally come through.  On my first pass, I noticed a cluster of early 20-somethings with a few hot girls and where one of the guys was smoking and made a mental note of them for when I passed them again while leaving the area.  I’d be delayed from that goal for a bit, however, as there was a hot mid-20s dark blond on a bench smoking with her boyfriend who I needed to see more from.  Like so many of yesterday’s girls, Sighting #122 had a conservative presentation in a white top and dark jeans but was the center of attention where it counted with her smoking style.  There was an opening on the bench but unfortunately it was to the right of the boyfriend, with blondie on his left obstructed by the dude.  I’ve been in this unfortunate position during a couple of other classic sightings over the years and still managed to see some good stuff and this would be no exception as I caught three of her intense and sometimes cheek-hollowing drags followed by cloudy exhales that followed.  I wasn’t in a position to watch for long but it was a pleasure when I did and I was jealous of the boyfriend who got to take this stinky nicotine hottie home.

I hadn’t forgotten about the group on the north end of this long and narrow smoking area as I headed back that direction and it didn’t take long to identify that one of the aforementioned cute girls was now smoking, ironically having lit up just before the group left the smoking area.  Sighting #123 was a curly-haired blond with a big bust covered in a black tanktop and with high-waisted medium blue jean shorts below.  Honestly I could do without these high-waisted shorts and pants that are back en vogue but most girls manage to look good in them, especially when they’re attractive mid-20s blonds with cigarettes in hand.  I can’t say I ever really expected “big things” from this girl for whatever reason, but was taken aback when I saw her first drag and especially the massive volume of smoke that poured out of her mouth when she exhaled.  I kept close eye as she proceeded westward down Dan Patch Avenue, the only person in the group who was smoking, and discovered that first drag wasn’t a fluke.  After every intense drag, she opened her mouth and just let creamy balls of smoke flow out in a way I only see once in a while.  It makes me wonder why so many girls develop so many different tics with their smoking styles, and how some of them develop thinner exhales as their habit develops while others develop thicker ones.  Really nice to see different girls’ habits progress differently and I got a kick out of watching blondie make quick work of her cigarette and toss it to the sidewalk in a few short minutes having very rapidly exhausted it of its contents.  The butt was a Marlboro Light, a brand far more popular in Minnesota than it was the past two weeks in Iowa.   It was too late to get a good photo but I still managed a blurry one before venturing elsewhere.

The musical entertainment in the grandstand was approaching and last night’s performer was Kid Rock, who seems to be a curse for me at the Minnesota State Fair.  I mentioned how this was probably my weakest day at the MNSF since 2009….and guess who the grandstand performer was on August 29, 2009???  Anyway, it seemed as though most concertgoers were settling in for the show poised to start in the near future, but there were some lingering smokers getting their last nicotine fix before the show east of the grandstand.  The cutest was Sighting #125, a petite mid-to-late-20s blond in (what else!) a conservative white blouse and jeans sitting next to her boyfriend/husband where both were smoking cigarettes.  I hovered by another group of more mediocre young women smokers and watched from afar at blondie, who had very soft features and looked way too wholesome to smoke.  Her drags and exhales were decent but nothing to write home about, and unfortunately her smoking pace declined as she approached the end of the cigarette, and the boyfriend finished his a couple of minutes before she finished hers.  She disappointed me a little when she handed the cigarette to the boyfriend, although what happened next was cute as they stood up to head towards the concert and he approached the cigarette in the general direction of her mouth and she crouched down a bit to wrap her lips around it and take a final drag before he took the drag that finished the cigarette off and dropped it to the pavement and crushed it out.  I identified the butt as a Marlboro No. 27 but must admit blondie let me down a little as adorable of a smoker as she was.  This sighting was kind of the inverse of my classic MNSF #10 sighting from 2010, where a blond babe was binging on nicotine with her less addicted boyfriend before heading into the Hinder concert, sucking down 2 1/2 cigarettes in about five minutes and swiping the final half cigarette from the boyfriend’s hand before going in.

It was now after dark which meant I spent more time around the beer gardens block where sightings become increasingly prolific.  There are always random 20-something smoker gals hovering just outside the beer gardens puffing away, but frankly the majority of them are pretty forgettable in the context of the 150+ sightings I score on the average Minnesota State Fair day.  One that stood out a little more last night was Sighting #136, a mid-20s blond in a gray tanktop and jean shorts in a group of four where she was the only smoker, having taken an impressive drag and exhale from her first cigarette that I saw from the corner of my eye.  She had a memorable face and it became animated when she talked, meaning she was pretty fun to observe and definitely the life of the party amongst her friends group who was laughing along with her.  But the fun stopped for me after about two minutes waiting for her to get back to her cigarette as her mouth kept running but was not placing the smoldering all-white cigarette between her fingers into it.  When she finally got around to taking another drag, it was nice and I had no illusions she was just a social smoker, but after she made me wait another 60 seconds or more for her next drag after that, I decided I didn’t have the rest of the night to observe just her and moved on.

I wouldn’t get far, however, as I progressed south to a row of benches against the wall of the bathroom across the street from the beer gardens.  Sitting there were two early 20s babes that included Sighting #137, a hot long-haired brunette in a black tanktop and jean shorts who was smoking a cigarette.  Hers was one of the prettier faces I saw with a cigarette in it near the beer gardens area and she was a decent smoker too, dragging while sitting there and illegally filling up the crowded lineup of benches with the filthy smoke that had been inside her lungs.  After less than a minute, she and her blond friend got up and moved towards the bathroom entrance and re-enacted a fun incident from last year.  The two girls stood almost directly in front of the entrance to the men’s bathroom and the brunette continued smoking her cigarette.  I got even giddier when the blond friend in a white top and white shorts took possession of the cigarette and enjoyed a couple drags of her own to become Sighting #138 and make this a 2-for-1.  The blond was about on par with the brunette beauty-wise and both were solid 8s on the 1-10 beauty spectrum.  The brunette got the cigarette back for the final couple of drags and tossed it to the pavement before heading into the bathroom (and it was the women’s bathroom they went inside just for the record!), allowing me to ID their butt as a Marlboro Light.

From there, I had every intention of going a different direction but something was pulling me to head back north where I came from, and am I ever glad I did because doing so led me to my best sighting of the day by far.  On the curb just north of the beer gardens, I spotted a fast-moving trio exiting the area minus any adult beverages but two of them holding unlit cigarettes in their hands.  The eclectic trio included some hipster-looking mid-20s guy, an early 20s brunette girl, and the girl who locked in my attention and kept it for the next several minutes, a petite, fresh-faced mid-teen blond in a flower-print tanktop and dark jean shorts who was only about 5’2″.  When I saw the face of the girl who was about to become Sighting #141, my heart briefly stopped because it was just so innocent and the rest of her presentation matched that innocence.  But based on her company it took awhile before I allowed myself to accept that she was only about 15 years old.  As rare as it’s become to see mid-teen smokers, I always come up with reasons to talk myself out of believing they’re as young as they look just as I did with last week’s Iowa State Fair girl, and I kept telling myself she had to have just been a young-looking late teen.  My early skepticism about her youth notwithstanding, I was still preparing myself for a fantastic sighting as I watched the guy light up his cigarette and made sure I positioned myself parallel to girly so I could see her light-up when he handed her his lighter.  When she did, I finally began to accept that she was about the age that I instinctively suspected as she placed that unlit cork filter between her lips and fired up, briefly struggling to work the lighter before bringing that cigarette to life in a way that just screamed 9th grade girl.  Interestingly though, that light-up would be the only part of her smoking routine that resembled the work of a 15-year-old girl….

I had to work hard to keep up with this trio as they hustled their way down an oddball, out-of-the-way path to get from the beer gardens to their midway destination, and I hauled ass through the crowd attempting not to miss a thing or God forbid lose them.  And whatever midway rides they were about to go on couldn’t hold a candle to the ride I went on watching this little girl’s smoking performance.  She must have set a goal before she arrived to exhale cigarette smoke into the faces of very fairgoer on the grounds as it seemed impossible for it to be a mere coincidence if she hadn’t.  Her drags were impossibly accomplished for a girl so young, frequently done in the form of brief no-handlebars dangling drags, and her exhales were very impressive combination nose-and-mouth missiles that repeatedly nailed their targets, assuming the targets were innocent bystanders of all ages who kept getting nailed in the face by this adorable cutie’s air pollution.  The only downside was that with everybody else getting whacked by her exhales, I wasn’t getting the opportunity to get splashed in the face with as many of her stink bombs as I’d hoped.  It continued to be a challenge keeping up with this trio as they weaved through huge crowds of mostly teenagers at the edge of the midway, with my girl never amending her aggressive and criminal smoking behavior a bit even in the densest of crowds.  At one point she even walked right past a fairgrounds cop with cigarette in hand and didn’t bat an eyelash….

Now I appreciated the fast pace of this sighting for what it was but as the trio got into the midway, I was rewarded with a needed respite as they got into the ticket line and I had a conveniently located bench to enjoy a front-row seat for the second half of her cigarette.  It was such a treat to watch this sweet-looking young thing smoke her cigarette while standing in this line, especially in the company of the guy and the nonsmoking brunette.  Was she the younger sister of one or both of them?  It was impossible to know but there was zero doubt in my mind as I watched that this girl was younger than the other two by several years.  I had one snapshot left on my camera phone so I had to make it count, and since it was after dark my prospects for a quality photo weren’t great, but I got as close as I could and waited for her to take a drag before snapping that shutter just as her face was partially turned my way.  It’s too blurry to fully appreciate but I couldn’t have possibly done better given the circumstances…

She had about three drags left for me to just sit back and admire at that point, with generous missiles of smoke always flowing from her nose and mouth that repeatedly reassured me she was no rookie.  There’s a teen celebrity, past or present, that she reminds me of but I can’t put a finger on who.  But the past-tense rolodex girl that her gentle mid-teen features immediately brough to mind was the early teen “strawberry blond” (FCF #5) smoking with her family back in 2008, although obviously this girl was a straight blond without any strawberry.  Without a shadow of a doubt, she was my top find of the day and she was approaching the end of her cigarette just as her group was buying tickets, but walked off with it still smoldering after making the purchase, giving me confidence that I’d get a butt ID.  Unfortunately, this would have an unhappy ending as I watched her take her final drag and then squeeze the filter to crush out the cigarette.  As I was bemoaning the prospect of her tossing the butt into a trash can rather than merely littering it, she sped up her walking pace to toss the butt into a dumpster full of garbage bags that some fair worker was hauling in front of her.  Damn…wasn’t gonna identify that one, but for what it’s worth I think I saw Camel markings on it when she lit it up at the origins of the party for my eyes that this sighting was.  I watched her perfect little petite smoker girl body migrate west deeper into the midway as the adrenaline from having scored my best sighting of the day pulsated through my otherwise weary body.

And it’s a damn good thing I stumbled upon her because I was about to go through an extended dry spell with only about an hour and a half left for sightings on the night, hitting nothing but singles and getting the timing wrong on sightings that had the potential to be more.  The best example of the latter was Sighting #147, which included a foursome of two girls and two guys where the only smoker was the very pretty early 20s blond hottie in a white tanktop and black shorts.  Unfortunately, I discovered her just in time to see her take her final drag and drop the smoldering cigarette to the ground without crushing it out, pressing forward with her nonsmoking friends.  Interestingly, her discarded butt was another Camel Turkish Royal, a cigarette I tend to only see girls smoking one week a year…the week I go to the Minnesota State Fair.

The next genuine pleasing moment I’d find came at the smoking area near the beer gardens and bathroom area, which is definitely the place to be after 9 p.m. on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.  Standing in front of the ashtray was a duo of early 20s gals who were both smoking, but only one of whom was good enough to count as a sighting.  Sighting #163 was a pretty mid-20s dark brunette in a green top and black shorts putting on a respectable show for the few drags in which I got to admire only her, but this sighting was about to get more crowded as a young couple approached the smoking area that included a petite blond cutie I had seen in the area earlier that day but missed seeing smoke.  The guy lit himself first and then lit up Sighting #164, his girlfriend whose face was decently pretty but didn’t quite match her sterling presentation in a spaghetti strap pink tanktop and short jean shorts.  I had a feeling she’d be a great smoker and she was with nice long drags and thundercloud exhales.  But the sighting got an extra bit of color when a female duo approached the couple.  One of the gals, a cute mid-20s brunette in a flower-print black dress who seemed like she already had quite a bit to drink approached the boyfriend to ask for a lighter.  He handed the brunette the lighter and she flicked her cigarette to life to become Sighting #165, handing it back to him and saying “Thank you soooo much!” before raising her hand to high-five him while dangling the cigarette.  It was a cute close to her brief encounter before she and the nonsmoking friend walked back to the beer gardens.  I hung around the smoking area a bit longer to enjoy the two lingering smokers (#163 and #164) before drifting off in pursuit of smokier pastures and to boost my numbers with only about a half hour of fetish time remaining.

With time fleeting, I was spending a disproportionate amount of time around the beer gardens block as that’s where you can usually tick off the most sightings this time of the night.  The area lived up to its smoky reputation again last night as I watched an attractive mid-20s brunette in a pink top and jeans approach a food stand with a freshly lit cigarette.  It was only when she got in line that she lit the cigarette and became Sighting #171, and it was hot watching her smoke while standing in line for food.  I was obviously sneaking peeks at her drags and exhales as she smoked but as always needed to avert my attention at times to avoid staring, and when I looked directly behind me to a table just inside the open-air beer gardens, I spotted Sighting #172, a cute mid-20s dark blond sitting on a chair and smoking a cigarette with her feet up on the lap of her nonsmoking boyfriend who was sitting on the next chair, her bare legs on full display.  For a blissful couple of minutes, I turned back and forth watching the brunette in line for a corn dog smoking and then pivoted behind me to see the blond resting her sexy bare legs on her boyfriend’s lap, and couldn’t quite decide which was sexier.  The brunette ultimately broke the tie though when she arrived at the front of the food stand line and ordered a corn dog at the very moment that the blond smoker and her boyfriend got up and left.  I followed the brunette as she walked away with her corn dog and half-smoked cigarette, heading across the street to the bench where she originated and sitting next to her friends.  I was readying myself for a smoking-while-eating sighting but it didn’t go quite as planned as her first priority was finishing that cigarette.  For another two minutes or so, she attended exclusively to her cigarette, holding that corn dog in her right hand and letting it cool.  It was just gonna have to wait because her nicotine fix was more important.  She finally dropped and crushed out the cigarette next to the bench and began eating the corn dog, unfortunately denying me a butt ID since it was so close to her and I knew she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I crossed the street back to the beer gardens area and spotted Sighting #173, a very wholesome mid-20s dark blond who I’d bet money was a schoolteacher as she just had that young female elementary teacher look about her.  She was decked out in a green top and jeans with a beer in one hand and a freshly lit all-white in the other, sitting next to a brunette in jean shorts who I also hoped would light up but just kept plugging away at her phone.  Even without the brunette smoking, the dark blond put on a cute enough show as it was pretty obvious she was just a social smoker, hitting that cigarette at an unnaturally fast pace for rapid-fire drags and then emitting very shallow follow-up exhales.  While I certainly favor hard-core regular smokers to mere social smokers, I still think it’s cute when a girl of this pedigree finds it irresistible to have a cigarette with her beer.  I was pleased with her fast pace of smoking as I was running out of time, and she cooperated beautifully by finishing the cigarette in about three minutes and walking away with the friend.  Unsurprisingly, her discarded butt was a Marlboro Light.

I had time for one more pass by the grandstand where Kid Rock was at the tail end of his performance, and then headed through the huddle of teens at the edge of the midway, but before I got there I scored my last find of the night, an early 20s hottie brunette in a white top and beautifully fitting black cutoffs with frayed black denim touching her upper calves.  She was standing in front of a bench wielding a cork filter cigarette while talking to a family that included younger kids.  I had assumed my Sighting #177 girl was part of that family but the way she walked away made me wonder if she just stopped to make small talk with them for whatever reason and expose them to her smoky stench, but before I knew it she was walking away and in the company of a nonsmoking boyfriend.  The crowd of teenagers is always very densely packed and my smoker girl had to squeeze through them and managed to get separated from the boyfriend while doing so.  She was standing inside the midway just outside of the crowd and leering towards the crowd for the boyfriend, dragging from her cigarette as she surveyed the crowd with me lurking at her from the side.  When she spotted him, she dropped the cigarette to the ground earlier than I’d preferred and approached him, leaving a smoldering two-thirds smoked Camel Turkish Royal on the ground, my fourth CTR sighting of the day….and likewise my fourth CTR sighting of the entire year 2014.

It was 10:27 and if I wanted to match last year’s 180 sightings threshold I’d have to get them while making a final pass by the beer gardens en route to the Coliseum where I was heading to meet the folks.  I didn’t figure that would be much of a problem at this hour but I came up completely empty in the final three minutes of walking, meeting the parents and heading into the parking lot still hanging onto some hope of one or two more sightings.  Nothing.  Interestingly though, the traffic cop led my dad into the wrong lane coming out of the parking lot and it resulted in a 15-minute loop around packed blocks of State Fair traffic before we got onto the street we needed to get on.  Sitting in the backseat and surveying the exiting fairgoers, I did manage to see one more sighting, an early 20s blond with her nonsmoking boyfriend walking by in the dark and turning the cherry of her cigarette bright red as she took a drag and became Sighting #178.

It was hardly a day I should complain about as I scored some quality material and one undisputed homerun, but it lacked the overall sizzle of recent Minnesota State Fair trips and showcased some disturbing trends.  Most prominently, those trends include the plunging prevalence of tobacco use by Minnesota girls under 21 along with e-cigarettes not going away and robbing me of at least a dozen decent sightings.  It wasn’t as bad as last year when a couple of what would have been my best sightings of a given day were girls putting giant ugly pieces of plastic into their mouths to ingest their nicotine rather than actual cigarettes.  Still, I have one more day of the Minnesota State Fair yet to come and even if it’s no better than yesterday was, it will still be satisfying to walk away with hundreds of sightings of girls of varying levels of attractiveness publicly smoking in summer attire.  All things considered with the state of smoking in the year 2014, I’m a lucky man to continue to be scoring sightings of this magnitude.

 

 

2014 Iowa State Fair, Day 3

I adjusted some things in my summer schedule, most notably moving my mid-August road trip up to the 4th of July weekend since the 4th fell on a Friday this year, and by doing so was able to free up the third weekend in August to make another full-day Saturday visit to the Iowa State Fair.  Don’t expect this to happen again, at least in the near future, but next year I’m gonna incorporate my August road trip with a first-time trip to the Missouri State Fair so there will be an extra day next year as well.  So how did this extra day at the Iowa State Fair go?  I can’t complain.  It wasn’t nearly as good as last Saturday and only had one truly electric moment, but I hit a solid number of extra base hits, to torture that baseball metaphor a little further.  And right from the get-go, I’ll warn that there will be no further sightings of the chain-smoking blond teen who I saw both last Saturday and on Wednesday night.

I actually went a little later than during the previous week as there was rain in the forecast for the afternoon and I wanted to make sure that threat had passed before heading out there, so I didn’t get to the fairgrounds until 12:30.  Now normally the morning hours aren’t ripe with sightings, but going an hour and a half later than usual would not have been something I would have tolerated had this been my only full-day at the fair, but since I had already gone a full day the previous week, everything yesterday was just a bonus in the first place.  With that in mind, I followed a few leads yesterday that generally led nowhere, in hopes some longshot girls would light up.  Doing so probably cut my sightings total down as I ended with a mediocre 111 sightings for the day, but again, since it was a bonus day in the first place I had no reason to be upset.

The day began with an Iowa State Fair first for me….scoring two sightings while standing in line to buy tickets before going inside the gate.  Sighting #1 was a decently attractive brunette in a black T-shirt and white shorts sharing a cigarette with her boyfriend.  She would have been a nice little appetizer by herself but Sighting #2 surpassed her a few people back in the line.  This very wholesome mid-20s mother whose long blond hair flowed over her shoulder in a braid was standing next to her two young children smoking a cigarette.  Her wholesomeness was underscored by her very feminine blouse and long blue-and-black striped skirt.  Of all the young mommies at the fair who could have been smokers, she was definitely would have been one of my last guesses.  I got to watch her take about six drags, always turning to her left to exhale away from the crowd.  She lost the cigarette when behind people in line, not that my identifying the butt was an option anyway, and in moments proceeded to ruffle her hands through her young son’s hair, exposing him to mommy’s freshly stinky fingers.  The son looked about three and the daughter about four or five.  Definitely a good way to start the day and clearly the earliest after arriving at the Iowa State Fair that I ever scored a sighting.

About five minutes later I was inside the gate and scoring again.  I saw this middle-aged dude smoking a cigarette sitting on some cart and a teenage girl and boy had their backs to me but were talking to him as he opened his pack of Marlboro Reds.  I was only halfway attentive as I walked past until I noticed the guy handing the girl a cigarette, which she thanked him for, clearly just bumming one.  Now my Sighting #3 girl was more than a little alternative looking, with her dark blond hair in unflattering dred locks, but she was cute and probably underage.  The boy with her definitely was, looking about 13 or 14 and too young to be her boyfriend.  He was probably her younger brother.  Whatever the case, girl’s outfit was flattering, with an open-front blue blouse with a tanktop underneath and pale blue cutoffs below.  If she had a normal hairstyle I’d have liked her more, but she was still an undeniable cutie.  And weirdly enough, after bumming a cigarette from that guy, she then proceeded to walk to a nearby middle-aged lady and asked to bum a light.  For a girl who looked like she was under 18, she had some serious chutzpah.  The older lady cooperated and pressed the cherry of her own cigarette to the young girl’s.  The girl then proceeded to walk through the seating area behind the grandstand and I snapped a couple of nice photos.  Her smoking style was average but it’s always fun watching an underage girl publicly smoking, and it’s even more adorable when she’s doing so in front of a nonsmoking younger brother.  She and the brother eventually settled onto a bench sitting next to yet another middle-aged guy smoking and I found a bench across from them for a good front-row seat to the second half of her cigarette.  When she was done she crushed the cigarette out on the back of the bench, which would have denied me the butt ID had I not already seen it was a Marlboro Red, and soon got up with the younger brother to leave.  The day was off to a fantastic start, with three solid sightings under my belt in just a few minutes compared to the 45 minutes or so I waited for my first sighting last week.

Alas, it wasn’t meant to last as the more typical early afternoon sightings pace would play out in the next few hours, but that seating area outside the grandstand would prove to be my saving grace producing more great sightings soon thereafter.  The first of which were Sightings #5 and #6, a family of smokers where mom, the guy I presume to be dad and two daughters were all standing outside the grandstand gate smoking.  Now while this may sound like a homerun, the family was pretty trashy looking and one of the daughters was just barely good enough to qualify as a sighting.  The other daughter, however, was a much better find, a light brunette wearing a gray tanktop and jean shorts, with smooth, perfect legs below as her best feature.  I’d guess she was in the 20 or 21 range age-wise and the sister looked older.  I was able to snap a decent pic, including of the legs, and see five or six drags, all of which were substantial.  She was the last of the four to finish her cigarette and the family drifted away, giving me my chance to ID her butt.  It appeared to be yet another variation of Marlboro Red, with darker brown printing on the word “Marlboro” than does a traditional Marlboro Red.  Who can even keep track of how Reds varieties there are today?  Probably not even Philip Morris.

I would only venture a few yards from this sighting to the middle of the grandstand seating area where I would find Sighting #7, a very exotic-looking girl with an unusual family makeup.   Here sat this dark-complected cutie who looked about 22 sitting next to what I presumed was her dad.  She was smoking a cigarette and he was not.  But what didn’t make sense is that “dad” was your typical middle-aged Iowa white guy while the daughter was either Asian or Native American, and I’m actually leaning towards the latter.  Her presentation was adorable with her wearing a very utilitarian plaid shirt up top with an ultrafeminine pair of pale jean shorts with lace on them on the bottom.  There was an open bench across from them where I sat and snapped some pics, but they’re a little too distant to fully appreciate, but this sighting was about to get weirder.  Suddenly a very chubby 20-something gal with similar exotic features to my smoker entered the scene, annoyingly standing in front of my smoker and blocking much of my view.  I had a hunch this was the sister, who could use a smoking habit of her own to suppress the appetite and lose some weight, who also looked Native American.  But also entering the scene was “mom”, a middle-aged white gal who was smoking a cigarette.  So now this poor father had the smoke of his daughter (let’s presume they adopted two Native American girls) and his wife hovering in front of him as the four of them talked amongst each other.  Infuriatingly, the fat sister kept me from seeing about a third of this sighting, but the family stood up moments later and began to venture their way towards the concourse, and producing the sighting’s top moment as my little Indian girl let that all-white cigarette dangle from her mouth for a good 20 seconds when she stood up.  Damn was that hot. I followed for a bit, hoping to get a better photo but not succeeding.  I really wanted a butt ID but was justifiably nervous when she leaned down and crushed the cigarette out before dropping it into a nearby garbage can.  When passing the garbage can, I took a quick peek inside just in case it was still in plain sight, but it was not.  Some pretty colorful sightings thus far in the day, with this one being my favorite thus far.

Sighting #8 was poised to be a heartbreaker if not for the redemption I would ultimately get an hour or so later.  I was walking around this alleyway that leads around one of the buildings and has a bathroom area and a big hill leading up to the east side of the grounds.  A lot of times in this area you’ll catch a couple of hotties sitting on the hill for a smoke break, and yesterday as I walked by I saw this impossibly wholesome couple where the girl had just gotten up off the grass and was approaching a garbage can.  She was the picture of Midwestern wholesomeness with a beautiful face, her dark blond hair in a ponytail, and wearing a nice white blouse and black shorts.  As she stepped up to that garbage can, I watched her toss two cigarette butts into it.  D’oh!  I had just missed a great sighting, but at the same time watching her toss those butts into the trash at least confirmed to me she was a smoker.  It was the first time ever that a girl throwing her butt into the trash worked to my advantage.  I walked away annoyed that I missed it, never imagining this was poised to become my second-best sighting of the day.

On Wednesday night, I scored a major sighting at the edge of the grandstand and the midway, with smoker girls sitting in the window sills.  I’d pull off another yesterday afternoon, albeit with less glamorous girls.  I approached the area and knew I had hit gold when I saw two teenage girls and a boy all wielding freshly lit cigarettes.  Sighting #10 was a short light brunette with a conservative gray top and tight jeans.  She looked good, not in a glamorous sense, but in a girl-next-door sense, and had somewhat beyond-her-years features that reminded me of an old coworker.  She hovered closest to the dorky guy, so much so that I presumed she was his girlfriend.  More attractive was Sighting #11, the other girl of the duo who was youngish looking with long auburn hair wearing a black tanktop and jean shorts.  The first girl looked 18 but this girl looked more like 16, until she managed to reduce her appeal for me when she turned her back briefly my way and revealed an ugly, large tattoo on her upper back over her tanktop, a tattoo that confirmed for me that she was almost certainly 18 as well.  They put on a decent smoking show as I sat there, scoring a couple of quick pics, one of the auburn-haired girl in mid-drag.  Both were decent smokers but the auburn-haired girl impressed me more.  She was so into sending messages on her smartphone that she was the last of the three to finish her cigarette.  When the three of them left I had no problem IDing their butts, both of which were cork filter Camels.

The heartbreaker of the day came next with Sighting #14 at the back of the midway.  I had weaved through the packed mid-afternoon midway and was relieved to get to the back of it where there was more open space, my eyes immediately zeroing in on two huddles that included a very pretty 16ish blond in a memorable pink blouse and leopard print yoga pants.  It looked as though she had just removed something from her mouth….and sure enough seconds later a plume of smoke flowed from her mouth and she dropped a cigarette butt to the pavement and crushed it out. Nooooo!  This girl’s pedigree and the storyline that followed would have made this sighting one of the best of the day, but one exhale was just not enough to whet my appetite.  I hovered back there and snapped a photo to preserve her memory, and found myself particularly annoyed that the three teen dudes in her cluster were all still smoking, clearly not as fast in ingesting carcinogens into their bodies as this girl.  She began opening her giant purse and I was hopeful the pack would come out, but instead came out soft drinks she smuggled into the fairgrounds and took a swig from, passing one on to one of the guys.  But remember I said there were two clusters.  Next to the cluster of young people she was in was a group of older people, all smoking, and some nonsmoking young kids….and it became clear they were all going to the fair together, a family of smokers in some capacity.  Once everybody finished their cigarettes, the group journeyed southward into the midway and IDed her discarded butt as another throwback-to-the-80s Marlboro Red.  No clue when Reds took over the Iowa cigarette market again but it’s definitely happened…

Now about a half hour later I ran into this family of smokers again elsewhere on the fairgrounds and the mother was smoking again.  They were going the same general direction I was so I followed for a good three blocks, hoping that cute young daughter would follow suit.  She never did, but I did get to see one of the boys in the group who was clearly her boyfriend wrap his arm around her waist and slowly slide it down to that leopard print-covered ass to which she eventually got around to playfully lifting his hand from.  Obviously not everybody here was related to the parents as there were some friends in the group, but they all shared the bond of nicotine dependency, at what must be a tremendous cost with the current price of cigarettes and all those smokers.  The blond would tease me on a couple of occasions by opening up her giant purse, but always coming out was a jug of soda somebody would swig from and never cigarettes.  I eventually parted as I got to the northwest side of the fairgrounds, never to see the family again yesterday.

Now while that detour may have seemed unproductive, there was a silver lining.  As I walked to the tables behind The Depot, I saw a familiar wholesome blond cutie with her boyfriend sitting at one of the tables with a beer in front of her, a freshly lit cigarette between her fingers, and a pack of Marlboro Menthols right in front of her.  This most unlikely smoker who teased me less than an hour earlier was finally gonna give me a show, and the nearly empty lineup of benches was perfect to position myself for a front-row seat, complete with action shots of her smoking.  There was an odd haze to the photo quality that left them less than perfect, but I was still satisfied, and even more so when I sat back to watch her smoke as it was just spectacular to see a cigarette approach that perfect wholesome face and draw in smoke.  And most curiously, the boyfriend wasn’t smoking.  Would this change?  I’d have to wait and see but for now I was mesmerized watching her solid, well-timed drags and cloudy sexualized exhales.  Looking down to under the table I could see those nice black shorts of hers and I’ll just bet I was unconsciously licking my lips at the entire presentation.  She made pretty quick work of the cigarette and crushed it out on the ground before sitting the butt on the seat next to her, clearly planning to toss it in the garbage later.  I knew she dropped her butts into the trash can so that didn’t surprise me, meaning I was lucky to have seen the pack in front of her and ID her brand…..

I just had a feeling this sighting wasn’t done yet, and she confirmed my suspicion but taking out another cigarette and lighting up a couple of minutes later.  This was a face I would never have imagined to have had one cigarette touch its lips, but here this girl was on at least her third cigarette of the last hour.  The show was once again beautiful, with a solid smoking show that should be taught in schools to young girls on how a pretty young gal should properly smoke a cigarette and exude the highest level of femininity while doing so.  I watched her smoke the entire cigarette, pleased with every drag as I’m sure her black insides were, and continued to be intrigued by the fact that boyfriend didn’t light up at all.  Up until now, when I saw her drop two cigarettes into the garbage can when I saw her an hour earlier, I figured she and the boyfriend each smoked one.  While that’s still possible, anecdotal evidence was now pointing to wholesome blondie having smoked two in a row by herself then and now!  What a spectacular find!  She crushed this cigarette out like the first and, living up to her goody-two shoes presentation in every way expect for her insatiable nicotine dependency, went to the nearest dumpster to dispose of the butts in the most environmentally friendly fashion.  I snapped a couple rear photos of her in her black shorts as they walked off, feeling perky now and knowing she’d be one of my better sightings of the day.  Turned out she was my second best.

My morale stayed high as I walked east down the concourse and saw Sighting #17 approach.  She was another gorgeous smoker girl in the company of a nonsmoking boyfriend, a dark brunette wearing a light blue blouse and matching jean shorts, with smooth tan legs underneath.  That face was her top asset though, with a very distinguished look of beauty that was so distinguished that I know I’ve seen this girl before.  Maybe it’s from fetishing at area malls or maybe it’s from seeing her before at the fair, but this was a face I had seen before.  She progressed onto the concourse with her cigarette in one hand and her pack of Camel Blues and lighter in the other.  I had no luck at all getting a close-up photo and had to settle for a rear and long shot that regrettably failed to completely capture her stunning beauty.  I walked parallel to her as she smoked, watching her drags and being impressed by them, especially in the presence of this nonsmoking boyfriend.  She made the cigarette last a good distance but the show still ended way too soon as she dropped the butt to the pavement and crushed it out.  Only then did she proceed to insert the pack of Camel Blues and lighter into her back jean shorts pocket that I was already jealous of.  I’d have to wait until midnight before seeing her again, but I would.  To be continued on this one….

That area at the edge of the grandstand and the entryway to the midway continued to deliver and deliver and deliver, this time with Sightings #19 and #20, a trio of girls with two smokers that both looked underage.  The nonsmoker of the group was an overweight brunette and it was nice that the ugly one was the nonsmoker.  The other two were not likely to become homecoming queens either, but there was a working-class cuteness to them as they stood there publicly smoking their cigarettes despite appearing to be only 16 or 17.  The slender brunette was the girl I spotted first and she was decked out in a traditional fair time ensemble of a white shirt, tight jean shorts, and cowgirl boots.  Her presentation and figure was the better of the two smokers, but she was a slower smoker and just failed to capture my imagination the way her friend did.  The friend was a curly haired blond in a red and black plaid blouse and more utilitarian jean shorts, but I found my eyes fixating more on her as I rested against the wall and snapped a couple of photos, her turning her head to the right to take a drag and to exhale with better-timed drags than the friend which always brought a smile to my face.  I noticed at least one other guy lingering in the area, an older guy, who also took notice of the girls smoking.  He didn’t say anything and didn’t seem as mesmerized as I was, but these underage smoker girls were not going unnoticed.  The brunette finally finished her cigarette about two minutes after the blond did and the girls proceeded into the midway.  Their brand was Pall Mall Menthols, not one of my favorites, but I was in no position to complain and I was curious while watching them walk away which of the two smoker girls had the cigarettes in her purse.

And while that last sighting was playing out, two more were simultaneously unfolding.  One wasn’t particularly memorable but Sighting #22 was fantastic.  This early-to-mid 20s brunette had a beautiful face that was somewhat hid inside a camouflage cap (her ponytail came out the back of the cap) and a bland sweatshirt and jeans.  But her face was anything but bland and neither was her smoking style.  She stood alone, apparently finishing her cigarette before going into the bathroom, and while she held her cigarette in an unfortunate masculine way while approaching it to her mouth, her exhales were absolute thunderclouds.  A middle-aged guy she didn’t know was standing next to her, and while he didn’t say anything, had to have been annoyed by the smell and the low visibility that this brunette babe was forcing upon him with blasts of exhaled smoke unlike anything else I saw yesterday.  Unfortunately the show ended after about four drags and she crushed out the only half-smoked cigarette and went into the bathroom, apparently unable to hold it any longer.  I approached and discovered the discarded all-white butt was a Marlboro Ultra Light.  I’ve never been a big fan of Ultra Lights, but if the nicotine deprivation they force upon female smokers forces them to produce exhales like that, then I’m fine with more girls smoking them!  I’d see this girl one other time later in the afternoon with a group but she wasn’t smoking.

The next sighting of significance occurred on the east side, particularly in the seating area for the bandshell where some sort of very lightly attended amateur concert was going on.  I walked behind the main rows of seats and stumbled upon a large friends group where a hard-to-miss mid-20s blond in sunglasses, white blouse and jeans stood there holding a cigarette next to her face in a bent elbow pose.  I took a bench nearby and briefly watched the show, noticing the unusual pack of American Spirits on the table in front of her.  She was Sighting #25 and did okay for herself, but I will say that bent-elbow pose was the highlight of her performance.  And after a couple of drags, she handed it to her dark brunette friend who would become Sighting #26, taking a few drags of her own.  Both of these gals were worthy of a writeup but for whatever reason, I lost interest quickly and left before they finished, not sensing any bells and whistles were forthcoming.

I scored a couple modest sightings by the east side beer gardens and then headed westward down the concourse, spotting out of the corner of my eye a trio of 20-somethings where a mediocre brunette closest to me had a cigarette and would become Sighting #29.  Now I looked past her and noticed the other two gals in the trio were far more fetching than she was, and I took a longer look to see if either of them was smoking….and just my luck one of them was!  Sighting #30 had one of the more sexually charged presentations of the day, her long dark blond hair, flowing over a black and white striped top covering an impressive set of boobs with a pair of tight white shorts on the bottom that contrasted gorgeously with her very tan legs.  She had without question one of the best tans I’ve seen, and it worked nicely on her facial complexion as well, even though her nose was a little too big for her face to be the perfect 10 that her body was.  The tan complexion also contrasted nicely with the all-white cigarette she held between her fingers every time she wasn’t dragging from it.  I followed from the side trying to score a good photo but only managing mediocre ones.  Her smoking style was very nice, with lengthy well-timed drags and cloudy plumes for exhales that lingered in the air, undoubtedly annoying fairgoers who walked past her in this very crowded setting.  Eventually, the three girls sat on a bench in this seating area where I was able to sit closeby and watch her finish the cigarette, albeit from an inconvenient side angle.  She crushed out the cigarette beneath her shoe and I could tell just sitting there that it was a Camel Crush.  The girls soon got up to leave and I admired her tight ass and tan legs one last time as she walked away.

Back to the south side seating area for Sighting #32, what I first believed was probably a mother-daughter sighting featuring an unflattering late 40s or early 50s mother sitting next to a cute college-age ponytailed dark blond dressed in a very utilitarian black T-shirt and sweats.  She was a solid smoker though and much cuter than you’d expect if the gal next to her really was mom.  Unfortunately, I would see this girl smoking alone in the same general area a few hours later and put in doubt my suspicion that it was really mother and daughter.  It’s probably more likely they were just vendors from different food stands who knew each other but were out on a smoke break together.  It’s still possible that it was mother and daughter though.

After a semiproductive trip to the far south side, I turned west down the horse barn block and came across another cluster of 20-somethings with two smokers amongst them.  Sighting #35 was just average but the second girl I spotted with a cigarette was something special, the hottest girl of the group of five in fact.  Sighting #36 was a long-haired dark blond wearing badass sunglasses along with a pastel-striped blouse and skin tight pale blue jeans with a number of holes in them.  She looked about 25 and had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.  She really exuded confidence and sex appeal as she walked with her group, easily standing out in this crowd both for her beauty and that confident IT factor.  My only regret is that I only got to see a couple of drags before she walked over to a garbage can and tossed her still-smoldering all white in there, giving me a chance for a nice frontal snapshot.  I then took a peek into the trash can to find a smoldering Marlboro Light sitting in a paper fair food tub, and since I didn’t hear about any fires at the fair yesterday, the cigarette apparently didn’t set the trash can ablaze.

It was around 6 p.m. and I was back on the concourse where I came across one of my top-five sightings of the day and definitely one of the youngest smokers of the day, Sighting #43.  Walking by me in a hurry was this tall and slender long-haired light brunette holding a cigarette in the company of a teen boy about four inches shorter than her who was not smoking.  The girl’s outfit certainly didn’t stand out in the crowd, dressed from head to toe in a black tanktop and black jeans, but she wasn’t the least bit Gothic or alternative-looking despite that choice of outfit.  Based on her height and that general first impression, I figured she was probably 18 when I first looked at her, but as I finally got a close look at that face along with the youngish shorter guy she was with, I began to suspect she was a couple of years younger.  I just had one problem getting a more intimate account of this sighting…..the young couple was practically sprinting for the midway and I was having a major challenge trying to keep up, especially since I was trying to score action photos to boot.  I got some nice rear photos of her with a cigarette, but getting ahead of them for a frontal photo was nearly impossible as they flew past crowds of people with the teen smoker puffing away and exhaling with reckless abandon towards anybody who disapproved of her smoke.  She eventually gave the spent cork-filter a toss without bothering to crush it out, and no surprise, it was a Marlboro Red.  Eventually, they walked into this junk T-shirt store at the back of the midway, a familiar destination for other girls in previous days but I still couldn’t understand why they were practically running to get there.  Anyway, I pretended to shop around in the same general area, still scheming how I could get a frontal photo of her face, but they cooperated by leaving the store in a couple of minutes and the girl obliviously walked right into the direction of my camera, where I captured a perfect facial shot and, looking at it today, find it hard to believe she’s even 16!  I only wish I could have seen more direct smoking from her during the course of following, but even with what I saw she’d be among my top-five of the day.

My next sighting of significance was Sighting #57 where I spotted a duo of 20-something gals lingering near a curb while one of them smoked.  Thankfully, the smoker was the hotter of the girls, and one of the girls whose presentations was the best of the day, even though her face wasn’t quite as hot as said presentation.  She was a blond whose hair hung over her right shoulder in a giant braid onto her medium blue blouse with a pair of bright pink shorts and smooth, tanned legs underneath.  She was the picture of femininity from afar and when I saw that cigarette between her fingers as I approached I was giddy as a schoolgirl.  The sighting did disappoint a bit though as she was a slow smoker and when she did take a drag, there were certainly no bells and whistles.  I snapped a pic right away and thought I was discreet about it, but before long she started walking to the side out of my vantage point.  I saw from the markings on her cork filter cigarette that it was a Marlboro Smooth so I didn’t feel the need to stick around for a formal ID, and started to question whether I should continue with my photo-taking as I don’t seem to be nearly as sneaky about it as I think.  At the very least, I should reduce my photo-taking frequency, but it’s so helpful in remembering details about specifics of clothing and the like that it’s gonna be hard to control myself.

From there I wandered to the east side beer gardens area and while I didn’t score any sightings there, I hadn’t even crossed the street moving back westward when I stumbled onto a modestly attractive brunette who was Sighting #58 in the company of a guy and another girl who were not smoking.  This in no way would have qualified for a writeup had it not been for the couple they approached next, a mid-20s guy and girl who for some reason were sitting in the back of one of the state fair carts while lighting up cork filter cigarettes.  The Sighting #59 girl was a knockout, a gorgeous platinum blond in a red tanktop and jeans with a memorable pair of orange-framed sunglasses on her face, and she was a fantastic smoker too with nice long drags and hugely cloudy exhales that whoever sits in that state fair cart next will undoubtedly smell the residual odor from.  My self-imposed moratorium on photo-taking lasted all of five minutes as I had a perfect bench just a few feet in front of them to snap a completely undetected pic of her in mid-drag.  Now I said before that the other group migrated towards this smoking power couple in the state fair cart, and only one of them was smoking, but at this point the gorgeous blond in the orange sunglasses was talking to the ponytailed light brunette in the purple shirt and jean shorts from the original group who was not smoking.  But she was about to become Sighting #60 as she beckoned the cigarette from the blond for a drag.  She would do the same later, but the blond babe was the star of this sighting, with first-rate drags and exhales which sent that cigarette to its maker very quickly.  She adorably tossed the cork filter out of the cart and on to the pavement where it smoldered down to the filter and I was unfortunately unable to ID the butt.  It would have been great to see that blond again yesterday but I never would.

My third best sighting of the day came next.  It was about 7:30 and the main grandstand entertainment tonight was Lady Antebellum and Billy Currington, with the show starting around 8.  Lots of country girls in short shorts were hovering around the grandstand entrances and I was looking for some with cigarettes between their fingers and was lucky enough to find one.  Sighting #62 was standing just off of the curb on the concourse and jumped out at me from a distance with a freshly lit cigarette between her fingers while surrounded by nonsmoking elders.  I hustled on up for a closer look as she was foraging through her wallet/purse where a visible pack of Marlboro Lights was front and center.  And getting a closer look at her, she was at most 18, most likely a year or two younger with long, curly light brown hair, a black Lady Antebellum T-shirt (no mystery where she would be going in mere moments) and a nice pair of dark blue cutoffs cresting over smooth young legs and an unusual pair of boots.  Typical country girl look right?  Well, sort of.  The features of this girl and the nonsmoking younger girl next to her both stuck me as at least partially Hispanic.  Yet the cluster of nonsmoking adults the girls were standing with were as middle-aged white Iowan as they come, all joined together standing off the concourse curb so that the teenage girl in their company could smoke a cigarette.  Now it’s vaguely possible that these girls were not Hispanic but I got a couple of photos and have studied them carefully and it seems almost certain to me the smoker girl has some Latina in her.  Perhaps the daughters are adopted.  I have no idea but whatever the family dynamic, it was an adorable smoking show….

The adults mostly talked to themselves but my Latina Marlboro teen was slowly enjoying that cigarette, taking nice enough drags but making that thing last a long time.  She usually turned her head to the right when exhaling, avoiding the cluster of nonsmokers that almost certainly included her parents.  And the sighting had one oddball little wrinkle as well that gave it additional character.  Her cigarette wasn’t burning properly, which I noticed right away but which she didn’t seem to notice for a few minutes, with a long stretch of black paper that had burned but was clinging for its life onto her smoldering cigarette and refusing to come off.  At first she showed the cigarette to the gal to her right who I assumed was her mother and how the burnt paper was clinging to it, and I’m sure mom was absolutely fascinated to see the deformity on her teenage daughter’s cigarette.  After multiple aggressive attempts to ash the paper off, girly finally had to kneel down and rub the burnt paper onto the pavement and then stood back up and resumed smoking.  It was a nice long show and I wasn’t going anywhere until she finished it.  Finally she did, and I waited another few minutes for them to head back into the grandstand when I stepped up and definitively IDed her butt as a traditional Marlboro Light rather than one of its offshoots.  As I turned and watched the family enter the grandstand, knowing somebody was gonna be forced to sit next to that smelly daughter during the show, I speculated that this may have been the second girl adopted across racial/ethnic lines who I had seen smoking today in the company of nonsmoking parents.   I wonder if there’s something to that….greater likelihood of girls from adopted parents taking up smoking.  I can imagine an increased permissiveness in such households for various reasons, but then again, it may just be a fluke.  Fluke or not, said scenarios made for two of my favorite sightings on August 16, 2014.

Sightings numbers were picking up as dusk approached and quickly thereafter arrived, but few of them were particularly memorable.  But I’ll stick with the rare multicultural theme as it applies to smoker sightings at a fair where about 95% of the attendees are lily white. My Sighting #75 was a pretty young late teen Asian girl in a group with a nonsmoking guy and another nonsmoking girl as they walked into the midway.  She was wearing a nice tanktop and shorts that made her look great from afar, but up close she was sporting some ridiculous-looking tattoos which for whatever reason looked goofier on her than even the average young girl.  She had a pretty wholesome face though, and certainly didn’t look like a smoker.  I’m not the best at discerning different Asian ethnic groups, but if I was to guess, I’d predict this girl was Korean.  I’ve said before that from my observations Asian women and girls are the most likely of any ethnic group, including whites, to smoke, and even though the statistics don’t bear this out by any stretch, every year my suspicions are further vindicated at least by my own observations.

Now I had been having a decent if unspectacular day of sightings up to this point, but certainly no future first-ballot Hall of Famers had arisen yet by this point yesterday.  That was about to change as I made my fateful journey into the midway around 9 p.m. and worked my way towards the back when I spotted a trio of teens (two guys and a girl) and spotted one of the guys lighting up.  My eyes veered towards the girl in the group as I passed them and sure enough, she already had a cigarette lit.  I didn’t get a very good look at her while walking past but was following from behind now and admiring a perky, petite young body in a girlish red tanktop and very short jean shorts with a long, freshly lit cigarette next to it.  It was quite a sight, but having gotten a closer look only at the guys in the group up this point and seeing they were in the 17-18 range it never crossed my mind she’d be younger than that….until they all sat down in a X-shaped arrangement of metal benches next to another dude who was apparently waiting for the trio, and this allowed me to take a seat parallel to them, no more than five feet away from the girl who sat on the inside of her all male counterparts on the bench.  Sweet Jesus!  My Sighting #80 was the purest young face I’d seen all day, arguably for the entire fair.  I looked at all the guys around her and some of them even had facial hair.  They were clearly in their late teens.  It just didn’t make sense that they’d be hanging out with this 13-14-year-old girl, I kept telling myself, but as I studied her face and looked over her body, there was just no way this girl was anything other than a middle school girl!!

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect vantage point, leering over my left shoulder unbeknownst to everybody as she sat there on that metal bench, holding her cigarette to the right and as out of sight as possible except when she lifted it to her lips to take delightful drags.  And they were very impressive, easily putting to shame the majority of the adult women smokers I came across yesterday with nice long drags, four-second hold times, and turning her head to the right (that would be my direction) to exhale volcanic eruptions of smoke that rocketed out of both her mouth and nose.  Oh and she was just so precious to look at even when the smoke wasn’t flowing from her little face.  She had long dark brown hair flowing down her back and such a slender young body inside that tanktop.  But it was below the waist where that slender body sparkled best, with smooth legs that were just curvy enough that she didn’t look “too thin” flowing out of the tiniest pair of jean shorts I think I’ve ever seen.  I felt sorry for how cold those legs must have been because a good six inches of her upper legs were touching the metal seat on the bench with as short as her jean shorts were.  But that face was her key feature, brimming with youthful innocence while also evoking a big of a naughty side.  Unlike a couple of the other teen smokers I saw at the fair this year, it didn’t surprise me to see this girl with a cigarette.  She looked cute beyond belief with the petite frame and precious face to match, but she didn’t necessarily look wholesome.  And I was reminded of that every time the cigarette approached her lips and was followed by a meaty, cloudy expulsion of smoke from her mouth and nose that were all generally headed my direction….

It still wasn’t adding up as I sat there watching though as everything about the way this carried herself from the way she sat to the way she touched her hair to the way she held her cigarette screamed “eighth grade girl”, but why on Earth would this group of older guys be with her unless the facial-haired guy sitting next to her I assumed was her boyfriend was dating someone four years younger?  That scenario was certainly possible, but I was cynical enough at this point to simply believe she had to have been older than she looked.  I’d get excellent additional context on this later in the night, but for now was just enjoying my best smoking show of the day and enjoying the exhales that me and the middle-aged lady sitting next to me kept choking on.  She dropped the cigarette to the ground next to her bench but the group didn’t leave.  I really wanted a butt ID here but agonized as I looked down to see the cigarette smolder down to the filter in the five minutes or so that the group kept sitting there BSing with one another, with the girl doing the least amount of talking.  On the other hand, it was kind of hot looking at that cigarette smoldering down there with smoke still rising from it at a pretty good clip minutes after it last touched human lips, knowing that it was the lips of this sweetheart of a young girl that were responsible for that continued rising smoke.  Finally the group got up to leave and I quickly claimed her spot, looking down at the discarded cigarette with nothing left but a cork filter and a smoldering few centimeters of ash, denying me the brand identification that I coveted.  I somehow managed to lose them in the midway after I got up but as I said, I would see the girl again and would get some clarity on the sighting’s biggest mystery.  But even if the sighting had ended right there, it still would have been my best sighting of the night, and I’ll be haunted in my dreams for months at that adorable early teen face turning my direction and exhaling combination mouth and nasal blasts for a heavenly 5-7 minutes.

That last sighting would start my best sightings tear of the day as I left the midway after not being able to find my little brunette and explored the huddle of teens gathered in the center of the fairgrounds.  As is often the case, the edges of that huddle is where the smoking action was, in this case an adorable sweetheart of a 19-20ish brunette sitting on a bench with a freshly lit cigarette in hand.  I said that my last girl, while fresh-faced and adorable, kind of looked like a smoker.  But my Sighting #81 cutie didn’t look at all like a smoker, a wholesome sweetheart if I’ve seen one whose outfit, a flower print tanktop and a pair of dark blue jeans, complemented that image perfectly.  What didn’t complement the image, however, was the pack of Camel Menthols sitting on her lap or the freshly lit cigarette itself which she held off to her right to spare the two nonsmoking guys sitting to her left.  Curiously, it didn’t really seem as though the guys knew this girl before they shared this bench together judging from their banter from afar.  I could have been reading that situation wrong, but it wouldn’t at all surprise me if the dudes were taking the opportunity to flirt with the hot smoker girl while seated next to her, with her gorgeous face beaming from all the male attention.  A nonsmoking female friend walked up to the girl and stood in front of her, chatting it up while she smoked and flirted with the boys.  The smoking show itself was nice, albeit without the pomp and circumstance of what I saw from the carnival teen.  Like that girl though, she held her cigarette below the bench to her right and directed all of her exhales that way too, but unfortunately I wasn’t seated parallel to this girl to ingest all those exhales as I was the other girl.  Still, she put on a good long show and it sent shivers down my spine comparing her girl-next-door contrast with the pack of Camel Menthols on her lap and when she was actually smoking the cigarette.  She crushed the cigarette out beneath her foot and remained there for quite a while.  I kept hoping I’d return to the area later in the night and see her smoking again, but that was the last I saw of her.

After the last girl finished her cigarette, I continued my roll when I walked through the series of benches in the middle of the fairgrounds only a few yards away and spotted Sighting #82, a sexy early 20s brunette in a blue tanktop and white shorts seated on one of the benches smoking a cigarette.  I found a seat on the circular grid of benches so I would be almost right next to her, and it was only when I sat down that I discovered a 17-18ish blond girl was only a few across from me on the next bench over smoking a cigarette of her own, becoming Sighting #83.  It was a blissful couple of minutes as I had two young females smoking on both sides of me, literally only a few feet from me on both sides, with sidestream smoke from both of their cigarettes and their exhales flowing straight towards me.  Unfortunately, the first girl in the white shorts’ sighting was about to end early as she handed her cigarette to the boyfriend sitting next to her, and only a few moments later, they both stood up and began to walk into the midway.  I briefly got a beautiful view of her ass in those white shorts as she stood there only a couple of feet in front of me, but it still hurt watching her walk off with the boyfriend who was now in possession of the cigarette that was so recently in her glorious hands.  This left only the teen blond across from me, decked out in a pink top and light blue capris, completely distracted by her phone and failing to even notice me watching her smoke.  She wasn’t really that attractive and had a certain gawkiness to her, but given her age, I was still intrigued, particularly with the oddball direction the sighting was about to go….

Up came some middle-aged Hispanic guy who started talking to her as if he was her father.  What’s going on here?  Why is it that nobody at the fair has parents of the same ethnicity as they are?!?!  Twice yesterday I had seen two nonwhite smoker girls from white families and now I was seeing the inverse….a lily-white blond girl with a father who looked straight out of The George Lopez Show.  Whatever the case, the Hispanic guy was back in a couple of minutes and sat right next to her before she finished off her cigarette.  Another bizarre dynamic of a seemingly nonsmoking parents tolerating a young and presumably underage daughter to smoke.  I love the Iowa State Fair.  When they left in a couple of minutes, I identified her cigarette butt as a Camel Menthol, the same as the girl two sightings ago.

I scored a few more decent sighting in the next few minutes as I headed down to the south side.  I wouldn’t get far before running into Sighting #87, a glamorous mid-20s blond in a mixed-gender group of six or seven friends and the only smoker among them.  She was a real beauty with platinum blond hair and decked out in a white top and dark jeans.  She was also a very polite smoker in the company of this nonsmoking group, tilting her head skyward after every drag on her all-white and launching a smoke volcano straight into the night sky.  Unfortunately her group was unpredictable as it drifted northward and did the annoying stop-and-go routine that made it very challenging to observe her routine.  Finally they settled in front of a cotton candy stand and the smoker continued laying waste to her all-white.  Finally, she crushed it out under her shoe on the pavement and then immediately moved to erase all evidence that she had just smoked a cigarette, popping in a piece of gum within 20 seconds after finishing the cigarette and then managing to find some sort of moisturizer in her purse that she rubbed all over her fingers to get rid of the smell.  This was kind of cute and all, but I tend to prefer girls completely unashamed of their smoking habits and forcing others to deal with it.  An hour or so later though, I saw blondie in front of the beer gardens making out with some guy, so I suppose you can’t argue with the results of her covering up her smoking habit as she was definitely poised to get lucky last night.

After going up the south side and back again I struck gold when I spotted a family moving northeast.  The family in question included my sighting of the night, the brunette who looked like an early teen but whose presence with a group of older teen guys made me question my impression of her age.  But watching her slender little body walk in tandem with two of those three guys now–behind a middle-aged couple–the puzzle piece finally fell into place.  She wasn’t the girlfriend of any of those older guys she was smoking with on the midway….she was the kid sister of at least one of them.  Now nobody was smoking on the long walk to the east side gate where they apparently parked their car, but it was fantastic to study them as I followed, finally realizing this young smoking prodigy WAS as young as I first believed, a revelation that made the sighting I saw earlier that much more delicious.  I hoped that somebody would light up on that long walk back to the car but it wasn’t meant to be and once they exited the gate I conceded defeat.  I was still extremely grateful for this revelation though as I now knew she almost certainly was 13 or 14 as I suspected all along, and a whole new set of questions arose.  Did the parents smoke?  Do the parents know their baby girl smokes?  The possibilities are endless and I only wish I was able to find out how the story ends.

So I suppose it sounds like that long walk to the east side gate was generally a dead end that stole fetish time right?  Not true….because as the family in question walked out the east gate, a familiar face was one of three females coming back in.  Remember Sighting #30, the well-tanned dark blond with the white shorts who I saw smoking in the mid-afternoon?  Well she was back, wearing the same outfit and in the presence of two different female friends, one a chubby brunette and the other a hot dark blond that was even prettier than my Sighting #30 girl!  And I was gonna get a chance to walk right with them on the long trek back into the fairgrounds from this east side gate.  The overweight brunette wasn’t good-looking enough to count as a sighting, but she nonetheless got the ball rolling by making a request to the hot new dark blond that led to her opening up her purse in a few seconds.  Sure enough, a pack of Marlboro Menthols was produced seconds later and she extracted one for the fat friend and one for herself, lighting up and becoming Sighting #90.  And not to be denied, my original blond in the white shorts was opening up her purse to get a cigarette of her own from her pack.  Before I knew it, I was walking behind three oblivious early-to-mid-20s gals wielding freshly lit cigarettes and belching out clouds of exhaust that I walked through one after another after another.  When the time came I got side angle views and the new hottie was definitely the prettiest of the three, and her presentation was solid with a long-sleeved top that seemed to absorb her cigarette at times when I looked to see if she was still holding it, along with a pair of jean shorts.  And while the new girl was the prettiest, my tan girl in white shorts still dominated on the presentation front and was the best smoker to boot, producing the cloudiest exhales for me to walk through.  The new blond lost her cigarette somewhere and I missed it, but I did see the white shorts blondie drop her all-white to the pavement after taking a final drag, and I approached the smoldering refuse expecting it to be a Camel Crush, her same brand from earlier in the day.  Instead it was a Marlboro Light!  Apparently she has a day brand and a night brand.  Nice to get this encore from her, especially with the hot new friend she added to the proceedings.

I zipped around scoring some mediocre material until I made my final pass of the evening of the east side beer gardens area, where I scored some solid finds.  The first was Sighting #99, a beautiful mid-20s long-haired blond in a pastel-colored white and green-striped blouse with tight white pants below, and apparently, even though she’s a smoker, she’s as angelic as her clothing would indicate.  She was in a mixed-gender group of friends swilling beer and cutting it up, and her first drag was her best as she inadvertently exhaled directly into the face of the female friend she was talking with.  After that though, she got more wholesome as the camera phone came out and her friends were taking selfies of each other.  Her cigarette hand was always held behind her white pants when the camera was on her, and on one occasion one of the guys in the group posed for a photo with them with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and she scolded him to take the cigarette out so it wasn’t in the pic.  I thought back to last summer and my FCF #2 sighting where the smoker princess purposely posed with the cigarette visible behind her boyfriend’s back in the photo and was disappointed that this girl didn’t give me a replay of that.  Her smoking continued to move more in a “social smoker” direction from there as she took a drag and acted like she didn’t want it anymore before dropping it to the pavement and crushing it out despite having at least three drags left on it.  Blondie’s performance disappointed but she was good-looking and wholesome enough that I gave her as much of a pass as is possible.

Moments later, in the same general area, I got two separate female smokers puffing away in the presence of nonsmoking boyfriends only a few yards apart from each other.  Sighting #100 was the girl I spotted first, an attractive early 20s redhead in a black top and white pants covered with strategically placed holes.  She was a solid smoker but she ultimately got upstaged by Sighting #101, a cutie in a pink top and dark blue jeans with a buckle that seems to be the article of clothing of choice of girls who show livestock in 4-H.  And this girl had a face young enough that I originally suspected she just might be who she looked like, but the scuzzy-looking boyfriend standing next to her was clearly in his early 20s and she must have just looked young for her age.  Whatever the case, she was a great smoker with nice long drags and thick, dense exhales, some of which blew right into the boyfriend’s face.  It would be an abbreviated show from both girls though as I caught them more than halfway into their cigarettes.  I wouldn’t catch the butt ID of the redhead but the preternaturally young-looking blond in the dark country girl jeans was smoking a Marlboro Red.  I swear that’s at least the 20th Marlboro Red girl of the Iowa State Fair, and that was just of girls whose butts I was able to identify!

Another detour came next that was a major fail.  I saw these two hot teenage girls in sexy attire, taking particular interest in the gorgeous brunette wearing a pair of black and white referee-striped shorts.  She and the friend bought a corn dog and were heading up the long alleyway to the north side gate afterwards.  The other girl, a dark blond hottie in a bare midriff top and jean shorts was eating the corn dog and I put my faith in the brunette to get the ball rolling and light up while the friend ate….or at the very least see both girls light up when blondie was done eating.  But the corn dog ran out just before the fairgrounds did and no cigarettes were produced.  The girls walked out the gate and I watched for a bit just in case cigarettes came out of somebody’s purse.  They didn’t, and now it was a good five-minute walk to get back to a portion of the fairgrounds where there were actually people.   Like I said, I took some risks last night that I ordinarily wouldn’t have if I didn’t have my usual ISF two-day haul in the bag already.

The Lady Antebellum-Billy Currington concert was getting to ready to end and I wanted to be there when it did to see the hordes of nicotine-addicted country girls fleeing the grandstand for their fix when it did.  But the music was still playing when I spotted my last huge find of the night heading east on the concourse.  Sighting #104 was a truly gorgeous 21-22-year-old dark brunette country girl decked out in a yellow and brown plaid blouse, tight jean shorts, and cowgirl boots.  She held her boyfriend’s hand in her right hand and an all-white cigarette in her left.  There was just something magical about this girl that words can’t fully describe, a classically beautiful face with her dark brown hair just perfectly matching her face and outfit.  I got close enough to take a couple of rear photos that turned out better than I expected they would in the dark but still failed to capture this girl’s smoldering IT factor.  Just seeing that cigarette in her left hand as she walked with the nonsmoking boyfriend, looking as if it was a natural extension of her body, gave me goose bumps, but she upped her game several notches with her first drag, a beautiful ingestion of the cigarette’s cancerous chemicals into her perfect young body that was followed by something that took my breath away.  She turned to her right and looked at the nonsmoking boyfriend….and then exhaled straight into his face.  Unlike my FCF #2 girl last year, I think this was inadvertent, an absent-minded mistake, but either way she nailed that young lad right in the kisser with the toxic waste expelled by her blackened respiratory system.  And the boyfriend didn’t even flinch or respond in any way, perhaps being used to these “accidental” exhales to the face by his girlfriend and being perfectly fine with it because she’s such a perfect 10 superbabe….

I followed them to the main beer gardens right off the concourse and watched her take a handful more drags while proceeding, none of which she exhaled into her boyfriend’s face but all of which were treasures to be able to witness.  As she ascended the curb to make the final approach to the beer gardens with the boyfriend, she dropped the all-white butt to the ground without crushing it out.  As I zeroed in on it, I saw markings that I hadn’t seen in quite a while from a cigarette brand that has really become scarce in the last few years, largely because of how expensive they’ve become compared to Marlboro and Camel variations.  It was a Parliament, complete with the inverted filter….my first Parliament sighting of 2014 and probably the last two or three years for that matter.  That revelation raised the stakes on this sighting even higher as I settled in on a berm at the edge of the midway and watched this duo at the counter of the beer gardens preparing to purchase adult beverages.  A female friend came up from out of nowhere and greeted them, clearly friends of the couple who had planned to meet them there all along.  This girl was such a great find I had a half a mind to stay put and see how long it would take her to light up another, but I didn’t want to miss the potential tidal wave of smokers dismissing from the Lady Antebellum concert, so I grudgingly departed and unfortunately wouldn’t see this country sexpot again.  Even with just one sighting from her, she was impressive enough to qualify for my top-five sightings the day.

The concert was just ending as Lady Antebellum lead singer Hillary Scott was singing the final bars of “Need You Now” as I approached, and I saw the first of the two substantive post-concert sightings almost immediately on the concourse when I spotted a group of mid-20s couples, including one very attractive mid-20s blond in sexy form-fitting pink shorts on the tail end of a cork filter cigarette.  My Sighting #105 girl had a fantastic presentation as I’m sucker for pink shorts on a pretty smoker girl, and of the mere three drags I caught on her cigarette, she was a solid smoker too.  A brief storyline ensued as her boyfriend was nudging her for something and began opening her purse.  A pack of (what else?!?!) Marlboro Reds came out and she handed him a fresh cigarette.  Rather than use her lighter, she approached his fresh cigarette with the remaining 10% of her own smoldering cigarette and lit his.  After that, she had just one drag to go and finished off the cigarette, dropping it to the ground before she, the boyfriend, and their friends took off.  No surprise that her butt was indeed a Marlboro Red just as the pack in her purse indicated, but I was obviously annoyed the roles weren’t reversed here and I got to see the girl smoking her cigarette from light-up to finish.  Still, kind of adorable that the girlfriend smoked nearly her entire cigarette already before the boyfriend got around to mooching one from her.

And lastly, a sighting I’m pretty was unconnected to the concert occurred on the far western edge of the concourse where a mid-20s couple sat on a bench, the boyfriend eating a walking taco and the cute blond ponytailed girlfriend in the revealing blouse and jean shorts was smoking a cigarette.  But my Sighting #106 girl was greedy and requested a bite of the boyfriend’s taco.  In one of the most unfeminine displays I’ve ever seen, he held the taco out and she took a big, disgusting bite, chomping her jowels like a dog with lettuce falling out of her mouth.  Any demographic other than a sexy young girl with a cigarette in her hand doing this and it would have been pretty gross, but seeing her do it was just too precious for words.  After she chewed and swallowed this giant bite of food, it took less than 30 seconds for her to take another drag from her all-white cigarette.  As soon as the boyfriend finished the taco, the two of them got up and began walking towards the northwest gate, her with a cigarette and him without, a combination that was still incredibly frequent throughout all three nights of the Iowa State Fair.  But I was growing more and more concerned as they got closer to that exit gate that she’d take the cigarette outside with her and deny me the butt ID.  And she did, cute as it was to see this sweet-looking blond walk past the gate attendants with cigarette in hand.  I couldn’t complain too loudly though as I was really scoring with brand identification at the Iowa State Fair.

It was now right around 11:30 and I was confident I’d have about 25 finds from the departing Lady Antebellum crowd which was now heading towards the gates in droves.  Instead I just got two or three very mediocre sightings and I kept telling myself I must be missing the major hotties as they were departing, but in another 15 minutes the crowd had thinned considerably and I kept scratching my head as to why the sightings came to a standstill.  Just further evidence that trying to predict when and where you’re gonna score a huge sightings haul is a fool’s errand.  Life has a way of surprising you in both directions on that front.

As midnight neared, I decided I didn’t want to push my luck and made my way towards the shuttle buses.  On my final turn off of the concourse and towards the bus loading zone, I’d see one more familiar face on a bench….the easily identifiable beauty from mid-afternoon (Sighting #17) who was the dark blond that I recognized from somewhere who was smoking a Camel as she and her boyfriend entered the grounds.  Now she and the boyfriend were seated on a bench, and once again, only she was smoking, sitting there looking three sheets to the wind and then some, her eyes revealing that she was feeling REALLY good about life at that moment, and I had no doubt the two-thirds smoked cigarette smoldering between her fingers played a role in that.  I’d have given a thousand dollars to have been the boyfriend next to her who likely got the opportunity to make her feel even better about an hour later when they got home.

There was a 15-minute line just to board a shuttle bus, meaning I easily could have explored the grounds a little longer and still made the last departing bus, but it was a risk I’d rather not take.  Plus, I saw plumes of smoke rising from those ahead of me in line, and while I generally couldn’t identify the source of most of them, I saw one blond cutie in a cowgirl hat and jean shorts about 25 people ahead of me line standing off to the side and exhaling straight up into the night sky.  I didn’t get a great look at Sighting #111, my last sighting of the day, but I could tell she was very attractive and I would have loved to have cut in line to be standing closer to her rather than the lame, chubby girls standing behind me in line.

It was nearly 12:30 before I even got on my shuttle bus and for obvious reasons I felt good about my unprecedented third day at the 2014 Iowa State Fair, the entirety of which put forth a solid dozen or more sightings worthy of year-end acclaim, a far cry better than last year when only four ISF sightings made my top-25 fairgrounds sightings list.  Numbers-wise, the combined 32 hours on the fairgrounds yielded 320 sightings, which is closer to what I usually get for the Minnesota State Fair.  The extra day was cheating a little, but even if I hadn’t gone for the third day this would have been my best year at the Iowa State Fair since at least 2011, making up for a below-average local county fair earlier this month.  And from here, I have two Saturdays in a row at the granddaddy of them all the Minnesota State Fair, and you can expect my writeups shortly after Labor Day weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

2014 Iowa State Fair, Day 2

Living up to my first day at the 2014 Iowa State Fair was going to be a tall order on my annual half-day, after-work visit on Wednesday, August 13, 2014, and I had no illusions that I would on a weeknight where the main grandstand attraction was a tractor pull.  The bright side was that the bar was really low for improving upon the abysmal Wednesday night visit last year, one of my weakest days or nights of fetishing at any state fair ever.  Working to my advantage this year was perfect August weather, with full sun, 80 degrees, and low humidity, and also a free bandshell concert by The Swon Brothers, a country duo made famous on TV’s “The Voice” last year who I figured might draw a decent-sized crowd.

So there was reason for measured optimism getting off the shuttle bus and purchasing my half-priced late afternoon admission at 5:00, and overall the night went acceptably.  It was by no means my greatest night of fetishing of all-time, but I scored a couple major finds with one new girl destined to find her way into the top-20 or so of my all-time greatest Iowa State Fair hits next spring when I reconfigure my lists.  There were some lengthy dry spells last night and the crowds tend to disperse very dramatically after 11 p.m. on weeknights, but the frequency with which I found a sighting worthy of a writeup was much more common than last year.  I ended the night with 68 sightings, which is probably right about average for my Wednesday nights at the fair, even though there was a three-year stretch where I bent that curve upwards from 2010-2012, primarily because high-profile country singers were in the bandshell those nights and brought out larger crowds.  Whatever the case, it improved upon the 61 sightings I scored in 2013, which was my only real “goal”.

I got my first sighting of a modestly attractive young mother a few minutes after arriving and then headed to the south side where Sighting #2 was the first to impress.  She was an attractive dark brunette in a skimpy black tanktop and tight dark jeans walking with her boyfriend, both wielding half-smoked cigarettes.  I followed them down a side block and snapped a photo, taking in the headwinds of both of the exhales she released after taking decent drags.  Not much of a storyline with this sighting but she dropped the cigarette and crushed it out after just a few well-choreographed drags.  Her butt was a Marlboro Light.  I walked away with my first satisfying sighting of the day and was already doing better than I was last year on this day.

I stitched together a few more modest sightings in the next half hour before discovering my next memorable girl on the edge of the grandstand and the midway.  Sighting #7 was a ponytailed light brunette in a gray T-shirt and faded blue cutoffs.  She looked about 20 or 21, was standing there with an attractive female friend and a guy, and was the only smoker of the group taking a couple of nice drags before ending the sighting prematurely by crushing out the cigarette despite having a good three-quarters inch of tobacco left for her to smoke.  She looked like a classic “nice girl” who somehow got herself addicted to cigarettes and is now forcing her nonsmoking friends to wait for her to attend to her stinky dependency before pressing forward.  She was hovering outside the nearby bar and grill with the female friend while the guy went inside to get an adult beverage, allowing me to snap a couple of photos, one frontal and one from behind, unfortunately after the cigarette was discarded (the butt was an L & M).  I would see this group again (although no more smoking) not long afterwards on the south side of the grounds and my suspicion was confirmed that the guy was the boyfriend of the smoker, as they walked hand in hand, her smelly, nicotine-stained fingers interlocked with his as the cute couple progressed with the other female friend.  Wish I would have seen more from this girl, who was my 1,500th Iowa State Fair sighting since 2006.

I ventured through the south side seating area, where one never knows what they might find, and would ultimately come across the sighting of the day in a place I don’t believe I’ve ever gotten a sighting before.  There are two small flights of stairs on the eastern end of the seating area that lead up to a circle of international flags and a fountain.  Sitting on a bench atop the first flight of stairs was a mid-teen couple that thankfully grabbed my attention walking by, even in this remote spot where I don’t often look.  I ascended the stairs to see Sighting #8, the sweetest little blond angel one could ever expect to see with a cigarette.  She wasn’t “beautiful”….she was just wholesome beyond words, the classic stereotype of a bubbly, innocent 16-year-old cheerleader type with a mouth full of braces and her blond hair up in a bushy ponytail.  She could have been an extra of one of Stephanie Tanner’s friends on “Full House” back in the 90s.  Yet there she was, holding a freshly lit cork filter cigarette in her hand and couldn’t have possibly looked more out of place doing so wearing a conservative gray shirt and a pair of tight Spandex-type pants with a busy, colorful pattern on them.  I was in love!  Now the boyfriend next to her was a pretty wholesome-looking fellow himself, also right around 16 with a bushy hairdo, and I’m 90% sure when I got there he was smoking a cigarette himself, although it was disposed of quickly.  The entire show that I was about to get consisted of this fascinating girl’s smoking show, and what a show it would be…..

I sat down on a bench across from them, and while a little too exposed for my preference, had a great vantage point of her smoking.  And almost immediately after I sat down a middle-aged couple walked past them, and the guy began talking to them in a joking way, with the boy responding equally lightheartedly.  I couldn’t make out a word of it but since there was little else that made sense for them to talk about, I suspect the conversation revolved around the teenage couple’s smoke break.  The innocence of this couple, especially the girl, is impossible to overstate, so it was just heartbreaking whenever she inserted that cork filter into her mouth for a precocious drag.  The drags were surprisingly long and adorable, but the exhales were what always got me, her innocent face expelling sloppy little cloudbursts from her mouth and nose that always seemed to drift right into the boyfriend’s face.  There was no wind to speak of yesterday so it must have just been fate that directed her exhales to flow straight into his grill over and over and over.  And I got one other surprise that came all-too-frequently after her sloppy, blobbish exhales–spitting.  I know not everyone is into sloppy exhales and especially spitting in smoker girls, but this girl was chronic, dropping juicy lugies straight in front of her onto the pavement after her drags on four different occasions.

Normally I would have had a wide-open lane to take some direct frontal photos of this madness, but I had a big problem.  The bright sunshine that boosted my morale so high when I entered the grounds was now at the angle where it was producing long shadows and interfering with my shots.  I tried from a few different angles, drawing major attention to myself doing so, and just couldn’t get the sweet spot where I captured her face and the cigarette.  I sat back down so I could watch the end of the show, watching the once-long cigarette grow shorter and shorter as it was consumed by this most innocent face.  She took her final drag and crushed out the cigarette on the pavement in front of her.  Watching that last exhale drift into the boyfriend’s face, I thought to myself that he must be relieved her cigarette was finally gone so he could breathe again, but he still had one decidedly unfeminine display from his little girlfriend to watch before they pressed on….an unprecedented double lugie drop, with a giant ball of spit dropping from her mouth followed by a second, slightly smaller dribble a split second later.  I thought to myself this guy had to have some level of fetish himself for the girl to feel so comfortable being so gross in front of him. Either way, I couldn’t have been more jealous.

I had two orders of business as the couple got up to leave.  The first was to ID her butt.  I maneuvered my way around four pools of her slobber to find the butt I presume to be a Marlboro Red Special Blend as its markings are similar to the Marlboro Light Special Blend except with a cork filter.  I even took a photo of the pavement where all of her lugies were dropped.  From there I needed a better photo, even though her cigarette was gone.  The couple was going up the hill towards the east side and I found a walkway parallel.  I was really pushing my luck here as this couple was definitely aware of me at this point, and I would need luck on my side to pull off the direct frontal photo I was going for.  But luck was on my side as they turned left exactly as I needed them to and I snapped the shutter on my camera phone getting a photo that will preserve her memory forever.  I obviously would have preferred a better smoking photo, but I’ll still be able to look at this snapshot at any time in the future and recall the chronic spitter with the innocent mid-teen face and remind myself that this girl does indeed smoke.  I thought there was a very good chance I’d run into these two again last night given the aforementioned smaller weeknight crowds, but I never did.  Nonetheless, the visit was already worthwhile after receiving the gift of this sighting before dark.

Needless to say, I was positively giddy after that sighting for quite some time and would go on a pretty decent tear in the next half hour.  There’s an isolated grassy idea just to the west of the main entrance to this one big commercial exhibits building, and a trio of early 20s gals was sitting (one was standing) there smoking cigarettes.  One girl was too overweight and unattractive to count, but Sighting #10 was a dark blond in a light blue top and pale blue jean shorts.  She was decently attractive but nothing that took my breath away, and finishing off her cigarette with a final drag before dropping it to the grass, ahead of her two friends who were still smoking.  Unfortunately, the short-haired brunette in a conservative white top and jeans was a mystery because her back was to me and it wasn’t gonna be easy given her positioning to see her face.  She sat Indian-style and I could see the cigarette in her hand and was pretty confident she would be Sighting #11 before I saw her face.  I finally found a position to the side where I scored a modest photo and finally got a decent look at her face.  She was easily the prettiest girl of the three and I got to see one final drag before she crushed the cigarette out.  She got up and the trio left, and seeing them all in the same position side by side the short-haired brunette definitely stood out as the cutest.  I’m lucky I got two-for-one sightings like this yesterday otherwise my numbers wouldn’t have been particularly great at night’s end.

I’d get another two-for-one sighting at the edge of the grandstand and the midway moments later, in a group of five that consisted of two girls and three guys.  As I approached, I could tell both 18-19ish brunette girls were very pretty, and one was already smoking while the other was taking a fresh cigarette out of a pack of Newports.  Adorably, only one of the three guys was smoking and it was pretty clear later on that he was the guy who was not the boyfriend to either of the two stinky girls.  I was thrilled as I walked into the scene where Sightings #14 and #15 would play out, hoping for a blockbuster and one of my best sightings of the night.  Two of the guys were preparing to take some photos and the timing was perfect for me to get a snapshot of my own of the already smoking girl in mid-drag, and I’m grateful for my stealth camera because I was about to get called out, albeit for something entirely different than stalking them.  Seconds after I got my photo, the girl seated on the left who was already smoking saw me and said, “You can go.” followed by “Don’t mind us, we’re picture whores”, believing the reason I was lingering there was to avoid their picture-taking so I wouldn’t get in the shot.  I had no choice but to walk past the group and kick myself for having to walk away, desperately scrambling to figure out how I’d get back to see more of that sighting….

I waited a minute or so and then returned and sat on a bench further away than I’d prefer, but still well-positioned to watch them.  By now, the second girl with the Newport was well into her cigarette, hovering around what I could tell was her nonsmoking boyfriend, a pretty and fairly petite ponytailed dark brunette with a white T-shirt and jean shorts who was probably the better-looking of the two girls, but it was the other girl (the one who spoke to me earlier) who intrigued me most.  She was a pretty long-haired light brunette with a gray top and white shorts (always a favorite) sitting up in a window sill on the grandstand’s edge, her smooth, tanned legs on full display as she smoked her cigarette.  Sweet Jesus these two were sexy and I wished I was able to watch from a closer position.  Their smoking styles were both nice, but the light brunette’s was easier to see sitting up in that window sill, her well-timed drags always followed up by solid exhales.   The dark brunette was horsing around a little more and got a couple of talking exhales in while in the company of her boyfriend and the other smoking guy.  All too quickly, the sighting ended and the girls were walking towards the nearby bathroom.  The light brunette in the white shorts had a plumper ass than I expected, but it was in that “sexy big butt” realm, and she apparently knew it as the girls began dancing and shaking their booties to nonexistent music as they walked towards the bathroom.  I tried to get a photo but for whatever reason my camera failed me until they were too far away.  I was only able to identify the still-smoldering butt of the dark brunette Newport girl when I returned to where they smoked as the other girl’s butt was unidentifiable amongst several discarded butts in her area.   I would have loved more from the sighting–or to see these girls again yesterday–but I still did okay and would still rank this as among my top-five sightings of the day.

For obvious reasons, I journeyed back to that south side seating area more than usual in hopes of rediscovering my favorite new mid-teen blond smoker and spitter, but even though I wouldn’t, I still came across a double-barrel sighting in the more public seating area in that south side location, spotting an 18ish duo of girls where one of them, Sighting #20, was smoking.  Unfortunately, it was the less attractive of the two, a slightly chubby and only modestly cute dark brunette in the final drags of what looked like a pack of Marlboro Mediums.  She got up to leave and her butt and thighs were a little too big for the skin-tight leggings she was wearing, and I was disappointed that the shapely, jean-shorted dark blond friend with her wasn’t smoking.  However, on a bench across from them was what I presumed to be a husband and wife in their late 20s or early 30s.  The wife was the only smoker and was expertly brandishing a freshly lit all-white between her fingers to become Sighting #21.  She was quite attractive and had curly, light-brown hair and was wearing a conservative blouse and jeans, smoking like one would expect a long-time smoker gal would, without any dramatics but with a natural poise.  I’d see the same gal smoking again about an hour later in the same general area, sitting next to the husband who was once again not smoking.  Very nice to see all these nonsmoking guys in the willing company of stinky females despite the stigma.

One common theme yesterday was the way my sightings came in a glut all at once, often after lengthy inactive periods.  Such was the case as I was approaching the center of the grounds and came upon a trio of cute 18-year-olds and discovered Sighting #22 amongst them, a girl who looked at least partially Hispanic and was quite cute yet insisted on defiling her face with a distracting ring in the middle of her nose.  Unfortunately, both of her friends were cuter but never did smoke.  No sooner did I see her than I came across a young 20-something couple very closeby who both lit up cigarettes, my Sighting #23 girl being a modestly attractive short-haired blond in a conservative blouse and jeans.   And then I hit the mother lode when I looked up to a group of six walking by that included five girls and one guy.  Four of the girls were smoking, allowing me to stack up Sightings #24,  #25, #26, and #27 all at the same time, less than 30 seconds after scoring the first two girls in this sensory overload moment.  While I had plenty of visual targets to seek in on, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to follow a group of four 20-something smokers….

Now none of these four girls were mind-blowingly hot, but two of them stood out in the crowd.  One was a long-haired dark brunette in a black blouse and a long lavender and black striped skirt, an outfit unusual enough to draw my attention, even though her smoking style was forgettable enough to quickly lose that attention with so many choices.  The girl  who fascinated me most was a shaggy-haired light brunette with badass sunglasses, a white blouse, and high-riding jean shorts and smooth legs coming from them.  She was fun to watch and the best smoker of the four, and their group stumbled into an even larger cohort of fairgoers that they appeared to know, this one mostly male, and the ladies kept on smoking in this cluster.  My favorite light brunette was talking to a middle-aged guy and taking her nicely timed drags and really cloudy skyward exhales with complete ease in his presence even though he wasn’t smoking.  I got a couple of decent pics that got my favorite girl in the mix, once in mid-drag.  I wanted a butt ID, challenging as it seemed with this big group standing there, but my favorite girl made the task even more impossible for me when she walked to the garbage can, crushed the cigarette out on the lip and tossed it inside.  I’d never see her smoking again last night, but I would see two of the other gals smoking, including the brunette in the lavender and black skirt.  I was able to get back to the partially Latina 18-year-old afterwards and enjoy the last couple drags of her cigarette as well.  Suddenly I felt like I had some momentum again.

It was approaching dusk as I ventured back to the south side and slipped by that seating area once again that has been so rewarding this year.  And I could see from afar that it was about to be again as I saw from behind two teenage girls with cigarettes sitting by themselves on a berm.  And lucky me, I had my choice of benches across from them to get a front-row seat.  I planted my ass on a bench directly across from them to get as close as possible, about to get one of the biggest pleasant surprises in the history of fair fetishing.  Even though there were two girls smoking, I was only going to be able to count one of them as a sighting, and that was the decently attractive brunette in a red top and dark jeans who was Sighting #31.  Now the reason that I didn’t count the other girl was not because she wasn’t attractive….she was in fact the more attractive of the two.  I couldn’t count her because I never count a girl I’ve already counted before as a sighting earlier in the same year.  In this case, it was a girl from Saturday night…..THE girl from Saturday night.  I was staring right back at that innocent face of a petite blond who looked like 90s country singer Lila McCann….a face I couldn’t forget even if I got a full frontal lobotomy.  As very close to unprecedented as it is for me at least in state fair sightings, I was seeing this same Marlboro Reds-chaining cutiepie again who smoked nine cigarettes in two hours on Saturday night.  It was surreal enough to keep running into her on Saturday night, but now I was running into her yet again four days later!!

She was distracted on her smartphone when I sat down and since I knew she’d recognize me from Saturday, I quickly got up and moved a couple of benches away.  The brunette friend, who by the way was a different and more attractive friend than the brunette she was with on Saturday, was just finishing her cigarette, crushing it out on the berm and that was the cue for the duo to get up and walk away, with my blond still clutching on to a couple of remaining drags on her cigarette.  I followed at a bit of a distance, not wanting to get called out for two nights of familiarity, but I always wanted to get a couple of photos.  After two more drags, she dropped the butt to the pavement, burning ash scattering all over as she halfheartedly crushed it out with her butt.  Unsurprisingly, another Marlboro Red, now my 10th from her in two nights.  I had one objective and that was to get photos of her since it was too dark to get good ones on Saturday night.  Unfortunately, it was approaching dusk and I was at the danger zone where my photos start getting blurry without the flash.  I managed a couple of rear photos that aren’t too bad, capturing her sexy body which tonight was draped in a more revealing black tanktop that exposed quite a bit of bare flesh on her back and a pair of very tight dark jeans.  Now I preferred her short shorts from Saturday, but these jeans were sexy too, and the presentation made her look even more like Lila McCann circa 1998.  I tried to take a couple side photos of her walking but they didn’t turn out, and I saw her looking my way both times and making awkward eye contact.  I would definitely have to hang back at this point as the girl turned down the concourse and then headed into the midway….

I kept a distance as I followed, hoping she’d at least light up another cigarette.  Instead, she met with her guy friends, at least one of them the same from Saturday night, and they stopped at some junk vendor in the midway and lingered long enough that I couldn’t risk hovering any longer and vacated, hoping and expecting I’d see her again later in the evening.  As is the story all too often with this girl, to be continued…

As I said, the Swon Brothers were performing at the bandshell and a pretty big crowd was assembled there watching them, so I spent about 10 minutes encircling the crowded seating area looking for smokers, and coming up with at least a modest litany of hits.  On my first pass, it wasn’t until the very end that I came across a trio of 20-something smokers standing on the grass puffing away.  The context needed to describe Sightings #36 and #37 is that one of the girls was a dark-haired brunette in jean shorts with her overweight, middle-aged mother.  I saw this gal smoking once before last night and had already counted her as a sighting, but can’t remember her serial number.  The other two gals, who definitely seemed to know her, were both new, and one was a tall and only modestly attractive brunette while the other was the cutest of the three, a feminine-looking dark blond in a white top and jean shorts.  Now even she wasn’t gorgeous per se, but hers was the face that drew my attention the most as she smoked her cigarette.  I leaned back against the bathroom wall, listened to some of the music, and enjoyed my front-row seat of the stinky threesome for a couple of minutes before venturing off.  Interestingly, I would see the dark blond, my favorite of the three, smoking again after the concert and was able to ID her brand after she dropped that second cigarette butt to the grass….a Camel Blue.

Back to the aftermath of my first trio sighting, I ventured to the east side of the stage briefly but then planned to double back from the direction I came from to go through the back of the crowd again.  Doing so I came across Sighting #38, an attractive mid-20s blond navigating through the crowd with a half-smoked all-white between her fingers in the company of a nonsmoking brunette friend.  Oh I have to follow, I thought to myself, turning around to do just that.  But I wouldn’t get far when this blond was sidelined by none other than the smoking threesome I just observed.  Seriously?!??!  At first I thought they were part of an interconnected group but they weren’t.  Apparently they were just complimenting her on her T-shirt!  There were no tattoos on her back as I first suspected, but blondie was wearing a tie dye T-shirt with an largely open back and far as I can tell, that’s what the smoking threesome spent the next 30 seconds discussing with her before she and the friend proceeded.  Blondie’s presentation in that open-back tie-dye T-shirt and a pair of spotty medium-blue jean shorts below it really did add some sizzle to her steak, as her face while attractive wasn’t one of the prettiest at the fair.  The girls were walking around the east side of the stage and I was confident I’d get the chance to ID her butt.  I had one more sidetrack though that nearly sabotaged me as the two girls stopped in front of another young gal I didn’t suspect they knew who had a newborn baby.  Blondie dropped the cigarette to her feet and crushed it out at the exact moment she stopped, exposing the tiny baby to her fresh cigarette stench at close range as she chatted.  I had to wait for them to disperse before I could ID her butt as a Marlboro Light.  That girl was prominent the rest of the evening as well, sitting with a larger group of guys and attractive mid-20s girls inside The Depot.  Her pack of Marlboro Lights was always present but it wasn’t until I made my final pass through The Depot en route to my midnight shuttle bus that I saw her take another one out to light, and of course I couldn’t stick around to see it and risk missing my bus.

My next sighting of significance occurred on the west side of the grounds, on a bench not far in front of The Depot in fact…close enough to hear the music playing inside there.  This was significant because as I approached a duo of what appeared to be mid-teen girls dancing to the music in the grass in front of the bench, I could see a cigarette in the hand of the dark blond hottie of the pair, decked out in a pink tanktop and jean shorts to authenticate the image of the Sighting #40 girl that I had tremendously high expectations for.  As I approached the bench and saw what appeared to be older gals sitting there, one of them smoking and being barely attractive enough to count as Sighting #41, my first thought was that I had a mother-daughter sighting on my hands here.  But further speculation threw a bucket of cold water on my high expectations when it became clear that the two dancing girls, including that smoker, were older than they looked.  They both had relative baby faces and the body types of mid-teen girls, especially as they so immaturely danced to the bopping music, but closer inspection confirmed they were more like 21.  And closer inspection of the two less attractive gals on the bench was that they were likely a little bit older, but still in their 20s.  Even with the disappointment, that dark blond dancer was still quite a find and I enjoyed her smoking show as I watched from the nearest bench.  Nothing dramatic about her smoking style, but for smoking to be occurring at all by this blond putting forth such a youthful, feminine presentation lit up my night.  I was even able to snap a couple of photos that, while blurry, capture her presentation from the side.  She finished the cigarette and dropped it to the ground, crushing it out.  The group didn’t go anywhere so I wasn’t immediately able to identify the butt as planned, but I marked the bench and when I came back later in the night I was able to confirm that it was a Camel Blue.

The concerts were starting to dismiss and I ventured around one of the nearest bathrooms, hoping some girls might be looking to take a combination potty and smoke break.  A duo of 18-19ish couples were hovering not far from the bathrooms and I began to notice one of the girls fidgeting in her purse.  She was a shorter dark blond in (another!) tie dye bare midriff top coupled with black shorts.  And sure enough, out came (another!) pack of Marlboro Reds, one of which she kept for herself and another she handed to one of the guys who I would quickly discover was her boyfriend.  Not sure when it happened that tie-dye tops, acid-washed jeans and shorts, and Marlboro Reds came back in style, but it’s like it’s 1988 all over again!  Anyway, I was able to sit down nearby and watch Sighting #44 smoke her cigarette.  Stylistically, she was just average but as always seeing a girl with such a feminine presentation smoke was a pleasure to witness.  The other friend, a taller dark blond in a tanktop and jean shorts, was also cute but it didn’t look like she and her boyfriend were smokers.  After a few minutes standing there, the two couples walked off in the direction of (where else) the south side seating area.  The guys fooled around near the fountains while the girls stood back, the smoker filling her body with blackness and making the cherry of her Marlboro Red glow when she took a drag in the unlit area.  I sat in front of them, fully expecting they’d move that direction, and when they did, I noticed the other guy had a cigarette going by now and was handing it to his girlfriend for a drag, turning this sighting into a two-for-one as the other girl very briefly became Sighting #45 before handing it back to the boyfriend.  I briefly followed them and the #44 girl took her final drag off the Marlboro Red before dropping it to the pavement and crushing it out and proceeding into the south side of the fair.  Since it was only guys smoking at this point, I ventured elsewhere.

Another of my top-three sightings of the night came next as I migrated to the center of the grounds where there’s usually a giant huddle of mid-teens this time of the night, but much less of one on a Wednesday night.  By no means was she a mid-teen, but the mid-20s gal I saw from afar while approaching drew me in like honey the second I laid eyes on her.  Sighting #49 was very pretty, probably about 25, a long-haired dark brunette with the features of a heavy smoker, wearing a flattering and sexy red tanktop and tight-fitting jean shorts while holding a freshly lit cigarette between her fingers.  I kept repositioning myself on a series of benches in the area as others got up to leave, improving my vantage point of the gal who was the most skilled smoker of the evening.  Also in her company was a guy, a young girl who looked about two and was being pushed around in a stroller, and another mediocre dark blond who was also smoking but barely good enough to count as Sighting #50.  At first I thought the blond was the mother of the young girl but would eventually learn it was my brunette who was, and the little girl would be tugging on mommy a couple of occasions as mommy obliterated her cigarette.  On every single drag, that cigarette was placed in her mouth for a rich, elongated drag followed up with fierce smoke missiles that rocketed out of her mouth in a way that I’m glad I wasn’t too close to or it’d probably have left a bruise….

I got to watch every drag from pretty close range and on the final third of the cigarette was even treated to a couple of exceptional talking exhales, where she’d be saying something to the boyfriend/husband with wisps of smoke escaping her face, but there was always enough exhaust left in her lungs that the missile blast exhales were yet to come, and were still plentiful in volume.  Also impressing was her tight body, which I would never have believed could have ever spit out a kid, her flat stomach visible under that tight tanktop, shapely midsection visible under those tight jean shorts, and impossibly smooth legs underneath.  I had figured the boyfriend/husband was a nonsmoker throughout this sighting but he did light up towards the end of her cigarette.  She took a final drag and crushed out the cigarette before preparing the young daughter in the stroller and wheeling off in the moments ahead, and I couldn’t help but speculate that the daughter is undoubtedly already addicted to nicotine having lived in the womb of this addict for nine months.  I swooped in after they strolled away and IDed her butt as a Marlboro Red Special Blend, my second of those this evening and both from very high-profile smoker gals.

Next I made my final midway trip for the evening and quickly after entering doubled-down on an Iowa State Fair tradition–the cigar sighting.  Two young ladies of color, both in the 18-19 range, were standing there with the prettier of the two smoking a Black ‘N’ Mild cigar.  She appeared to be Hispanic but also had some African-American features, and although she was a little chubbier than my preference, had a cute face.  I watched as Sighting #52 took a few drags from the cigar, and after every drag would oddly blow onto the cherry of the cigar even though it seemed to be burning just fine.  I stuck around until she handed it to the heavyset African American friend who I wasn’t interested in and walked deeper into the midway.  Even though neither of 2014’s ISF cigar sightings will be “blog-worthy greatest hits” as the two from 2012 and 2013 were, I still appreciated both of them.

I pressed forward into the midway as planned and when I got to the back, I spotted blasts of smoke rising into the sky.  Now I could tell the obvious heavy clouds of water vapor from an e-cig or vaporizer was the source of one of the clouds, but that an actual cigarette was the source of another.  But where was it coming from, I asked myself while surveying the crowd and seeing nobody with a cigarette.  Alas, I looked at this bench nearby that a bunch of teenagers were standing atop, and started surveying them.  There were three guys and two girls in the general cluster, and one of the guys had a vaporizer….while one of the girls had a cigarette.  Now there is some bad news….the girl who wasn’t smoking would have been the sighting of the year, a 13ish dark brunette with braces wearing a bare-midriff top and pink shorts, about five notches more innocent-looking even than my chronic-spitting mid-teen cutie earlier in the day.  The other girl in the group who was smoking (Sighting #53) was not particularly cute, but a short dark blond with glasses and white shorts covering a tiny butt and virtually no hips.  She was a mystery because her body type was that of a 13-year-old girl–which was without question the age range of the friend–but her face looked like a 16-year-old.  Meanwhile the guys all seemed like they were more like 17.  It was a very odd group and I still don’t understand the logistics or the age of the one girl who was smoking, but that midsection still suggested she’s only gonna be going into the seventh grade next week, and if that’s right, really makes this a powerful sighting despite the fact that she wasn’t particularly attractive….

The smoking itself had a few memorable moments as the group eventually got down from the picnic table and hovered behind the seating arrangement where I was watching.  The highlight of the sighting was when the two girls were talking and one of the guys approached.  The girl was a good six inches shorter than the guy and had just taken a drag from her cigarette when she looked up his way and exhaled, inadvertently sending a pretty long-distance smoke missile right into his face, to which he adorably did not respond.  That was the only electric moment of her otherwise modest smoking show, but the other fun moment came when the guy with the vaporizer took a gigantic drag and then stepped right up to the cutiepie brunette girl and exhaled one of those massive water vapor bombs into her face, a gigantic cloud surrounding her face from which its doubtful she could see anything for the next few seconds.  I stuck around until the smoker finished her cigarette and IDed it as a Camel Blue.  I suppose this sighting’s storyline will rank it among my top-five of the night, but it had the potential to be much better than that if the girl was prettier….and if I could more definitively identify her age.

After the midway, I headed west down the concourse as the 11:00 hour approached, when I knew the population on the fairgrounds would start to thin down quickly on a Wednesday night.  The area near The Depot rarely fails to deliver at the west edge of the concourse and it came through again last night.  A mixed-gender cluster of all ages hovered outside the gate of The Depot when a young couple walked out, the very attractive female of the couple in possession of a cigarette.  And Sighting #57 was indeed a knockout, a long-haired blond in a white blouse and long black and white striped skirt.  She looked to be in her mid-20s and had the face of a long-time heavy smoker.  The boyfriend with her wasn’t smoking at the time, although he would later.  And she was a helluva smoker to, with no-purpose dangles and long drags with heavy exhales, often done amidst the tight cluster in which she was the only one smoking.  She dropped the butt in an inaccessible spot and I figured the show was likely over, leading me to wander around the general area and encircle The Depot again….

But lo and behold when I got back, my favorite sexpot blond was holding a pack of Marlboro Red Special Blends (the third MRSB smoker of the night!!!) and extracting a cigarette before putting the pack back in her purse.  She lit up and carried on with a good 3o-second dangle after the light-up that dazzled.  This girl was a pure professional when it came to ingesting cancerous chemicals into her young body, but I was greedy.  There was a wholesome ponytailed girl in jean shorts who she was talking to and I really wanted to see her light up too.  From the back, the second girl looked like she was about 16, but up-close she was probably 21.  She wasn’t nearly as “hot” as the long-haired blond smoker but she’d have definitely made a more unlikely smoker.  Just when I was about to give up hope and walk away, the boyfriend of the smoker pro took out a pack of cigarettes I couldn’t identify, but with all-white filter, and lit up, handing a second cigarette to the friend who let it dangle from her lips while waiting for the pro to get her lighter back out of her purse.  It seemed pretty clear she was a social smoker, but was still well-positioned to be Sighting #58.  And in moments, the friend lit her up, and it was an absolute joy watching the two of them take dueling exhales.  The original blond easily bested her style-wise but it was a wonderful show nonetheless…and also kind of adorable that the girlfriend apparently smokes a harsher brand than her boyfriend. Around halfway through her cigarette, the wholesome friend started wandering across the steps next to The Depot and I followed in hopes of a butt ID.  But when she got to the building’s entrance, she stubbed the cigarette out on the wall and pocketed it to save for later, then walked inside.  I’m guessing she just really needed to use the bathroom, but either way, I just made one more pass by the long-haired blond to see one more impressive drag before heading back east on the concourse.

Doing so, I came across another unlikely duo, two 18ish girls of middling-to-slightly-above-average attractiveness chatting with a guy and another girl but getting ready to walk off.  I could see from afar that one of the two girls had an unlit cigarette in her hand.  As I got closer, I could see she was pretty in a fairly undistinguished way, with shoulder-length light brown hair and a grayish top and shorts.  Shortly after walking away from the other couple, she lit up and became Sighting #60.  Her smoking style was similar to her presentation, nice but not memorable, and she took several drags before what I was hoping for happened…she handed the cigarette to the friend.  Now the friend was much like her in that she wouldn’t stand out in the crowd for being a raging beauty, but was pretty enough to command my attention and I would jump at the chance to go out with either one of them.  The friend’s presentation was more memorable in that she was wearing a tight pair of pale yellow pants.  The original smoker was distractingly beginning to dig in the backpack of the girl now in possession of the cigarette who took a single drag, albeit a very nice one, becoming Sighting #61 and responding to the friend with a talking exhale that was easily the most memorable smoking moment of the sighting.  Unfortunately she handed the cigarette back to the original girl who was proceeding to take a sweatshirt out of the backpack and put it on her.  Not sure why as it was by no means cold last night, but at least the distraction was finally about to be over.  It must have been a short cigarette because it didn’t seem to last long and the yellow-pants friend who intrigued me more only got two total drags before it was gone, with the girl who lit it crushing it out and tossing it into the garbage can, denying me the butt ID.

I had an hour to go on the evening and had tied my total from 2013, so everything from this point forward would just be gravy as I headed to the south side.  By this point in the night I had all but forgotten about her, thinking she had to have left early or I certainly would have seen her, but as I walked down the middle of the street on the south side and looked to my left, there she was…..my chainsmoking Marlboro Reds girl with the same friend as before…..and she was smoking another cigarette even though the friend wasn’t.  This was the second cigarette I witnessed from her tonight and the 11th of two days at the Iowa State Fair, a record I suspect will hold for the rest of my life and for however short her life is likely to be.  Once again, we made eye contact, which meant I had to tread carefully as I followed.  Her cigarette looked recently lit so I should be in store for quite a show, and it turned out to be vintage unpredictability from my Lila McCann clone, who walked pass this cluster of middle-aged guys looking at this new statue of the couple from the American Gothic painting that was erected in the last year.  For whatever reason, my smoker and her friend were prompting high-fives from these guys in their 50s .  The guys awkwardly cooperated, touching the free hand of the teenage girl with the smelliest and most nicotine-stained fingers of anyone on the fairgrounds.  She pressed forward on a near identical path that they took earlier in the night, on a direct line to the midway, as Miss Chainsmoker kept taking her modest drags and modest exhales from the cigarette…

Once in the midway, the girls continued their immature little game of high-fiving everyone they came across from random midway people to the carnies operating the rides and games.  In between high-fives, she predictably attended to her cigarette.  Finally, she finished off the cigarette and crushed it out right before high-fiving a guy with a jumpshot basketball game, who let her take a shot after the high-five, which she missed.  The girls pressed on and I felt I was so exposed that I only dared to follow for another minute or so, in hopes she’d smoke another cigarette.  When she didn’t, I turned around to fetish elsewhere, still hoping and fully expecting to run into her again with as empty as the grounds were becoming.  Sadly I wouldn’t.  Now it never crossed my mind I’d see this girl a second night at the Iowa State Fair, but after seeing her two nights of doing just that, it’s  not unthinkable I’ll run into her next Saturday when I plan to go again if the forecasted rain fails to materialize.  Even if I don’t, what an unbelievable ride with this girl who seems next to impossible to beat right now for 2014 Sighting of the Year.

It was a rough final hour, with the fairgrounds getting so empty they could have shot a cannon down the concourse and not hit anybody.  We’re talking ghost town empty, where I’d walk down a street and wonder if the place already closed and I was the last one to know.  But I would string together a handful of additional sightings, and my final two of the day were the last memorable ones, with one sighting leading into another.  Sighting #67 came on the concourse behind the grandstand when I spotted a guy with two familiar-looking girls, one of whom I had eyeballed earlier in the night because of her spectacular presentation, a light brunette with the body of a young girl wearing a very sexy pair of tight jean shorts that featured a litany of different shades of blue.  I almost flipped when I saw the cigarette between her fingers from the rear that I wished I had seen hours earlier.  I hastily walked her way for a better look, and unfortunately the long cigarette held next to those sexy jean shorts was the best this sighting would look.  She wasn’t “ugly” but was quite a bit older than the outfit and body type suggested, probably at least 21, and her features were only modestly attractive.  But as I hustled on up to see her, I’d come across my final sighting of the night seated on a bench…

Sighting #68 was a decently attractive brunette in a white top and jean shorts, with a distracting sweatshirt tied around her waist covering up her most attractive bodily assets.  She had a memorable look with long dark brown hair and a face that wasn’t knockout gorgeous but stood out in the crowd, especially with the all-white cigarette she sat there smoking all by herself.  I didn’t suspect she’d be sitting by herself for long though and she wasn’t.  A guy that was assuredly her boyfriend approached the bench with a corn dog, originally sitting to her left and obstructing my view.  Adorably though, she took a drag from her cigarette and exhaled and the smoke apparently drifted his way, at which point he stood up and sat on the other side of her, seeking refuge from her merciless smoke assault.  He also handed her the corn dog, from which she took a bite and handed it back to him, quickly returning to her true love, the cigarette.  She got on the phone and was apparently trying to meet back up with people they separated from, and in seconds the couple was discovered in line at a nearby food stand.  The smoker girl got up to chat with them in the line, leaving her boyfriend to finish his corn dog.  She continued to adeptly smoke the cigarette while chatting with the nonsmoking friends and finally after another half dozen drags dropped it.  In moments, they all walked back to the bench where the boyfriend was and IDed her all-white butt as a Camel Light.

There was nearly a half hour left of the night until I had to get on my shuttle bus but I would find no new smokers.  I did, interestingly enough, see that last girl smoking another Camel Light only a couple of minutes after she finished the previous one.  I tried to squeeze every last minute of fetishing I could but had to board my shuttle bus only a couple of minutes before midnight.  Underscoring how empty the fairgrounds were, I was one of only three people aboard that midnight shuttle bus.  As I said, my calendar allotted me a potential third day of Iowa State Fair sightings coming up this Saturday, but the weather forecast is a disaster morning, afternoon, and night so we’ll see how much if any of it happens.  But even if last night was the end of the 2014 Iowa State Fair, I’m standing at 209 sightings this year, up from 175 last year and 189 in 2012.  And I’ve had some exceptional quality as well, even beyond this year’s shining star, with as many as nine sightings that at least have the potential to make my top-25 sightings of the year.  In terms of depth and breadth, the Iowa State Fair bested my county fair this year for the first time in three years, which is a sigh of relief as the last couple of years made me fear the Iowa State Fair was starting to decline as a venue.  Don’t count them out just yet!

 

 

2014 Iowa State Fair, Day 1

After a couple of very mellow years in a row, I walked into my all-day Saturday fetish safari at the Iowa State Fair with downwardly revised expectations. The daytime hours in particular were near sightingless wastelands in 2012 and 2013 and I went into August 9, 2014, expecting that would more likely than not be the case as well, with those halcyon days of 2010 and 2011 of robust day and night ISF sightings now looking more like a fluke than anything likely to repeated with any frequency.   And so it went for most of the early hours of yesterday’s tour, with a sparse selection of sightings in those early hours making for sagging morale. But by mid-to-late afternoon, I started to string together some impressive blockbusters and my numbers started to surge by early evening. With each hour before dusk, I began to acknowledge that I was having a pretty decent day….until evening came around and things went off the hook. Much like my legendary 2008 Minnesota State Fair, yesterday was a day that started slow but ended up as one of my more unexpectedly awesome days at the fair in a long time.

It would have been unthinkable at 4 p.m. that I would end the evening with 141 sightings, two short of my all-time Iowa State Fair record set in 2011, but that’s exactly what happened. And frankly, I could have easily gotten a dozen or more beyond that if it wasn’t for one particularly lengthy detour that was nonetheless more than worth the investment of time. The grandstand last night was the Goo Goo Dolls with Daughtry, and they undoubtedly drew a favorable demographic, so that probably helped my cause a little, but it was still quite a jarring throwback to a better era when smoking was more culturally acceptable. It certainly didn’t seem like 2014, especially in those hours after dark when the sightings numbers were so blistering.

The day got off to a milquetoast start with gloomy skies that kind of served as a wet blanket on my morale. It wasn’t supposed to rain and didn’t, but bright and sunny conditions give my spirit a lift when I get off the shuttle bus and enter the Iowa State Fairgrounds for 13 hours of sightings bliss. It was shortly after 11 a.m. when I entered the gates, feeling a little less energy than usual but still knowing I was poised to see a few hot sightings that day even if the day was a total disaster. The first few hours put that theory to the test though as I wandered around finding very little to hang my hat on. It was well over a half hour after my arrival when I finally got Sighting #1, which I later determined was a younger-looking mother of a teenage daughter. The early ambiguity came when the older gal—a brunette with a nice, slender figure in a black tanktop and jean shorts—started digging into the purse of her adorable teenage daughter (who looked about 14) and plucked out a cigarette and a lighter. I didn’t even make the association that the gal lighting up was probably a mid-30s mother because she looked younger and definitely didn’t have the body of the mom of a teenager but as they migrated to the bench I figured that had to have been the arrangement. I was hoping that since the daughter was carrying cigarettes, it meant she would get in on the action to, but when the girl didn’t get so much as a drag during the duration of the cigarette, I figured she was probably just carrying mom’s cigarettes in her own purse (mom wasn’t carrying a purse). I guess it was a decent little show, but certainly hoped that my day wouldn’t simply consist of wandering for 45 minutes at a time to come across sightings no better than this.

Unfortunately, it pretty much did until mid-afternoon, and my Sighting #4 would be the first sighting of the day that made me stand up and take notice. I was walking down the Grand Concourse approaching the main block of the beer gardens when I noticed a family with a long-haired light brunette daughter who looked about 22. She was wearing a black tanktop and jean shorts over a very shapely young figure and immediately jumping out at me was a pack of Marlboro Menthols stuffed in her left back pocket. And she was pretty too, her face matching the body with a pair of badass sunglasses adding to the effect as she walked next to a young guy who I assumed was her boyfriend and not her brother. They stopped in front of the beer gardens for adult beverages and I hung around hoping that would be a catalyst for tobacco consumption. It wasn’t immediately but I still counted this as a sighting since I was confident the pack of cigarettes in her back pocket was hers. I did a brief walk up the concourse since no tobacco was being smoked but made a point of returning a few minutes later in case that situation changed. And it did. When I got back a freshly lit cigarette was smoldering between the brunette’s fingers. I positioned myself to snap a few photos, scoring a half dozen, none of which were exceptional but still captured the girl and her cigarette together. I was elated that the boyfriend wasn’t smoking at all and the pack of Marlboro Menthols in her back jean shorts packet was entirely hers. And then the 50-something older woman, the matriarch of the group of six or so, lit up a cigarette as well. Not sure if this was the mother of the smoker girl or her boyfriend but either way it was hot to see this group begin to proceed away from the beer gardens, with the two females of the group being the only smokers. I got to watch from a “side rear” angle the brunette’s nice drags and cloudy exhales into the packed fairgrounds foot traffic, never seeming to care who was choking on her smoke. It was a good long show before she dropped the cork filter Marlboro Menthol butt to the pavement without bothering to crush it out. I walked up and IDed it just to make sure it was indeed a Marlboro Menthol, and of course it was. After at least two hours at the fair, I really needed a sighting like this to keep up morale.

And that morale boost came in handy with the bleak early afternoon hours plodding on, but I at least got another brief sampling of greatness with Sighting #6, which took place in the seating area near the fountain on the south side of the grounds, a location with a storied history of producing quality ISF sightings. This time, a very pretty 21ish dark blond in a blue blouse and jean shorts was sitting there taking a couple of final drags from a cigarette which she then handed to the boyfriend who finished it off and crushed it out. They weren’t going anywhere so I didn’t bother to wait to ID the butt. Wished I could have seen more from this girl yesterday because she was a beauty who was definitely capable of a blockbuster sighting given the right storyline.

Unfortunately, my next sighting of note was a dubious first in my years of fetishing–getting robbed of seeing a sighting play out because I was in line for food, or in this case lemonade. I’m always paranoid when I get in line for food that a great sighting is gonna walk right by and I’ll miss it and that’s exactly what happened when Sighting #9 wandered right on my by me as I stood with gritted teeth in line with some father changing his order in front of me. This dark blond in a black top and acid-washed jean shorts and badass sunglasses fired up a cigarette, along with her boyfriend, as they were walking down the concourse only a few yards from the line I was standing in. I hoped I could get my lemonade in a hurry and catch up with them before she finished her cigarette. About two minutes passed before I made it out of the line with my lemonade in hand, hastily proceeding eastward down the concourse looking for the hot brunette wielding her cigarette. The good news is that I did run into them again near the east side beer gardens, only by now she had finished her cigarette. It was nice to see how attractive she was and knowing that she smoked, but I still kicked myself for missing 99% of this one. I never her again yesterday either.

I had better luck heading back to that south side seating area where I scored Sightings #10-11 standing in the grassy area for a smoke break. It was an early 20s duo with a nonsmoking guy, and while one girl was a chubby brunette who barely qualified as a sighting, the other girl fascinated me. She was a blond with glasses who kind of had a “cute nerd” look about her. She definitely didn’t look like a smoker, wearing a pink T-shirt and those ugly baggy athletic shorts below the waist. Her pink T-shirt had something about 2012 written on it and I wondered if that’s when she graduated high school. I was able to watch her smoke most of the cigarette and managed to snap one pic while she was dragging, even though it’s from a little too far away to fully appreciate. The drags were all nice and fun to watch and it felt good to have a sighting of a worthy girl that wasn’t sabotaged by bad logistics. I heard her mention “Cherokee” while she was talking to the friends, which probably meant she’s from the small town of Cherokee in northwestern Iowa, a good three hours away from the Iowa State Fairgrounds. She finished the cigarette and crushed it out, walking away with the friends soon after. I approached the cork filter butt but it was smoked so close to the filter that I couldn’t ID the brand.

I got an appetizer of Sighting #14 encircling The Depot bar and grill on the west side of the grounds, with its open air eating and drinking area a long-standing home for scofflaws who smoke “inside” despite its illegality. The current scofflaw in question was this pretty late 20s long-haired light brunette sitting by herself at a table text messaging on her smartphone with a pack of Camels in front of her. I counted her as a sighting even though she wasn’t smoking at the time. When I passed the same area a half hour or so later though, she was definitely smoking! As distracted as she continued to be with her phone, I was able to lean over the railing just over her head and watch from only a few feet away as she took intense no-handlebars dangling drags and then released massive clouds of exhaust that rose up to offend my olfactory senses in the seconds after she exhaled. I hovered there for a good five drags, all monstrous dangling drags of the 5-6 second variety that really contrasted with her otherwise feminine image. There was a middle-aged woman sitting adjacent to her on the bench, and I assumed since they never acknowledged each other that they didn’t know each other. Kind of hot that this gal was being smoked out in such close proximity to this hot young smoker who was certainly one of the most skilled smokers I saw yesterday.

Somewhere in between seeing the last girl with the pack of Camels in front of her and actually seeing her smoke one a half hour or so later, I crossed paths with Sighting #16. There are a series of metal railings that serve as gates leading into the grandstand when they let people inside for the evening shows. There was no line yet so the railing sat empty, or at least they would have if this mid-20s couple wasn’t sitting there smoking cigarettes. While I’m puzzled as to why all these hot smoker girls are wearing drab black tanktops in the dead of summer as so many are, the mid-20s dark brunette beauty sucking on her freshly lit cork filter cigarette looked great in it, but even better in her skimpy jean shorts which were seated so uncomfortably but so adorably on that circular metal railing. She was a very pretty girl and much prettier when she placed that long cork filter in the right corner of her mouth and took a drag. Her smoking technique was memorable only because she always took drags from the right corner of her mouth, but her beauty and sunny demeanor were the star of the show anyway. Location was a big problem for me in terms of getting a frontal view so eventually I had to retreat to a bench behind them, although that wasn’t entirely bad as I was able to see her jean-shorted ass so nicely perched on that railing from behind, with a couple inches of exposed bare back and her panties creeping just a little over the belt line. I was able to see her smoke nearly the whole cigarette from this angle and when they walked away from the railings they took a couple of selfies with their cell phone camera, the girl looking so beautiful and beaming. I took the opportunity to ID the cigarette butt, which was another Camel, and then ventured off elsewhere.

Next came the first of three blockbusters I scored during the daytime hours, my second favorite of the three. I was walking down the main stretch of the concourse behind the grandstand when I spotted this sexpot 19ish duo approaching a garbage can. My radar was definitely not buzzing with anticipation as these two looked like the sort of upscale coeds who would never be smoking in the year 2014. The ponytailed light brunette in a skimpy bare midriff flower print top with jean shorts drew my attention first as I approached, and I was shocked when I saw she was holding a freshly lit cigarette in her hand. I quickly changed positions to get a better look and then I noticed she had a second cigarette which was all bent and busted up that she was tossing into the garbage. But then I noticed the equally gorgeous light brunette friend in a conservative gray top and tight white pants was also holding a cigarette, still unlit. As crazy as it would have seemed when I approached these two, they had indeed just become Sightings #18-19. I got a honey of a photo of the girl in white pants lighting up her cigarette before the two wandered off down the concourse. My first pursuit was to take a peek inside that garbage and see if I could get a brand name off of the discarded half cigarette, and I did. Sitting right atop the trash pile was a cork filter cigarette with the unmistakable markings of a Marlboro Red. Who woulda thought?!?!?

From there I quickly caught back up with the girls, walking mostly behind them and taking in their stinky exhales while admiring the spectacular body of the bare-midriffed babe in jean shorts, taking a few photos of her awesome body and capturing the cigarette between her fingers in most of them. I also wanted a risky frontal shot and managed to walk around them and score a pretty decent one. It was now time to settle in for the rest of the smoking show as the girls sat on a curb to finish their cigarettes and I crossed the street to watch the second half of their show. I had spent most of my time admiring the bare-midriffed sexpot with her hair up in a ponytail because of that amazing presentation, but watching the girl in white pants, whose long hair flowed over her shoulders, I had to acknowledge that she was just as pretty as the friend….and she was the better smoker of the two to boot, taking more frequent drags and producing cloudier exhales. Her smoking style was a little more masculine than I’d prefer but she still pulled it off, averaging two drags for every one the friend took as they sat there chatting, oblivious to the fact that they were being watched by at least one guy. Some random middle-aged woman stopped in front of them to either ask something or make a statement. I couldn’t hear it, but was kind of hopeful they were being lectured about their smoking….

After a good 5-7 minute show that consisted of walking and sitting, the girl in white pants crushed out her cigarette on the pavement and let it sit there while the bare-midriffed friend finished hers off about a minute later, unfortunately crushing it out and taking it to the nearest garbage can. I crossed the street when they left to check out the butt crushed out onto the pavement by the girl in white pants, and while I already knew it was a Marlboro Red based upon what was thrown in the garbage moments earlier, I couldn’t really tell from what was left on the cigarette so I’m lucky I got the butt ID from the trash can or it would remain a mystery. I took one final look at these two and briefly wondered if they were sisters as much alike as they looked despite the dramatically different presentations. I still suspect they were just friends, but it’s hard to ask for a better sighting than this in the year 2014, the public consumption of tobacco by exactly the kind of girls who most of us fetishers get most excited about seeing light up. The fact that I got see the entire cigarettes get smoked by both of them made it that much more special. Even if I didn’t get a single other decent sighting yesterday, the day was already worthwhile for having seen these two.

It was around 4:00 by now and while the pace of sightings was starting to pick up a little, I had a lot of catching up to do to wrap up the day with a respectable sightings haul. I wouldn’t match that last duo anytime soon, but I would come upon another duo with a girly girl presentation that helped make this sighting memorable. Sitting on a bench outside a bar and grill at the edge of the midway entrance—the exact same bench where I saw ISF #5 “Brittny” light up in front of her family back in 2008—sat this trio that included two female smokers and a nonsmoking guy, all of whom looked about 20 or 21. But what intrigued most about Sightings #29-30 was there hairdos. The more attractive of the two was the light brunette sitting on the outer position on the bench. She had it in braided pigtails that rolled over her shoulder. She was decently attractive in her blue top, jean shorts, and sunglasses, but I’m not sure she would have gotten a writeup if it wasn’t for those braided pigtails which really added color to the sighting. The other girl, a dark blond, had a single giant braid in the back of her hair and was wearing a black top and short jean shorts accentuating the nicer pair of legs of the two. She wasn’t as good-looking as the light brunette but looked a little younger and a little more innocent for whatever reason. I was well positioned to watch them both smoke their entire cigarettes. There were no stylistic bells and whistles but it was a fun show, especially with the guy in the group being a nonsmoker being forced to choke on the fumes produced by two girly girls with braids. They didn’t leave after finishing their cigarettes so I wouldn’t get a butt ID, but I would see these two again near the bathroom a few hours later, both smoking again.

Moments later, in front of the beer gardens, a trio of two guys and a late 20s girl were standing there breaking out the beer and cigarettes. The girl was opening up a pack of Newports, getting ready to fire up and become Sighting #32. She had platinum blond hair and was only modestly attractive, but I liked her presentation in a pink top with black leopard print spots and a pair of jean shorts below covering a sexy, slender figure. And given that she was right in front of me, I snapped a quick pic of her in mid-drag and watched her take a couple of drags. I didn’t really need to stick around for more than that but felt like I was slowly building some momentum at this point.

The Depot has been an increasing source of sightings in recent years, and another Depot tradition is that I always seem to catch at least one of their young cute workers smoking every year. That tradition continued in 2014 with Sighting #38, a cute 17ish brunette in a green Depot T-shirt and jean shorts taking a smoke break with two guys on the table directly behind their workroom. She had some ugly ring in her nose that took away from her appeal some, but she was still definitely a cutie and I was able to catch a couple of sloppy, belching exhales as I awkwardly stood there getting noticed by just about everybody. I had to press on wishing I could have seen a little more from this one, but with that said it’s unlikely she could have measured up to my all-time best Depot girl sighting (ISF #18) from 2010.

On a couple of brief occasions, the sun peaked out between the clouds yesterday, and combined with the humidity, it felt like a sauna whenever it did. While I wanted that sun to boost my morale in the morning, I was more than happy to see it cloud over again in the afternoon to avoid oppressive heat.

My next great sighting, another of my Big Three during the daytime hours, came on the south side of the grounds near the livestock buildings. As I was proceeding south, I crossed paths with Sighting #40, an absolutely gorgeous early 20s ponytailed dark brunette walking with a female friend and holding a freshly lit real cigarette in one hand and an e-cigarette in the other. Huh?  I immediately turned around and followed, admiring from behind her utilitarian, girl-next-door ensemble consisting of a white T-shirt and a pair of navy blue cotton shorts (not jean shorts), but the most adorable part of her ensemble was a pink baseball cap on her head from which her ponytail came out the back. She was an absolute knockout, and while it was sexy to see her in this everygirl outfit, I thought to myself how insanely hot this girl would look in her nightclub clothes. Anyway, it was time to get to the bottom of this cig in one hand, e-cig in the other situation. She resolved it quickly by taking her first drag from the real cigarette, and it was a solid one with a nice long draw time and a cloudy, skyward-directed exhale that looked so incredible coming from such a pretty face.   The e-cigarette situation was quickly resolved too as she handed it to the friend walking next to her who began “vaping” on it shortly after. Now the friend was a looker herself, a light brunette in a matching lavender top and spotted shorts, but it was definitely the right girl of the two to be smoking the real cigarette as the dark brunette was a much more classic beauty. And sadly, e-cigs were a problem yesterday, robbing me of a good 10 sightings among attractive young females.

But back to the good stuff, the girls continued to walk northward, and I only realized after a couple of minutes that they were walking with three guys in their group, none of whom were smoking. I was snapping pics left and right, some from behind and some from the side, all the while admiring the walking smoking show which always impressed, accompanied by healthy drags and cloudy, skyward exhales. The only blemish on the dark brunette’s beauty was an ugly tattoo on her left arm. Now I try not to let tattoos get in the way of my appreciation of a smoker girl sighting, but certainly if I’m trying to judge top-tier sightings and rate which one I like better, a lack of tattoo is a good tiebreaker and in this case might hold this girl down a position or two in my year-end rankings. I heard one of the girls mention “stopping for a gyro” as they walked, and the sighting took its final stand near the gyro stand where the two girls stopped with the three guys and chatted as the brunette finished her cigarette….

I enjoyed a couple more drags while waiting, admiring her body in those shorts and especially that legendary face. And the sighting kept its best moments for last as she was about to take a swig of water from her bottle, but had to free her hands first which required her to hand the cigarette to one of the two nonsmoking guys. Here stood this guy, holding this moist, three-quarters smoked cigarette straight up and you could tell by the look on his face he was pretty grossed out by it. In a few seconds, the dark brunette reclaimed the cigarette and took her best drag yet, this intense six-second behemoth in which her face lit up with squinty-eyed pleasure as she inhaled a giant snootful of smoke into that wonderful young body. I was so caught up in the moment watching this that I almost missed my chance to snap a frontal pic of her dragging. Thankfully, the drag lasted so long that I got the snapshot in while her lips were still wrapped around the cork filter. The lighting on the pic isn’t as perfect as I’d prefer but it was still one of my best photos of the day. A couple more modest drags wrapped up the cigarette before she stomped it out on the pavement and everybody got in the nearby line for the gyro. It was a cinch for me to ID the discarded butt seconds later…..a Marlboro No. 27. I no longer had any cause to complain about this day’s sightings haul compared to the last two years at this time of the day, and little did I know I was just getting warmed up.

My next sighting of note would be the third of the Big Three, a sighting where a little longer of a show could have been truly legendary but even the limited show I got ensures it year-end acclaim and was my second-best sighting of the day. I was walking westward down the concourse when I saw a family of five that I presumed included a mother, father, two teenage daughters, and a teenage son walking my direction. Right away I noticed what looked to be the older daughter, a long-haired bleach blond in a little blue dress, smoking a cigarette and becoming Sighting #50. She was very pretty and looked about 18 or 19, and I caught her in mid-drag, the only drag I would end up seeing from this girl as she extended her hand to her right in the direction of what I presumed was her mother, a 40-something bleach blond gal who was undoubtedly attractive in her day but had a bunch of tattoos in particularly ugly places on her person. Only it wasn’t mom who was gonna claim possession….

The girl who would become Sighting #51 was the younger sister, another bleach blond who reached in front of mom and grabbed the cigarette from the older sister. And she was a knockout dressed in a way that only made her more impossibly sexy. My guess is she was about 17, her shoulder-length hair resting on her pink, bare-midriffed top with slits on the back revealing her bra and well-toned teen female flesh. And below the bare midriff was a very tight and sexy pair of white shorts, my favorite thing a young girl can wear besides leather. She was no rookie either, taking very nice drags and releasing cloudy, obnoxious exhales that drifted right back into my face. I was doing everything I could to take a perfect photo, which is not easy while in motion. I caught her in mid-drag and thought I absolutely nailed it until I looked at my camera and realized the photo cut her head off. Four incredible drags transpired from this adorable teenage face before the cigarette would find yet another owner….and this time it was mom who I suspect was the original smoker in the first place but was courteously passing the cigarette around to her addicted daughters while the males in the family kept their lungs pink. Painful as it was to see the youngest daughter give up the cigarette, it was pretty damn hot to be witnessing a mother-double daughter sighting, which I think may be a first for me. I was able to get in front of them and snap my best pic yet of the family, with a particularly precious frontal photo of the youngest teen daughter in her pink top and white shorts. Mom finished off the cigarette and crushed it out on the pavement. When I identified the cork filter I was taken aback to see another Marlboro Red.   Haven’t seen this many Marlboro Red smokers since the 80s! I hoped like mad I’d see this family again later in the day but I never did. Still, it was right around 6:00 at this time and no longer had any reason left to complain about the way my day was going.

As the early evening pressed forward, another time-honored tradition of the Iowa State Fair played out with Sighting #55—a cigar sighting, of which I seem to get every year at the ISF and virtually nowhere else. In this case, it was 30ish blond mother with a group of people that included her husband and a daughter who looked about seven years old. She was reasonably pretty with long blond hair, a gray top, and short black shorts covering up a nice pair of smooth long legs. Her group was on the block of the east side beer gardens (a sightings treasure trove in the evening hours) and mom was on the final few drags of a plastic-tipped Black ‘N’ Mild cigar. The sighting really had only one shining moment but it was a big one as mom took a big, stinky drag from her cigar and then exhaled, with the smelly cigar smoke flowing right into the face of the fairgoer walking behind her, a 30-something guy who seemed to take it in stride. Unfortunately, she knelt down and crushed out the cigar on the pavement and let the smelly butt sit there while assembling with her group to chat and finish their beers. I was able to snap a respectable pic of her walking, but unfortunately it was after she finished off the cigar. Now this sighting isn’t gonna be in any year-end top-25 like the cigar sightings from the previous two Iowa State Fairs both were, but I still loved keeping the tradition alive and adored how she exhaled filthy cigar smoke into that guy’s face.

As I said, this east side beer gardens area delivered big-time yesterday and I stacked up a few more sightings before walking a short distance up the block to an obscure street that connects to the midway. Sitting on the edge of the grass was a young couple that looked about 18, both smoking. The location was unfortunate because in order to really get a good look I’d have to wander into the grass in front of them and would be fully exposed in an area where I’d have no logical reason to be hovering. I still managed to linger to the side to see my Sighting #59 girl, a dark brunette in short jean shorts exposing a pair of killer stems as smooth as a baby’s bottom. They were slow smokers so I only got to see one drag from the side. I would have liked to have seen more from this girl.

Heading west from there, I just barely left the east side beer gardens block when I ran into another group with a hot young smoker who would become Sighting #61, a tall mid-20s long-haired blond in a pink blouse and jean shorts who had just lit up an all-white. In the group was a middle-aged gal who appeared to be somebody’s mother and two younger guys, one of whom was smoking. But as I settled in to enjoy the show, up walked another mid-20s blond, this one in a flattering blue blouse and black shorts and who was even hotter than the other girl, and sure enough she was about to become Sighting #62 as she extracted a pack of Camel Menthol Lights from her purse and pulled out a fresh cigarette. I snapped a few pics, none of which were particularly comprehensive but I did capture the faces of both girls in some capacity. I stuck around for a good half dozen drags from each of them, and while both girls were hot, it was a split decision as the blue-bloused girl was a little hotter but the tall girl in pink was a slightly better smoker. In previous Iowa State Fair runs, part of the problem holding down my sightings numbers was that all the smoker girls I seemed to run into were smoking solo, with very few sightings where more than one girl in the same group/family was smoking. That was definitely not proving to be a problem on August 9, 2014.

I continued my nice sightings pace walking west from there down the concourse and finding myself behind a sexy mid-to-late 20s brunette in a black tanktop and jean shorts walking with a guy and another girl and smoking a freshly lit all-white. My Sighting #64 girl was a slow smoker, going as long as two minutes between drags, and may well have been just a social smoker who was smoking while swilling a beer. As I followed her, I spotted Sighting #65, a cute dark blond with a freshly lit cigarette of her own, but decided to follow through with #64 even though it was a close call. She continued walking until getting to the edge of the midway to the west of the main beer gardens area, where she kept (slowly!) smoking her cigarette while I watched from a convenient vantage point.   She finally finished the cigarette, crushed it out beneath her foot, and walked into the midway with the guy and other girl. I easily approached her butt and identified it as a Camel Crush.

I had every intention of going through the midway about 15 minutes later but had repeated problems finding my way past the entrance last evening…and that was a good thing! I had just walked inside around 7:30 when I came across a group of 18-19ish guys and girls that included Sighting #70, a wholesome long-haired brunette dressed in a white shawl covering a pink top with a pair of tight dark jeans below. She had a nice slender figure and a pretty face with soft features that definitely didn’t look as though it belonged to a smoker. Her group consisted of three guys and one other girl had two other smokers amongst them, both guys, and they were leaving the midway heading across the street to a main block of food vendors. The group huddled in front of one vendor and the three smokers were puffing away in a very crowded location. My presence lurking was nominally awkward but I managed a decent frontal photo and was able to watch her smoke the whole cigarette. There was nothing particularly distinguished about her technique but she was still fun to watch. She dropped the cigarette and crushed it out, then waited for the guys to finish smoking before they left this very odd location for a smoke break and allowed me to ID her butt. Not sure what’s going on here in Iowa, but it was another Marlboro Red. It used to be that girls smoked Marlboro Lights with this frequency but those are getting more and more scarce among young girls in recent years.

I made another shot at entering the midway and saw a pair of attractive young smokers right away when I got inside, but it was when I looked to the bathroom area at the edge of the midway on the southwest side that I was once again detoured in the best possible way. Yet another group of three guys and two girls were hovering there and I saw from afar that the epic beauty of the group was taking a pack of Newport 100s out of her purse. Iowa State Fair midway, you are gonna have to wait again because Sighting #73 awaits. I hustled into a perfect stalking post only a feet few in front of the group against the wall and watched this gorgeous brunette extract a cigarette from her pack.   She was the most beautiful girl of the day, probably about 23 with very dark features to the point that I wondered if she had some Middle Eastern heritage. She was the shortest in her group at about 5’4” and the only smoker, decked out in a neon pink top and dark blue jeans. She had the look of a long-time heavy smoker and her technique matched the look as she placed the long Newport in her mouth and lit up. If there was any lingering doubt that there was something special about this girl, it vanished when she fired up and did an astounding triple pump dangle off of the light-up, gulping down three shots of tar and nicotine into her lungs before removing the cigarette and cutting loose with a skyward exhale that was cloudy as all hell….

There wouldn’t be any other drags quite that incredible, but her second drag also consisted of a dangling drag and as the shortest person in the group, her skyward exhale managed to whack one of the nonsmoking dudes squarely in the face. I couldn’t have been more content with my location here and settled in for a long show. It was approaching dusk so the two photos I took are a little blurry, and she was on the inside of her group and both photos were a little too crowded, but I did capture her in mid-drag in one of them. Her drags were all substantial, were all nicely paced, and her exhales all above-average in cloudiness, but there was one thing that didn’t fit…..the cigarette just kept on keeping on. I have no idea how she made it last as long as she did as her drags were hard and frequent, but she kept hitting that cigarette for yet another nicotine jolt every 30 seconds or so for an astoundingly long time, so much so that I caught a half-Asian girl and her boyfriend with a pack of Marlboro Lights heading around the corner and took the occasional to check her (Sighting #74) out. She was good too, but her timing wasn’t great in the presence of greatness with my dark-complected Newport hottie. She eventually dropped the cigarette and crushed it out in front of her, right in the middle of this mixed-gender friends group where she was the only smoker. It’s a good thing I saw she was smoking a Newport 100 before she lit up because the group wasn’t going anywhere for quite some time. I finally gave up and made that long-delayed midway run, and finally about three-quarters way through I saw this group inside the midway, especially that unmistakable dark brunette beauty in the memorable neon pink top. There would be some nights where this would have been the best sighting of the day, but it’s probably only gonna be fifth or sixth best for this day given the lack of memorable storyline. She still has a very good shot at being singled out on my blog at the end of year though.

The area in and around The Depot Bar and Grill continued delivering after dark as I encircled the place and looked up a small flight of stairs that leads from the outdoor patio of The Depot to one of the fair buildings and could see the silhouette of a young couple that included a hot girl smoking a cigarette. As I approached, I was briefly sidetracked by two decently attractive 20-something brunettes smoking just outside The Depot but my attention was soon directed back at this Sighting #87 cutie who appeared to once again be the only smoker of the two standing with her boyfriend and puffing away. She was a dark blond with very wholesome features, decked out in a sexy bare-midriff gray top and jean shorts. It find it amusing how some smokers linger at the top of this flight of stairs because if they’re trying to be out of the way of disapproving nonsmokers, they have chosen a pretty bad spot. Not a bad spot for me though as I watched her take the last couple of drags before walking down the stairs and dropping the all-white butt onto one of the cement stairs and not bothering to crush it out. It was kind of a dark spot but it was hard to miss that glowing cherry from her polluted tobacco refuse which looked like a Marlboro Ultra Light based on the markings. I’d see this girl a few minutes later in a better lit spot and she and the boyfriend really did make for a wholesome couple, one in which it was hard to believe the girl had just piggishly smoked a cigarette in a busy public spot moments earlier.

The next memorable sighting happened at the bathroom area on the southwest edge of the midway, mere feet from where I saw my dark-complected Newport brunette about 45 minutes earlier. A 20-something dark blond appeared to be all by herself (unless she waiting for somebody in the bathroom) and crouched down in a very vulnerable pose before lighting a cigarette and becoming Sighting #91. She was pretty and I wanted to see her upclose so I walked up and stood right next to her. She gave me a warm smile as she watched me approach and settle in next to her. While I enjoyed the perky smile, that warm welcome came with a price as she seemed acutely aware of my presence from that point forward, and since I had to look downward over my shoulder to watch her smoke I wasn’t in much of a position to sneak my peeks….and she oddly never changed position either despite what looked like a very uncomfortable way to sit. I stuck around for two drags, with very nice straight-ahead exhales from her mouth following the drags, before I decided I better split so as not to make her feel awkward, leaving long before I wanted to.

By this point of the night, the teen huddle started to form at the center of the fairgrounds across the street from the midway entrance. It’s mostly mid-teens that hang out in this area and I don’t often get sightings but given the pedigree of girls that hang out there it would be epic if I did, so I’m always vigilant about wading through them to see. Usually it’s on the periphery of this huddle that you find something good, and last night it happened to be a young couple walking next to the huddle that were too old to be part of the huddle themselves. They looked about 22 and the girl was a wholesome-looking dark blond in a white tanktop and jean shorts….another one who didn’t look like a smoker but who nonetheless had a cigarette between her fingers. I followed my Sighting #92 girl for a couple of minutes and got to see a couple of drags, but one of the most compelling aspects of this sighting was that she was smoking and the boyfriend wasn’t, so when she handed the boyfriend the cigarette after a couple of drags I quickly lost interest and moved onto the next shiny object.

And shiny object perfectly describes what came next as I migrated back to that east side beer garden gold mine. I got one decent sighting on the first pass but when I saw an open bench across the street I thought it was a good opportunity to put those gel-filled inserts into my shoes that lessen the impact on my feet late in the day. As happens almost every year at every fair, this choice brought about a great sighting. At the bench next to mine was a mother with a stroller, and from out of nowhere this early 20s brunette hottie in short shorts comes running over and lowers her face into the stroller to make baby talk with the “little buddy”. It took a couple of seconds but I noticed a partially smoked cigarette in the hand of the girl and I almost needed a diaper change of my own based on my bodily response to seeing Sighting #95. She talked to the mediocre-looking mother for a minute and never did take a drag from her cigarette while in the presence of the baby, but before leaving once again leaned over to make baby talk with the infant, and surprisingly the baby didn’t scream a fit after being exposed to her ashtray mouth from such close range…..

Up to that point it was too dark for me to fully appreciate this girl’s features until she cooperatively walked back across the street closer to the beer gardens and relit the cigarette that apparently went out. She also met up with two nonsmoking female friends, also in the 21-22 range and both attractive, but my smoker girl was the hottest and very obviously the alpha female of the group, doing the vast majority of the talking as she attended to her cigarette. Her presentation was killer, in a country girl blouse and daisy dukes that gorgeously framed her chiseled ass and crotch, with a pair of smooth legs and cowgirl boots that were just the perfect touch to complement her image. Her smoking style complemented her demeanor as well….high-strung and a little flaky. She would say something to the friends and then start looking around with a confused look on her face. Perhaps she was halfway intoxicated or perhaps she’s just this way no matter what, but whatever the case her ADD-style drags were followed up by disorganized and sloppy exhales that drifted wherever they may, once into the face of one of the nonsmoking friends. I got to see about five of these drags before she dropped the cigarette and crushed it out. When it came to ID it I figured I stumbled into yet another Marlboro Red, but there was some lines on the filter that aren’t consistent with Reds, even though the light black Marlboro print above the filter sure suggested it was. Must be one of the dozens of Marlboro Red variations floating out there these days. Whatever the case, the east side beer gardens delivered again, and not for the last time of the evening!

Going back to the block on the course that separates the teen huddle at the center of the fairgrounds and east side entrance to the midway, I spotted a group of teens (two guys and two girls) with an adorable petite blond as the only attractive one of the bunch, decked out in a white top and short jean shorts. She would be my Sighting #99 as I took a seat on a berm just outside the midway and watched her take the last couple of drags from her cork filter, featuring fairly modest draws, hold times, and exhales. As she dropped her cigarette to the ground and crushed it out, the thought even crossed my mind that she might just be a social smoker out smoking with her friends. Even so, that face was just precious, and she even had braces on her teeth that, when coupled with her diminutive size and soft facial features, made her look like she was about 15 even though the friends group helped convince me she was probably 17. As they drifted just a short distance away, I swooped in and IDed her discarded cigarette as yet another Marlboro Red. This was without question a memorable sighting and I was annoyed that I didn’t get to see more, but little did I know this sighting would shortly escalate into my best sighting of the day and one of my best Iowa State Fair sightings of all-time. To be continued…and continued….and continued….

On that note, I crossed the sightings century mark right around 10:00, more than an hour earlier than I had on either of the previous years and I was feeling pretty good as I again encircled The Depot and hit another extra-base hit with two benches full of acquaintances of various ages sitting there drinking and smoking. There were three attractive 20-somethings sitting next to each other puffing away on freshly lit cigarettes, but one girl completely stole the show. My Sighting #103 was a gorgeous long-haired platinum blond in her mid-20s seated atop the bench, her firecracker of a body decked out in a white tanktop and red-striped shorts that framed a perfect ass. A long freshly lit cigarette looked gorgeous in her right hand and even though my positioning was awful, I just had to stick around to see a couple of drags. They didn’t disappoint either, with the cigarette inserted into the right side of her mouth for nice lengthy ingestions, followed by slightly above-average exhales. Wish I could have stuck around for more but I couldn’t without sticking out like a sore thumb and risking getting called out so I took off. About a half hour later, I returned to this spot and blondie was still there. She wasn’t smoking this time but I got to take another look at that ass in the red shorts and even caught the brand from the pack right in front of her. Unfortunately it was Old Gold, not one of my favorites and one I didn’t even think existed anymore.

In the near future, I was drifting to that seating area on the south side of the grounds. After dark, it tends to empty out almost entirely but it wouldn’t be the first time I came across underage teens sneaking a smoke in the area, and sure enough, there was a familiar-looking foursome hovering last night that included my petite blond Marlboro Reds smoker with braces who I had last seen about a half hour earlier. And what an eclectic foursome it was upon more isolated inspection. In addition to the adorable blond, there was a hip-looking black guy, a shirtless and muscular white guy, and this unattractive brunette female. Not sure what brought a group like this together in life but as I watched three of the four (the two guys and blondie) insert cigarettes in their mouths, it was bizarre how prophetic that common denominator would prove to be. An unlit cigarette dangled in blondie’s mouth and it took about 30 seconds after I arrived and took a wide open bench before her lighter illuminated the dark corner of the grounds. The light-up itself was odd, with blondie producing a flame halfway between her and the shirtless white guy who both proceeded to lean forward into the flame until their cigarettes were lit. From there, the group started leaving the dark area, headed towards the main south side street. As I began to follow I noticed that the cigarette hadn’t left my little blond’s mouth since it was lit, and she was approaching the black guy with the lighter to fire up his cigarette. Her dangle, complete with at least two dangling drags, lasted at least 30 seconds before she finally removed it from her mouth. When I first saw this girl smoking up near the midway entrance, there was no indication there was anything special about her. That long distance dangle was the first evidence that proved my first impression was wrong, but it certainly wasn’t gonna be the last….

As they started walking down the south side, I thought it was the best-case scenario as it would allow me to watch from an inconspicuous side angle as they progressed, but I could never have imagined what weirdness was about to transpire. Blondie waved to the guy inside one of the food stands as if she knew him, and after walking about 15 yards down the block, decided she was gonna go back and talk to him. I didn’t know if she was gonna order food or not, but she didn’t. She just stood there talking to him and smoking her cigarette. It was just so cute seeing this 5’2” little blond with that cigarette in her hand, and as she took her first drag while standing there, the thought crossed my mind that her exhale might go inside the food stand, but if I was preparing myself for a homerun, what I got was a grand slam. Her exhale went straight into the food stand to the point that I could see the waves of smoke rolling inside even from across the street. Blondie realized a second after she exhaled what she had done and began waving her hand in front of her face in attempt to brush the smoke away, but the damage was done and her little boyfriend inside the food stand was being asphyxiated. I wish at that point I was closer so I could hear if she was apologizing to him or not. Whatever the case, her subsequent exhales were all directed to the side as she kept conversing with him for a couple more minutes before heading back to her friends group without making a purchase…

Finally I figured this sighting was gonna have some stability and predictability, but that wasn’t gonna happen. She began running back in the other direction again, and the shirtless guy playfully tried to stop her, racing her way and grabbing her by the waist as she held her cigarette out in front of her so she wouldn’t burn him.   He let her go after a few seconds and she drifted, all by herself, back to the dark and empty seating area where this sighting had originated, sitting on a berm and texting furiously. The unpredictability worked to my advantage in this unusual situation though as I found a wide-open bench parallel to her to watch her smoke the rest of the cigarette in solitude. As I observed, I was struck that her style was generally pretty average, with medium-length drags and medium-sized all-mouth exhales, and certainly nothing like that long-distance dangle that began this second cigarette of hers for the evening, but she more than made up for the lack of stylistic flourishes with what the rest of the evening held for me. Her female friend finally showed up just as she was wrapping up the cigarette, which she flung in front of her in the dark without bothering to crush it out while wrapping up whatever oddball texting business she had to do all by herself in the dark. End of sighting right? Hardly. Not 10 seconds after this microscopic little blond princess stood up, she was foraging in her little purse again. She wouldn’t….would she? Unbelievably the answer was yes, as another cigarette came out and was placed in her lips. She fired up and confirmed my feelings that there was indeed something very, very special about this girl, the likes of which I had still just scratched the surface of even after a good 15 minutes invested in her at this point….

She was now out of the darkness and sat in a nearby bench with her group, smoking at least her third cigarette of the last half hour. I sat across the street on a bench of my own watching her smoke yet again, admiring that adorable face and racking my brain trying to think of who she reminded me of. It wasn’t until the bus ride home that it occurred to me that it was the mid-teen country singer Lila McCann who had a few hits in the late 90s before fading into oblivion. This girl’s features were just as wholesome as a 1998-era Lila McCann, right down to the braces, except this girl also had an adorable petiteness to her that lifted her above her country-crooning counterpart. Her group was hovering in front of her so I wasn’t seeing much….and I wanted to do some exploring elsewhere anyway so I finally proceeded down that south side block as far I could go, scoring a couple of mediocre sightings and then heading back the direction I came from, fully mindful of what I left behind but thinking for sure by this point the show had played out….

Sure enough, the foursome was still on that bench that they were on 10 minutes or so earlier when I abandoned the scene. And almost immediately when I got there, blondie was rummaging through her little white purse again. No way, I thought to myself! She can’t possibly be about to do it again. But out came an empty pack of Marlboro Reds that she tossed into the nearby trash can…..followed by a brand new pack of Marlboros that she starting packing against her wrist for the next 30 seconds ago. I nearly collapsed as I watched in awe as she opened the pack and started distributing cigarettes to her friends, offering one to the unattractive brunette girl as well who was the only one who took a pass. And then of course, blondie got a cigarette for herself, at least her fourth of the last 45 minutes, and lit up. Once again, I reclaimed my bench and watched her smoke at least half of the cigarette before the usual high risk of familiarity compelled me to leave. Besides, I wanted to make one more run down the midway tonight anyway with the 11:00 hour approaching….

I walked past the teen huddle and the beer gardens block and then into the midway, stitching together a few sightings but nothing particularly memorable over the course of the 15 minutes or so since I had migrated out of the south side. But when I exited the midway, I came out at the same area where I originally saw the teen foursome commandeered by the little blond about an hour ago….and they were back again….with my favorite blond on the final couple of drags of her FIFTH cigarette of the night, and that was just the ones I witnessed. I took a seat on the very berm in which I saw her take her first drag, and she dropped this Marlboro Red to the ground and crushed it out. By this point I grew to expect the unexpected from this girl and while I didn’t want to jinx it by openly allowing myself to hope for yet another cigarette, I would barely have time to ponder the thought before her little white purse was opened again. My little cigarette Santa Claus opened that pack of Marlboro Reds and was again trying to corrupt her friends by handing them out. The shirtless white guy (whose shirt was now on again) took it, but placed it behind his ear. He may be a smoker, but there was no way he was even gonna attempt to keep up with this tiny blond girl lest he be taken to the emergency room for nicotine poisoning. My little blond ashtray mouth was now lighting up her sixth cigarette in barely an hour…and that was just the ones I had witnessed. She did share a couple of drags off of this one with the brunette friend, who I hadn’t seen smoke at all up to this point, but blondie claimed most of the cigarette and got a couple of pics taken with the girl that made me wonder if those two were more than just “friends”. My blond certainly didn’t look like a stereotypical lesbian, but the brunette sure did. Either way, as soon as the photos were finished, the group zipped right on through the teen huddle, with the blond and at least one of the guys brandishing cigarettes as they did, and migrated to yet another isolated area in the dark where they sat by themselves and smoked. The isolation they sought validated my suspicion that some if not all of them are underage….

This was another sighting where everything just seemed meant to be, because as isolated as their location was, there was a series of mostly empty benches next to a food stand with a perfect vantage point to overlook them. The foursome kept chatting and horsing around as blondie finished off her sixth cigarette, the cherry glowing a bright red every time she took a drag in this dark location. She pitched the cigarette a good five feet to the side when she finished it this time, and sat waiting with baited breath if it was humanly possible for yet another encore. In less than a minute, I’d get my answer. As she prepared her seventh cigarette of the last hour and a half to light up, I was numb with a combination of elation and disbelief. How could I have ever imagined at 10:00 when I saw this girl smoking the last few drags off of that Marlboro Red near the midway that it would have snowballed into this. A real-life teenage girl chain smoker in the year 2014, a creature I had no idea even existed anymore, and an absolute adorable pint-sized one at that. As I watched her take her early drags off of this seventh cigarette, seated on that berm with her jean shorts so short that plenty of bare upper leg was touching that cement, I also found myself thinking that her standing on my all-time ISF greatest hits list was rising with each new cigarette list, and she was now positioning herself for the very upper reaches of my all-time list.

I was nonetheless getting anxious sitting here, wanting to see what this girl was capable of but also wanting to tick off more sightings. Given how close I was to the fairgrounds’ main sightings arteries, I decided to do small loops around to pick up some additional sightings but to be sure to come back to this spot every few minutes to see how high her cigarette number for the evening would go. And so I did just that, and ended up scoring an infuriating would-be sighting of a hot 21ish blond in jean shorts sitting in the same general vicinity as my chainsmoker, next to her boyfriend who was eating. Sighting #114 never officially did become a sighting, but I saw her sitting there with an unlit cigarette in her hand on my first pass and was optimistic it would eventually be lit. But I walked past her four times over the course of 15 minutes and it never was, always just perched there between her fingers. I know there’s an oddball quit-smoking technique where smokers hold an unlit cigarette in their fingers at all times, but I was pretty confident this was not one of those situations and that cigarette would at some point be smoked. With as hot as the girl and with as sexy as her presentation, I hoped to be there when it did, but it wasn’t meant to be.

And the craziest thing happened with blondie the chain smoker too. After that seventh cigarette, she actually took a break. I hovered for about five minutes and she didn’t light up again yet remained sitting there BSing with her friends. This was my cue for another detour that would hopefully get my numbers up some, and I had already exceeded last year’s haul of 114. Had I not spent a good half hour at this point focused like a laser on this stinky little sexpot, who knows how high my number would have gone?!??!

And as further proof that when you’re hot, you’re hot, my latest voyage down the beer gardens block yielded another short sighting that nonetheless had enough color to be an extra-base hit. Right in front of the beer gardens stood Sighting #117, a very wholesome-looking mid-20s dark blond with a fresh face that didn’t look at all like a smoker. There she stood talking to her nonsmoking boyfriend/husband, puffing on a cigarette and looking very much like a pro while doing so and not just a social smoker. Most memorable about her was her outfit, a skin-tight pair of grayish yoga pants with a blue streak in the front that accentuated every awesome curve on her lower body, with a top that matched. The outfit looked very athletic and not becoming of a girl hitting the all-white cigarette the way she was. Unfortunately, she was near the end of the cigarette and she and the boyfriend/husband were approaching the beer garden’s entrance again. She stood right at the precipice of the open-air entryway while taking her final drag from the cigarette. Again defying her wholesome image, she exhaled straight into the beer gardens and flicked her still-smoldering cigarette to the side right at the edge of the entryway. I had no problem walking up and IDing the butt as a Camel Crush, and once again, a girl who didn’t fit the smoker stereotype at all put forth a brief but inspirationally obnoxious show.

After completing this latest loop and stitching together a few more modest sightings, it was back to my favorite cluster of benches yet again overlooking the isolated spot where Lila McCann’s chain-smoking baby sister was sitting. She was still sitting there, and before you even ask, the answer is YES! She was indeed in the middle of her eighth cigarette of the last hour and a half….and that was just the ones I saw. Remember a half hour passed between when I saw her smoke her first and her second, and she could have easily smoked three more cigarettes during that time. But alas, it was the eighth I had witnessed and I got there right before the two guys in her group were parting ways with the two girls, and I continued to get the lesbian lover vibe whether true or not just based on their body language around each other. Blondie’s cigarette continued to glow bright red in the darkness with her subsequent drags until she polished off that cigarette to her satisfaction and proceeded to spike it like a football on the cement. That in itself was cool enough but things got weirder when the brunette, who had taken no matter than three or four drags from any cigarette that evening, proceeded to jump off from the berm, picking up the still-smoldering cigarette off the ground and take another drag off of it. This was the oddest group of smokers I think I’ve ever come across, but I wouldn’t change a thing. A couple of minutes later, they both finally got up to leave, heading to the south side once again, and as 11:30 approached, I was prepared to abandon blondie for the night and make one loop through the main arteries of the grounds before leaving for my midnight shuttle bus.

My first order of business was taking one last voyage past the east side’s beer gardens area, a block that had already delivered in spades today but had one more magical moment in store for me before quitting time. The moment began with the evening’s final genuine “discovery”.  Sighting #123 was this knockout 18ish dark brunette standing sans an adult beverage (good indication that she was as young as she appeared) near the beer gardens entryway smoking a cigarette in the presence of two nonsmoking guys.  She was one of the half dozen or so smoker girl faces of the day that just leaped out at me yesterday because she was so beautiful and didn’t look like a smoker.  Raising the stakes of this profile was her black tanktop and ultrafeminine pair of skimpy white shorts with a mesh, lace pattern on the front.  It was quite a contrast to the freshly lit and stinky cigarette between her fingers.  Did her substance match her style on the smoking front, you ask?  Yeah buddy!  Her drags were intense and her exhales some of the cloudiest of the day, the drags featuring a trait I’ve only seen a few times before from hot young smoker girls….the gulp!  After every drag, her cheeks inflated like a blowfish with inhaled smoke that she then gulped down before exhaling.  This beauty was no amateur, and most adorably, there were two occasions where the taller nonsmoking guys she was with were on the receiving end of vicious secondhand smoke attacks as she looked up and talked to them while spewing her cancerous exhaust…..

Even after more than 12 hours of watching girls smoke, I was still capable of getting genuinely excited watching a performance like this, and had a nice vantage point to watch her consume nearly the entire cigarette, with long succulent drags she gulped down followed by giant cloudbursts of exhaled smoke that expelled the contents of her black lungs.  The sighting ended with a flourish as well as the bar was playing some sort of dance music and my girl started to shake her booty with the music in a well-choreographed groove that made her feminine assets wiggle in the sexiest imagineable way, those feminine shorts of hers being particularly impossible for me to take my eyes off.  She approached a food stand when she took her final drag and obnoxiously dropped her butt to the curb and I had no problem approaching it and identifying it as a Marlboro Black.  Naturally, I figured she was gonna order food at the stand as most people do, but for the second time that night she was apparently just socializing with whoever was working there for a couple of moments.  Why can’t I get smoker girls of her pedigree to start socializing with me?!?!?   This girl and the two guys she was with started walking the same direction as I was headed and I followed for a couple of minutes admiring that ass, and got particularly intrigued when I saw her fidgeting around in her purse, expecting that perhaps another cigarette would be smoked.  It never happened though and we parted ways soon after.

Now I chose to tell the narrative of the last girl in full because she was the highlight of my final walk to the east side beer gardens block, but there was oh so much more going on during that five-minute stretch.  Right in the middle of watching #123, I spotted Sighting #124 across the street approaching the entrance of the beer gardens in the company of a guy.  She looked like she was in her mid-20s, dark blond, wearing a pink top and jean shorts.  She was attractive but I had a choice to make to cross the street and pursue her or continue to watch my teen brunette and I chose the teen brunette.  Still, I was able to witness from afar the nasty tricks this little hottie had up her sleeve.  She was right on the precipice of the beer gardens with cigarette in hand, but she and the nonsmoking boyfriend stopped for a moment before going inside, and I presumed it was to let her finish her cigarette.  So when they walked inside about a minute later, I took one more close look to confirm my suspicion that the cigarette was gone….but it wasn’t.  Here was this adorable blond scofflaw walking deep inside the beer gardens building still criminally brandishing a cigarette.  If only a sighting like this had transpired when I wasn’t distracted by an even hotter girl.

And while those two were the main attractions on my tour of the east side beer gardens block, the hits kept coming.  First, from out of the same food stand that the #123 girl wandered towards at the end of her cigarette, emerged Sighting #125, a brunette worker from inside the stand (there were at least two others inside holding down the fort) who stepped out for a cigarette break.  She was a decently cute brunette, nothing in the league of the main event girl on the block, but still added to the sensory overload aspect of the proceedings.  As I began to head in the direction of my #123 brunette in the white lace shorts upon leaving, I stumbled across Sighting #126, another attractive blond in a flattering pink top and sexy/skimpy white shorts wielding a cigarette in the company of two more nonsmoking guys (crazy how many nonsmoking guys I saw yesterday in the company of stinky young women and girls….far more than the other way around).  Unfortunately, she was heading the other direction from the girl I was still most in love with and following, so my sighting with her was cut short, but what I wouldn’t have given about eight hours earlier to have stumbled into a girl of this caliber who I now sadly had to walk away from after seeing only one drag.

Only seconds later, I was heading west towards the concourse and a group of four drunken young gals was heading my way, two of them (Sightings #127-128) wielding cigarettes and loudly singing the chorus of the Goo Goo Dolls “Iris (I Just Want You To Know Who I Am)” as they proceeded towards the east side beer gardens.  The Goo Goo Dolls were performing at the grandstand last night so it was an obvious choice of drunken karaoke song selection.  And after I pressed forward from those two, another 20-something dark blond with a cigarette (Sighting #129) was walking my way, seemingly by herself, and startled me when she boisterously/drunkenly shouted in my face “Don’t do it!”   Whatever you say, stinky girl….I’m at your mercy!   I had a fair amount of territory left to cover in the 20 minutes until closing time, but that was one extremely productive hike to the east side beer gardens!

The plan now was to wrap up my day with one more walk up and down the south side block, then a sweeping tour of the concourse and around The Depot en route to my shuttle bus.  The plan was going swimmingly as I proceeded down the south side but the evening would have one more detour from the day’s most familiar little blond.  It would be one thing if I was consciously following this chainsmoker around all night, but I wasn’t…..I just kept randomly running into her with that ever-present cigarette in hand, and this time would be no exception.  Standing right in front of the entrance to the horse barn next to her brunette friend, my adorable little blond was polishing off her NINTH Marlboro Red of the last two hours (again, her ninth that I had seen…there was plenty of opportunity for her to have smoked a few more that I missed).  I would catch her right in the middle of her final drag before she dropped the smoldering butt to the ground and walked inside the horse barn with her friends.  Once inside, she met back up with the two guys who must have gone in in front of her while she had to stand down to smoke her latest cigarette.  And once inside, the guys were taking more pics of the two girls which set off a light bulb in my own head.  I hadn’t even thought about trying to get a photo of my own up to that point given that it was dark and I didn’t want my flash to go off, but with my girl now inside a well-lit horse barn, this could be my chance.  Unfortunately, there was no way they missed my lurking presence in the last two hours and I’d really be pushing my luck trying to score a photo, even as stealth as I’m able to be snapping pics with this camera phone.   I opted to dance close to the sun and try to score a couple of photos from just outside.  Neither of them ended up being close enough to truly capture this girl, but one at least gave a general sense of her size and pedigree.

I crossed the street to the south side beer gardens and foraged through the crowd to score another couple of modest sightings, but then migrated back to that horse barn to see if my favorite Iowa State Fair girl in years was still there.  She was, lingering with the friends towards the back of the horse barn.  Adorably, the little blond appeared to be talking to one of the horses inside the stall, and I felt sorry for the horse as his own manure had to have smelled better than being face-to-face with this chain-smoking little girl for an extended period.  Seriously though, seeing her talk to this horse really got me to thinking about how erotic it would be to make out with this girl after she had just smoked nine Marlboros in two hours.  Was this a special occasion “partying at the fair” thing or does this girl really smoke at a comparable clip day in and day out?  I’m inclined to believe it’s more likely the latter, and assuming she was going back to her senior year of high school in a couple of weeks, I can only imagine what a torturous adjustment it will be for her to struggle through a full day in class without the nicotine her body demands in such massive quantities.  I once again strongly considered going inside and snapping a pic but it was just too risky with her friends right there with her.  A close-up photo would have been the perfect icing on this multi-tiered cake, but even without one, how could I ever forget the face of the most prolific chainsmoker in my two-decade history of state fair fetishing?  A sighting that started so unassumingly only two hours ago had morphed into an all-time classic, and if I walk away from state fair season with one “classic” on any given year, I feel like I’ve achieved a major victory.  To have scored it on this day that I began with such limited expectations only made the victory that much sweeter.

I only had one problem walking away from this sighting…and that was the time.  It was now 11:47 and I was as far away from my shuttle bus as is possible on the fairgrounds.  The buses are known to haul ass out of the grounds at midnight sharp and I did not want to be stuck on the east side of Des Moines having missed my bus.  So I began to rapidly make the journey back to the concourse, still hopeful of picking off some great sightings on my way out.  And surprisingly I did as apparently the Goo Goo Dolls/Daughtry concert was just now letting out and there were a ton of people around.  I wish now I hadn’t been so worried about getting to the shuttle bus because I could have easily picked up two dozen smokers watching the crowds disperse.  As it was, I still managed nine sightings just in the process of walking down the concourse and around The Depot.  The first two were Sightings #132 and #133, a duo that consisted of a decently attractive blond and a very attractive 21ish mixed race girl whose features were the perfect hybrid of caucasian and African American with a killer body draped in a tanktop and jean shorts to match.  She was the perfect prototype of a girl whose demographic is not expected to smoke in modern times but who nonetheless was. Sadly, all I had time to do (or at least misguidedly felt as though I had time for) was a passing glance of admiration of the two cigarette-wielding babes.  In retrospect, I should have stuck around for more.

I made my way around The Depot in far too much of a hurry, picking off a half dozen more sightings before approaching the west side of the concourse and scoring my last great find of the night in Sighting #140.  There were two girls and a guy in this trio, and standing out was this beautiful 21ish curly-haired platinum blond with a freshly lit cigarette.  She didn’t look anything like my #123 girl from the east side beer gardens, but she had one similar feature in that she was also wearing a feminine and deceptively innocent-appearing white shorts with a mesh, lace pattern on the front.  The other girl in the group was not smoking but the guy was about to get a cigarette of his own from the clearly drunk-off-her-ass blond girl, but after she handed him the cigarette she drunkenly raved on about how “this is my cigarette” two or three times.  I’m not a big fan of being around dumb drunks, but when it’s extremely cute girls in white shorts with lace patterns being possessive about the cigarettes they’re addicted to, I’ll take a few minutes with a dumb drunk anytime!  I was hoping I could follow this girl straight to the shuttle bus and get a butt ID on her cigarette, but unfortunately there was another option for exiting the grounds at the northwest gate….and that’s the one she took.  It was painful watching her and her cigarette go the other direction, but she was still a fantastic way to end the night.

So now it was a block and a half left of walking on my surprisingly resilient feet and as I approached the shuttle bus loading zone, I was taken aback that there was a substantial line for the bus, something I had never seen before at 11:57 p.m. and it was obvious to me that there was no way the shuttle buses would be done loading at midnight.  This became all the more real for me as I arrived at the gate and heard one of the bus employees tell a couple with beers in their hands that they could just hang back for awhile and finish their beers because the buses would keep loading until there were no more passengers and figured it would be awhile that night given how significant the crowd still was.  I had half a mind to turn around and catch more sightings but didn’t care to play with fire, and I was genuinely exhausted by that point in the evening after 13 hours of nearly nonstop walking so I decided to just board the bus.  But during the five minutes or so of loading, I happened to look behind me in line and discover a young brunette about 15 feet behind me in the line was smoking a cigarette.  Of course there was a girl smoking in line for the bus on a night like this, I thought to myself while craning my neck to get a better look at Sighting #141.  She was a mid-to-late 20s dark brunette in a utilitarian plaid shirt and jeans, and while there was nothing particularly glamorous about her, the absolutely obnoxious way in which she was smoking and exhaling into the crowd in front of her was impossibly sexy and kept me looking back at the line right up until the moment I boarded the bus.  There was another young gal in her group who was obstructed by people but I thought I saw her with a cigarette as well, but was never able to verify it….

So I climbed aboard the bus and took a seat near the front, looking out the window in hopes of seeing more smoking but the brunette had lost the cigarette by the time I got on.  As luck would have it though, the brunette took a seat near the front with the younger-looking girl, and then shouted back “Mom!” to the middle-aged gal who was heading further back, grabbing her attention to let her know she was sitting up front with what I presumed was her younger sister.  As I watched mom sit down next to her, I was wondering if mom was intentionally trying to avoid sitting next to her stinky daughter for that 10-minute bus ride home.  The other girl of the duo was absolutely killing me wearing a pair of turquoise cutoffs showing off her sexy smooth legs that I got to admire the whole ride home, and I was hoping like mad she would light up when she got off the bus.  When the time came to get off the bus, the mother and two 20-something daughters got off first and the brunette smoker immediately lit up another cigarette.  They were going the opposite direction from where I parked my car but I still followed briefly in hopes that the cuter sister in the turquoise shorts would lit up as well, but she never did.

It was now 12:30 a.m. and time for my aching body to get to my car and head home.  While I was still a little annoyed that some crossed wires narrowly prevented me from having my biggest sightings day ever at the Iowa State Fair, the thought would have never crossed my mind 12 hours earlier that I would come within two sightings of my all-time record yesterday.  It would have been unthinkable.  And I credit the demographic set and the dismissal time of the Goo Goo Dolls-Daughtry concert for much of my success in securing such a comprehensively fantastic day with no fewer than six sightings that have the potential to make my greatest hits or my top-25 fairgrounds sightings of the year list.  Going into this fair yesterday morning, my concern was that I may not have enough great sightings to do a worthy top-25 list of genuine blockbusters this year, that seems like an unlikely concern at this point, particularly since I’m strongly leaning towards a second full day at the Iowa State Fair next Saturday, giving me 2 1/2 days of ISF sightings to draw from rather than the usual 1 1/2 days.  I’d be shocked if the second and third days at the fair prove as worthy as yesterday, but as yesterday proved, you never know what a day at the state fair is gonna bring.  You just never know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2014 Local County Fair

 

Tuesday Night

Everything was in place for a fantastic beginning to my local county fair on Tuesday night.  I had a fantastic weather forecast, I had the folks’ place to myself for a few days as they were on vacation when I came home, and my usual sweetheart arrangement of parking in my grandma’s garage each day and walking across the street to the fairgrounds.  Most years I’m giddy as a schoolgirl as I make that hike to enter the fairgrounds for the first time, but I had a problem this year.  I was sick.  It was a combination of a fever and a gut ache which I had picked up the previous night, most likely as a low-level food poisoning from that evening’s takeout barbecue meal.  It wasn’t a fully debilitating bout of sickness but it did work to kill the mood some as I proceeded to the gate at 5:30 that evening to kick off the 2014 summer fair season.

Thankfully, the mood was restored before I even got into the fairgrounds because I scored my first fairgrounds sighting of the year earlier than I’d ever got my first fairgrounds sighting of any fair.  This mid-to-late 20s late brunette of modest attractiveness wearing a tanktop and jeans was standing between two trailers just inside the fairgrounds fence as I walked by and lit up a cigarette.  I didn’t get to see a lot of her as I walked past, but considering my typical observation is that little happens at my county fair smoking-wise until after dark, this precedent of a first sighting before even entering the grounds was a beautifully encouraging one.

And those early expectations were generally lived up to.  For several years now, I’ve been having a fantastic opening night at my county fair.  Last year’s 35-sighting haul on opening night was particularly huge and not to be repeated, but I felt pretty damn excited to finish opening night with 28 sightings this year.  There were the usual slow patches during the day and, as expected, the hour or so that followed entering the gate was one of them.  I resigned myself to simply enjoying the spectacle of so many adorable girls dressed like streetwalkers and I often run into some familiar faces at this small county fair which produces a lot of returning participants year after year.

Regarding smoker girls, there were at least three returning favorites that night, two of whom were not smoking at least at the time.  One immediately recognizable face was the brunette with the tall hair and the head band who is my lifetime FCF #34.  In 2012, this girl was about 17 and smoking a cigarette on the midway and getting a kiss from her nonsmoking boyfriend before he pressed on.  And in 2013, I briefly saw the same girl sharing a cigarette with three guys.  Thus far in 2014 there has been no smoking from her but there is a development that could prove epic if I do see her light up…..she’s about eight months pregnant.  I saw her twice on the grounds last night, neither time smoking, but given that my local county fair produces at least one pregnant smoker sighting every year, there is real hope that I will stumble across this girl puffing away in the upcoming four days.  The fact that her uniquely attractive looks have held up perfectly despite being so far along in her pregnancy would make it all the more exciting.

Holding up less well was another all-time favorite I saw in the midway not too long after….4-H Tonya (FCF #18), the tall blond wearing white shorts from 2010 who was about 18 at the time and smoking with a hot friend outside the 4-H building.  She was now in her early 20s and pushing a stroller in line for midway tickets.  While she was still attractive, the pudge that was kind of fittingly hot for her in 2010 had grown, as it usually does, and she had some serious thunder thighs now.  She didn’t smoke either of the two times I ran into her on Tuesday night, and even if she had, it wouldn’t have been the same.  The third familiar face is coming at the very end of my writeup, but unfortunately I should prepare you all now for what I suspect will be a huge disappointment for a blog favorite.

My friend Corey, who was at a horse show in Kansas City during fair week in 2013, called me two weeks before this year’s fair to say that he would indeed be attending this year and would be doing so solo as his wife would be going to the horse show without him.  Corey has at times been a cockblock when it comes to seeing great sightings play out and there’s incredible danger that he will this year, and I got my first reminder of that when I saw him standing on Machinery Hill only a half hour or so after my arrival.  He was looking at his phone when I saw him and I just had a feeling a call was coming my way any second.  Sure enough, my phone went off and he wanted to meet right then.  I agreed and approached him.  Thankfully, he at least didn’t force me to wade through sightings-free livestock buildings as he has some years in the past but as we roamed the grounds talking I wasn’t fully engaged in sightings and wouldn’t be able to focus on them if I came across one.  The first example of this came in between two buildings on the south side of the ground where an attractive short-haired brunette was smoking a cigarette sitting next to her nonsmoking boyfriend.  It’s not like I missed out on anything too earth-shattering when we walked past them without stopping, but it frightened me that at some point I would be forced to miss something great.  Luckily, hours later, I’d see this short-haired brunette again on the grounds, once again smoking in the presence of the wholesome boyfriend who wasn’t touching the stuff.

There was about an hour to kill wandering the grounds and getting food before they let people into the grandstand for the 8:30 show.  I still wasn’t feeling great and knew it was a giant gamble to get one of the county fair gyros I love so much.  While I didn’t ralph, it did end up being a mistake as that thing didn’t set well at all with me for the rest of the night and into the morning. The upside was that while standing in line for the gyro, a young couple with a stroller was in front of me.  The early 20s mom was petite and modestly attractive in her tanktop and shorts.  And at the top of the stroller she was pushing was a pack of Marlboro Menthols and a lighter.  My rule of thumb is that if there’s just cause to believe a girl is a smoker, I count it as a sighting even if she’s not lighting up at the moment.  Thankfully I’d get my confirmation later in the night when I saw the girl smoking.

After purchasing the gyro, I headed up to my favorite spot in the grandstand overlooking the smoking area and the beer gardens with Corey following me.  When I first started sitting in this spot back in 2009-2010, it seemed to be overflowing with younger smokers.  On some occasions, the fenced-in beer gardens area is, but the smoking area itself seems to mostly produce middle-aged and overweight smokers anymore.  It’s a sign of the times I suppose, indicative of how many fewer attractive young women and girls are smoking now even compared to five years ago.  And the area (combined with the beer gardens on the other side of the chain-link fence) produced a handful of sightings tonight over the course of the two hours or so I sat there before and during the concert by country music newcomer Eric Paslay….

One was a slender late 20s blond in a pink T-shirt and tight pale blue jeans who lit one up inside the beer gardens.  Another was an early 30s Americanized-looking Asian gal with a nonsmoking white boyfriend/husband who was bopping along to the music inside the beer gardens when she fired one up.  But the best girl by far who I saw inside the beer gardens smoking was this gorgeous long-haired mid-20s blond in a long black dress.  Unfortunately, she was immersed in a tight pack of people in the middle of the beer gardens and it was hard to get a good look at her.  But on three different occasions, there was just enough of an opening to see her take a drag and it was very nice every time I got to witness.  Later in the night, I saw this girl upclose outside of the beer gardens.  She wasn’t smoking but it was great to confirm that she was as wholesome and as beautiful as I suspected when I saw her from afar smoking inside the beer gardens.

The Eric Paslay show was a surprisingly low-energy affair, so much so that Corey told me halfway through he was tired and heading home early.  This was music to my ears since I wouldn’t have to worry about him shadowing me after the show.  I bid Corey adieu and only about 10 minutes later decided to depart myself, exploring the grounds for smoker girls now that it was well after dark when the stinky girls typically finally start making an appearance at my fair.  I stayed within earshot of the grandstand until the show ended so I could hear the rest of the songs Paslay sang, but when he wrapped up, it was time to head down into the midway.  Right away, I took note of this family that included a very sweet-looking mid-teen light brunette daughter wearing a below-the-belt ensemble that grabbed my attention.  She was wearing a skin-tight pair of tight jeans in a way that only a mid-teen girl can and had a pair of black leather boots with a high heel that snugly wrapped around her lower legs.  The thought of smoking never even crossed my mind so I pressed on into the midway….

Finally I started to put together some sightings as I saw from the rear this attractive ponytailed brunette with a cigarette between her fingers accompanied by a husband/boyfriend and a young son who looked about three years old.  She looked great from the rear in a conservative black sweatshirt and tight dark jeans, and I got to see her take two drags as she approached a carnival stand with the son, dropping the cigarette to the ground and crushing it out before turning to the carnival worker to play a game with the son.  I finally was able to see her face and she very much lived up to expectations with a wholesome face that matched the outfit.  Of all the young mommies I saw at the fair last night, she would have been one of the last ones I would have expected of being a smoker.  As soon as I had an opening, I knelt down and IDed her discarded butt…..and was very impressed that my hard-core mommy was smoking a Marlboro Red.  Methinks this kid has a smoking fetish in his future.

I migrated further into the midway and noticed an 18ish brunette wielding an unlit cigarette.  She was decently attractive, decked out in a sweatshirt and dark jeans and looked as though she might be at least half Latina, but she was conversing with people and after a few minutes of lingering it was clear she wasn’t gonna be smoking the cigarette any time soon.  Thankfully, I was lucky enough to be around about a half hour later when she did light it up, standing in front of the fairgrounds’ primary bathroom complex with a mixed-gender group of friends in which she was the only one smoking.  She was a solid smoker too and even though the stalking logistics weren’t great, I got to see a good five or six drags which were all lengthy and with cloudy exhales.  She was definitely worth the wait.

But going back in time a bit to right after I spotted the last girl with the unlit cigarette in the midway, I ventured back the direction I came from in the midway and saw the sighting of the night–and the girl to beat for the entire fair at this point–and she was a familiar face and a familiar lower body.  The mid-teen girl in the tight jeans with the form-fitting black leather boots was actually smoking….in the company of her family!  I was kicking myself for not being around for the light-up on this one, but as sick as I was it was probably for the best or my poor feverish body might have collapsed if I had been present to see this most unlikely mid-teen light brunette cutiepie, whose face was every bit as adorable and as unlikely to be a smoker as her tight and relatively petite young body, light up a cigarette.  What made this sighting most fascinating was the family dynamics.  On the bench was the 15-16ish daughter and the nonsmoking dad.  Mom was lingering to the side, and in front of the bench was a lanky, awkward 18-19ish older brother who was also smoking a younger sister who looked about 10.  Neither parent was smoking yet the two kids publicly were, including the underage daughter.  She had yet to take a drag but just seeing her sit there with the half-smoked cork filter so close to those tight jeans almost made my knees buckle….

But then she did take that first drag and it was spectacular, ingesting a good four seconds worth of smoke before tilting her head up with a pleasured look on her face and exhaling skyward….straight into the face of her baby sister who was standing there.  I’m assuming that was an accident, but nothing was said by way of disgust by the younger sister or of apology by the smoker girl.  Any doubt that I had stumbled into an FCF classic was now removed.  It was dark and I didn’t want to tell on myself by turning my camera flash on, but I still had to get a snapshot of this.  The photo is blurry but it will nonetheless preserve this moment in time forever more.  The family began noticing my awkward lingering presence so I had to venture a small distance away to an open bench that still provided me a nice vantage point to her remaining drags.  Nobody got it in the face from her subsequent exhales but they were still a pure joy to watch, especially knowing she had the freedom to smoke in the immediate presence of her parents.  All too quickly, the show ended with a final drag.  She bent over and stubbed out the cigarette for a few seconds on the pavement below the bench, and only then sat upright again, tilted her head skyward with a look of pleasure on her face, and released another beautiful smoke missile into the night sky.  As down as I sometimes get about the decline of smoking in modern culture, the fact that a sighting like this can still play out at my county fair in the year 2014 means I’ll still have a few good days to come in this life.  The family got up and left a few moments later and I zipped on over to check out her discarded cigarette butt.  It was a full-flavor Marlboro Menthol.

And while the smoking part of this sighting was done, I’d see the brother and sisters several more times Tuesday evening and it filled in a couple blanks regarding the context.  The brother and sister were sitting on a bench quietly outside the beer gardens the next time I saw them, and I figured they must have been waiting for the parents inside the beer gardens.  It was such a joy to see that innocent-looking girl in her tight jeans and boots sitting there and knowing she was an addicted cigarette smoker.  On my next pass, all three kids were lingering near the beer gardens entrance and the dad was talking to them out the door, asking about “their mother” and confirming that this was a family dynamic as suspected.  The dad then proceeded to fork over some money to the kids, with my favorite girl en route to picking up a “walking taco”.  I wouldn’t see them again that night but am very hopeful for sightings of her later this week.  She’ll have a hard time finding a more perfect outfit to contrast with her smoker girl reality in the days ahead, however.  I tell you she was enough to make a sick man well again.

I wouldn’t hit a high note like that again for the rest of the night, but my very next sighting would be my second best of the evening.  I was hovering in the back of the midway amidst a crowd of young people looking and sniffing around for any sign of exhaled cigarette smoke.  But out of the range of my nose off to the side was where I would hit the jackpot.  A duo of 21ish girls was wielding freshly lit cigarettes.  One girl was unattractive and overweight but the other girl was an absolute angel, a long-haired blond wearing a stylish denim jacket over a summery black dress.  It is impossible to convey how wholesome this girl was.  She looked like she should be doing commercials for skim milk rather than dragging on an all-white cigarette at the back of the county fair midway.  Her smoking style lacked bells and whistles but she was a sexy and accomplished smoker, taking nice drags and exhaling very precise exhales through her mouth.  But the highlight of this sighting was that face….sweet Jesus this girl did not look like a smoker in the least.  Out of all the people over 18 at the FCF, she may have been the last person I would have predicted would smoke.  I observed the show from an open bench and the one downside of the sighting was that the fat friend sometimes lingered directly in the line of vision and I didn’t see everything, but I still got to see about 80% of it.  After a good five minutes of very nice smoking, she dropped the cigarette to the grass, crushed it out and approached the line for the “Ring of Fire” carnival ride where another nonsmoking friend was holding the smokers’ place in line.  I walked over to where they were standing while smoking and found two Camel Lights butts in the grass.  A half hour or so later, I saw the three friends stepping on to another carnival ride and again was in disbelief that THIS BLOND BEAUTY was addicted to Camel Lights.  As badly as I felt, I was running on pure adrenaline after seeing these two excellent sightings back to back.

Exiting the midway and heading down one of the main avenues, I’d soon get another quality sighting when I spotted a trio of 19-20ish dudes in the company of a hot blond.  Now this blond wasn’t the classic beauty the last girl was, but her gray tanktop and dark jean shorts covering a perfect ass was my kind of summer outfit, especially when she was holding an unlit cigarette in her hand.  I followed them to an isolated seating area outside a closed-down-for-the-night 4-H food stand where the girl and one of the guys sparked up their cigarettes.  It was adorable seeing her put her legs up on the barrier in front of her as she sat on the bench smoking.  Unfortunately, I strongly suspect I was spotted early and often glaring at this group as I caught them making eye contact with me several times.  After a few moments of this they got up and left.  I stealthly walked around a building and kept tabs on them for a bit, but eventually they walked out of sight.  The logistics just weren’t good enough on this one which was unfortunate because the girl was impressive.

I only had one female e-cigarette sighting last night but unfortunately it was a heartbreaker.  This very wholesome looking light brunette in a tanktop and jean shorts amidst a friend’s group was dragging copiously off of one of them ugly vaporizers.  Watching the vapor exhaled through her nose, I shook my head in disgust at what a waste this was.  Thankfully, there was little additional evidence that these things are catching on among my preferred demographic.

Next to impress was another wholesome early 20s brunette who I saw from the rear with smoldering cigarette in hand.  She was in the company of another nonsmoking boyfriend.  Her cigarette was near its end so I only got to see a couple of drags from the rear before she knelt down and crushed it out on the pavement before tossing the butt into a nearby garbage can, denying me the butt ID.  Most intriguing about this girl was her outfit, a red top with a very feminine denim skirt that was more puffy than tight.  It definitely didn’t look like the outfit a smoker girl would wear to the fair.  She progressed into a more lighted region of the grounds walking hand and hand with the nonsmoking boyfriend and forcing him to choke on her fresh cigarette stench.  It was time for me to pace ahead and get a good look at her face.  She was decently attractive but certainly not stop-traffic gorgeous.  Still didn’t look like a smoker though.  And definitely her most memorable accessory was that girly girl denim skirt.

Bad logistics again short-circuited the next sighting, which featured an adorably tiny 17ish ponytailed blond in a white top and pale blue jean shorts standing amidst a group of nonsmoking female friends with a mostly smoked cork filter in hand.  The girl was more “cute” than “hot”–standing no more than 5’1″ and 100 pounds– but she seemed to have a colorful personality, doing most of the talking and leaving her nonsmoking friends laughing.  I only got to see two drags from an awkward location before she dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it out.  I wanted to ID that butt but she wasn’t going anywhere.  Thankfully she cooperated by revealing her left hand holding a pack of Newports.  Wish I could have gotten more from this one but she was still probably my third best find of the night.  And not far away from this group was another group of three 18ish girls, all relatively mediocre looks-wise but all smoking, helping me boost my numbers for the night up.  Petite blondie wandered their direction and started chatting them up as well, still proudly brandishing that pack of Newports.

The midway shut down at about 11:15 Tuesday night, 45 minutes before it’s usual midnight closing.  This was a bad development for a number of reasons.  It reduced the already limited amount of territory for me to navigate on this grounds and it shrunk the fairgrounds population pretty significantly in what is almost always the heaviest smoking hour of the night.  This would lead me to leave about 20 minutes sooner than usual but not before scoring a couple more memorable sightings.  The first came in this dark seating area next to the pizza stand where a group of four 21ish girls were sitting.  One of them was smoking a freshly lit cigarette while the others were eating pizza.  From what I could see she was attractive, but the combination of darkness and her black sweatshirt and long sepia hair camouflaged her a bit.  A group of guys approached, a couple wielding cigarettes, and I took the distraction as the opportunity to walk past her.  I still didn’t get a great look, but confirmed she was decently attractive and a pretty impressive smoker as well judging from the long drags and exhales I saw in silhouette.

From there it was time to go and as I approached the north exit en route to my grandma’s garage to retrieve my car, I got the confirmation of a suspicion from earlier regarding the aforementioned “blog favorite”.  The girl in question was 2012’s mid-teen “Selena Gomez” lookalike discovery who I saw again in 2013 putting on a more mature smoking performance.  I had seen a girl I figured might be her earlier in the evening, but despite her memorably cute face, trademark short jean shorts, and long legs, couldn’t tell for sure because something was off.  It was her hair.  Regrettably, her hair is now some alternative Miley Cyrus-style abomination shaved on one side with a fluff of hair on top hanging over the other side.  At least she didn’t go with a bleach blond as Miley did and kept her original trademark brunette.  Anyway, the reason I knew for sure it was her this time was because….she was smoking a cork-filter cigarette, assuredly one of her infamous Newports.  She was the only smoker in her group of six or so in fact.  There was absolutely no hope of me successfully watching her smoke at this uber-isolated part of the fairgrounds without getting caught 20 times over, so I just kept walking occasionally looking over my shoulder and catching one drag that was impressive like those I saw from her this year.  Still, why oh why do adorable young smoker girls have to grow up?  While her unattractive hairdo certainly doesn’t discredit her lengthy body of work over the previous two years, it’s hard for me to imagine she’ll make 2014’s year-end favorites list as she did in 2012 and 2013 because I just can’t get past the goofy haircut.

On that mellow closing note, I walked to my car, sicker than ever as the gyro I ate was hanging with me like a block of cement in my gut.  As I was pulling out of my grandma’s garage and preparing to pull onto the street to go home, I spotted a familiar smoker walking home herself…..the girl next to the pizza stand about 15 minutes earlier.  Unfortunately it was still too dark to see her face as she walked home with two of the guys who approached her earlier, but it wasn’t too dark to see that she was smoking again.  Overall, a very good night.  A Tuesday night sighting haul of 28 is rock solid and I know I already have one sighting assured of being in my year-end top-25 fairgrounds sightings.  Hopefully the momentum will carry on into Wednesday….and hopefully I feel less like a dead man walking when I go.

 

 

Wednesday Night

I’m unhappy to report that I went into night two of my local county fair still feeling sick, barely eating anything all day as upset as my stomach was.  My fever had lifted some but not entirely and the entire fair experience continues to suffer because of it.  On the other hand, if the smoker girls continue to deliver the way they did for a second night in a row on Wednesday night, going to the fair feeling less than 100% is a small sacrifice.  As depressed as I often get about the state of affairs with smoking these days, especially among younger girls, visiting my small-town home county fair in southern Minnesota successfully lifts my spirits year after year.  I didn’t get an individual sighting as exceptional as my best one from Tuesday night, but I got a flurry of “extra base hit” sightings, sticking with the baseball metaphor that I find to be a useful metric.  The total sightings number was 23, but with a number of repeat offenders.  And while I didn’t get in “trouble” the way I did three years ago when I got cornered by the cops, I did get another gentle reminder of my very obvious exposure level on this small fairgrounds.

I arrived at the fairgrounds around 6:45, giving me a small window of about 45 minutes before Corey was supposed to meet up with me for the concert.  Considering how scarce sightings tend to be at this fair at this time of the night, I was fine with that.  But I had only been there about 10 minutes before stumbling into my cousin and her husband who I frequently see at the fair.  And I talked to them about 10 seconds before I heard my phone going off, even though it wasn’t yet 6:00.  It was Corey….who saw me walking by while he was eating and decided to call to meet up early.  Thanks buddy!  This development assured me of zero sightings before the concert of country singer Craig Campbell.  I sat down with Corey and chatted while he finished eating fair food, and he then wanted to venture way into the fairgrounds parking lot to get something out of his truck.  This held some potential of seeing girls sneaking a smoke in the parking lot but nothing happened.  We ventured back in and took seating in my favorite spot for the concert.

The smoking area and beer gardens were relatively sparse again and I wasn’t confident I’d get much in the way of sightings here again this evening, but I ended up doing okay.  The first “sighting” of relevance was one of two heartbreakers that I’ll count as a sighting even though I didn’t see actual smoking.  These two girls who looked about 18 had been lurking in the smoking area for much of the concert, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were gonna smoke as, like many others who lurk in this area, they were chatting it up with older adults on the other side of the fence inside the beer gardens.  I still held out hope though as both girls brought some IT factor to the table, with the prettiest of the two being a long-haired blond wearing a denim jacket and a summery flower print dress while the other girl, a long-haired light brunette, was wearing a pink top and very tight dark jeans.  I got my hopes up most when a trio of older smokers, one of whom didn’t look old enough to be either of the girls’ parents and the other two who looked too old to be their parents, approached the fence to chat it up with them.  The girls conversed with the older people who they clearly knew, but after about five minutes, the oldest guy of the three who looked like he was about 60, appeared to be beckoning something from the pretty blond in the dress.  Sure enough, she opened her purse and pulled out a pack of Newports, extracting a cigarette for the guy.  So this was gonna be a perfect opportunity for her to have a cigarette for herself right?  Wrong!  In fact, the two of them lurked in the area at least another 15 minutes and she never did smoke.  As I’ve said before, if I have every reason to believe based on anecdotal evidence (such as possession) that the girl smokes, I’ll count her as a sighting, but this is clearly one with an asterisk next to it.  I had hoped to see her later on the grounds actually smoking as I so often do at this fair, but it didn’t happen this time.

In fact, it wouldn’t be until the last 15 minutes or so of the concert before I finally hit pay dirt, and boy did I ever, with one of the most confusing sightings I’ve ever gotten.  This sighting had all the bells and whistles to be worthy of year-end greatest-hits acclaim, but I’m not sure here because the ambiguity was maddening.  This cute and petite little blond in a tanktop and jean shorts wandered out of the grandstand and lurked in the smoking area.  She looked about 13 so I figured she was just waiting for somebody or preparing to send a text.  Imagine my utter disbelief when about five seconds later an unlit cigarette was inserted into her lips and sparked up.  I continued to be skeptical though as her back was now towards me and I figured I must have just missed her face.  She had to have simply been an older girl who looked really young, but she cooperated nicely and took a seat on a bench in the smoking area, sitting in the light and letting me have as good of a look at her face as I could possibly get.  And sweet Jesus I could still swear she was not a day over 14.  But that’s when the confusion started.  Two much older guys followed her onto the bench and it was clear they were part of the same group.  I didn’t get a good look at the guy who sat across from her with his back to me, but figured he was in his 30s.  But the guy who sat next to her was this bearded, thuggish-looking young guy who looked about 22.  All three of them were smoking cigarettes and I was carefully studying this odd dynamic for clues as to their association with one another…..

What I got were a contrasting litany of clues that continue to leave me scratching my head the next day as I write this.  The girl carried herself like a very new smoker, everything from the way she held her cigarette to her extremely shallow one-second drags and minimalist exhales.  And adorably, she had a jug of Gatorade in front of her that she was taking sips from in between shallow drags on her cigarette.  Everything about her smoking style screamed that she was exactly what she originally seemed, an early teen girl who just picked up the smoking habit.  But right when I thought I had this situation figured out and was leaning back to enjoy a rare show of an adorable beginner early teen smoker, the thuggish bearded guy leaned over to give the girl a quick peck on the lips.  I had dismissed the prospect of this guy being her boyfriend because he looked at least eight years older than she did, but the evidence was now pointing to him being just that.  Was she considerably older than she looked?  I just kept looking at that tender face right in front of me and simply couldn’t see it.  There was just no way she was older than 14!  But I couldn’t imagine this guy being any less than 21 and would be pretty shocked if he was carrying out a public relationship with a girl as young as this girl seemed given the obvious legal implications….

I never quit trying to figure this sighting out but it only got more confusing.  After several minutes she crushed the cigarette out on the edge of the bench she was sitting on and dropped it to the grass.  Show over right?  Not by a longshot.  I wasn’t paying as close of attention in the moments after she finished her cigarette but lo and behold when I looked over again she was already smoking another one, her smoking style continuing to consist of the shallowest imaginable drags and exhales.  The presumed boyfriend smoked another as well, and also pulled in for another quickie kiss.  But things just got insane after she finished the second cigarette and she reached to the pack of L & M and lighter in front of her to fire up a THIRD cigarette.  Even with all the ambiguity about the girl’s age, I had still grown comfortable with the idea that she was a rookie smoker based on her rudimentary style, but now even that was in question.  After all, how many rookie smokers smoke three cigarettes in a row over a 15-minute period.  The confusion was killing me, but it was a good kind of killing to be sure.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence inside the beer gardens, two attractive 20-something blonds were lighting up cigarettes of their own.  They were both hot but stealing the show was the long-haired blond with pink top and skimpy black cutoffs.  It was darker on the other side of the fence so I didn’t get as excellent of a vantage point as I did with the would-be 14-year-old cutie in the smoking area, but I was able to see that the girls were both hot and much more skilled smokers than the teenager with long, deep drags and cloudy exhales.  It was not uncommon for me to be able to dart my eyes from the young girl outside the fence to the two 20-somethings inside the fence and see three consecutive drags, the cherries of their cigarettes glowing red one after another with a cloud of smoke spewed from their respiratory systems that were as black as the evening sky.  It was far and away the highlight thus far of the smoking area from the two nights of concerts.

And the show ended right around the same time as well as the two 20-somethings wrapped up their cigarettes around the same time and crushed them out while the younger girl who had by now smoked as many cigarettes combined as the two older guys in her company finished her third cigarette soon after.  The concert was wrapping up and the trio got up to leave moments before Corey and I would depart, giving me one last look at this girl’s body which, again, looked like that of an early teen girl.  So what was the most likely scenario here?  Perhaps it was exactly as it seemed and a much older guy was dating this jailbait girl and corrupting her into being a smoker.  But honestly I suspect he may have been a few years younger than I suspected and she may have been a few years older.  You’ll occasionally run into girls, especially really petite girls, who look much younger than they are, but damn if this girl didn’t look like she was just getting ready to start the eighth grade next month.  I didn’t see her on the grounds again Wednesday night but have three more nights in which to do so and am hoping I can possibly get more context to understand her story.  Even with the confusion, I’d still rate this as my second best sighting of the night.

Corey again cooperated beautifully and left immediately after the concert.  He works early in the morning but only on weekdays so there’s still no guarantee he’ll be taking off right after the concert on Friday and Saturday nights.  Whatever the case, it was not yet 10 and I had full fetish freedom for the next couple of hours.  Unfortunately, my timing was off for the next one, the second of the heartbreaking would-be sightings of the night.  I had just walked over to the grandstand’s south side entrance to see if there were any smokers leaving the concert on that end of the fairgrounds.  I then returned to the north side entrance where I had just emerged from and out of the corner of my eye caught two blond hotties hustling through the grass en route to the main bathroom complex.  The girl that dominated my attention was this 19-20ish long-haired dark blond in black blouse with a pattern on it and pair of gorgeously fitting acid-washed light blue jean shorts.  The main reason she dominated my attention, however, is that she was holding a pack of Marlboro Lights in her hand.  I followed her and the friend to the bathroom and they went inside.  I sat on the bench outside the bathroom awaiting their exit with the hope that cigarettes would be fired up then.  But when they exited the bathroom the cigarettes apparently retreated into the one girl’s purse.  The smoking most likely occurred before I arrived on the scene and I probably just missed it….

Still, looking at these girls they had a certain badass look about them, with very mature faces that made me suspect they may have been a little older than I first expected, but soon after stepping away from the bathroom, they took note of a couple of high school girls hovering and they greeted one another in a way that suggested they were of the same general age group, reaffirming my original suspicion that the girls were under 21.  They were progressing to the remote north side of the grounds and I followed with the hope that they may get around to smoking again.  Instead they wandered into one of the horse buildings and I couldn’t follow without looking too familiar to them.  Even without seeing smoking though, it was a huge treat to watch the one girl’s ass in those tight jean shorts and knowing that the owner of this spectacular body was a cigarette smoker.  My plan was to try to keep tabs on this duo as I expected more from them, but every attempt I made to return to the remote part of the grounds where they had migrated was met with distractions of the good kind, so I wouldn’t see them again.  A minor disappointment, but there were plenty of other shiny objects in the coming two hours that made up for it.

The next shiny object in question would end up being my favorite sighting of the night.  I was walking past the edge of the midway when I spotted a guy and an adorable ponytailed blond cutie who looked about 18 or 19 standing in front of a food stand.  The girl had a freshly lit cigarette in her hand.  She was probably the purest and most distinguished beauty of the night with a face that was in one sense quite wholesome, but in another sense, she also didn’t look out of place in possession of her cigarette.  She was wearing a black sweatshirt (this is Minnesota and after dark it gets cool even in July) along with a skimpy pair of medium blue jean shorts that shaped her ass gorgeously and showed off her slender, perfect legs beneath them.  I hovered in the general area hoping to see something that impressed but nothing prepared me for the show I was about to get, which began with the appetizer of a long, deep drag followed by a monstrously cloudy exhale.  Then the sighting took on another player as another blond of the same age who was apparently in the company of this couple emerged from the food stand, and she was wielding a cigarette too.  Now this girl was definitely chubbier than I’d prefer but very pretty, and decked out in a conservative plaid blouse and jeans.  And as I was acclimating myself to her added presence to the sighting, the unlikely main event of this sighting came next as the original girl was stepping up to the front of the food stand and quickly walked away carrying a gigantic bag of cotton candy!  The trio then began to walk into the midway and I giddily followed….

I had already gotten some of anecdotal evidence that the ponytailed blond was something special but I was about to get some more as I watched the cigarette go into her mouth and could have sworn I saw both of her hands free while she did (remember I was following from the rear), and the exhale that followed flowed out of her mouth and must have caught the slightest breeze as it then flowed right back to her face and the smoked rolled past her cheeks and drifted my direction.  Much as I enjoyed seeing her gorgeous ass from the rear, I needed to position myself parallel to her to see this smoking style a little more directly.  When I did, she confirmed that I had seen what I thought I had from the rear….a lengthy no-handlebars dangling drag.  The cigarette was placed in the right corner of her mouth and remained perfectly straight as she puckered her lips around the filter and took a long, deep drag, followed by a thundercloud exhale.  The chubby friend was a decent smoker too, but she was definitely playing second fiddle to the main event here.  But it was then that my favorite girl started opening that bag of cotton candy.  Now smoking-while-eating sightings have always been near the top of my list of triggers, but I don’t think I ever anticipated I’d stumble upon a smoking-while-eating sighting that included cotton candy.  I really can’t imagine the two tastes blending together well!  But apparently the tastes suited each other just fine to my adorable blond as she proceeded to alternate between stuffing her palate with a giant glob of cotton candy and a deep, intense drag from her cork filter cigarette, almost always in the form of her very distinctive no-handlebars dangling drags where the erect cigarette extended from the right corner of her mouth for a good five seconds.

The trio of friends eventually migrated to the back of the midway and settled in a larger group of mutual acquaintances made up mostly of guys, several of them who were smoking.  This was a doubled-edged sword as I was able to find a bench with a great vantage point of the group, but I also knew that my chances of a butt identification would be very long now that there were so many smokers hovered in this one area and not likely to go anywhere for awhile even after finishing their cigarettes.  But I had about three more minutes of enjoying my front-row seat of the show, occasionally catching glimpses of the chubby blond friend but mostly focusing my attention on this beautiful baby-faced blond doing one after another dangling drags in between eating big chunks of cotton candy.  At one point she even stuffed her mouth with cotton candy before the exhale from her last cigarette drag exited her mouth.  This girl was clearly very well-practiced as a smoker and the contrast between her extreme style and her girly girl face was getting a big old rise out of this boy’s pants.  She dropped the cigarette to the ground and I could see again that it was a cork filter but as expected, the crowd of smokers hovered there and I simply couldn’t wait them out for a butt ID.  I grudgingly got up to leave but it wouldn’t be the last I’d see of this girl or her friend.  In fact, I saw the chubby friend two more times within the hour, smoking both times.  But despite her chubbiness, the girl was pretty enough and a solid enough of a smoker that I would unequivocally bed her down if given the chance.

Now remember, at this point I was still hoping to catch those girls again from the horse barn, one of whom was carrying the pack of Marlboro Lights and who I likely just missed a smoking show from, so I was planning to head that direction again just in case, but on the front side of the midway I’d get another distraction from another 18ish smoker girl, this one a curly haired brunette in a gray top and tight pale blue jeans covering her slender female figure.  She was walking next to a nonsmoking guy I figured was a boyfriend and they approached a group of benches and a whole slate of fellow teenagers they apparently knew.  The girl’s cigarette was already about 80% gone but she somehow made it last several more drags while visiting with her mixed-gender friends, none of whom were smoking at the time.  But after she finished the cigarette and dropped it to the pavement in an inaccessible spot given the situation, she migrated to another bench where she opened her purse, extracted a pack of Newports, and handed a cigarette to an unattractive black girl who was apparently a friend.  This gave me the brand ID I was hoping for so I figured I had gotten everything I was gonna get out of this sighting.  As an aside, there was this very old man (well into his 70s) who sat on these same benches smoking several times last night.  I figured he worked in one of the carnival stands nearby.  He was quiet and kept to himself except for one incident where he saw a couple preteen boys climb onto one of the tables and he shouted out “get off the tables” in a surprisingly curmudgeonly tone.  Keep this guy in mind because he comes to play in a future sighting at the end of the evening.

Again attempting to make my way to the horse barn area on the north side, I was again sidetracked in the best possible way.  A group of five 17-ish kids, three guys and two girls, was walking my direction.  Right away, I noticed the cute and slender short-haired brunette in a white top and pale jeans had a freshly lit cigarette between her fingers.  As soon as I passed her, I turned around to follow, once again failing to reach the horse barn.  As I turned I discovered there was another cigarette possessor amongst this crowd…and it happened to be the other girl.  I had yet to see her face but her profile was such that she instantly became my primary person of interest in this group.  My mouth must have been hanging open admiring her red hair hanging over the shoulders of her white tanktop with a delicious pair of shorts framing her spectacularly curvy ass, the shorts having a black background with a pink and red flower pattern over it, and all with the freshly lit cigarette held between her fingers only inches away from those shorts.  Two cops were walking towards them and as they passed the group, one of the cops looked to the other and said matter-of-factly “smoking” as if speculating whether they were underage or not but thankfully not hassling them.  It must have been enough of a warning sign for the group though as they migrated towards the back of a mini-donut stand about 50 yards to the south to continue with their cigarettes, and where at least two of the guys lit up as well, which was mildly disappointing as I would have preferred the girls being the only smokers in the group.  I was able to find a nearby bench to watch a fair amount of the remaining show and finally got a good look at the redhead’s face.  She wasn’t a perfect 10 beauty but she had a girl-next-door accessibility about her that was very attractive and I definitely wouldn’t have guessed she was a smoker, unlike the brunette who looked more like a smoker.  Both girls were decent smokers, both neither had any definitive stylistic flourishes.

The group didn’t stick around behind the mini-donut stand long though and progressed across the street towards the midway.  I followed hoping for a butt ID but knew I was in trouble when they stopped and started talking amongst each other in a huddle.  I took a nearby bench and watched as both girls took final drags from their cigarettes.  The redhead crushed hers out beneath her feet and I tried to mark the spot for when they left, but unfortunately the other smokers in the group were littering their own cigarettes in the same general area.  When they departed a couple of minutes later I approached the spot and found a flurry of butts, none of which I could identify with certainty.  I suspected the redhead’s was the all-white Marlboro Light Special Blend butt though.

At most seven minutes passed and I was walking through a different part of the fairgrounds.  I looked to the west and couldn’t believe my eyes when this same mixed-gender group of 17-year-olds was smoking again, or at least both of the girls were.  My intent was to follow them again to assure myself of getting a butt ID, but I was briefly sidetracked walking by the BINGO stand and seeing a long-haired brunette sitting on the outer bench of the BINGO pavilion with a cigarette in hand.  She looked attractive from the back and I just had to get a look at her face.  She was prettier and more wholesome even than I expected, apparently a young mother whose young son who looked about two was sitting next to her and the nonsmoking Hispanic guy I presumed was her husband/boyfriend.  I had to just stand there lurking and really drew attention to myself doing so, but I wanted to catch at least one drag from her before parting.  And she didn’t disappoint either, taking a nice long drag and then turning her head to exhale as politely as possible amidst all the BINGO players, most of them nonsmokers.  Much as I would have loved to stick around for more, I was way too wide-open standing just outside the pavilion watching this…and I wanted to see if I could catch up to my favorite new stinky redhead anyway.

I was skeptical whether I would because I didn’t see what direction her group was going but in a minute or so I spotted them, heading back north presumably to the parking lot to leave.  I tried to keep some distance since at least some people in this group would certainly have noticed my presence at various points in the last several minutes, but I really wanted a butt ID.  They migrated into ever-darker areas of the grounds, which meant the best I could get in terms of smoking observations was seeing their cherries glow as they dragged at just the right angle or catch their plumes of exhaled exhaust.  As expected, they turned left once they got to the north end of the grounds, heading for the parking lot.  I watched from a distance and swore that I saw my redheaded stranger toss her butt into the gravel as she walked.  I drifted that direction thinking it would be a piece of cake to find the still-smoldering cigarette and confirm her butt, but unfortunately I just couldn’t find a smoldering butt in the dark.  Perhaps she didn’t toss the cigarette as I expected and I simply mistook a random hand gesture she was making to her group as tossing a butt.  Whatever the case, I did see two Marlboro Light Special Blend butts while observing the area where I thought she tossed the butt, which may well have been hers and would be in keeping with the butt I thought was hers from the midway earlier.

And in keeping with the theme of the night, as I was surveying the landscape for the previous girl’s discarded cigarette butt, I looked up to discover another foursome of guys and girls that included another emphysema beauty.  The light brunette with shoulder-length hair, a bare-midriff top, and white shorts was the only smoker in the group–which I couldn’t see too closely given the darkness–and I was a little disappointed as the dark blond in pink shorts next to her looked like a knockout from afar.  The group was walking my direction and were apparently drifting to a bathroom structure way out in the boonies that I didn’t even know existed.  It was apparently only the guys who needed to use the facilities (there’s a switch!) as the two girls took a bench in a pretty isolated area where I sat down to observe.  While it was still too dark to get a good look at either girl, I did finally get to see a few drags from the brunette and she was very impressive.  Even the way she held her cigarette with her elbow propped up on the bench got me all excited, before she even got around to taking one of her deep drags that lit up the cherry of her cigarette a very bright red for several seconds before she released a massively giant plume of exhaust.  It was killing me not being able to get a good look at her face, but seeing those three very impressive drags made up for it.  The guys came out of the bathroom and the foursome then proceeded back into the main stretches of the fairgrounds.  I followed the group back in from a distance and finally noticed that my brunette had a pretty big caboose in those white shorts.  As I studied it though, it seemed more like because she was hippy rather than overweight.  Anyway, I was fortunate enough to see her last drag from behind and watch her deposit the butt onto the gravel.  This time I was able to walk up from behind and locate the still-smoldering all-white butt she just discarded.  It was a Camel Crush.

I pressed forward into the grounds because I had to see this girl’s face (and the hot blond friend in pink shorts) in a spot well lit enough to appreciate her features.  They approached the midway and I got my chance.  The blond friend was definitely attractive and her presentation was a little stronger in those tight pink shorts, but the light brunette was prettier.  I had been hoping for a wholesome face but was floored at just how wholesome she was.  Looking at that adorable face, it was really hard to reconcile that this girl is not only an addicted cigarette smoker, but one with the ferocious technique that she did.  While the plump midsection was definitely a blemish, it further defined her and separated her from the pack…and wouldn’t stop me for a moment in exchanging bodily fluids with her.  Both girls and the guys looked 18 or 19.

I hovered in the general area of this group for awhile as they migrated just inside the carnival and at one point noticed there was a gorgeous 18-ish blond in a light blue blouse and short white shorts lingering with them and brandishing a freshly lit cigarette.  I just had to get a closer look at this!  But when I got to a decent vantage point, the cigarette was no longer in her hand.  What happened?  Some shrimpy black kid who looked about 14 was standing next to her and held a cigarette of his own, and he presumably let her have a drag of his.  D’oh!  And the girl was an absolute knockout to boot, frustrating me that I missed however brief of a show as it was.  I’ll kill the suspense right now, however, and let you know we haven’t seen the last of this girl.

Along that same line, I repeatedly saw this duo of mid-20s brunette gals and on one occasion, the unattractive and overweight girl of the duo was smoking a cigarette.  Unfortunately, the knockout long-haired brunette beauty next to her was not.  Every time I saw this girl who was just the perfect height and weight to pull of her ensemble of a red blouse and skimpy jean shorts, I swooned at how gorgeous of a smoker she’d be.  And once again, I suspect you know I’m not bringing this up without additional revelations to come.

Now I alluded at the beginning of the Wednesday writeup that I had an awkward “wake-up call” encounter, and it took place in the midway.  I was pacing through the midway and this middle-aged woman from inside a carnival stand called me out….

“I’ve seen you walking through here like five times.  What are you up to?” she asked in a not-as-suspicious-as-it-sounds tone.

I said that I was just taking in the fair and she responded that she didn’t know how I was able to take anything in as fast as I walked through the grounds.  Yikes!  Pretty bad when even the carnies know I’m up to no good!  Apparently I am THAT obvious at this small fair.  And by the way, the carny gal was smoking but not among my preferred demographic to count as a sighting.  I proceeded to talk to her for a few minutes and disarm whatever suspicions she may have had about my lingering presence.  The midway would be closing soon anyway so she wouldn’t see me again, but if I stand out like a sore thumb this badly on night two of a five-night fair, it makes me nervous that I may have more choppy waters ahead.

But the carny gal turned out to be my guardian angel as she allowed me to time my departure from the midway to coincide with the departure of my favorite cotton candy blond of the night and her chubby friend.  They migrated into a huddle of friends on the main street of the grounds and had just lit up another round of cigarettes.  This was the FOURTH cigarette I had seen from the chubby blond in the last hour or so and the second from the cotton candy beauty.  Positioning was terrible for this one as all I could do was lurk from a standing posture and do so for a couple of drags.  But as expected, the drags didn’t disappoint as this striking beauty defied her feminine image again by placing that cork filter cigarette in the far right corner of her mouth and carry out a dangling drag with the cigarette in a straight-line of erection the entire time.  Even after decades of fetishing, I don’t recall seeing a smoking style quite like this before, and I was reminded again why I fell in love with this girl an hour earlier.  But as I said, my positioning was terrible and I had to take a quarter loop elsewhere and return to minimize my exposure.  Sadly, when I got back less than a minute later, the two smoker girls were gone, not to be seen again last night.  I was kicking myself as I really wanted a butt ID and had I not departed for that single minute I could have probably followed them out of the fairgrounds and spotted her butt when she discarded.  Still, cotton candy blond and her chubby friend managed to reinforce their status as the most impressive smoker duo among a crowded field Wednesday evening.

I perused past the beer gardens next and hit the jackpot once again with an aforementioned favorite….the mid-20s dark brunette with the red blouse and tight jean shorts.  And this time she had a cigarette!  She was seated on the bench with the overweight friend (also smoking) and another nonsmoking friend.  Since I had seen this girl a few times that night and this was the first I saw her smoking, I figured she might be a social smoker, but judging from the intensity of her drags the cloudiness of her exhales, that began to seem unlikely.  I was giddy as I admired this beauty’s perfect face and had now confirmed she was a smoker with serious style.  Unfortunately, the best vantage point I had of her face was from an awkward standing position that I couldn’t keep up, and I had to sit on a bench on the other side of her with a mostly rear-side view.  Even this was fantastic as her body was so perfectly proportioned, her jean shorts fitting so nicely and her creamy smooth legs glistening with the minimal light exposure.  Plus she propped her elbow on the bench and held her cigarette as if sitting at a barstool, creating a nice throwback to the good old days when women still smoked indoors.  After observing several beautiful drags and all-mouth exhales, she very abruptly flung her smoldering butt underneath the table, which of course would make for easy butt identification when they left.  Unfortunately, they stuck around….and stuck around….and stuck around….without additional smoking to make their continued presence worthwhile.  FINALLY, about 45 minutes after I spotted them, the two brunette gals were getting up to leave.  I made a point of IDing her disposed butt–a Camel Menthol–and then following them towards the parking lot in hopes of seeing more cigarettes smoked.  Unfortunately, only the fat girl was smoking, confirming that my favorite girl is not a particularly heavy smoker.  Heavy smoker or not, her style, beauty, and perfect feminine form was more than enough to make her an extra base hit.

And during my many laps around the block waiting to ID the previous girl’s butt, I scored another unlikely 17ish blond cutie duo wielding cigarettes.  The one girl was an overweight plain jane but the other was an innocent-looking sweetheart of a teen in a silver tanktop and nicely fitting jean shorts.  On a lesser night, seeing a girl like this in possession of a cigarette may well have been the highlight of the evening as adorable as she was.  A third nonsmoking member of the group went into the bathroom, leaving the two smokers to sit on a bench.  I stood across from them hoping to see a few drags, but unfortunately everything that possibly could go wrong did.  I got a few moments to admire the girls wonderful curves caressed by her tanktop and jean shorts, taking particular admiration in the curvature of her vagina.  But before I saw a drag, a flurry of friends from elsewhere swooped in and surrounded them, with one guy sitting on the girl’s lap (lucky bastard).  I occasionally caught flashes of the cigarette still held in her hand but if a drag was ever taken I didn’t see it.  The dynamic here was too maddening and I was too exposed where I stood to make it a wise choice for me to linger.  I only saw the tail end of one drag from this girl but I guess this is just one of those cases where knowing the girl smokes will be the victory I walk away with from this sighting.

The local county fair had one more treat for me in the final moments before I left, a girl who I got the briefest of appetizers from about 45 minutes earlier.  It was the hot blond in the blue blouse and skimpy white shorts who was briefly in possession of a cigarette but apparently relinquished it to a shrimpy black male.  Only now she was standing amidst a crowd of males her age (right around 18) and had a freshly lit cigarette all her own between her fingers.  The good news is that she was positioned in between two food stands in the center of the grounds and there was an open bench I was able to sit and get a pretty good look.  The bad news is she kept drifting in and out of my line of vision, either getting obstructed by one of the guys or walking off in front of one of the stands where I couldn’t see her.  The even worse news is that she was an agonizingly slow smoker, going an eternity between drags.  But amidst all this waiting I was still able to have my heart positively broken admiring her wholesome blond beauty (it would be hard to construct a more perfect Midwestern girl) in those snug white shorts showing off so much beautiful leg.  I finally got to see one drag–sort of–but I caught most of a hugely cloudy exhale positioned skyward.  I had assumed this girl was probably a social smoker up to that point, but was starting to question that now.  And further developments on the sighting would cause me to question my first impression even more…..

Now remember when I mentioned the old man smoker who I thought worked one of the food stands?   He was hovering near those food stands with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and happened to make eye contact with my gorgeous blond smoker.  Blondie warmly said to him “Good night.  We’ll see you tomorrow!” as if she knew him.  Maybe she did, but either way it was adorable to have this delicate flower of a smoker girl communicating with another smoker old enough to be her grandfather.  After the old timer faded from the scene, it was more of a mangled mess with excrutiatingly long wait times between drags, but a blond guy that may or may not have been her boyfriend who was also smoking a cigarette put his arm around her shoulder, the two of them standing there with cigarettes protruding from their fingers.  Honestly, my hands would instead have been all over her ass in those white shorts, but hey, that’s me.  Anyway, I kept waiting for a drag to transpire but it just never did…and then the girl walked in front of one of the food stands and drove me absolutely nuts as all I could see was the cigarette held between her fingers while she was there.  I did get something else fascinating though….the name.  The same blond guy who had his arm around here was talking some kind of jive amidst the group and then shouted her direction, “Isn’t that right Sarah?!?!”  Since the blond beauty was the only girl around, “Sarah” had to be my favorite cigarette-wielding hottie.  And the same guy quickly afterwards talked to another guy in the group who had lit up and asked “So you’re smoking cigs now too?” indicating to me this whole group was more than mere social smokers….

But it became clear I wasn’t gonna get to see anything else from my vantage point on the bench and I also had no realistic chance of getting a butt ID amidst this giant crowd, so I decided my parting shot would be to linger in a standing posture parallel to the food stand she was standing in front of in hopes of catching one more drag.  Good choice.  Only seconds after I arrived, I finally got my first direct view of this babe smoking…and she delivered in spades.  She took a nice rich drag, puckering her lips around that all while filter and ingesting the poisons into her perfect body before tilting her head skyward and releasing a spectacularly cloudy exhale.  This girl was the real deal without question.  Much as I wished I could linger, I just couldn’t and the best I could do was walk directly past her en route to the exit hoping she reeked of smoke, but I didn’t really get an identifiable odor off of her and simply called it a successful night on the almost completely emptied-out fairgrounds en route to my car.

And what a night it was.  In terms of comprehensive awesomeness, I think Wednesday exceeded Tuesday.  I always seem to get tremendous bang for my buck at my local county fair and don’t know anyplace else where I can score a mere 23 sightings in an evening where so many of them are this spectacular.  Three more nights to go and I stand at 51 total sightings.  That puts me on track to get in the 110-125 sightings over the course of the five nights that is my recent average.  My record of 144 sightings from 2010 is most likely a fluke related to a delayed Saturday night Hinder concert that sent every young female in the audience out to the smoking area for a nicotine fix while waiting.  And hopefully I can avoid getting in more trouble for my stalking on these familiar grounds.  That’s my biggest fear with three nights to go.

 

 

 

Thursday Night

In 2011 and 2012, Thursday night was easily the best sightings night of the week at my county fair.  In 2013, it was the weakest night of the five.  I had decent hopes that this year’s Thursday night would be a successful one as country singer Thomas Rhett, a hot commodity among the preferred fetish demographic, was performing in the grandstand.  But unfortunately last night ended up closer to 2013 in terms of sightings success than 2011 and 2012, although that’s not entirely fair as I had a few repeaters with nice second acts and I got reconciliation on one of the previous night’s misses.  All in all, I scored 20 sightings of new girls along with the aforementioned returning favorites.

The night started right about 6:20 when I entered the gates.  I haven’t mentioned them yet this year but the girls at the gate taking admission and punching season tickets are as hot as ever, mostly blond and nearly all wearing short jean shorts with smooth, freshly shaven legs stemming out of them.  I haven’t been lucky enough to get my flirty favorite yet this year though.  Anyway, I proceeded into the gates with my usual low expectations of great sightings before the show.  It’s unfortunate that in recent years, sightings before the concerts have become incredibly scarce, which really sucks for me because the only time I dare to snap cell phone pics is during the daylight hours (don’t want to risk a flash going off by taking a photo at night).  Indeed I went nearly a full hour navigating through the crowded grounds before I got my first mediocre sighting.

They were letting the line of people in to take their seat for the grandstand show shortly after 7 and I always like to check the outside areas since a lot of smokers will step out for a puff after having secured their seat.  I thought I really hit pay dirt on first glance last night as I approached the south side grandstand entrance and saw a fat middle-aged gal standing next to a very slender blond in a tanktop and white shorts, both smoking.  From afar I suspected it was a mother-daughter sighting, but my guess is it was just two smokers shooting the breeze while blackening their lungs.  And on closer inspection, the slender blond looked a little trashy….certainly good enough to count as a sighting but someone I lost interest in quickly.  She was probably mid-20s and I would see her smoking again in the evening after the show.

Things came alive for the next sighting though, easily my best sighting all week from before sunset.  It was about 7:40 and I had already seen Corey a few times on the grounds, but luckily he was talking to his parents and didn’t see me but I knew I was living on borrowed time until he called to meet me for the concert.  But one place where I figured he’d be easy to avoid was the midway so I started heading that direction, but wouldn’t get far before I’d come across a foursome of 18-ish girls walking the other direction, two of whom were smoking.  One of the four was the least attractive of the group, a curly haired brunette who was good enough for my sightings count but who became elevator music instantly thereafter because the other girl who was smoking was a stunner, a long-haired blond in a white tanktop and tight dark jeans.  She had a real classic look about her and stood out as easily the prettiest of the four girls in the group.  I was salivating at the prospect of snapping a couple of pics in motion and managed a few….nothing exceptional by any stretch but at least one head shot that will preserve this girl’s beautiful image for eternity.  And I also got to admire her smoking show.  There were no stylistic bells and whistles but I will absolutely never get tired with seeing a cute teenage girl walk through a crowded fairgrounds during daytime hours shamelessly smoking a cigarette and exhaling into the crowd.  And with each year that smoking becomes more culturally vilified I find that much more irresistible.  The sighting took on a new player as the group of girls stumbled into an 18-19ish guy and, sure enough, it appeared to be the boyfriend of my favorite blond smoker who put her arms (cigarette hand included) around his waist and gave him an affectionate semi-hug that forced him to choke on her smoky stench.  The group stayed in place for a bit and I hovered, hoping to still score a butt ID.  But just as the group starting moving again, my phone went off…..

Unsurprisingly it was Corey.  Wonderful timing, buddy!  Interestingly though, I was able to field the call from Corey and follow my smoker girl without appearing to be stalking her since I was immersed in the phone conversation.  Corey said he was “in front of the goat barn” which was the same general direction these girls were headed (and me by proxy) so he could easily have sabotaged my chances here.  Thankfully, he said he was gonna be later than usual getting into the grandstand and would probably meet me up there around 8:15.  I agreed to those terms and felt as though I probably dodged a bullet as the conversation ended with just a couple of drags left on my blond hottie’s cigarette.  Oh how nice it was to see a cigarette approach those sweet young lips followed by the cloudy exhale into the crowded fairgrounds.  She cooperated nicely by dropping the cigarette to the pavement without crushing it out and it took me about five yards of walking to be right on top of the Camel Menthol she just finished.  I was now satisfied with my pre-concert haul and was gonna prepare to go into the grandstand show.

The grandstand show didn’t yield much in the way of sightings either in the smoking area I overlooked from my seat or in the beer gardens on the other side of the fence but I did manage to keep alive the long-standing county fair tradition of getting a pregnant smoker sighting.  It was a late 20s brunette in a conservative black top and slacks who was easily eight months pregnant in the company of a daughter who looked about four years old who mom was talking to as she smoked.  Mom wasn’t much of a looker and I may not have even counted her were she not pregnant.  Hardly ever do I get pregnant smoker sightings but I’ve been scoring them annually at my county fair now for going on a decade.

The only other smoking excitement during the grandstand show originated in the beer gardens about halfway through the concert when I saw two mid-20s gals with cigarettes walking inside the pavilion portion of the beer gardens.  I was impressed enough that these gals were walking in the indoor portion of the beer gardens with cigarettes but they had even more surprises about 30 seconds later when I spotted both cigarette-wielding ladies approaching the gate of the grandstand with a forbidden item in each hand–a beer and a cigarette (neither one is allowed in the grandstand).  There’s a young bouncer dude at the gate who stopped them from entering, and one of the two gals who seemed particularly feisty looked like she was loudly challenging him, but it soon became clear she was just messing with him.  The beer is not supposed to leave the beer gardens at this fair so both gals were violating the rules by possessing beer even where they did.  The two gals were both modest lookers, the less feisty one a dark blond in a conservative blouse and jeans who intrigued me most while the feistier girl was wearing a tanktop and shorts and was probably a little more attractive but managed to ruin it for me with a bunch of tattoos on her shoulders and upper back.  I’d actually see the tattooed feisty girl again near the end of the night…literally passed out on the grass in front of the beer gardens with a smoldering cigarette next to her.

The grandstand show by Thomas Rhett was definitely the highest energy of the three so far, although his brand of “bro country” isn’t really my thing.  I was disappointed that he didn’t seem to bring out more nicotine-starved young country cuties than he did, but there was a small sliver of salvation in the final minutes as I saw a familiar face in the smoking area….that beautiful 18-year-old blond who I saw emerging from the midway smoking a Camel Menthol before the show.  She was with the boyfriend and another of her nonsmoking blond friends standing there and, sure enough, she was removing a Camel Menthol from the pack in her purse and lighting up.  Not sure who to compare this girl to beyond an obscure reality show contestant but she really was a beauty.  Unfortunately, I only got to see a couple of drags before she and the group drifted into main part of the fair never to be seen again Thursday night.

The concert ended and Corey and I exited.  Corey once again cooperated by leaving immediately after the show, only this time I’d have another distraction as I bumped into my lunatic cousin Judd, who I had successfully dodged the two previous nights.  Judd had to work the next morning as well so he couldn’t stay either, so I only lost about 10 minutes, but it was a key 10 minutes right after the end of the show where a lot of smoker girls undoubtedly got their nicotine fix.  It still worked out okay though as the timing of Judd’s departure led me right to a group of 20-something guys and gals standing near the beer garden entrance where a cute blond gal in a white tanktop and pale blue jean shorts was smoking.  A bench was open not 10 feet in front of them and I had a perfect front-row seat.  She wasn’t the hottest girl at the fair but she was definitely very attractive, not to mention having a quality presentation in the tanktop and jean shorts.  I saw three decent drags and exhales before she crushed out the cigarette.  In seconds, the group wandered elsewhere and IDed her discarded butt….a Marlboro Light.

The next sighting I would get came a few minutes later and it was an unlikely lesbian sighting, featuring two attractive-by-stereotypical-lesbian-standards gals walking hand in hand, with the long-haired mid-20s brunette gal of the duo holding a cigarette in her other hand.  I followed them for a couple of drags and her drags were pretty impressive.  I’m not into the whole lesbian thing the way some guys are and this girl wasn’t hot enough to warrant more than a passing admiration before moving onto the next shiny object.

One of those shiny objects would be a returning champ from last night.  The 18ish curly/long-haired brunette beauty who on Wednesday night was smoking a Newport and then bummed another one to a black girl in her friends group resurfaced on Thursday night.  Now this girl was perfectly hot in her silver top and tight jeans on Wednesday night, but on Thursday she was rocking a white tanktop and perfectly fitting medium blue jean shorts that raised the stakes of her sex appeal about 20 degrees.  As I watched her walk by in this sexpot outfit and took a glance over my shoulder to admire her perfectly toned ass and legs, I thought to myself that I really hope I get to see this girl smoke again tonight.  And over the course of the next hour and a half I did….twice…sort of.  In both cases she was sitting down at benches in the presence of company in places where any extended observations on my part would have stuck out like a sore thumb.  So all I could do was linger briefly in both cases, admiring those smooth calves and that perfect ass seated on the bench when she wasn’t smoking and admiring her rock solid smoking style when she was smoking, complete with London fog-worthy exhales after every drag.  Despite only seeing three drags over the course of two cigarettes tonight, this girl who on Wednesday night nearly got lost in the crowd improved her position greatly and demanded to be respected for her skills as a smoker and her crazy feminine hotness.

Somewhere in between the two sightings of the brunette came my redemption from the night before on one I thought got away, although the sighting itself disappointed.  Remember on Wednesday night when I caught a young hottie and her friend emerging from near the grandstand area and walking towards the ladies’ bathroom with a pack of Marlboro Lights in her hand….one of which she had probably just got done smoking?  Well tonight my timing was a little better as I saw a girl emerging from the darkness near that same bathroom structure with a freshly lit cigarette in her hand.  I saw she was hot from afar as I approached, admiring her tanned features and tanned legs draped in a country girl tanktop and jean shorts with cowgirl boots.  It took me a few seconds to realize it was the same girl from Wednesday night and at first I was absolutely giddy thinking I’d get a full sighting of her.  I sort of did….but she must be a very bashful smoker as she proceeded to hide in the dark behind one of the carnival trailers to smoke her cigarette.  While she was in a dark spot, there was enough background illumination from the carnival to at least admire her show a limited amount.  I’m quite sure she was over 18 (she actually looks older than I suspect she is) so I’m a little perplexed by why she’s hiding while smoking.  She was in a big hurry to finish her cigarette and wrapped it up with rapid-fire drags and above-average exhales before dropping the cigarette to the grass and then migrating into the midway.  I walked up to where she stood and the two-thirds-smoked cigarette butt she left behind was a Marlboro Light, removing just about any doubt I may have had that it was the same girl from the night before.  I briefly followed her into the midway to get one final close-up look in the light.  She definitely had a “hard prettiness” to her, but I will say the previous night’s outfit of the black blouse and acid-washed jean shorts was more flattering on her than tonight’s country girl get-up.

And I’d get one more returning act from the night before…..the previous night’s group of 17ish guys and girls that included the redhead and the brunette who smoked two in a row.  I first laid eyes on them at a food stand near the beer gardens and while nobody was smoking yet, I didn’t figure that would last long.  Getting a closer look at them on Thursday compared to Wednesday, the dark brunette girl of the group was definitely the prettier of the girls and was dressed similar to the night before in a white T-shirt and tight jeans, but the redhead still topped her in the IT factor department.  She didn’t match the previous night’s outfit but still stood out in a red and white summery minidress.  About 15 minutes later, I’d see the group and they were indeed smoking this time, approaching the mini donuts stand.  I was able to find a place to sit and observe gingerly as they stood in front of the stand, smoking and conversing with the people inside the stand who they clearly knew.  I saw a little bit of smoking but managed to lose them at the time they lost their butts.  The night before I had some ambiguity about their brand and sadly that ambiguity continued on Thursday as I couldn’t identify which of the crushed out cigarette butts in front of the mini-donut stand were theirs.  I’d have one more passing encounter with this group that I’ll get into later…

The huddles of teenagers who inconveniently gather at the center of the grounds where there’s no good place to watch the girls smoke continued to deliver in spades.  I actually had a little better vantage point location of one girl, a 17ish curly-haired brunette smoking a cigarette with a nonsmoking friend while standing in between two food stands.  The girl wasn’t particularly gorgeous but she made up for her plain jane looks with a nice presentation with a plaid bare midriff country girl top and a pair of high-riding white shorts.  Had she been a perfect 10 beauty to go along with her body and outfit, this would have been an exceptional sighting, especially considering her deft smoking style and cloudy exhales that didn’t seem to bother the nonsmoking friend standing right in front of her at all.  It was still a great sighting, but there were just too many prettier faces with smoke billowing out of them at this fair for this girl to make the Hall of Fame.  I caught about five drags before she dropped the cigarette, crushed it out, and walked closer to the teen huddle.  I walked up and easily identified it as a Marlboro Light.

The teen huddle produced a much less logistically successful find about 15 minutes later and I could see a cigarette between the fingers of a blond in a tanktop and jean shorts from quite a distance away.  She was really packed tight into her mostly male huddle and it took awhile to get a good look.  She was pretty and looked about 17-18, although she had bright red lipstick that was a little over the top and looked a little clownish in contrast with her pale white skin.  Even so, I was lingering hoping to catch a drag and finally did, although I didn’t get to see as much as I’d like given the crowd she was immersed in so I changed locations.  I walked past her first as she wrapped her arm and cigarette hand around a nonsmoking guy, and looking at the all white butt that appeared to have an inverted filter, I suspected it was an increasingly rare Parliament sighting, a cigarette popular five years ago that has just gotten too expensive compared to its vaguely less overpriced peers.  Anyway, I found that different vantage point and hovered there even more awkwardly watching….and on two occasions she and one of the guys in the group were looking my direction.  It’s possible they were looking at other friends behind me but when they looked my direction twice I knew it was time to go.  I didn’t see nearly enough of this sighting as I hoped and didn’t get to confirm my suspicion that her cigarette was a Parliament.

As I so often do, I was preparing for my “final loop of the night” but managed to keep getting sidetracked and/or talking myself into yet another “final loop of the night”, but I am so damn glad I held out for one last walk through the nearly empty midway at about 11:20.  At the back of the midway I caught from behind the image of a girl I just knew was gonna be magic.  I saw this dark rear image of a girl with straight dark blond hair going all the way down her back, held down up top with a head band that had a little white bow on top.  A black sweatshirt and nice-fitting pair of dark jeans completed the conservative ensemble but there was one thing that didn’t fit at all with the rear silhouette image I was observing….an unlit cigarette protruding from the girl’s right hand.  A wide-open bench gave me a perfect vantage point of the sighting that would transpire….and I approached it giddy as a schoolgirl to get a look at the face and see if it lived up to the profile.  I thought I had prepared myself for the caliber of wholesomeness I was plunging head-first into but she exceeded my wildest expectations.  This girl was not only beautiful beyond belief, she ranks among the top two or three most unlikely smokers I’ve ever laid eyes on.  I’d put her at about 19 or 20 years old and her animated face just radiated sunshine and warmth.  I kept thinking this girl looks like she should be a counselor at a youth camp for Christ because her beaming, glowing presence just seemed naturally inclined to do something wholesome at all times, absolutely never including being at the county fair midway holding a cigarette in her hand….

And while it took me a while to collect myself after seeing a face this beautiful (she vaguely reminded me of actress Amanda Seyfried….only prettier), it took her more than just a while to light that cigarette.  She was cheering on a male and female friend preparing to ride the “Ring of Fire” thrill ride which hangs upside down.  She was giving her encouragement from the sideline so I was still confident of getting her to myself for the entirety of the ride the friends took.  Finally, after a good three minutes of holding the unlit cigarette in one hand and the lighter in the other, it was time to get to the part where she ingests carcinogens.  Her light-up was drama free but it still sent tingles throughout my body when her cigarette consumption became real.  The friends were just getting on the ride in time for her second and best drag, which was average in length but where a delayed exhale came out in the form of a sloppy smoky blob even as her face was more lit up than ever with a toothy grin as she watched the friends climb aboard the Ring of Fire.  And the exhale still wasn’t over as a residual puff escaped her nose a couple of seconds later.  A “smiling exhale”…I suppose I’ve seen one before but never one as animated as this.  Now more than ever it was hard to reconcile this saintly looking girl with the cancerous filth her body was addicted to.  The next drag was a little more traditional, with her exhale blown completely out of her mouth in a straight line…..

Unfortunately, remember when I said earlier that the mixed-gender group with the redheaded smoker and her brunette friend made one more appearance?  This was their moment as they coasted on past with both girls wielding cigarettes yet again!  Why can’t I ever get the timing right with these girls and be in a position to ID their butts?  It wasn’t gonna happen this time either as even a tow truck couldn’t pull me away from what was easily my best find of the night.  But of course my best find of the night couldn’t possibly follow the preferred script without a complication either.  Suddenly, some random overweight dude her age or slightly older approached her and she seemed to know him.  After taking a drag I couldn’t see, she suddenly handed the guy the cigarette.  NO!!!!!!  This led me to believe she was probably just a social smoker who didn’t need more than half of her cigarette and was looking for someone to take it away.  It was a letdown as the guy got his hands on the not-even-half-smoked cigarette and never returned it.  Still, I wanted to identify the brand this gorgeous dark blond was smoking.  The two friends who went on the thrill ride had just gotten off and the three of them, combined with the new smoker dude and a friend of his, were walking eastward out of the midway.  I followed, doing something I never suspected I would….waiting for a dude to finish his cigarette so I could get a butt ID.   After about three walking drags, he did finish it and drop it.  I looked down to see it was a white filter Marlboro with a little blue dot on the filter, which I believe are those Marlboro Nxts, the Marlboro version of Camel Crush.

The last sighting didn’t have the happy ending I hoped for but I ended up doing that final loop, managed to score one mediocre sighting over the next five minutes or so and was then headed for the exit to call it a night.  But on my way out, I saw a female face emerging near the beer gardens area with three friends (two male and one female) that immediately struck me as familiar as I watched a pack of Camel Lights emerge from the female’s purse.  It took about two seconds of admiring her face and light brunette hair, coupled with Camel Lights being her brand, and I recognized it was the 2012 FCF classic who will forever be known to me as the “woolly beret girl” (FCF #15).  There were two reasons I didn’t recognize her instantly.  First she was wearing a dark top and dark jeans, which contrasted with her usual pastel colors and white shorts and the like, and second, she was looking more mature.  The “woolly beret girl” I first saw in 2012 was very much a girl and probably 17 as I suspected at the time.  And in my successful encounter with her in 2013, she looked older than a girl but not yet a woman.  But in 2014, the little girl look is completely gone from my woolly beret girl who now looks like exactly what she was….a young woman with the weathered features of a long-time heavy smoker.  And what perfect timing I had as she opened up that pack of Camel Lights and placed an unlit cigarette in her lips just as she approached me.  As was the case last year, she was the only one in her group smoking and I turned around to follow and saw the light-up.  But that’s where the story took a surprise pivot.  It would take a lot for me to abandon my first sighting of the year of the old reliable woolly beret girl, but “a lot” was exactly what I was in store for……

At the exact moment the “woolly beret girl” lit up, I looked past her to find another group crossing paths with them.  It was the “Ring of Fire” midway group……and I was shocked when I saw the insanely wholesome hottie placing another unlit cigarette in her mouth.  This was her second in the last 15 minutes, and keep in mind I had written her off as a social smoker when she handed half of her cigarette to the fat guy moments earlier.  But now that seemed far less likely as “my greatest find of the night” raised her stakes dramatically by being the only member of her group of five to light up another cigarette.  She paused her walking briefly to light up and I could barely control myself from shouting for joy at the top of my lungs.  They were heading to the north side exit of the fairgrounds, the exact same exit I take on the way back to my grandma’s parking lot and I would be able to follow.  This couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.  She was more attentive in smoking this one as well, taking more frequent drags as she walked.  Unfortunately I had a mostly rear view and was usually only able to admire the exhaled smoke I saw flowing from her gorgeous face, but on a couple of occasions she turned her head while dragging and I got to see her lips pucker around that all-white filter and the cherry glow bright red.  While walking, the two guys (including the one that smoked half of her first cigarette) that seemed to come out of nowhere on the midway were hanging back, apparently not riding home with them.  I continued to follow as just the original three from the “Ring of Fire” ride progressed to a red sports car in a private lot in a guy’s yard.  The guy and girl who rode the Ring of Fire climbed into the front seat and I was waiting with baited breath to see what stinky girl would do.  I didn’t know if it would be sexier for her to drop her Marlboro Nxt butt into some stranger’s yard or to bring it inside the red sports car driven by obvious nonsmokers.  It could have gone either way as she opened the back door and took a deep drag…..but she broke the tie by closing the car door and bringing the cigarette with her.  Not only do the friends have to deal with her residual ciggy stench, but she’s actually going to smoke a cigarette inside a stranger’s likely expensive car.  I watched the car drive out of the lot….with the back window cracked and a smoldering cherry held between the fingers of a truly gorgeous young woman as it did.  An otherwise modest Thursday night ended with a grand slam.

So 20 sightings for Thursday which puts me at 71 for three days and still on pace–barely–to get in that 110-125 average range.  Friday’s crowd for country group Montgomery Gentry should be pretty good so I’m hopeful for a sightings surge then to get me within striking distance of my median.  Even if I fall short of my numbers preferences, however, the 2014 FCF has already been a giant success in delivering a steady diet of top-shelf sightings as it is nearly every year, with only a couple e-cig/vaporizer sightings by attractive young girls annoying me along the way.  It never ceases to amaze me how with cigarettes at over $8 a pack in Minnesota, so many teen girls are still ready, willing, and able to become smokers, but I definitely hope it continues.

 

 

Friday Night

While Thursday had been the weakest day so far at the 2014 county fair, there was no law saying that it had to remain the weakest day for the duration of the fair.  In this case, Thursday’s haul looks highly enviable after the very weak Friday night, where I scored only 16 sightings, only a few of which even warrant a writeup.  Not sure specifically what went wrong here but with the size of the crowd and the “party” demographic that showed up for country duo Montgomery Gentry, I never would have predicted at the beginning of the night that I’d have my weakest night of sightings at the county fair in several years.  I couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather either, but I did have lengthy sidetracks from Hurricane Corey that didn’t help.

I got to the fair around 6:30 and walked around as always, disappointed by the continued lack of production during the daytime hours.  I scored one mediocre sighting in a half hour worth of walking before hearing a “Hey Mark” from afar.  It was Corey, and at only a little after 7:00 I was resigned to being his bitch for the rest of the night.  He went to a food stand and ordered a burger.  I talked and halfheartedly scanned the comings and goings for smokers while doing so, seeing absolutely nothing.  The crowd for the grandstand was bigger than the previous three nights but there was still plenty of seating, and at around 7:45 we headed up there to my favorite spot.  While I’m resigned to the smoking area not being what it used to be in terms of drawing the preferred demographic for a smoke break, I was most disappointed in the beer gardens tonight which was teeming with people but only produced a few actual sightings.  The best of them was a duo of late 20s brunettes just inside the beer garden fence who on two occasions fired up a cigarette while swilling a beer.  Both were attractive but definitely not hot enough to ever be heard from again when it comes to my year-end favorites list.

However, the smoking area did produce my best sighting of night in the half hour before Montgomery Gentry took the stage.  Two young hotties emerged into the smoking area from out of nowhere and I caught one of them at the exact second she was lighting up, with a quick drag and exhale off of the lightup which remained dangling for a few more seconds.  It took me no time at all to recognize the smoker I had just set my eyes upon as a blond from Tuesday night in 2013, primarily because she was wearing the exact same memorable white dress she was wearing that night.  She looked about 22, had a very wholesome Elisha Cuthbert look about her and doesn’t really look like a smoker, so it was enjoyable to see her puffing away on her cigarette looking exactly like she did the night before.  Interestingly, the friend in the group–also a familiar face but not from smoking–looked much more like a smoker but apparently isn’t.  The sexy dark blond friend in a country girl top and jean shorts was working her phone as the blond smoker lit up and seconds later when she was putting her phone back into her purse, I was hopeful for a double sighting but it didn’t happen.  Shame too because they would have a made a hot smoking duo.  I got to see the blond in the white dress smoke the whole cigarette and it was a pleasure to see her skillfully take down the cigarette with nice drags and polished exhales before dropping it to the grass and crushing it out.  As the duo was about to go back into the grandstand for seating for the show, I briefly got my hopes up as coming outside and meeting them was a brunette babe in wildly sexy white cutoffs who I figured might be coming out to smoke herself.  She wouldn’t though and it would be the last I’d see of all three of them all night.

From there, while the concert was entertaining primarily because Montgomery Gentry has so many hits that their entire hour-and-a-half catalog of songs consisted of songs I knew, sightings were close to nonexistent in either the smoking area or the beer gardens.  The only development that got me excited was a familiar face popping up at the edge of the grandstand.  The beautiful blond “Sarah” from Wednesday night was back with her male friends at the concert, capturing the Montgomery Gentry concert with her camera phone, and wearing an outfit very similar to Wednesday night’s, a blue top and crazy sexy white shorts.  She kno-ooo-ooo-ws what I like!  Thankfully, I do have more to report from Sarah later in the night.

The concert ended and I wondered if Corey would immediately split as he did the previous three nights given that he didn’t have to work the next morning.  I got my answer right away when he asked “what do you wanna do?”  Ugh!  Working to my benefit is that the buildings close down shortly after 10 so going through them wasn’t gonna happen and we ended up walking around the grounds like I always do solo, only much more slowly and with much more distraction via our conversations.  This drug on for more than a half hour and I only scored one sighting while in his company, a modest 21ish cowgirl outside the bathroom who wouldn’t have been capable of being a classic sighting or anything, but it scared me that the “Great White Whale” could be walking right past us and I wouldn’t be able to follow.  Corey droned on and on about a mutual friend’s wedding and I was agonizing about how much I missed last year when Corey was gone for fair week and I didn’t have these kinds of unpredictable distractions. I like Corey, and definitely prefer to have company to go to the concerts with, but I don’t like the guy one damn bit the second the concerts end!!!

He finally decided to split as I figured he ultimately would as pacing the grounds is not his thing as it typically isn’t for normal people.  I had seen a silhouette of a blond hottie in a green summery dress smoking with her friends group near a remote line of a port-of-potties moments earlier and as soon as Corey departed I walked that direction to see if I could get a closer look.  Thankfully, I spotted her, and she was a pretty cute mid-20s blond, and the only one in her group smoking.  She was heading the same direction Corey was though and I didn’t want to go that way and risk getting tangled up with Corey again.  It was 10:45 now and I’d have more than an hour of fetishing left to make up for a lot of lost time.

And while I stitched together a few sightings here and there, there were only three memorable moments in that last hour.  The first was this cute and petite redheaded girl who looked about 16 standing with a cigarette at the edge of the midway.  She was so cute and in the presence of a curly haired friend I only saw from the rear but hoped might also smoke.  I saw a couple nice drags from this sweet redhead and while there was nothing unforgettable about them her girly girl profile still made this a fascinating find.  As the two started to walk away, the redhead handed the cigarette to the curly-haired blond friend and now I had to race ahead to see the face of the friend.  That’s when the sighting got a buzzkill.  It was a mediocre girl I already counted from Wednesday night and it became abundantly clear that this was her cigarette that the redheaded cutie just bummed 2-3 drags from.  And sure enough, a half hour later, I saw the two again and the blond was smoking while the redhead wasn’t.  The negative turn for this sighting kind of ended up defining my Friday night unfortunately.

A similarly clunky ending came for the next sighting which occurred on the series of benches at the front of the midway.  A group of four teenage friends–three girls and a guy–had one smoker amongst them….a 17ish long-haired brunette in a red tanktop and dark jeans.  The brunette was easily attractive enough to count as a sighting even though my favorites list from the fair seemed to have little danger of having her catapult to the top of it.  I sat down on a nearby bench hoping to see the sighting play out, but true to form, she got up and sprinted towards another group of friends standing behind me after showing me only one drag….and the guy in her group followed.  They lingered with those friends for a few minutes and then the girl and the guy progressed into the midway.  I followed in hope of a butt ID as her cigarette was near its end, but when she handed the cigarette to the boyfriend to finish it off, I decided I had too much ground to make up for to hold out for a butt ID from this girl and her boyfriend.

And while I was told by the carnival gal herself on Wednesday that the carnival stayed open till midnight on weekends, the lights went out around 11:15 and when that happens it really limits the amount of territory I have to navigate and raises my exposure level even higher. There was only one more girl who had anything good to show me Friday night….and that was sweet Sarah in her blue top and white shorts.  Unfortunately, just like Wednesday, she was immersed in a thick huddle of teenagers in the middle of the grounds where I had no hope of getting a prolonged sighting.  Grrrr!  When I saw she had an all-white cigarette lit, smoldering only inches away from those exceptional white shorts, I really pushed my luck and made two or three passes by their group hoping I’d time it right and catch one of her infrequent drags.  The best I could do was look from afar and see a plume of smoke rise from their group, knowing it came from her black lungs.  Oh Sarah!  Why can’t you smoke in a place where a fetisher can actually see you?!?!  If you did, I promise you that you’re good enough to be immortalized forever in my blog Hall of Fame!  As it stands though, unless she delivers a sighting I see more than two drags of before the fair ends, Sarah’s body of work has been too inaccessible to get the acclaim she’s worthy of.  On my final loop around the area, however, Sarah was not smoking again but checking out her ass I took note of something I missed on previous passes.  While her cell phone was clearly in the right back pocket of her shorts, her unidentifiable pack of cigarettes was in the left back pocket.  Never have I been more jealous of a pack of cigarettes.

So yeah….that’s it for Friday.  Considering my local county fair has been delivering something outstanding for me every single night for several years going, I felt let down walking away from last night with nothing all that great.  Worse yet, I’m up to only 87 sightings over four nights which is below average.  It’s possible I could still get the 30-some sightings necessary to match or exceed the hauls from the last two years, but the pattern of the last four nights has been shrinking returns.  I’m going into Saturday a bit demoralized but hopefully Friday was just an off night.  Remember that it was Saturday last year that I scored my dark brunette Pall Mall teen princess who would become my second-best county fair sighting of all time, so there is definitely some cause for optimism on the closing night of the 2014 FCF.

 

 

Saturday Night

A fetisher is gonna have a bad night now and then.  Certainly when it comes to visits to the malls and such, I’ve come to terms with that and have prepared for it.  But my county fair has been operating so far above its weight for so many consecutive nights over so many consecutive years now that it was actually quite a jarring wake-up on Friday evening when I had a pretty soft night.  While I suppose I could have bounced right back and had a spectacular Saturday night (remember just last year I scored my FCF #2 Pall Mall princess on Saturday night), for some reason I just sensed that I wouldn’t…..and I was right.  Strangely though, I’m okay with that as the night was a tick better than Friday and avoided being the rolling calamity I feared it might based on the first two minutes I spent at the fair, and I ended up scoring 23 sightings, far better than the previous night’s 16, although there definitely weren’t any rock stars among them aside from a returning favorite from years past.

What was the problem that arose in those first two minutes?  Rain!  Of the completely unforecasted variety!  On a weekend the meteorologists have been hyping all week as “absolutely perfect”!  It was just a light rain that lasted about 15 minutes and cleared out, but given that there were other storm cells to the west that ultimately died out before they arrived in my area, it probably held attendance numbers down as the storms came in just around the time some people may have otherwise been planning to come to the fair.  And tonight’s musical performer was 90s country singer Terri Clark who hasn’t had a hit in about 10 years and wouldn’t be likely to draw a very young demographic.  It all left me resigned to the likelihood that the best nights of the 2014 local county fair were behind me.

Still, I was under the impression from what I had just seen that the rain was moving just south of the hometown as I began my walk from my grandma’s garage to the fairgrounds, so imagine my surprise when I felt my first raindrops two steps after entering the gates.  The rain quickly picked up and I was racing for overhead coverage, ultimately settling under a tent in Machinery Hill on the north side of the fairgrounds.  I was bored out of my mind for a few minutes standing there waiting for the rain to stop but was taken aback when I heard a female voice shout “Mark!”  It was my 40-something cousin Chrissy who had seen me from afar and came to chat.  Better now than when it was dry when she’d be distracting me from sightings.  Her husband came over too and we chatted until the rain stopped about 10 minutes later.  I kind of fibbed and said I had to meet my friend for the concert and got busted for it when they saw me roaming alone two more times in the next hour before Corey got there.  This was the theme of Saturday night…..attendance on the grounds was below average but it was disproportionately relatives of mine who would be there as my parents showed up last night, my aunt and her friend, an aunt and uncle, this cousin and her husband….it all added up to one more headwind I’d face tonight in pursuit of quality sightings.

I was melancholy as I started trolling the grounds for sightings, telling myself if I get any sightings at all tonight I’d have to consider it a qualified success.  But thankfully after about a half hour of exploring I’d find one in line for the Terri Clark concert.  Most smokers in line tend to step slightly outside the line so as not to expose others in line to their smoke, so I was elated to see a late teen/early 20s Hispanic girl in a very feminine long skirt smoking with mom right there in the line, exhaling her smoke close enough to where a whole line of people was smelling it.  I turned around a few yards after my first pass and made another to get a better look at this girl.  The good news:  she was very cute and, particularly with as low as smoking rates are among young Latinas, seemed a really unlikely smoker to be sucking down a cigarette in the presence of a nonsmoking Latina mother who at least at the time was not smoking.  The bad news:  she had a serious acne problem, with very distracting pimples taking away from her otherwise beautiful face.  As I was taking this second pass, I spotted a group where another attractive early 20s blond had a unlit cigarette between her fingers.  I contemplated following her, but honestly this sweet Latina smoking in line next to mom intrigued me more so I hung back and watched from afar as she took a couple more drags right there in line, showing off a solid if undistinguished smoking style.  She surprised me, however, when she got out of line and began to walk southward.  It was fun following the girl in the black blouse and pretty long skirt knowing she was smoking a cigarette, but the cigarette was almost gone and she drifted towards a garbage can where she crushed the cigarette out on the pavement and then threw the cigarette away, denying me the butt ID.  If not for the unfortunate pimple problem, this girl would have been a top-tier find, and managed to deliver something my way that was better than I really expected that Saturday night was capable of only a half hour earlier.

I then began wandering up to the south side of the grounds, with that blond who I had just seen walking with the unlit cigarette always in the back of my mind.  And sure enough, only a few minutes later, I spotted her, the other girl, and the two guys in her group all watching this wood carver guy with a chainsaw, and the blond and her boyfriend were still smoking.  She was wearing a gold and black blouse with tight black slacks that framed her figure nicely.  She wasn’t as pretty as my Latina would have been if not for the Latina’s zit saturation, but this girl had a clean presentation and was also a nice smoker as I watched her with one eye and pretended to watch the wood carver with the other before walking away.  Maybe this night wouldn’t be so bad after all!!!

I scored one more mediocre sighting before getting my fair food (barely feeling well enough to eat another gyro on the last night of the fair) and got in the grandstand for the show around 7:45, with Corey running a little late.  Within a few minutes after arrival, my best sighting of the night would emerge from a long-familiar face whose been getting documentation from my county fair write-ups going back to 2010 now…..the long-haired blond beauty I’ve long referred to as “Old Reliable”.  It took me a few seconds to recognize it was the girl who must now be in her late 20s but looks hotter than ever, decked out in a shoulderless black blouse, tight dark jeans, and cowgirl boots as she stood in the smoking area and lit up.  Ah the pleasing familiarity of her smoking style, where the missiles of exhaled smoke were either fired straight down or straight up, was comfort food for the weary soul, especially here in the smoking area where they were missed last year…..

On multiple nights in 2010, 2011, and 2012, I could count on Miss Old Reliable to step out for two or three cigarettes per night during at least two concert evenings a week.  She seemed to be getting a little pudgy in 2012 but her pretty face and smoking reliability helped me overlook it.  Then in 2013, while I didn’t see her at any of the concerts, I saw her playing BINGO having lost a bunch of weight and looking sexy as hell smoking two Marlboro Menthols in a row while playing BINGO.  But now my Old Reliable girl was still minus the chub but back in her natural surroundings of the grandstand smoking area.  Another overweight middle-aged gal emerged to smoke and made conversation with Old Reliable.  Not sure if they knew each other or were just bonding as smokers.  Either way, I got to watch the whole performance and the surprising after party.  Old Reliable was walking back into the grandstand and coming up my aisle, walking right past me and then sitting down on a bench only about five rows behind me, where I hadn’t even seen her before the smoke break.  She was settling into a group that consisted of an overweight middle-aged woman, a thin young dark blond girl, and the guy who was her nonsmoking boyfriend last year at the BINGO pavilion who is apparently her nonsmoking boyfriend still this year.  I get the feeling this guy has the fetish, and I give bonus points to Old Reliable for dating a nonsmoker.  I was pretty confident I hadn’t seen the last of Old Reliable puffing away in that smoking area and I was right.

In the next half hour before and during the Terri Clark concert, I pieced together a few more modest sightings play out inside the fence of the beer gardens, including a mother-daughter sighting where the trashy redheaded early 20s daughter was just barely cute enough to count.  Her friend, a more slender and somewhat cuter early 20s blond in jean shorts, also lit up so I got two for the price of one here.  But it was Old Reliable’s second cigarette about a half hour before the first that got me excited again…..and this time she had a couple of rowdy friends joining her!  I could have sworn that the chubby middle-aged woman sitting in Old Reliable’s group was her mom and that the younger girl was presumably her sister, as I knew I had seen them smoking with her before in years past.  Did everybody but her quit since she made her first trip to the smoking area solo?  Nope!  All three ladies ventured to the smoking area this time (adorably everybody but Old Reliable’s boyfriend) and all lit up.  It was a nice show too, and the younger sister who looked 21-22 was better looking and a better smoker than I remembered her from 2011.  Old Reliable remained the star of the show though, exhaling downward 9 times out of 10 and creating a smoke blast that almost resembled a meterological graphic for wind with a cartoon cloud blowing huge exhales….except in Old Reliable’s case it was smoke she was blowing and not wind.  The girl has style and volume with her smoking and on a night with few bells and whistles, she was a welcome treat.  The show would end in a few minutes and the mom and younger sister made their way to the beer garden while Old Reliable came back into the grandstand to sit with the boyfriend for the rest of the show, not to be seen smoking again unfortunately.  Old Reliable still hasn’t claimed a position in my Hall of Fame because none of her individual sightings has been HOF-worthy.  Not sure how I’d structure a blog write-up about her with snippets from five consecutive years, but it’s really getting to the point where this girl deserves her own individual post on my blog.

I scored another handful of sightings from the smoking area and beer gardens before the concert’s end, making this the most productive night numbers-wise from the area, much to my surprise.  There was a cute late 20s cowgirl in a big hat, white T-shirt and jeans who was part of two young couples at the edge of the smoking area.  She was a very attractive smoker but I wasn’t in a position to see much from her.  I was better-positioned to see what I presumed was a young gal working inside the beer gardens heading outside of its indoor pavilion on a smoke break.  She was an attractive mid-20s blond in an eye-catching red and white summer dress who was rapidly sucking down a cigarette while leaning against the outside of the blond.  Some middle-aged guy from the beer gardens followed her and gave her some good-natured grief, which she seemed to play along with without missing a beat.  It was too far back to make out any particularly terrific details and it seemed to play out over the course of only about three minutes before she bolted back into the building, but it was my last moment of glory at the 2014 FCF that took place in the beer gardens or smoking area….or just about anywhere for that matter!

The Terri Clark concert was above-average and ended at about 10 minutes till 10.  I just had a feeling that Corey following me around to gab at the fairgrounds was gonna happen just like the night before and I was right.  I didn’t get as irritated about it tonight though since so many of my family members were there (including my parents!) and were lingering, chatting amongst each other on the fairgrounds.  Having Corey walk with me around the grounds made the prospect of being seen wandering aimlessly multiple times by my parents or other relatives slightly less awkward.  Still, it was in no way the same exploring the grounds at half pace with Corey, engaging in very distracting conversation while trying to survey the crowd for stinky little girls.  And my ball and chain for the night stuck around for almost 45 minutes before leaving tonight to boot, confirming my original suspicion that this would likely be another lost night.  My best and only real new find during this period came on the midway as a trio of decently attractive 17-18ish girls included a blond in the middle in a white tanktop and acid-washed jean shorts holding a mostly smoked cigarette.  I only got a few seconds in passing to look her way and couldn’t follow because I was joined at the hip with Corey.

But I did get one nice follow-up sighting during that long walk with Corey, also from the midway.  Remember on Friday night when I saw that cute little 17ish redhead smoking but the sighting lost some cache when she handed the cigarette to her less attractive curly haired blond friend who smoked the rest of the cigarette.  The good news is that the cute little redhead was back with a new group of friends having just entered the fairgrounds from the midway entrance, wearing another conservative ensemble of black sweatshirt and dark blue jeans, only this time with a cigarette all to herself as the curly haired friend was nowhere in sight and nobody else in the group was smoking.  Apparently she was doing more than just taking a couple of drags off the friend’s cigarette the night before and she’s really a daily smoker.  The bad news is that I couldn’t follow and see more or ID the butt because of Corey.  Cockblocking me from seeing that sighting play out would end up being Corey’s worst example of interference at the 2014 FCF.

Corey left around 10:45 and I finally got the rest of the night to explore the less-populated-than-they-should-be grounds, but the rest of the night would end up being a big steaming bust.  And another big part of the problem this year happened again tonight, despite my assurance that it wouldn’t.  The midway that was supposed to stay open until midnight tonight and has every night in previous years until midnight went black around 11:15, cutting off a big portion of the crowd as well as a needed avenue for exploration in these small grounds.  By 11:20, under the new midway hours, you have a very shrunken territory to explore and fewer people there than previous years, giving me little choice but to leave by 11:30 tonight, a half hour earlier than previous years.

On my way out, looking to boost my lethargic numbers for the night by whatever means possible, I decided to approach the fence of the beer gardens and peek inside, hoping just maybe there would be young hotties smoking who I hadn’t seen earlier in the night…..and as luck would have it, there were.  A couple of late 20s blonds in summer dresses were barely visible in the darkness of my vantage point but I could tell they were both attractive and watching them both smoke in front of my eyes.  Pleased with this, I walked off to my car, leaving the county fair behind for another year.  On my way to the car, I saw a red car at the stoplight with a clearly attractive 18-21ish blond driver smoking.  What the hell, I thought, let’s count her in this year’s haul as well despite the very limited vantage point I  had of her.

So as I climbed into my car, I wrapped up the evening with 23 sightings and wrapped up the 2014 local county fair with 110 sightings, in the same general league as the previous two years but still down.  But when taking into account the headwinds I faced, particularly in the last couple of nights, being down less than 8% from last year in total sightings doesn’t seem so bad, as my evenings were cut short in both directions by Corey and the early lights-out at the midway.  Impossible not to acknowledge, however, that my local county fair came back down to Earth some in 2014, after having spent so many years riding in the clouds seemingly impervious to the concept of a weak night.  At one level, the week’s disappointing ending makes it easy to forget how great the first two days were. But at another level, the last thing I need at the county fair is for everybody to leave earlier than they have in years past, and my fear is that that is happening by design as a means to get the kids home and out of the fairgrounds earlier in the night.  If this is indeed the new normal, I can probably count on diminishing sightings returns in years ahead.  Whatever the case, I still had a good year at my county fair, albeit it not a great year like the last four or five have all been.

 

Trevor’s Girlfriend Meets The Family

Trevor McPherson gingerly works the steering wheel and pedals of his dad’s car as he drives through the familiar suburban neighborhood approaching his home on a Friday evening in early October. He had just gotten his driver’s license a month ago and is still pretty nervous behind the wheel. A few short months earlier, he had no burning desire at all to get his driver’s license despite his 16^th birthday approaching in August, but the girl a few feet to his right in the passenger seat changed that rather quickly in the later weeks of summer when he fast-tracked his way through driver’s ed. Trevor allowed himself to take his eyes off the road for a second to look at 15-year-old Lauren, a beautiful long-haired dark blond who could not have more perfectly personified the Midwestern girl next door. The nervous look on Lauren’s face matched her body language, as she repeatedly crosses and uncrosses her legs and takes copious and deeper drags than usual from her cigarette. Trevor is nervous too, but seeing that Lauren is far more nervous than him is just too adorable and an uncharacteristically smug smile lights up his face.

Lauren takes note of Trevor’s grin and a nervous smile emerges on her own face before saying, “You’re enjoying this just a little too much!” She pauses to take another nervous drag from her cigarette and then adds through a talking exhale “I’m soooo nervous about meeting your family!”

“Don’t worry, babe. They’ll love you,” Trevor smoothly reassures her. The look of youthful apprehension on Lauren’s face as she laments meeting his family at the end of their car ride takes him back to that night in late June when he first met Lauren at the swimming hole in northern Minnesota near where both of their families’ cabins were. A trigger was pushed inside Trevor on the smoky ride up to the cabin with his sisters that day and he decided to let go of his boyhood inhibitions. His first step was to approach the first pretty girl who tickled his fancy, particularly if she happened to be smoking a cigarette. As luck would have it, the very sweet and innocent mid-teen Lauren was sitting on the dock of the lake with her little brother and Trevor dug deep to extract every morsel of confidence he could muster and approached Lauren. It was the best decision he ever made as they connected immediately and hung out together in subsequent weekends at the cabin that summer.   They lived two suburbs apart in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so Trevor needed to get his driver’s license to reconnect with Lauren on a regular basis after summer ended, but everything fell into place and Trevor had never been happier in his 16 years than he was right now.

But it’s time for Trevor to take a big risk that he hopes will yield a huge reward. It’s time for Trevor to introduce Lauren to his family. Lauren has always been surprised that Trevor is so tolerant of her smoking but Trevor never broached the topic of his sexual attraction and since he and the conservative Lauren were a long way’s from being intimate, he never had any opportunity to convey it to her without it being awkward. Introducing Lauren to the family had the potential to stitch together some loose ends. It could finally earn him some respect from his family who means well but has always treated him as fairly invisible since he’s so quiet and unassuming…..but how could he be ignored after landing such a cute, intelligent, and well-mannered girlfriend? And being immersed in the smoking culture of his family could subtly send some cues Lauren’s way that might loosen her up in his presence. There is obviously the risk that Lauren could be freaked out by discerning that his interest in her is a proxy sexual fantasy that involved his mother and sisters, but it’s a risk Trevor is willing to take and knows that that revelation is inevitable anyway if he and Lauren go out long enough.

Lauren takes a final drag from her spent cigarette and deposits the butt out the cracked window which she also exhales through and then it finally hits her as she turns to Trevor with a terrified look on her face. “Oh shit!” she exclaims. “Now I’m gonna reek of smoke in front of your family!” apparently not even making the connection while nervously smoking her cigarette up to that point.

Trevor laughs at what would be a legitimate concern for most girls in this position, but quickly puts her mind at ease with a deliberate understatement, “Don’t worry. Most people in my family smoke so they won’t care.”

Immediately the fear vanishes off of Lauren’s face as she thinks for a second and adds, “Okay, good. Your clothes always smell like smoke so I figured somebody in your family must smoke.”

Trevor smiles back, not wanting to give away any clues for the merciless smoke assault Lauren is about to get in his house. He doesn’t know any details of the smoking situation in Lauren’s home other than both of her parents smoke and that she and her cousin engaged in an uncharacteristic (for Lauren) act of youthful rebellion by sneaking her parents’ cigarettes the summer before last. Trevor doesn’t know any girls of Lauren’s girl-next-door pedigree from his school who are smokers, and even with his upbringing surrounded by smokers, he is still kind of shocked that Lauren smokes. And the fascination with smoking that turned such a good girl into a smoker at age 14 is something he hoped would prove exploitable for the purposes of indulging his own smoking fetish. Tonight is gonna be the first test of that, and it’s about to happen as he turns into his parents’ driveway and parks the car. He looks to Lauren and she exhales nervously while making eye contact.

Ever the gentleman, Trevor steps out of the car and walks over to the passenger side, opens the door for Lauren who gives Trevor a nervous smile while preparing to exit the car. Distracted as Lauren is, Trevor takes the opportunity to admire her body as she rises to her feet in the driveway. Lauren dressed seasonally appropriate with a sweatshirt covering her blouse that didn’t do much for Trevor, but she delivered below the waist decked out in a skin-tight pair of black leggings. Trevor is always fascinated that girls in general and Lauren specifically consider these leggings to be fairly conservative attire as they leave absolutely nothing to the imagination of the leering male. Lauren looks to the front door as she gets out of the car, allowing Trevor to look down to her crotch. His heart skips a beat as the leggings tightly caress every curvature and every line of Lauren’s vagina that he has lusted for so heartily since that first night they met more than three months earlier. As she begins to walk towards the front door, he gets a chance to eyeball her ass which was also perfectly outlined in the leggings. He could stare at Lauren’s nubile body all night, but tonight he has a higher priority only a few feet ahead as they approach the front door of his parents’ house, and he is determined to make sure this night is a success.

Trevor opens the door and holds it open for Lauren to enter the house he grew up in. He looks at Lauren’s face to take in her reaction upon entering, and can tell Lauren is taken aback by the blue haze of smoke and the dominating smell of tobacco that hit her immediately. But neither Trevor nor Lauren have much time to react before Trevor’s mom Becky approaches the door to greet them, cigarette in hand just as Trevor suspected she would.

“Hello Lauren,” Becky warmly greets her with a surprisingly aggressive hug. “We’ve heard so much about you.” She pauses and Lauren thanks her before adding, “And I must say my son did very well for himself!”

The rest of the family approaches the entryway from the living room to see the mystery girl they had been hearing about for months. Becky introduces Lauren to them one by one, first Trevor’s dad Steve, and then sisters Courtney and Haylee who, just as Trevor suspected, were both holding cigarettes in hand as they exchange greetings. Trevor continues to read the body language, noticing Lauren looking at Courtney and Haylee smoking, and noticing that Courtney and Haylee seem very shocked at how impressive Lauren was considering their limited expectations of what the wallflower Trevor was capable of lassoing.

Lauren is welcomed into the living room where a five-year-old boy was sitting watching TV. Becky points his direction and says “Oh and this is Jarrod. Our daughter Haylee babysits him and his little brother. His brother is sleeping right now so if you don’t mind keep your voice down a little so he doesn’t wake up before dinner.”

Lauren mostly smiles and nods as the family members talk to her, answering questions with one-word responses and not giving away too much too early, and nobody including Trevor expected anything different given the obvious trepidation a 15-year-old girl would feel in this situation. Trevor makes a point of following Lauren’s eyes as she observes the family dynamics, and Lauren is paying particular attention to young Haylee who is nothing like Lauren had anticipated based on Trevor’s deliberately vague descriptions. He knew that the cute and feminine 14-year-old Haylee, decked out in her usual ensemble of pink tanktop and white shorts, must look so out of place to Lauren as she goes back to the couch where Jarrod is sitting watching his Disney movie on TV and sits right next to him with cigarette in hand. Trevor knows that both Jarrod and his brother Joshua’s parents are smokers, but he still wonders if they know the magnitude of the smoky environment that their sons experience in the McPherson home where Haylee babysits them. And he also wonders at this moment how far removed from Lauren’s household reality what is currently unfolding and what is inevitably yet to come will be. Despite growing up in a smoking household and being a smoker herself, Trevor is a little nervous that an evening with the heavy-smoking McPherson females will be far outside Lauren’s comfort zone.

Becky tells the young couple to not bother getting too comfortable because dinner would be ready in just a couple of minutes. The scenario is unfolding as Trevor had expected it would, with his mom and older sister Courtney asking Lauren the most inquisitive questions, all of which Trevor either already knows the answer to or wasn’t overly interested in. Trevor’s dad, temperamentally similar to Trevor in being pretty quiet and laid-back, gets a few questions in himself but mostly lets the ladies banter about. And Haylee, most likely a little shy around a girl her own age who happens to be her brother’s boyfriend, keeps her distance and shows the least interest in Trevor and his guest.

“Come and eat,” Becky announces to gather everybody at the kitchen table, including Haylee and Jarrod in the living room. “I hope Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes are to your liking,” Becky asks Lauren who responds approvingly. Trevor knows that this will be the true moment of revelation for how intense the smoking culture is in their home, and watches Lauren as she watches Becky, Courtney, and Haylee all bring cigarette packs and butt buckets to the kitchen table. Having had friends over for dinner in the past, Trevor is fairly confident that no “do you mind….?” inquiries will arise from anybody at the table regarding smoking at the dinner table. He doesn’t know how Lauren will respond anyway so he’s glad that his family is as clueless and selfish as ever in carrying on with their highly irregular smoking behaviors.

Lauren’s eyes get as large as saucers as she observes all three females arranging their tobacco paraphenelia in conjunction to the plates of food in front of them. Becky places her pack of Marlboro Reds on the other side of the plate from her silverware and the butt bucket similarly adjacent to her glass of milk. Courtney does the same with her butt bucket and pack of Marlboro Light Menthol 100s and Haylee with her Camel Pink No. 9s. All three ladies have still-smoldering cigarettes either poking out of their butt buckets or held between their fingers as they sit up at the table, all acting as if it’s perfectly normal behavior. In moments, forks and spoons start hitting the plates of the seven diners at the table with a haze of smoke still permeating. Trevor continues to sneak glances at Lauren to gauge her reaction, which is hard to fully discern, but he thinks it likely that Lauren has probably never experienced a situation like this in her life, particularly since most restaurants have been smoke-free over the course of her lifetime.

The conversation continues to ensue with most questions directed to Lauren but a few to Trevor. Trevor’s eyes dart back and forth from Lauren to whichever of the three other females at the table happen to be dragging from their cigarette while eating at the time. It doesn’t appear from Lauren’s reaction that she finds it completely repulsive, which is a relief to him. He had a feeling at the onset that Haylee’s legendary foul-mannered crudeness would fully put to the test Lauren’s tolerance, and he’s proven right as Haylee places her cigarette in her mouth while still chewing and takes an extended dangling drag towards the end of her Camel Pink. She crushes out the cigarette into the overflowing butt bucket and then shovels another forkful of potatoes into her mouth. Trevor watches in awe, wondering if Lauren is doing the same, as a blast of exhaled smoke exits Haylee’s nose as she chews, crashing into the plates full of food on table and spreading as it hits. Once Haylee swallows her potatoes, she crudely picks up her butt bucket and lets a juicy lugie dribble from her mouth onto the pile of cigarette butts. Trevor can see Jarrod has been watching this along with him, but is kind of hoping Lauren had missed that one. As he looks Lauren’s way and notices her immersed in conversation with Becky, he realizes she probably had.

But socially unacceptable dinnertime manners are hardly limited to Haylee at this kitchen table. The more refined Courtney would never resort to the kind of grossness that just came from Haylee, but she takes a couple of final drags from her Marlboro Light Menthol 100 in the moments ahead and follows through with her requisite “superexhales”, expelling massive volumes of straight-ahead smoke from which no one at the table was spared the stinky consequences. Courtney crushes out her cigarette and the diners are spared further asphyxiation at least for the immediate future, but Trevor knows it won’t last long.

As everybody finishes off their plate, Becky offers a strawberry-banana dessert which everybody gladly welcomes. Courtney and Haylee open up their respective packs of cigarettes and extract another one, lighting up just as Becky lights up a cigarette of her own while going to the refrigerator to break out the dessert. The questions keep coming and Lauren seems to be warming up to Trevor’s family pretty nicely as everybody eats dessert and Becky, Haylee, and Courtney smoke. Trevor keeps looking at Lauren hoping her comfort level is such that she will join in, and as she polishes off her dessert, Trevor’s wish comes true. After a night of clearly rising comfort and confidence, Lauren reverts briefly to the nervous meekness she walked in with as she looks straight at Becky and asks sheepishly, “Do you mind if I have a cigarette?”

For the first time since they arrived nearly an hour earlier, the room goes silent for a moment and every face at the table looks at Lauren with genuine surprise. Becky breaks the awkward silence and says in an unintentionally condescending voice, “Sure honey! You go right ahead! I had no idea you were a smoker.”

“Thanks,” Lauren responds gleefully, with obvious relief on her face both for the family’s acceptance and the prospect of sweet nicotine relief. She opens up her purse and pulls out her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s, and as she places the cigarette into her mouth and digs out her lighter, Trevor’s mom pleasantly surprises him with a request he didn’t even anticipate…

“Be a gentleman, Trevor, and light your girlfriend’s cigarette,” Becky advises.

Trevor thought he had prepared for every scenario that may have unfolded over the evening, but he was unprepared for him mom to so effortlessly present him with the golden opportunity he’s been waiting for since June. Lauren hands Trevor her lighter, and Trevor nervously approaches the end of the long all-white dangling from Lauren’s mouth with it. Trevor feels a rush of adrenaline bursting through his body as he flicks Lauren’s cigarette to life, but also feels a little on-the-spot knowing that everybody at the table is watching a moment he always hoped would be between Lauren and himself. Courtney pushes her butt bucket in Lauren’s direction so they can share it.

A brief conversation about Lauren’s smoking played out for a couple of minutes, revealing the information that Trevor already knew about how Lauren took up the habit a little over a year ago and that she smokes about a half pack a day. He is kind of hoping for a lengthy discussion about smoking to dominate the rest of the time at the table but the subject soon changes to their mutual family cabins up north in the Bemidji area. Trevor has plenty of time to observe the smoking habits of everybody at the table and this contrast really exposes the comparative shallowness of Lauren’s drags and exhales, particularly compared to Courtney whose gigantic smoke infernos were legendary. This comes as no surprise given that Lauren has only been smoking a year while the females in his family are all hardened tobacco veterans, but Trevor adores watching Lauren’s rookie stylings as she smokes with the “big girls”, his heart melting at the innocent way in which Lauren holds her cigarette with her bent elbow at the kitchen table and giggling at times with the lighthearted banter that continues.

The trajectory of the evening finally breaks with another turn of events that Trevor has long figured was coming. Courtney interjects to announce her departure. “Well much as I’d love to hang out with you fine people all night, my friends are expecting me so I better go see them.”

Courtney is a senior in high school now and for several months, Friday night has been her night to howl. Trevor figured she would break away at some point, and listens to his parents remind Courtney of her midnight curfew as she gets up from the table. Courtney gives passing acknowledgment of her parents’ rules as she gets up to walk towards the stairs where Trevor knows she will change clothes. He briefly watches her walk away in her conventional home comfort clothes of loose-fitting T-shirt and jeans, but he’s pretty sure that when she comes back downstairs she’ll be wearing something a lot sexier.

The conversation at the table presses forward for the next 10 minutes or so, all three remaining gals having finished their after-supper cigarettes and leaving Trevor briefly bored, yet anticipating his older sister’s return. A mild commotion ensues from upstairs and Trevor can hear the beginning of a descent down those stairs followed by the mildly loud and aggravated voice of his sister asking those downstairs if they know where her purse is. In seconds, Courtney is downstairs and approaching the table again, and Trevor could not have been more pleased with her wardrobe selection. She is wearing a very revealing, low-cut, bare-midriffed white blouse covered by a stylish unzipped black leather jacket…..and a skin-tight pair of black leather pants below the waist. Courtney has kept her hair its natural blond that fall rather than dye it dark brown as she usually does after summer, and Trevor has never seen his sister look sexier, particularly with a freshly lit all-white Marlboro Light Menthol 100 dangling from her lips as she approaches.

Trevor looks Lauren’s way, hoping she’s noticing what he is and noticing how sexy Courtney looks in that black leather. While Trevor’s primary agenda for the evening has been to normalize and promote smoking to Lauren based on exposure to his unorthodox family, he also has been hoping for Lauren to see Courtney heading out for a Friday night with her friends wearing the exact sort of thing she is wearing to promote the conservative Lauren to expand her wardrobe. It is perhaps a longshot, but Lauren gives Courtney the exact response he wants to hear when she tells Courtney “you look really good in that!”

Courtney thanks Lauren but is still distracted looking for her purse. Her father points to a table on the outskirts of the kitchen where he spots her purse and points her in that direction. “Thanks daddy”, Courtney says, approaching her nonsmoking dad with that long cigarette still dangling from her lips and immerses him in a very aggressive hug, temporarily making Trevor jealous, and then removes the cigarette briefly from her lips and taps the ash into the nearest butt bucket. The cigarette goes right back into her mouth and she picks up the purse and approaches the door to leave for the night, but before she leaves she tells Lauren how nice it was to meet her and gives Trevor an admiring look, adding “don’t let this one slip away, little brother!”, winking at him as she walks away. Trevor feels on top of the world and can never remember a time when either of his sisters expressed their pride or admiration for him. He gives one final admiring glance at Courtney’s leather-draped ass as she walks out the door, wondering at this point what else the night had in store for him, convincing himself the night had to have peaked.

He was gonna get his answer in just a couple of moments, seconds after Haylee lights another Camel Pink No. 9. The screams of a long-sleeping and forgotten infant emerge from the nearest bedroom. It is Joshua, Jarrod’s 18-month-old baby brother. The timing is perfect as Haylee leaves the room and Becky asks Trevor and Lauren if they’d like to stick around or head on out and have some fun. Trevor leaves it up to Lauren and is relieved when Lauren says she’s having fun here and would be happy to stay a couple more hours, even though they’d have nothing more exciting to do than watch Jarrod’s Disney movies. Trevor knows that at least for him, there would be far more entertaining things going on in that living room tonight than what’s on TV.

Haylee delivers on that expectation in mere moments, carrying a crying Jarrod into the living room, cigarette dangling from her lips, and approaches the coffee table near where Joshua’s diapers are kept. She sets the baby boy up on the countertop with fresh diaper in hand, getting ready to do what Trevor knows to be Haylee’s least favorite part of her babysitting job. She lays out young Joshua on the countertop that represented the dividing line where the living room turned into the kitchen, and Trevor quietly celebrates as his positioning is perfect to watch this out of the corner of his eye with little risk of Lauren, seated to his right, noticing. Haylee unfastens Joshua’s diaper and attends to him, carrying out one of her vintage dangling drags while doing so, smoke sloppily spilling out of her face and gravitating into the airspace of the infant boy. At one point she leans forward while replacing the soiled diaper with the replacement, the cherry of her dangling cigarette mere inches in front of the baby boy’s face.

Trevor is awestruck observing his kid sister’s clueless and incredibly inappropriate display, wondering if the boys’ parents would remove them from the McPherson home immediately if they had any idea how their babysitter operated. And Trevor cannot help but notice the long ash at the end of Haylee’s cigarette and wonders how long it’s gonna hang on. As Haylee calmly speaks to Joshua through a talking dangle trying to settle down the crying infant, Trevor gets his answer. A long granny ash falls from Haylee’s cigarette, and even though Trevor doesn’t see where it falls, it looks to have dropped right onto the boy’s midsection. Trevor watches as Haylee places her hand near the boy’s penis and flicks the ash off of his skin and inside the otherwise clean diaper before fastening the diaper and lifting Joshua off the table. My sisters need quit finding ways to grow my smoking fetish, Trevor thinks to himself as Haylee lifts Joshua into her arms, cigarette still dangling from her lips and a dirty diaper in her free hand.

Haylee disappears into the kitchen to dispose of the diaper but returns in a few seconds, sitting on the couch adjacent to the loveseat that Trevor and Lauren are seated on, sitting right next to Jarrod with Joshua on her lap. At this point Lauren is observing as well, making goo-goo faces at young Joshua that goes along with Haylee’s baby talk. It’s the first time the two teen girls had bonded in any way since Lauren’s arrival and Trevor hopes their mutual bashfulness is on the wane. The girls have a brief exchange about the boys and how long Haylee has been babysitting, but it remains awkward and Trevor can’t help but notice Lauren looking at the close proximity of Haylee’s cigarette to both of the boys. He hopes Lauren doesn’t say anything, and ultimately breathes a sigh of relief when Lauren instead breaks out her Marlboro Lights 100s pack and he lights up another one for her, determining that Lauren’s comfort level in this free-smoking household is increasing.

The family quietly watches the Disney movies for the next hour or so. Nothing on the screen held Trevor’s interest too closely but the people watching the screen sure did. Most fascinating was Haylee who smokes her Camel Pink No. 9s at her usual significant clip with two very young boys in her immediate presence, either dangling the cigarette from the corner of her mouth or holding it to her right out of Joshua’s reach. Either way, her sloppy exhales often blast Joshua directly in the face while her sidestream smoke flow straight into the respiratory system of Jarrod sitting next to her. Jarrod frequently coughs and rubs his irritated eyes, and Trevor sits there fascinated that Haylee is too oblivious to even notice. He also notices both boys have as hard of time taking their eyes off of Haylee as he does, and he recognizes the significant likelihood that the young boys’ childhood babysitter is setting the early ideal for their sexual preferences. While Trevor has vague memories of his mom’s heavy smoking providing the origins of his smoking fetish, he can only imagine how bad these boys will have it as his mom was not a shapely 14-year-old girl in a pink tanktop and white shorts when he was their age.

And while Trevor’s observations early on during the course of the movie viewing is more directed towards sister Haylee, girlfriend Lauren ultimately demands to be noticed, and as the next hour plays out, Trevor begins to notice less-than-subtle signals from Lauren that the evening has had an effect on her. Only about 15 minutes after finishing her first cigarette, Trevor is surprised as Lauren tugs on his arm and hands him her lighter to spark up another cigarette. Lauren has always been a light smoker and she’s already smoked more tonight than she has any other night they’ve been together. And he can’t help but notice the look in her eyes after he sparks up that next cigarette, a playful and inviting look that Lauren follows up by cuddling next to Trevor and lying her head on his shoulder. Trevor puts her arm around her and is overjoyed that Lauren is comfortable enough around his family to make her first physical overture towards him beyond the hand-holding and goodnight smooches that represented as far as the two had gone up to this point.

Three months ago, or really even three hours ago, Trevor could never have imagined cuddling with a girl in front of his family, yet here he sits, bearing the brunt of Lauren’s exhaled cigarette smoke more closely than ever before and feeling her body expand and contract as she took her drags with his arm pressed around her shoulder. Trevor always enjoys when Lauren smokes a cigarette, but this was the best smoking experience he’s ever had with her and he’s briefly disappointed when Lauren crushes out her cigarette in the butt bucket Courtney left behind.

But the evening takes another unexpected turn seconds later when dad looks up and asks who wants ice cream sundaes. “I do!”, shouts Jarrod the loudest, but with Lauren, Courtney, and Trevor all nodding that that sounds good to them as well.

Becky then looks to Steve and says she doesn’t think they have any toppings at home, merely the vanilla ice cream. Steve then offers to go to the store and pick them up, but Trevor instinctively takes advantage of an opening he just knows will produce dividends for him. “I can go get it!” Trevor offers. “I need the driving practice anyway,” he adds, taking it further than needed to sell his point but nonetheless accomplishing his end as Steve nods that that will be fine.

Trevor looks briefly at his girlfriend next to him, who is still glowing, and cooperates as he hoped and chimes in, “I’ll go with!”

Lauren stands up as Trevor approaches his dad for the car keys.   Trevor’s dad gives him an “I-know-what-you’re-up-to” grin as he hands him the keys followed by a stealth thumbs-up to his son that probably wasn’t meant for mom’s eyes. Am I that obvious, Trevor thinks to himself as he turns to Lauren and they walk towards the door.   Trevor is just dying to hear Lauren’s thoughts on his family as he opens the car door for her and they make the short eight-block drive to the nearest grocery store.

Lauren wastes no time broaching the exact topic that Trevor hoped for, lightheartedly saying “You weren’t kidding when you said there are a lot of smokers in your family!”

Trevor laughs and adds, “See I told you that you didn’t have anything to worry about with my family.”

“Yeah they are really great. I liked everybody a lot. They’re so easy to talk to.” After a brief pause she continues, “I kind of feel sorry for those little boys though,” Lauren adds but with a tone that assures Trevor she isn’t too upset about what she just saw. “Haylee really smokes a lot around them. As much as my little brother hates my smoking, I can’t imagine smoking that much around him.”

“I guess I’m used to it because they’ve always smoked around me,” Trevor responds, taken aback once again as Lauren leans towards him and shows physical affection by rubbing her hands on his shoulder. They continue to chat on the drive to the store and Lauren keeps throwing lovey-dovey looks his way, a look he hasn’t seen from her before. As he arrives at the store, he instinctively parks his car in a fairly remote spot near the back of the lot, having a feeling that when they get back outside he just might want a little privacy.

Trevor opens the door for Lauren, who greets him with an unusually bubbly and flirtatious “thank you sir!” before approaching the store’s entrance with him and reinforcing his impression that something different was going on with Lauren tonight. He puts his arm around her waist as they walk, taking some initiative for physical content that both of them had shied away from up to this point. As they get inside, Trevor picks up a small basket for the few ice cream sundae supplies they need and Lauren wraps her arms around Trevor’s, walking arm in arm in a public display of affection that seemed so out of character for the shy Lauren. Who is this girl and what she done with Lauren Nelson, Trevor finds himself thinking.  On they press, arm in arm from aisle to aisle, picking up walnuts, chocolate and butterscotch sauce, whipped cream, and maraschino cherries.

After paying for their ice cream toppings and exiting the store, Lauren and Trevor make the long walk to Trevor’s dad’s car in the back of the parking lot but as Trevor opens the passenger door for Lauren to get in, she doesn’t let go of his hand and a mischievous look appears on her face. “Have a seat first, my good sir”, she adds.

Trevor cannot believe how frisky Lauren is but plans to play it out as far as she’ll let it go, sitting down in the passenger seat with Lauren quickly sitting on his lap and closing the door. The young couple is snugly seated in the compressed space and Trevor takes the opportunity to put his hand on the side of Lauren’s ass, gently caressing it as she reaches for her purse and extracts her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s. She places an unlit cigarette into her mouth and says through a talking dangle, “Be a gentleman, Trevor. Light your girlfriend’s cigarette,” playfully mocking Becky’s husky voice from earlier and then cutting loose a girlish giggle in sharp contrast.

Trevor laughs himself and then lights her cigarette and Lauren takes one of the deepest drags he’s seen from her. Lauren exhales straight into Trevor’s face and Trevor realizes that Lauren is onto him. He doesn’t know how to respond and wants to avoid an awkward conversation about his smoking fetish so instead tells Lauren how beautiful she is as she takes another drag and again exhales into his face. Lauren bites her lower lip and the look on her face drifts from merely frisky to come-hither, but Trevor only gets a moment to admire that look before she aggressively approaches him and presses her lips to his.

Trevor takes it in and enjoys his first open-mouth kiss with the girl he had been fantasizing about for the last three months. After all these years of wondering what a kiss from a smoker would taste like, Trevor is finding out as Lauren taps into a level of passion he didn’t know existed in her as he savors her tobacco-laced breath, their tongues slipping in and out of each other’s mouths for a good 60 seconds before they split apart.

“You’re a good kisser!” Lauren says, taking another drag from her still-burning cigarette and exhaling into Trevor’s face once again. Trevor can barely muster a word staring back at Lauren, aghast at just how correct his instincts were that Lauren’s out-of-character appeal to smoking was a vein that, if tapped into properly, could release a tiger. That tiger is out of her cage tonight as Lauren proceeds to kiss Trevor’s ear and neck, providing him a different perspective of her smoky odor as she moves her face while doting affection on him. She takes another drag from her cigarette and they make out again, Trevor’s senses running at full-throttle capacity as his teenage girlfriend thrusts her ashtray mouth directly into his while holding her burning cigarette over his shoulder, not close enough to burn him, but close enough for the smoke to drift towards him as he breathed and enhancing the sensual experience even more.

After a good three minutes of making out, they break apart again, and Trevor notices an even deeper level of mischief on Lauren’s face. As she takes another drag from her cigarette, she unzips her sweater and tosses it to the backseat. Trevor has little experience with girls, but he knows exactly how to respond to this gesture. Lauren’s red blouse wasn’t particularly low cut but he nonetheless places his hand on the blouse above the cleavage and pulls it down, touching her boobs for the first time and then lowering his face down to caress them with his lips. The constrictive blouse and her bra keep him from getting the level of access he was hoping for, but Trevor is still able to wrap his lips around both of Lauren’s breasts and inside her cleavage. She offers subtle moans of pleasure to encourage him and he gets even more encouragement by the feeling of her chest expanding as she takes another drag from her cigarette, followed by the odor of fresh smoke when she exhales.

Trevor is getting greedy at this point and tests Lauren by placing his hand on her crotch outside of her leggings, rubbing his fingers on her pussy to see how she responds while continuing to kiss her breasts. When he gets no resistance, he takes the opportunity to find her waistline with his hand and ventures down her leggings and her panties, proceeding inch by inch towards her privates dreading that Lauren’s disapproving hand would put a stop towards his own hand’s exploratory descent into parts unknown. He feels the stubble of her pubic hairs and congratulates himself for touching his first vagina before beginning to caress her girly parts with a rising level of aggressiveness. He has no idea what he’s doing down there, but Lauren’s increasingly passionate moans let him know he’s doing something right. He’s thinking to himself how crazy it is that having barely been to what he would consider first base with Lauren or any other girl up until now, he had rounded first base, kept running to second, and is turning to third base with a solid stand-up triple on one night. Lauren begins to bark instructions to Trevor to move his hand towards her sweet spot, and Trevor becomes humbled a bit and her instructions keep coming and he’s unable to locate the spot she wants him to find. As she says “ouch!” at one point, Trevor decides it’s time to quit while he’s ahead, removing his hand from her pants and removing his face from her boobs to look at her. The look of passion and pleasure is as strong as ever and she playfully adds, “If I had known this would happen, I definitely would have shaved down there last night.”

They begin to make out again, her breath tasting smokier than ever after having consumed most of her cigarette at this point.  When they break apart this time, Lauren takes a final drag from her cigarette and tosses the butt out the cracked window before crashing her head into Trevor’s chest. She reeks of smoke at this point, pressed so tightly to him, and Trevor remains very turned on, sensing that she is as well. “You want to do anything else,” Trevor asks after a couple of minutes of comfortable and relaxed silence.

Lauren pauses a bit before responding, “I’d love to but it probably isn’t a good idea since we’re heading back to your parents place.”

Trevor almost completely forgot about the fact that they were heading back to his folks’ place with ice cream toppings, but agreed that they should head home, opening the door to let Lauren climb out before circling the car to get into the driver’s seat himself, the evening having gone more spectacularly than he could ever have imagined. He starts the car and prepares to drive away, but Lauren leans toward him with another come-hither look in her eyes, taking him more off guard than at any other point that night with the question, “So how big is it?”

Trevor is at a complete loss for words before finally coming around to responding with “you’ll just have to see”.

Lauren wastes no time doing so, unbuckling the top buckle off of his jeans and venturing down his shorts with her hand to touch Trevor’s now fully erect cock. Trevor can tell that this is the first dick Lauren has ever touched and she explores it thoroughly with her fingers, a bubbly smile emerging on her face as she strokes his manhood. Trevor adores the feeling of having his dick stroked by the most important girl in his life and briefly entertains the thought that she won’t be satisfied by merely touching it. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on that thought before she reads his mind and begins to unzip his fly with her free hand. She gives Trevor an approving look before working his unit through the hole in his shorts and then through the fly of his jeans, admiring it for a moment before climbing on top of her passenger seat, trying to figure out a way to give head with the inconvenient console separating her seat from his.

She ventures ahead, getting on her knees at the edge of the passenger seat and lowering her face to his crotch, filling her mouth with his manhood and taking an extended suck before working it with oral thrusting motions that provide Trevor accelerating levels of physical pleasure the likes of which he could never have imagined. How incredibly far I have come since last summer, Trevor thinks to himself while watching and feeling Lauren’s sexually charged assault of the most private parts of his body. He looks to her lower body, her ass up in the window for anybody to see if they weren’t parked in such a remote spot and at such a late hour. He briefly pontificates on how vulnerable of a position Lauren is in, leaning over the console in the car and thrusting herself down into his lap, but as he feels the jagged edge of Lauren’s teeth sharply press against his hard dick, he quickly changes his mind and recognizes that he’s the one in the really vulnerable position here, at the mercy of this horny teenage girl fellating on him and capable of inflicting incomprehensible pain with one “false move”.

He lets this thought pass quickly though as he realizes he’s about to discharge. He warns her that it’s coming and asks if she wants to taste it. She vigorously nods in the affirmative and in seconds his male fluids explode into her mouth. He’s curious if she will gag and find it gross, but she gulps it up as quickly as possible, seconds before lifting her head from his crotch and making eye contact for the first time in a few minutes while using her hand to wipe her mouth. She leans back in the seat and both of them take a moment to catch their breath, continuing to make lovey-dovey eyes at each other.

Trevor asks if she’d like him to return the favor, but realizes they’re both really out on a limb at this point. Lauren obviously does as well and responds, “No silly. If you went back to your parents place with me all over your face I am pretty sure your parents would figure it out.” Lauren giggles and Trevor has to agree, but after a brief awkward pause, Lauren adds, “Maybe next Friday night you can return the favor though”, giving him a toothy smile and then reaching into her purse for yet another cigarette which she beckons Trevor to light. The very possibility that the next Friday night—or any future Friday night–could be in the same league as tonight hadn’t crossed Trevor’s mind until now, but at this point all bets were off as his reserved girlfriend of four hours earlier has taken the bait he set out for her and swallowed it whole—literally!

Trevor and Lauren drive home from there, and while Jarrod asks “What took you guys so long?!??!” Haylee, Steve, and Becky feel no need to ask as they figure some kind of hanky-panky transpired and have no interest in finding out details about it. Trevor and Lauren’s body language as they prepare their ice cream sundaes speak volumes, particularly to Trevor’s parents who grow increasingly concerned with ongoing observations that these two got a little too frisky on their drive to the grocery store. Everybody sits down to watch Disney videos and eat their ice cream sundaes soon after, and Lauren and Trevor both make eyes at each other thinking the same thing as they place the maraschino cherries that top their sundaes and rip the stem apart from the cherries inside their teeth. They both know they will be popping more cherries in the very near future.

Has Scarcity of Sightings Enhanced Your Smoking Fetish?

I’m 36 years old and have had some level of sexual association with female smoking going back to my earliest memories of childhood, actively fantasizing about it as young as first grade.  My fetish grew with me into adolescence and young adulthood, but didn’t come out of the closet until 1999 when I discovered these boards.  That was, of course, the end of an era for public smoking, but also the end of taking for granted the presence of sightings.  And in the year 2014, I have to admit that the scarcity of sightings today has enhanced the optical pleasures I take away from the sightings I do get.

Now, granted, part of this stems from my age and timeline coming to terms with my fetish, but I can’t help but think that even if I was 20 years older, the widespread prevalence of smoking a generation ago would have made it less of a big deal to me.  Without question, I would still have had a fetish for it if I graduated high school in 1981 instead of 1996, but would my attention to detail and raw psychological fascination in young female smokers have ever reached the point it is today if not for the “rare treat” aspect of modern sightings?  I tend to think not.

Now this is not to say I wouldn’t go back to the smoking culture of the 70s and 80s in a heartbeat if given the chance.  But if I’m forced to acknowledge an upside to the current era of declining tobacco prevalence, it’s that the sightings I do get are so much more satisfying.  I take this into account on my blog as well when I’m reconfiguring lists of all-time favorites.  Sightings that would have been “merely great” if I had stumbled into them 15 years ago get bonus points for occurring in the modern era, simply because the likelihood of these kinds of sightings occurring today is so limited.

Take my three favorite fairgrounds sightings from 2013 for example.  One of them was an 18ish brunette who lit her first cigarette 30 seconds after entering the fair gates on a day designated as “smoke-free” at my county fair.  I saw her two more times that night at the fair and she was smoking both times, and then three more times on subsequent evenings, and she was smoking every time.  While she would have been an incredible sighting 20 years ago, the context of a girl like this existing in 2013, smoking so heavily with cigarettes selling for $7.50 a pack in Minnesota and flagrantly violating the fairgrounds’ ban on smoking, made her that much more memorable and worthy of Hall of Fame status.

Another of last year’s Big Three, also at my county fair, put on a smorgasbord of trigger-tripping fetish behavior that I had a front-row seat for, being the only smoker in her group, posing for group photos openly advertising her cigarette in them, making out with her nonsmoking boyfriend with fresh tobacco breath, and smoking while eating fair food in her tight huddle of friends standing amidst her haze of secondhand smoke.  Again, a sighting like this would always have been incredible, but it wouldn’t have seemed so otherworldly exotic in 1993 when smoking was normalized than it did in 2013 with smoking so denormalized in “polite society”.

And lastly, I described last year’s Minnesota State Fair sighting involving a mother and 13ish blond daughter smoking in the presence of the nonsmoking husband/father as “the kind of sighting I thought existed only in the past….the kind of sighting I never thought I’d see again”.  Even though the daughter’s smoking show lasted all of four drags, the fact that I witnessed something like this in 2013 elevated it to the upper reaches of my all-time greatest sightings list, without doubt several positions higher than it would have if I had witnessed the same dynamic play out 25 years ago when I was closer to the daughter’s age.

Am I alone here?  Are sightings more satisfying for all the fetishers here today than a generation ago?  Do you find yourself studying the detail of gals’ smoking style more closely in those rare opportunities that you get a front-row seat to a sighting than you did when so many more women were publicly smoking in the past?  And are you more admiring of the girls who still deliver first-rate sightings now simply because of the magnitude of their rebellion in the face of a hostile culture?  For me it’s all the all of the above, and for as long as a day or evening of fetishing is still capable of producing an adrenaline-charging sighting like any of the three I cited above, I will continue going out of my way to put myself in situations where such sightings can materialize.

Minnesota State Fair Overview

The Minnesota State Fair is my favorite sightings venue of the year.  It has been delivering for me consistently since I was a boy and has been the source of a long list of my best sightings of all-time.  Going back to 1993, I have scored 2,882 sightings at the Minnesota State Fair.  The list has become so long that I’ve written my own shorthand version of a top-300 sightings of all-time from the MNSF.  And even that list only represents about 12% of total sightings over the last 20 years.  From there I’ve narrowed it down to a top-100 list…

Below I will make two separate lists.  The first is the total number of sightings I scored each year at the Minnesota State Fair since I started keeping count.  The second is a numerical breakdown of my top-100 sightings year by year.  It’s not easy to explain but hopefully it’ll make since when you see the chart….

Chart 1

1993–2 sightings
1994–0
1995–1
1996–6
1997–1
1998–4
1999–6
2000–6
2001–106
2002–105
2003–106
2004–109
2005–101
2006–165
2007–184
2008–192
2009, Trip 1–206
2009, Trip 2—95
2010, Trip 1—117
2010, Trip 2—212

2011, Trip 1–194

2011, Trip 2–203

2012, Trip 1–186

2012, Trip 2–199

2013, Trip 1–180

2013, Trip 2–196

Some more specifics about the figures in Chart 1 below.  But first Chart 2, the distribution of my top-85 sightings year-to-year….

Chart 2

1993–31
1994
1995–76
1996–1
1997
1998
1999–54
2000–2, 12, 75
2001–8, 16
2002–48, 74
2003–20, 28, 32
2004–7, 19, 40, 46, 62
2005–42, 82
2006–4, 13, 21, 41, 88, 99
2007–9, 17, 18, 33, 68, 87, 91, 94
2008–3, 6, 23, 29, 34, 51, 83, 90, 93
2009, Trip 1–30, 49, 92, 100
2009, Trip 2–14, 36, 63, 71, 77, 89
2010, Trip 1—10, 35, 64, 70, 84
2010, Trip 2—5, 43, 53, 56, 79

2011 , Trip 1–15, 47, 55, 59, 72, 95

2011, Trip 2–22, 25, 52, 57, 69, 78, 80

2012, Trip 1–26, 37, 44, 85, 96

2012, Trip 2–24, 38, 50, 60, 65, 81, 97

2013, Trip 1–27, 39, 58, 61, 73, 86

2013, Trip 2–11, 45, 66, 67, 98

Now I’ll do a brief year-to-year synopsis to accompany the charts….

1993–The year I finally broke through with my first memorable sighting after eight years of attending the Minnesota State Fair with a bourgeoning but still undefined smoking fetish.  I had just turned 16 a couple days before my first consequential MNSF sighting transpired, and I couldn’t have asked for a better “sweet 16″ gift.  Grade:  B+

1994–It was just my mom and I this year as my dad had to work.  Sightings of smokers were not on my mind and I spent much of my day at free country music concerts in the bandshell.  This was the only year of the last 18 where I didn’t score a single memorable sighting. Grade: Incomplete

1995–Another year of just my mom and I.  Pretty much a carbon copy of the year before except for one significant development…..a vintage sighting of a hot blonde near the sandcastles that remains in my top-100 of all-time 16 years later.  I had just turned 18 and on my continued slow road to having a defined smoking fetish.  This sighting was one more stepping stone on that road.  Grade:  B

1996–Two days before I left for college, I had no idea that I was about to have an even more consequential day in the trajectory of my life, but on August 28, 1996, exactly that happened.  Once again it was just me and my mom, attending one of our bandshell concerts and stumbling into the epic foursome that would become known as “The State Fair Girls”.  There are few days in the history of my fetish as momentous as this one.  Grade:  A

1997–For the first year since 1993, my dad was back this year.  All those years in the 90s I wasted with trucking through commercial exhibit buildings with my parents, attending bandshell concerts during the day, and leaving in the mid-to-late afternoon after only 7-8 hours at the fair….all during the era where teen smoking rates were at their highest since the late 70s.  What a waste.  This was the final year in which I didn’t have smoker sightings in mind as I journeyed through the fairgrounds, but even without paying attention I managed to score one passing sighting of a babe smoking in a cluster of hotties.  Grade:  D+

1998–I had worked at the post office this summer and although I hadn’t fully come to terms with my smoking fetish by the time the MNSF came around at summer’s end, it was the first state fair where I was consciously looking for pretty girls with cigarettes.  So I had that part down…but I still hadn’t changed my ways, following in the folks’ shadows through the buildings and sitting at outdoor concerts during the day.  I did pull off a handful of mediocre sightings, but chalk this up to another wasted year at the exact time when teen girl smoking rates hit their peak.  Grade:  C-

1999–On May 11, 1999, I discovered the smoking fetish websites online and spent the rest of the summer intensely searching for sightings in a way I never had before.  This would be my first Minnesota State Fair with a confirmed smoking fetish.  Yet once again, for a final year, I was in my parents’ shadow for most of the day.  By mid-afternoon without any good sightings, I was feeling very disappointed…and straitjacketed.  There had to be a ton of smoking going on the grounds but I just wasn’t in a position to see it, I kept telling myself.  But I finally came up with the solution I should have came up with years earlier.  At age 22, I finally told the folks I was gonna wander the grounds for the final hour by myself.  In doing so, I saw a number of quality sightings, including a girl who remains in my top-50
MNSF sightings of all-time today. Needless to say, a monster was born…and the Minnesota State Fair would never be the same again.   Grade:  B-

2000–This was a year of transition for me in quite a few ways.  It was a gloomy and cool day and I had to leave the fair early to go to a job interview.  Not necessarily a recipe for a great day at the fair, but I nonetheless scored two of my top-15 MNSF sightings of all-time, including my #2 sighting ever, the best young girl sighting of my life.  It was transitional because I still spent about 40% of my day with the parents either in the buildings or at outdoor bandshell concerts.  No complaints this year as being with my parents facilitated both of my epic sightings of the day in their own way.  Still, it was the end of an era for both the daytime bandshell concerts and me spending any time at all with my parents.  The new millennium was gonna have an entirely new set of rules for the Minnesota State Fair.  Grade: A-

2001–The transition put into place two years prior reached its completion in 2001, the first MNSF that would resemble my current state fair safaris.  I separated from the folks early in the morning and navigated the grounds on my own terms.  I also counted sightings that I accrued on the grounds for the first time and was actually surprised when the number exceeded 100.  I had to wait until the dinner hour, but I managed to score two epic sightings that year.  Also new to 2001 was the shift of the bandshell concerts from the daytime to the evening. Starting at 8:30 p.m. Ronnie Milsap took the stage.  This was important because prior to 2001, my family had left the fairgrounds before dark every year.  Being able to stick around after dark would bring about a new MNSF experience and a boatload of new sightings.  And after all this, I would get home around midnight, log onto the computer, and find my one-month-old love interest Dana waiting for me online to hear all about my day at the fair and lamenting how she wished could have tagged along.  Needless to say, another great day.  Grade: A-

2002–I backslid a little this year from the previous year in a couple of ways.  My mom had to work a few hours early in the morning so we took off late and didn’t even get to the fairgrounds until after 11, a good two hours later than normal.  And there were no evening concerts and thus no grounds to stick around after dark, meaning we left at 7 p.m. once again.  Nonetheless, I navigated the grounds on my own again the entire day and dedicated the eight hours I did have that day exclusively to sightings.  How did they hold up?  Mixed bag.  If you check out my Chart 2, you’ll see that I only had a couple top-100 sightings that year and nothing in epic terrain.  Numberswise, however, I still pulled off more than 100 sightings in those eight hours, which is a pretty good timeframe for that number of sightings, even though plenty of them were third-tier sightings of moderately attractive single mothers and the like.  Not a bad day at the fair, but disappointing by MNSF standards.  Grade:  B-

2003–Another year of just my mom and I as my dad had to work.  It was also another year of an evening bandshell concert which of course faciliated a longer day at the fair that lasted until well after 10 p.m. Again, I flew solo all day and dedicated the entire day to sightings. The numbers were strikingly consistent with the previous two years with just over 100 sightings, but this year I scored three sightings in the near-epic category that remain in my top-40 today and bested anything scored at the 2002 MNSF.  I also scored my first blockbuster MNSF sighting during the evening hours, which set the stage for much more aggressive evening fetishing in the years to come.  My best years were still ahead of me, but this was indeed a good one.  Grade:  B+

2004–A year very similar to the previous year in that it was again just my mom and I and we stuck around late for another evening concert.  Numberswise, I broke a previous record with 109 total sightings, but that was just a few more than I had scored the three previous years. There was only one big difference between 2004 and previous years.  The quality was astounding.  Right away in the morning, I was scoring epic and blockbuster sightings, the best of which was my Swisher Sweet girl still in my top-10 today.  The quality of the sightings held up over the course of the day and I managed five sightings that remain in my top-60 MNSF sightings. It was my most consistently satisfying sightings day at the MNSF thus far.  Grade:  A

2005–This was my 20th consecutive year at the Minnesota State Fair.   I was unemployed and had nothing to do.  And I had just had an epic local county fair with three of my best sightings of all-time.  All this meant I was rarin’ to go and was more excited about the emerging Minnesota State Fair than I had ever been before, so much so that I made the first incarnation of my top-25 MNSF sightings list of all time in the days before the fair.  So did it live up to the hype that year?  Not really.  It was my weakest Minnesota State Fair of the decade.  I barely crossed the 100-sighting threshold and there were no truly blockbuster sightings, as evidenced by how few entries 2005 has in my top-100.  It was still a more productive day than any of my 1990s safaris where I hung out with my parents all day and left by 5 p.m., but definitely the weakest from the 2000s, especially considering I was out on my own all day and stayed until 10:30 p.m.  Grade:  C+

2006–This was the year where things blew wide open.  With one change to my formula, my number of total daily sightings nearly doubled.  In recent years, there were evening bandshell concerts which sidelined me from about 8 p.m. to 10:30.  For whatever reason, the quality of the concerts diminished badly starting this year, which meant my sightings numbers went off the hook.  But even within the traditional timeframe of years prior, my past records were shattered and my old record of 109 sightings for the day was exceeded before 7 p.m.  But the sightings just kept coming into the evening hours and I ultimately scored 165 sightings, which at the time seemed insurmountable.  And beyond the quantity there was incredible quality to go along with it, with two sightings that remain in my top-15 of all-time and four additional entries in my top-100.  I thought this stroke of good fortune was a fluke at the time, but in reality it was more a combination of staying longer hours and becoming more efficient in my navigation.  The result was the first of a stretch of three sightings days at the Minnesota State Fair that were my all-time best.  Grade:  A+

2007–I was a little distracted heading into this MNSF safari on my 30th birthday.  Any red-blooded male would be the day after a smoky date with my biggest high school crush Krissy.  Nonetheless, I found my groove after a slow start and settled into a pattern almost identical to the previous year’s with blistering numbers of sightings and some top-shelf quality to boot.  By my 7 p.m. meeting time with the folks, I had scored THREE epic sightings (all still among my top-20 MNSF sightings of all-time) and was already at 124 sightings on the day.  Even though the evening hours didn’t deliver the way they had the previous year, I still bested the seemingly impassable 165 sightings I scored in 2006 by pulling in 184 in 2007.  I might give a narrow edge to 2006 as the better of the two years because it was so unprecedented up to that point to be scoring the volume of quality sightings I was that day in 2006 while 2007 was an extension of that.  Nonetheless, I raked in eight of my top-100 MNSF sightings in 2007.  Not a bad way to celebrate my 30th birthday. Grade: A+

2008–Without a shadow of doubt, my best day ever of fetishing not only at the Minnesota State Fair, but of all-time.  I have described in the past the trajectory of this day as a snowball that built momentum as it rolled downhill until it became a full-on avalanche.  The first hour of the day was infuriatingly slow but things got rolling pretty well with a spattering of great sightings in the late morning and early afternoon.  Things got better and better into the late afternoon and early evening, both in terms of quality and quantity.  And by evening things were off the hook, so off the hook that the only reason I didn’t cross the 200-sighting threshold is because I was seeing so many sightings of incredible quality in those last two hours that I stuck around to inspect them in detail.  Even at 10 p.m., after 13 hours of walking, I was operating on pure adrenaline and didn’t even really notice my intense foot pain as I usually do.  I scored 192 total sightings including two epics that rank among my top-10 of all-time, along with a total of nine entries in my top-100.  It’s hard to imagine a scenario where I could have a better day of fetishing than this, but the Minnesota State Fair has delivered for me so strongly in the past that I’m not ruling anything out.  Grade:  A+

2009, Trip 1–I got a surprise second trip to the Minnesota State Fair in 2009.  It was a good thing too because my first all-day trip was disappointing.  It was a cool day to begin with, but by mid-afternoon the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and things became downright unpleasant for a late August day.  Beyond that, there were lengthy stretches in the morning and afternoon where sightings were simply nonexistent and where my mood was at times melancholy and bored in a way that’s very rare for MNSF trips.  As the temps cooled in the late afternoon and the evening, sightings numbers did pick up.  I was able to top the previous year’s record for sightings numbers and crossed the double-century threshold for the first time with 206 sightings, but had to sit for a good portion of the last two hours because of foot pain that came with arriving on the grounds an hour earlier than usual and stopping less frequently to admire epic sightings, which were fewer than years previous.  I left with four sightings in my top-100 and expected my 2009 MNSF experience to be a bit of dud, until I scored a very unexpected half-day encore visit the following week.  Grade:  B-

2009, Trip 2–It was like being Superman, flying around the Earth to reverse time and recreate a day that had passed when my parents asked if I’d be interested in going to the Minnesota State Fair again on Labor Day weekend last year, if only for a half-day (my mom had to work the next morning so staying till after 10 wasn’t an option).  It was a warm and sunny day and right off the bat I could tell that it was gonna be a much better day than the week before.  Sightings came at a regular clip throughout the day and at no point was I bored or distracted the way I was the previous week.  Several blockbusters occurred in this time frame, and the day ended with my only MNSF epic sighting of 2009.  All in all, I scored 95 sightings during the half day, including an impressive six that made their way to my all-time top-100.  Grade:  A

2010, Trip 1—Despite being sick with a lingering head cold and getting by on less than two hours sleep the night before, I was ready to go at my first excursion to the Minnesota State Fair on a sticky 90-degree day that would be cut short at 7 p.m. since I would be attending my first evening bandshell concert in five years.  The day was generally mediocre with a spattering of worthwhile sightings in the day’s early stages, but the final hour or so of fetishing made the trip worthwhile as I scored a bounty of blockbusters, and one monster epic that ended things on a high point leading into the concert.  I was especially pleased knowing that only five days later I would be returning, this time for a full day of sightings bliss.  Grade:  B+

2010, Trip 2—My full day at the Minnesota State Fair started slowly in a number of ways.  I was still a little bit sick.  I was smarting from a would-be love interest telling me the night before she just wanted to be friends.  The morning temperatures had dipped into the 40s and female fairgoers were decked out in jackets and jeans rather than tanktops and shorts.  But the day would warm up to a comfortable mid-60s high that brought about a crowd of historic proportion to the fair that day, an all-time one-day record attendance that was almost too much in the afternoon hours.  Sightings were hard to spot in these crowds and the ones I was seeing were generally marginal.  The day was considerably below average.  But then something crazy happened when nightfall came and the final three hours of the day would churn out one blockbuster/epic sighting after another, producing one of the best sightings nights of my life.  The daytime crowds that proved too stifling would eventually produce the evening crowds that were just right in churning out the right demographics of smokers, and I was in the right place at the right time to see many of them.  I ended up salvaging a modest day of fetishing about as impressively as possible.  Grade: A-

2011, Trip 1–It isn’t often that a day at the Minnesota State Fair starts producing an endless litany of outstanding sightings before 2 p.m., but that’s exactly what I was experienced that day, particularly during the noon hour when I enjoyed one after another rock star sighting and was convinced I was on the cusp of one of my best days ever at the Minnesota State Fair.  Unfortunately, the clouds rolled in at mid-afternoon and while it stayed dry, the clouds were a perfect metaphor for the wet blanket that was thrown on the day, as sightings became a lot more irregular and a lot less memorable in the second half of the afternoon.  This dragged on into the evening, but in the final hour or so, I did go on a mini-roll and racked up a handful of quality sightings.  Any time you get even a period of a day that delivers the way the early hours this day is a gift, but the slowdown in the second half of the day did keep the day from ranking up there with my best ever days of fetishing.  Grade:  B+

2011, Trip 2–The inverse of my first visit to the Minnesota State Fair in 2011, I sat in the passenger seat in horror on the drive up to the fairgrounds with rain coming down in buckets and no assurances that it was going to clear up for the rest of the day.  After a late morning clearing when we got there, the rain came again around noon and I was starting to get very nervous.  But by mid-afternoon the clouds broke and the sightings came fast and furious.  While there were no genuine epics for the day, there was a steady stream of above-average material that lasted from about 3 p.m. through the evening hours till the time I left around 10:30, and you can’t ask for much more than that during a day of fetishing.  Grade: A-

2012, Trip 1–My first trip to the Minnesota State Fair in 2012 happened to be on my 35th birthday, but it was hard to get too thrilled as the forecast was predicting rain my early afternoon and I was actually anticipating it would be an abbreviated day, and that I would return the next day for a complete day of fetishing.  The rain did come around the noon hour, but it wasn’t as bad as expected and was actually a catalyst for a couple great sightings while taking shelter from the downpour.  The downside of the rest of the day is that while the worst of the rain ended after about an hour, I was still planning on leaving early because the fairgrounds were a sloppy mess but by mid-afternoon decided to stick around.  The uncertainty was a buzzkill on the day, and it didn’t help that the evening hours I wanted to stick around for ended up being below-average.  With all that said, I had an above-average sightings haul with an ebb and flow pattern but which peaked in the late afternoon.  It wasn’t one of my best sightings days by any stretch, but all things considered I stitched together a pretty good day of memorable encounters.  Grade:  B+

2012, Trip 2–My second day at the state fair this year was about perfectly on par with the first day in terms of substance, with a healthy haul of impressive sightings but no single sighting that burned up my world.  But I’ll rate the second day a tick higher for a couple of reasons.  First, the weather was perfect, and when you arrive at the fairgrounds on a sunny day when you know you won’t run into any weather issues, your morale is always higher and that’s very important.  Secondly, I had a better evening haul on my second trip, and good evening sightings help wrap up a great day at the fair with a ribbon.  Always nice to exit the grounds for the evening with a beaming smile on your face.  Grade:  B+

2013, Trip 1–I was understandably nervous going into the 2013 Minnesota State Fair because of the unsettling news that smoking would be restricted to “designated smoking areas”, threatening to blow up the best venue for smoker girl sightings the world has ever known.  But I was relieved to see that there would be a generous 18 designated smoking areas on the grounds rather than the three or four I suspected, and most of them were located in areas that had been frequented by smokers on smoke breaks in the past.  Couple that with a fair amount of noncompliant smokers puffing away wherever they chose and August 24, 2013, wasn’t noticeably different from sightings days past at the MNSF.  The biggest annoyance ended up being the heat and humidity.  It was a steady day for sightings with decent quality at every stage of the day, and the designated smoking areas occasionally working as nifty holding pens that helped me rather than hurt me in scoring sightings.  The evening hours really sparkled, however, with more civil disobedience of the smoking areas and a “sensory overload” spurt where I was scoring quality sightings so steadily I could barely process it.  For as dark as I let my thoughts drift in the months preceding on what this day was likely to be, it was a huge sigh of relief that for all my worries it ended up being an above-average sightings day.  Grade:  A-

2013, Day 2–My second trip to the 2013 MNSF on Labor Day weekend was far less hot and humid than the week before and seemed poised to be a fantastic day.  It got off to a much slower start than the week before, and even though the daytime hours produced my best MNSF sighting in three years, things didn’t get consistently good until after dark.  And ironically, things got really good only after the weather went to hell, with storm clouds moving in and a steady rain coming down around 8:30 and lasting a good hour.  The rain was the source of a good half dozen outstanding sightings, in large part because it delayed the concert by pop sensation Macklemore who was performing in the grandstand that night and brought my favorite demographic of fairgoers in impressive numbers.  So basically the day featured beautiful weather and a ho-hum array of sightings, while the evening featured miserable rain that emptied out half the crowd at the fairgrounds, but some of the hottest smokers in the state were the ones who stuck around.  Gotta love the Minnesota State Fair!  Grade: A-

The consistency and history of the Minnesota State Fair as a sightings venue clearly rates it as my favorite place to fetish.   I feel like I dodged a major bullet when the designated smoking areas didn’t ruin that for me.  The fair board seems to be trying to remain as welcoming to smokers as possible, unlike most venues, but their hand was forced when a little girl got burned in the eye by a cigarette.  I have no illusions that the designated smoking areas will hold the antismoking crybabies at bay forever, but I think I at least bought myself an additional few years of a Minnesota State Fair that is as close to a wide-open fetishing paradise as exists in America today.

MNSF #1. The 1996 State Fair Girls Who Escalated My Fetish

My smoking fetish was officially born on the sunny mid-afternoon hours on August 28, 1996, only three days after my 19th birthday, and three days before I left for my freshman year of college. And given the intensity my fetish has taken on in the years since, it was one of the single most defining moments of my life as it made me finally come to terms with just how sexy I find it to be when girls smoke. It’s the “granddaddy of all sightings” that I dramatized in my 90% reality-based  “State Fair Girls” story on Smoke Signals a few years later, and I honestly don’t think it’s possible for this sighting to ever be dethroned from its berth at the top given its long-term impact…..

There I sat, with my mom, at a concert for has-been country singer  Billy Jo Royale who I didn’t even really want to see, but agreed to since my mom liked him and since we had a couple of hours to kill back in the time when I had grown pretty bored with the Minnesota State Fair.  After sitting in the bleachers awaiting the free concert to begin, up came these adorable beauties, all around 18, dressed in as sexy and classy of summer attire as any guy could ever dream of (tanktops, very upscale looking jean shorts with flashy and glamorous belts), and sat in the bench directly in front of us. The thought briefly crossed my mind, as I admired their perfect figures and beautiful faces of this assortment of three blonds and one brunette, that these girls would make some amazingly hot smokers, even though that thought generally didn’t consume my every encounter with attractive females as it does today.

In no more than 30 seconds, my wish would become a reality as these beauties, one by one, opened their purses and retrieved their respective packs of Marlboro Lights, sparking up their all-whites within less than a minute of each other and proceeding to smoke cigarette after cigarette after cigarette for the entire two hours we sat there, completely oblivious to the dismay of others sitting next to them, several of whom left in disgust as the girls snickered.  Even my mom gave me a “What in the world could those girls be thinking smoking like that?” look, but thankfully we didn’t move. I just shrugged while trying to hide the fact that my jeans were elevating before my eyes.

It’s hard to single out which girl was my favorite, and I found myself declaring a new favorite every time I studied a different girl.  One dark blond who sat on the right was attractive but not in the league of the other three, but immediately to her left was a bodacious platinum blond in a pink top, white shorts, and a glamorous belt.  To the left of her was a long-haired brunette in badass sunglasses, a blue top, and jean shorts who looked the most comfortable and natural smoking a cigarette.  And on the far left was another incredible blond in white shorts who was mind-blowingly hot.  Again, every time I laid eyes on one of these three girls, she became my new favorite.  They were all just that amazing.

The concert was as big of a blur to me as the air quality a few feet in front of me as these extraordinarily sexy 18-ish superbabes ingested unending volumes of tobacco into their perfectly proportioned young bodies. At one point, as explained in my “State Fair Girls” story, they even turned around and teased me with their smoking show, smiling at me while exhaling plumes of smoke very near me, which really drove me over the edge.  This was the first time I ever got an erection from watching chicks smoke, but it definitely wasn’t the last.  The girls just kept on smoking like lifetime professionals–as if they were getting paid to do so–and left a mountain of butts in their aftermath.  These images were burned into my mind for months (and in fact years) to come and I would never view the Minnesota State Fair the same way again.

In so many ways, this sighting set the stage for who I am today. Would I have the fetish as bad as I do today had it not been for this erotic experience? I can’t really say for sure. All I know is that from that day forward (and as I said I started college only three days after this sighting) I never missed the chance to watch a girl smoke again.

MNSF #2. The Best Early Teen Smoker Girl of All-Time Puffing Away With Grandpa

As stated previously, I couldn’t stay very long at the fair on the dreary Friday in 2000 due to a commitment that evening and really didn’t want to stay very long given the weather, but in the final half hour of a day that had already proven quite productive, I scored the most epic young smoker sighting of my life.

To give a little background, I had been sitting at an early afternoon concert by now country music superstar Keith Urban back when he had only two hits under his belt, looking around for smokers as always, and repeatedly saw plumes of smoke going airborne from the direction of this young blond girl, sitting with what appeared to be her grandparents.  I never saw the girl with a cigarette and didn’t expect to as she was way too young and way too Barbie-doll cute.  The smoke, I told myself, had to be coming from one of her  grandparents. But that smoke just kept coming from where she was seated, beckoning my attention repeatedly from the awkward spot where I was seated. I never did see anything, but got plenty of chances to admire the cuteness of this little blond sweetheart even from my considerable distance away.

About three hours later, I was navigating the fairgrounds near the bungee jumping stations and saw a freshly lit all-white protruding from VERY young female fingers.  Instantly, I recognized these hands as belonging to the same girl I saw at the Keith Urban concert, again in the presence of the older couple who I assumed to be her grandparents.  I studied her closely, stunned as I determined there was no way she was older than 13, and may possibly have been even younger. I positioned myself a few yards away from them and watched in absolute awe as this most adorable girl casually smoked in the presence of her grandparents. Decked out in a cute red T-shirt and utilitarian white shorts, with long platinum blond hair flowing all the way down her back, the last thing one would have expected to see was a Marlboro Light approach her young lips, yet that was exactly what I was seeing.

As hot as mother-daughter smoker sightings are, I was witnessing a grandfather-granddaughter sighting (granny didn’t appear to smoke), and in the most public place in the state of Minnesota.  As she watched the bungee jumpers overhead, she jubilantly talked it over with her grandparents the way you would expect a 13-year-old girl would do, with the cigarette becoming animated in her hand amidst her excited responses at the brave bungee jumpers.  And she was no amateur.  Her inhales were deep and her exhales were tight plumes of straight-ahead smoke that sailed many inches in front of her face.  I could feel the blood rush to my crotch watching this, having to sit down to avoid the bulge in my jeans from showing. When she took her final drag, she crushed the cigarette out under her shoe, and for whatever reason it was at that moment it hit me how special what I had just seen really was.

Many of us with the smoking fetish can trace the origins of our fetish back to when we were little boys. The best way I can sell the magnitude of this sighting’s epicness is to call upon readers to recall your jubilation in those late elementary years when you discovered or heard rumors that one or two of your sixth-grade female classmates had started smoking….and then imagine the cutest blonde princess in your grade being the smoker, and smoking publicly in the company of her family!  It was like a perfect middle school fantasy come to life for a smoking fetisher and I experienced it, albeit 10 years later.

MNSF #3. Brunette Babe With An Insatiable Cigar Addiction

I had just taken my early evening rest at the 2008 Minnesota State Fair, my greatest day of MNSF fetishing of all time, and after about 20 minutes of resting my aching body, decided it was time to begin my nightcap….with some of the best timing in world history. Only a couple minutes later while walking through the grounds, I spotted a cluster of four early 20’s hotties on the edge of the sidewalk after about a block of walking. An attractive long-haired dark blond extracted a cigarette from her purse and fired up, leading me to walk their direction for some further observation. As soon as I was standing in close proximity, I noticed an equally attractive long-haired brunette muttering something indecipherable to the blonde as she looked at the freshly lit cigarette, and then started fishing into her own purse as if to get one of her own. I knew the next sighting was at my doorstep, but imagine my delight when the item removed from her purse was not a cigarette, but a small tipped cigar.

It wasn’t the size of your typical Black and Mild. It was much shorter, only the length of a cigarette, but considerably bigger around. The contrast was striking as the brunette fired up her cigar. She was very feminine with her flowing mane of dark brown hair running all the way down her back, wearing a modest pink T-shirt for a top and skin-tight painted-on light blue jeans to advertise her unbelievable ass.

There were four girls in the cluster, each above-average on the attractiveness scale but somewhat hard to discern age-wise. I would guess they were 22, with somewhat of a weathered party girl look on their faces that could indicate they may have been as old as 25, but definitely no older than that. At the time, it was just the two smokers, but all my attention was on the cigar girl as my subfetish for novelty cigar sightings is even more intense than my cigarette fetish.

Watching her smoke the cigar completely lived up to expectations, as she would tilt her head into the sky after taking a drag, giving me a perfect vantage point as the ball of thick smoke disappeared down into her throat, followed by cloudy and dirty exhalations only a few seconds later. There was no ideal location to watch this incredible hotness unfold, and I found myself awkwardly watching from the side, attempting to act like I was waiting to meet someone yet still be close enough to breathe in some secondhand cigar fumes. Things would not get easier as the girls had a strange habit of stopping at a certain destination,  staying a few minutes, then meandering a half block or so and then stalling out again, meaning my presence would not escape notice. Nonetheless, when the cluster first took off, I delightfully followed right behind cigar girl, and was lucky enough to get splashed in the face with a couple lungfuls of filthy cigar smoke that lingered in the air several seconds after she released them from her black lungs.  The girls, only two of whom were smoking, stopped dead in their tracks again closer to the grandstand area, making my job extra difficult. But the best part of the sighting was soon to come…..

The girls were standing right in front of an anti-meth booth, complete with a display of photos of meth users. The two smokers approached the booth and dragged from their tobacco cylinders of choice, seconds before a teenage girl working the booth approached them with some literature. I noticed that the girl’s eyes lowered as she spoke to the young ladies, clearly taking note of the cigarette in the blond’s hand and the smelly cigar in the brunette’s hand. It’s rare that I see something so hot at the fair that my boy parts get uncontainably excited, but as I watched that brunette exhaling a cloud of cigar smoke right in front of the anti-meth booth, my “excitement” could be contained no longer. Soon after, the bizarre stop-and-go routine continued until they stopped at a corner near the DNR building. By this point, I really had to linger at a distance to avoid being spotted. A couple of the girls seemed to look my direction now and then, but never made direct eye contact, so I’m not certain whether I was spotted or not. I had spent a good 15 minutes observing this crew before the brunette finally finished her cigar, tossing it onto the curb with nothing but the plastic tip remaining.  I had seen all I needed to see, but just in case you think this sighting is completed, I should warn you I wasn’t through with these girls yet. Or is it that they weren’t through with me?!?!?!.

About an hour later near the grandstand, now after dark, I found myself staring down the barrel of a repeat sighting that I had never even imagined would resurface. It was the cluster of party girls from an hour earlier….including an encore performance from cigar girl!!! Amazingly enough, she was in the middle of another cigar. Two of her three female friends were smoking cigarettes, including the cute redhead who wasn’t smoking before and the sexy blonde who was. It was a perfect opportunity to briefly follow them again and ingest some more stinky secondhand cigar smoke, but I didn’t want to risk being spotted given how much time I had already spent watching these girls.   Still, the location was better for spying this time as I sat on a bench near the grandstand about 20 yards away and watched the show. Again I was struck by the contrast between this brunette cutie’s pink shirt, tight blue jeans, and stinky plastic-tipped cigar, which she continued to inhale every puff from. I couldn’t imagine anything sexier, and was overjoyed as the cluster walked away and the brunette deposited her second plastic-tipped cigar butt on the fairgrounds pavement, and I was intrigued watching the large cherry splatter dramatically as it hit the street.

Another hour after that, it was almost 9:30 and I was continually amazed at what I was stumbling into, and nothing more amazing that what I would see next. Walking past the haunted mansion on the busiest street on the grounds, there they were AGAIN! The party girls including the pink-shirted brunette stogie girl. None appeared to be smoking this time so I kept walking around the perimeter of the nearby horticulture building. Ten minutes or so had passed before I made another pass by the haunted mansion to see if my favorite girls of the day were still there. And boy were they. I could see freshly lit cigarettes in the hands of the blond and redhead and seconds after making that observation, what did I see but my brunette sweetheart firing up her THIRD cigar in the last two hours. I made one final pass closely behind her and timed it perfectly to ingest one more exhalation of cigar smoke.

There were so many high points to that 2008 MNSF sightings day, but this was tops, and it was also my greatest cigar sighting of all-time. I’d give my first-born child to see something even remotely like it again.

MNSF #4. Teen Smoking Krista Clone Corrupts Unattractive Friend And Smokes While She Eats

My 2006 visit to the Minnesota State Fair reached an uncharted level of hotness compared to prior years, both in terms of quality and quantity. I had hit the “sightings century mark” at an astounding 6:30 p.m., at least three hours ahead of schedule from previous years, but the cute 20-something blonde that represented my 100th sighting near the food building commons area was a memory in the mere seconds it took to raise my head and find Sighting #101, a beautiful 16-ish chickie with a mane of long and curly light brown hair running all the way down her back, and an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips.

Immediately sensing something special about this girl, I began to follow her and a redheaded friend who was considerably less attractive. The brunette wore a lovely bare-midriff blouse that exposed her well-toned belly to the tens of thousands of lucky male fairgoers, as well as a tight pair of denim Capris that fashionably showed off her glowing teenage booty and lovely lower legs.

It took about 30 seconds for her to fish her lighter out of her purse, but when she did, she sparked up that cigarette. She took a couple of drags before handing the cigarette to her friend and then wasted no time firing up another cigarette of her own. I got particular guilty pleasure about the fact that this adorable teen beauty was the bad influence on her less attractive friend. From there, the girls decided they wanted something to eat, and stood in line at this stand that appeared to sell little cups of frozen custard or something of the like.

Luckily, the stand was two-sided, so I was able to go to the other side and see through the glass, finally getting a good look at her. She was more beautiful than I previously suspected. Not only because of her astounding mane of light brown hair, but also her flawlessly beautiful face, she reminded me of Krista, the daughter of a woman my mom works with who is now college age. Krista is a nonsmoker, and homecoming queen hot…and this nicotine girl at the Minnesota State Fair possessed facial features cut from identical cloth. It was like a fantasy come to life as I recalled all the times I thought about how hot Krista would look as a smoker.

It only got better as the girl stood up to place her order, unapologetically holding her cigarette above the counter and proudly displaying her youthful nicotine addiction to the world. After receiving their orders, the girls carried their desserts and their cigarettes to the sidewalk, where they quietly sat and consumed a toxic brew of transfat from the custard and deadly carcinogens from their cigarettes. And consume they did!  I sat on the sidewalk across the street and got to see a surprising amount considering the foot traffic between us. The pretty girl went back and forth from eating a spoonful of her frozen dessert to taking a drag from her cigarette, dragging furiously and frequently, sucking the tobacco out of that cigarette faster than I would have expected and producing a cesspool of air pollution surrounding her beautiful face.  She would soon crush the cigarette out in front of her on the sidewalk at the exact moment that her friend did.

No more than 60 seconds had passed before the pretty girl turned around and started fishing through her purse. Could this 15-16 year-old stunner possibly be so addicted to cigarettes that she needed an exciting encore less than a minute after polishing off her last? DING! DING! DING! Every part of my fatigued anatomy stopped for a second as the pack of Camels in her purse was extracted for the third time in less than 10 minutes, and the girl lit herself up again. It was very clear that her frozen custard had quickly become an afterthought, taking a backseat to her obviously insatiable nicotine dependency. She only got a few drags off of the second cigarette before the two of them got up to leave. I couldn’t help but following a little further, even though I’m pretty sure they spotted me by this point and soon realized that I needed to abort or risk being called out for stalking her. As I studied this beauty’s amazing face one last time before parting ways, I would’ve given anything to turn back the clock and be 16 again if only for that evening.

MNSF #5. Lindsey Tortures Her Teen Friend With Cigarette

In the evening hours that wrapped up my second evening at the 2010 Minnesota State Fair, I scored more than a half dozen blockbuster sightings, several of which are on this list, and the quality of the blockbusters just kept escalating.  I was already on an adrenaline burst before I even stumbled into the most epic sighting of the year and one of my all-time MNSF classics.  Without further adieu, I present you….the legendary Lindsey.

I had spent so long in the same parts of the fairgrounds tracking sightings that I was now long overdue for another journey to the east side of the grounds.  In this case, I found myself at the far eastern gate where I was at the early stages of what would be my best sighting of the day.  This is another one where I need to warn you….hold onto your hat….because you’re going on the ride of your life….

By now, KISS was performing and could be heard virtually any place within a half mile of the grandstand, but I just happened to be in a sparsely populated area near the east gate outside the range of the KISS concert, and was thus able to hear voices in close range, which saved me from missing out on the upcoming sighting.  I was busting pretty good through this east side since there weren’t many people there, but took a quick mental note of a trio of cute 17ish girls who had apparently just entered the fairgrounds at the 9:00 hour.  I took a quick look at them, didn’t think they looked like obvious smokers, and decided I should press forward.  Thankfully they weren’t out of hearing range as I heard one of the girls behind me saying “Lindsey, now we ARE gonna stop sometime because I really need a cigarette!”  I quickly jerked back my head to see an adorable brunette looking at the curly-haired blonde who she just made the request to.  The blonde didn’t bat an eyelash or say a word, giving her the silent treatment, which provoked the brunette to continue pleading.  “Now c’mon Lindsey.  I’m ALWAYS giving you cigarettes!”  Holy shit!  Needless to say, I followed.  I already counted these two as sightings just from that banter, but I wouldn’t be satisfied until I actually saw them smoking.

As I followed I got to make a number of observations.  Remember I said that there were three friends.  The third wheel was a modest brunette who did little to capture my interest.  The other two had me absolutely fascinated.  The brunette doing all the begging was the best looking of the three, with a beautiful wholesome face, long brown hair, a slender body, but a less than sexy red sweatshirt and utilitarian jeans below the neck.  But it was Lindsey the blond who fascinated me most.  She was also pretty, and had those alluring curly blond locks as well as a white and gold top.  But below the waistline was where she really sparkled, literally. Lindsey was wearing a short pair of medium-blue jean shorts that was made glam outlined in gold glittery trim.  Watching that ass wiggle in those shorts I would have killed to have gotten my hands on it.  The girls were pressing forward quickly, with Lindsey sipping a drink she must have purchased just after entering the gate.  The begging brunette seemed to be doing most of the talking, but unfortunately as we moved closer to the grandstand their conversation was becoming inaudible due to the noise from the KISS concert, but judging from the body language it looked as though the brunette was continuing to plead with Lindsey to stop for a cigarette.

It was shortly after this point that I would come across my most difficult decision in the history of Minnesota State Fair fetishing.  As I followed Lindsey and her girls, I crossed paths with a duo that took my breath away.  I looked to my left to see an amazing blonde 21ish beauty in a red top and white shorts holding a white cylinder with a glowing red cherry on the end.  Standing next to her was a long-haired brunette in jean shorts, also smoking.  They were the most beautiful girls I had seen all day.  We’re talking perfect 10s here.  These girls belong in Hollywood.  They were standing in a cluster of three guys, one of whom was smoking a giant cigar.  If only the girls were smoking cigars, Lindsey and her crew would have been a distant memory.  Now…what to do?  These girls were so gorgeous it was crazy….yet the storyline behind the Lindsey sighting was so epic that I wanted to see that play out too.  But was it gonna?  Just because the brunette wanted to “stop for a cigarette” didn’t mean they were going to anytime soon.  And meanwhile, I had these two epic beauties right in front of me who were smoking in the present tense.  Watching Lindsey and her friends walk forward into the crowd, I decided I was gonna try to have it both ways…and figured there was a decent chance I would since the 21ish babes were wrapping up their cigarettes.  I stuck around and observed their last two succulent drags.  Almost in tandem, the girls dropped their cork filters to the ground.  I took one last look at these beauties, especially that blonde in the white shorts.  How is it even possible for girls this hot to exist, I thought to myself.  I relished in this observation for a moment but then had to see if, just maybe, I could catch up to Lindsey.

I raced through the area behind the grandstand in the direction they were headed.  The crowd had thinned down some now so it was not completely out of the question for me to find them, but it still seemed like a longshot.  I was starting to lose hope as I continued my fast pace by the west end of the grandstand….until I laid eyes on that shiny beacon that was Lindsey’s jean-shorted gold-trimmed ass.  I was back in business, baby!  I continued following until they came to a stop at the edge of the midway near the radio station.  It seemed to be a hangout for a lot of teens and young adults not quite old enough to party at the nearby beer gardens.  The three girls quickly struck up conversation with what I assumed were friends they planned to meet there, although I suppose it’s possible they just decided to yuck it up with other kids their age that happened to be hanging there.  I was starting to get nervous as I stood on the curb across the street thinking that this might not play out, but the begging brunette just wasn’t gonna let that happen.  There was a flurry of people that made it easy to lose people in the crowd, but I had an opening to watch the brunette, reading her lips as she said to Lindsey, “PLEEASE!  I need a cigarette!”  She then held up one finger and said “Just one!”  I have to admire Lindsey for being such a torturer, making her best friend beg her for a single cigarette.  You gotta figure Lindsey’s current or future boyfriends are gonna have to work just as hard or harder to get a blowjob out of her.

And then, at least 10 minutes after this sighting began, Lindsey dug into her purse and extracted a bronze pack of Marlboro 27s.  The would-be epic sighting of the night was finally gonna become an official sighting.  Lindsey handed the brunette a cigarette and then placed one in her own mouth.  The brunette looked adorable dangling that unlit cigarette for a good minute as Lindsey got out her lighter, lit herself up first, and then sparked up her nicotine-deprived friend.  As suspected, the third girl didn’t smoke.  Now it was time to watch the show…and the girls didn’t disappoint.

Actually, the brunette may have disappointed a little, at least compared to Lindsey who was a total pro, taking frequent and lengthy drags and spewing generous snoots full of smoke in her exhales.  Sometimes she was thoughtful and turned to exhale.  Other times, she exhaled straight ahead and at least twice she caught the nonsmoking girl in the face.  Other friends were in and out of the conversation, but Lindsey and the brunette were the only smokers.  The brunette wasn’t a bad smoker, but her exhales were less dense and her drags less frequent than Lindsey’s, although I must confess that from that angle I was watching I couldn’t see nearly as much of the brunette.  Lindsey, on the other hand, hacked up a lugie about halfway through her cigarette and instead of the girlish flick of spittle most little girls spit, hers had volume and distance.  It wasn’t a big lugie, but she sent it flying an impressive distance.  And after that, things got even weirder.  She had a strange habit of extending her arm, bending her wrist, and ashing the cigarette, but one time while doing this, she accidentally tapped the cigarette right out of her hand.  At first, I thought she was just finishing up the cigarette, but it was a genuine accident and she quickly picked up the cigarette off the dirty pavement and stuck it back in her mouth.  She wasn’t quite done with this cigarette yet!

The girls became mobile which had its upsides and downsides.  It was hard to lose Lindsey with that ass of hers gleaming, but the crowd was such that it was still a real possibility.  And she kept puffing on that cigarette long after I expected it was at its end.  The brunette had apparently already lost hers, which was curious since she smoked much slower than Lindsey.  But as Lindsey dropped her butt, I found out why.  Lindsey had smoked it right down to the filter.  There was a speck of paper left, but every morsel of tobacco had been smoked out of it into Lindsey’s black lungs.  I took one final look at that adorable ass of hers swaggering its way onto the horizon, aware that I had almost assuredly scored my best sighting of the day.

My mood at this point was all-out euphoria, something I haven’t felt since fireworks at Summerfest 2009 where the smokers were absolutely everywhere.  I literally started running as soon as I reached a point on the grounds that was empty, so much so that some drunk from the beer gardens jokingly shouted out, “No running!”  If you would have told me at 7:00 that my sore feet would have been capable of sprinting across the fairgrounds, I would have told you that you were crazy.

The blockbuster-within-an-epic sighting in which I took an incredible risk paid off completely and I was able to identify three out of the four butts and got to watch all four girls smoke.  It’s a damn tall order for any sighting in 2011 to top this one.

MNSF #6. The Original Minnesota State Fair Cigarette Molestor

There were no shortage of unforgettable moments at the 2008 Minnesota State Fair, but this monster epic from the late afternoon was one of the high points, not only of this year but of my entire Minnesota State Fair experience.  It was also somewhat groundbreaking in that it was the first sighting where I really took note of the smoking technique of a particularly addicted girl and have found myself studying the techniques of smoker girls more thoroughly as a consequence of the show this girl put on….

It was around 5 p.m. as I approached the grandstand area, encircling the east side of the seating area and quickly scoring two impressive sightings.  But after completing the loop, I was faced with two sightings prospects occurring simultaneously, and am pretty sure I made the right choice…..spotting this angellic-looking 19-20ish dark brunette with long and curly hair exiting the grandstand and producing a pack of Marlboro Mediums. I noticed a badge clipped onto her black slacks and recognized she was a grandstand worker, most likely one of the vendors for the commercial exhibits underneath the grandstand. I hadn’t had a blockbuster grandstand worker sighting since that epic supersmoking cutie in 2000 who was #12 on my list, but I definitely sensed correctly that I was about to have another one now.

She was dialing numbers on her cell phone as she leaned up against a tree right in front of the seating area. She was incredibly beautiful, but did not have a particularly flashy or glamorous look.  Her red blouse and dress slacks made her look a little more professional, but her girl-next-door face gave her a distinctive and heartwarming allure. In itself, that made her a great sighting. But it was her technique that elevated her to another level. Amidst her distracting cell phone call, she dragged intermittently from her cigarette as though it was an afterthought, but the robust drags were nonetheless intense and extreme with an unquestionable aura of pleasure evident on her face. But it was what happened after the drags that intrigued most.

Literally, 7-10 seconds passed where the smoke lingered inside her coal black lungs before the smoke came pouring out of her mouth and nose. Even more amazing was that the smoke kept coming after the initial exhale. After every exhale, residual smoke continued to escape all three of her facial orifices with every breath. Smoke was literally oozing out of this girl like incense from a metal container waved around the church by a Catholic priest during Lent. And it was the same routine with every drag. Deep and intense drags, a period of extended holding where you could almost take a nap and still wake up before the first sign of smoke escaped the inside of her body, and then more smoke spilling out of her gorgeous face for as long as 30 seconds after the original exhale. This struck me as the smoking style of a 20-year veteran smoker coming from a girl who was most likely only 20 years old.

Unfortunately, the performance ended entirely too quickly. She would end the phone chat and quickly retire the two-thirds smoked cigarette, stubbing it out and placing the remainder in her Marlboro Mediums pack to finish off later. Nonetheless, what a huge sighting.  For months afterwards, I would lay head to sleep and see smoke pouring of this girl’s face with every breath. In the years since I’ve witnessed a lot of vaguely similar smoking performances, but none quite as overpowering as this one, particularly since she made it seem so effortless.  When I see a girl this ferociously addicted to cigarettes that she practically molests the cigarette in her mouth and molests the smoke inside her lungs, I reeeeallly wanna have sex with her….and I desperately wanted to have sex with this one.

MNSF #7. My First Little Cigar Sighting From A Worthy Brunette

I stated previously that 2004 was my first great day at the Minnesota State Fair.  Even in the early morning hours I was scoring impressive sightings, but it was the later hours of the morning that produced a groundbreaking first-of-its-kind sighting for me that I will never forget.

I was breezily navigating an unpopulated east side corner of the fairgrounds when I spotted this adorable 22-ish dark brunette with shoulder-length hair and the most perfect girl-next-door face leaving one of the buildings all by herself. She was dangling something brown from her young lips which immediately froze me in my tracks. At first, I thought it was a More cigarette as she stopped quickly to light up, but the undeniable aroma of cigar smoke that quickly followed the light-up made it abundantly clear that this wholesome cutie just lit up a small Swisher Sweet cigar at the Minnesota State Fair…..

There seems to be a growing “little cigar” trend nowadays, particularly in inner cities, but it was still largely nonexistent in the Upper Midwest in 2004, and this adorable girl in no way fit the stereotypical demographic of a little cigar smoker, yet there she was, holding her stinky little brown treasure at her side as she proceeded through the grounds with an enticing mix of awkwardness and confidence. My crotch expanded instantly inside my jeans and I managed to follow her at a distance where I wasn’t exactly conspicuous, but was still able to smell the awful but alluring stench of cheap cigar smoke lingering in the air after she exhaled. My guess is she probably knew she was being followed, but there was no way I gonna miss out on this, watching her cute little butt wiggle in her painted-on jeans with each step. Here was this girl, exuding femininity with every flourish of her hips, yet smoking a smelly little cigar at the Minnesota State Fair.  I dared not even fantasize about something like this up to this point….

This was one of the only times in my years of fetishing where I was briefly overcome with an animal lust sensation…wishing I could have my way with this girl right then and there with her willing and instinctive acceptance, tasting the fresh cigar smoke on her breath the whole time. After watching her drop her little cigar to the pavement and stomp it out before walking away, I had way too much built up “tension” to carry on without a quick trip to the john to relieve myself. It was the only time a sighting got to me that much that I had to make a detour to relieve the tension.  There were many other moments that day would impress, but this was unquestionably the high point of the day, or of the entire year of 2004 for that matter.