2017 Iowa State Fair, Day 2

Well that sucked!  Wednesday, August 16, 2017, was a roller coaster ride of expectations that started extremely low.  The weather forecast for days insisted on a washout, 70% chance of rain with “chances increasing later in the day”.  But I was boxed in with my schedule this week in that Wednesday was the only realistic day I could do.  And some weather models were showing that the rain might moved out by mid-afternoon, even if the interpretation by the weather guys was the diametric opposite.  So I took a gamble and prepared to head to the Iowa State Fair, knowing it could be a fair sightings day that was awful by historical proportions.  At least I had a great Saturday, I told myself, as a way of justifying the prospect of a lousy follow-up.  But by the time mid-afternoon came, it was becoming clear that the forecasters completely blew it once again.  The rain completely bypassed central Iowa and had already moved eastward by 2:30 in the afternoon!  I couldn’t believe it!  Maybe, just maybe, I’d salvage something decent after all.  And with young bro-country hitmaker Chris Lane playing the free stage, there was decent prospects for a young and female-skewing audience as well.  Things were looking up!

Unfortunately, despite weather conditions that stayed somehow worked out to my favor, my night played out more like I feared it would work out in the event of a washout!  Wednesday is a lousy night in general for crowds, unless there is a high-profile free stage act like 2011’s The Band Perry or 2012’s Hunter Hayes, but the bad weather forecast seemed to really suppress attendance last night.  I ended up with a record-low 37 sightings, with nothing good enough that it seems likely to crack my year-end top-25.  Seven hours at the state fair yielded no more sightings than a decent night at my county fair would be expected to!  With that said, the evening got off to an interesting start that buoyed my changing expectations early on with the cooperative weather.  I got into the fairgrounds at 5:00 and bought my half-price weeknight tuition ticket and had only been there about 10 minutes when the glum evening already hit its peak.

Venturing to the south side of the grounds, I’d find Sighting #1, the girl who defined the evening and would be the night’s best sighting.  Standing on a pile of wood chips near a trinket stand and the sidewalk was a pair of girls, one of whom was a tall blond in a brown tanktop and white shorts smoking an all-white cigarette.  The presentation was killer and I wasted no time getting a couple of photos, capturing her in mid-drag in the only one that turned out.  Their location was challenging so I crossed the street and found a bench to watch the show.  The friend, by the way, was a light brunette who was decently attractive.  She wasn’t smoking but later got out a vape tank and was vaping.  The blond was the more striking of the two girls, even without the presence of a cigarette.  Taking matters down a peg, unfortunately, her drags were slow and her style below-average, but I still had a good vibe about this one and was determined to stick it out till the end.  Doing so, I was present when the sighting got a whole lot more interesting.  In addition to the blond’s cigarette and the brunette’s vape tank, the girls were also holding beers.  And Iowa State Fair police are quite bullish on checking IDs for those with alcohol who they think might be underage.  No fewer that three cops approached these girls, who both looked well above 21, for an ID check.  They didn’t seem as exasperated or insulted as I would be in that situation, but proceeded to fish around in their bags for their IDs.  I got one modest dangle from the blond as she opened her bag to get the ID out, but it wasn’t as intense as I’d hoped….and she was just as slow-moving finding and handing over that ID as she was smoking her cigarette.

A guy sitting on the bench next to me was also observing this and asked me “so are they gonna get them?”  We had a brief exchange but both agreed the girls easily looked 21 with years to spare.  I’d have guessed they were about 24.  The cops ultimately relented and walked away, satisfied with their findings.  The girls hovered there as the slow-poke blond slumbered through that cigarette with a surprisingly weak style, leading me to believe she was just a social smoker.  On the other hand, she had a hardened look that first led me to believe she was the real deal. I’d invested a good 12 minutes in this sighting before she finally dropped the finished cigarette, but they still didn’t move.  I’d mark the location though and return on my next pass, surprisingly finding a Virginia Slim butt.  I guess I hadn’t gotten close enough to take serious notice of the shape of the cigarette, but at first I thought it probably wasn’t hers since I would have figured I’d notice a girl smoking a Virginia Slim even from the distance that I was watching.  Whatever the case, the girl was a disappointment in some sense but this sighting was still an outstanding start to the evening and gave me renewed hope of significant rewards coming my way for having made the gamble and come to the fair despite the forecast.  Those hopes were certainly dashed as the night proceeded though.

And I was especially grateful in the hour to come that I had gotten that great sighting early because it was absolutely dead after that, even at that pivotal 6 p.m. hour when sightings are typically most robust.  Locations that were teeming with people on Saturday were nearly empty tonight, and worse yet the area in front of the beer gardens were mostly vacant as well, indicating the party crowd stayed home in droves tonight.  It was 6:30 before I got another sighting even worth mentioning, and even that was short.  Sighting #6 was this cute dark blond hovering with two nonsmoking coworkers on a break at this photo booth on the south side.  They were all wearing a red and white top that was apparently their uniform at this side, with my blond smoker wearing leggings on the bottom.  I got to see a couple of drags and got a quick pic of her exhaling before the show abruptly ended and the cigarette was finished.  Not much else to say about that one and I drifted away, but at that point the bar was so low that I was grateful to have gotten at least one more sighting beyond the first one that was worthy of a writeup!

I’d get another vaguely interesting one heading west on the concourse.  Sighting #9 featured a 20-something redhead sitting with her boyfriend on a bench both snacking from the same plate of fair food.  But the girl was holding her left hand with a cigarette in it over the back of the bench, concealing the secondhand smoke as much as possible from the nonsmoking boyfriend.  I saw a very similar sighting in 2015 (might have even been on the same bench!) but that girl was hotter and the couple more hands-on during the sighting.  There was nothing wrong with this sighting, and the girl was decently attractive and I got a couple of modest pics, but I wasn’t well-positioned to see much smoking because of the bench arrangement.  After a couple of drags, I ventured elsewhere for greener pastures that largely didn’t materialize.

Now I mentioned how that Virginia Slim blond (Sighting #1) would dominate the night, and my second piece of evidence on that front would emerge as I walked over to the stage where Chris Lane would be singing at 8:00.  There was already a gathering of scantily clad teen girls and young adult females seated near the stage, but there didn’t appear to any smoking going on.  But in the background of the seating area, I came upon the blond and her vaping friend, and was a bit surprised when I saw the blond taking another cigarette out of her pack of now-identifiable Virginia Slims.  Her smoking style had been so mediocre earlier that I had presumed she was a social smoker, taking in a single cigarette while having a been, and I had doubted that she was smoking a Virginia Slim until I saw the evidence now.  They must have just been VS 100s though because it was pretty obviously not a 120, as this time I walked past closely and eyeballed the cigarette as she put it in her mouth and lit it, in her usual slow-motion.  The girls were too isolated her to hover or take any pics, but I found a bench in the distant and watched much of her show.  The girl would go on to surprise me as before 11:30 when I left, I would see her smoking THREE more cigarettes the remaining three in close proximity to the east side beer gardens where she hung out most of the night.  There was a brunette who smoked four cigarettes last year on my Wednesday night at the Iowa State Fair, and this girl managed to surpass her consumption.  It made me wonder if I was just catching her at the right time every time I ran into her or if she really was smoking that consistently all night long.  With all of that said, I still feel I had seven smoker sightings last Saturday that I preferred to her and it’s doubtful this girl will make my year-end favorites list.  I’m sure some will think I’m crazy given the frequency of her smoking, the storyline involving the cops, and her exotic brand, but she had her downsides for me.  She was decently attractive but didn’t radiate beauty, and her smoking style was slow and entirely lacking in bells and whistles.  Seems odd she’d smoke such a glamorous brand if she didn’t intend to show off smoking them.  As for the slowness, on her fifth sighting of the night it took her about three minutes after taking the cigarette out of the pack to even getting around to getting it lit.  I’ll post the photos on my gallery next month and people can take a look and see what they think, but for me this girl, despite being the best sighting last night, just wasn’t cut out for top-tier honors.

Back to the events of the evening that didn’t involve my Virginia Slims blond, few and far between as they were.  I just got a snippet at the tail end for Sighting #12, a cute and wholesome 21ish blond walking with her boyfriend from the south side across the street to the midway.  She was wearing a red tanktop and dark jeans and was definitely one of my least likely smokers of the night.  Adorably, she was smoking and the boyfriend wasn’t.  Unfortunately, I got to see all of two drags before she dropped the spent cigarette, a Marlboro Red, en route to the midway.  It was continuing to be that kind of night.

I wandered around lucklessly for the next two hours, slowly cobbling together weak sauce sightings with maximal frustration.  I made frequent journeys to the free stage where Chris Lane was performing, especially since there was a good-sized crowd of a favorable demographic gathered there, and it seemed like it would be the most likely place to find anything decent.  I only got a couple of sightings there and none were worth much. At the very end of his concert, I discovered a trio of two girls and a guy sitting on the curb in the general area.  One of the girls was smoking.  Sighting #20 was a long-haired dark brunette in her early 20s in jean shorts.  She was a little chubby but attractive.  That was as good as it got.  And you read that right….it was 9:30 at night at the Iowa State Fair and I was only at 20 sightings!!!

I circled the area and the surrounding bathroom thoroughly following the end of the concert, seeing all kinds of country cuties in sexy outfits but none of them were smoking.  I eventually wandered off, knowing the concourse would be busy for a while longer before people started leaving for the night in droves.  There, I finally scored my second extra-base hit of the night with Sighting #24, running into a duo of mid-20s babes in sexy summer attire where one of the two was smoking.  The smoker was a long-haired dark brunette in a gray tanktop and black shorts, revealing a lot of flesh both above and below the waist.  I got close enough to take as good of a pic as is possible after dark but it’s still too blurry to full appreciate.  She was an attractive smoker with a great presentation, taking nicely paced drags with cloudy follow-up exhales.  The friend was attractive too but wasn’t smoking.  The two of them came to a stop across the street from the beer gardens as if waiting for someone, and the dark brunette had a couple more drags on her cigarette before dropping it to the pavement without crushing it out.  I watched it smolder on the pavement hoping that it wouldn’t burn away before she left so I could identify the brand.  Thankfully, they waved as the familiar-looking dudes that must have been accompanying them showed up and walked away.  Her discarded butt was a Camel Menthol.  At this point, it just felt good to be getting SOMETHING decent last night…one of my worst nights of fairgrounds fetishing ever.

I’d put together a couple more memorable sightings in the half hour to come, starting with a journey to the beer gardens on the south side where I saw an attractive early 30s blond in jean shorts smoking.  This normally wouldn’t have been enough for Sighting #26 to qualify for a write-up, until I discovered she was standing apart from a group of four males in their 30s, all nonsmokers.  She was the only one smoking, but apparently felt obligated to keep her distance from the boys lest her stinky secondhand smoke corrupt their gentle male sensibilities.  She was a good smoker too, with some particularly cloudy exhales that humorously drifted in the direction of the nonsmoking male companions talking to her from several feet away.

There’d be one more extra base hit from the evening with Sighting #29, which took place heading west from the east side beer gardens.  This middle-aged guy was smoking a cigarette and accompanied by two 20-something women, one or possibly both of whom were his daughters.  Neither of the women was smoking, but I took an interest in this cute blond whose golden locks came out of the back of her ball cap in a ponytail, with a feminine pink tanktop and dark jean shorts on the bottom, very short shorts that framed her ass and long legs perfectly.  Seconds after I laid eyes on her, she was digging through her purse and I was beginning to anticipate a pack of cigarettes coming out.  She was very clearly intoxicated so her movements were slow, but sure enough, a pack of Camel Menthols came out.  A cigarette was gradually extracted and placed in her mouth to be lit, and my second-best sighting of the night was about to play out with a long walk westward down the concourse.  It was a farrow-to-finish sighting where I got to see every drag, as she drunkenly staggered her sexy body in the company of her less intoxicated companions.  She was being loud and obnoxious, and that’s not generally a good look for my tastes, but she was otherwise so pretty and wholesome-looking that I let it slide, particularly when she lifted that cork-filter cigarette up to her face for an intense drag.  I attempted a couple of photos, but they were a blurry mess to the point that I didn’t even save them.  At one point, some other couple accidentally spilled a beer on the ground, and the blond boisterously started cackling at them in a playful way.  Her friends weren’t amused though, turning out and calling out “Sarah!” to beckon her to walk away and not make an ass of herself.   The blond finished her cigarette as they approached the western edge of the grounds, tossing her butt into the grass while still burning and giving me one last look at her ass before she wandered away into the darkness.  It was one of really only three sightings all night to make an impact on me, and that last smoking-related moment of the night worth mentioning.

The last hour of the night was weak and the grounds were emptying out quickly.  It usually does on weeknights at the Iowa State Fair so that wasn’t unexpected.  I was probably lucky to stitch together a handful more sightings as I did given the sparsity of the crowd, and most of what I did see was at the east side beer gardens.  It was there I saw the blond Virginia Slim girl smoking her fourth and fifth cigarettes of the night.  And a cluster of 20-somethings was lingering behind the beer gardens and three of them were smoking.  None were gorgeous and I didn’t get to see much smoking by them, but was lucky to get three-for-one and put together Sightings #33, 34, and 35.  And at one point, I walked past the beer gardens, which was just a quick walk down the alley from the free stage where tonight’s concert was, and saw Mr. Chris Lane himself sitting there having a beer with a couple of members of his band.  Didn’t seem like anybody really knew who he was….and if they did, they sure didn’t seem that starstruck.

Now I said everything worth mentioning that was smoking-related had already happened by this point, but there was one last memorable girl for the evening.  I was walking in front of The Depot when I crossed paths with two 18-19ish babes of the highest order, both wearing miniskirts.  But one of them was wearing a leather miniskirt, the sexiest possible item in the female wardrobe for my tastes.  The two of them walked all the way down the concourse and I got to follow, turned on to the highest degree watching this top-tier babe strutting her ass in black leather.  They sat down on a couple of benches and checked out their phones for a bit, allowing me to enjoy seeing her in a seated position decked out in that skirt.  Damn I wish leather would make a comeback and I could see girls dressed like her more often.  If I could have had a choice between 10 more mediocre smoker sightings or seeing that blond in her black leather miniskirt, I’d choose the blond in the leather mini.  What a sexpot!

That was it!  I boarded my shuttle bus around 11:40 as it was pretty clear the night was dead and I’d be quite unlikely to see anything more if I stuck around another 15 minutes and waited for the last shuttle bus of the night.  With only 37 sightings on the evening, I’m extremely grateful I had a fantastic Saturday at the fair.  Combining my 142 sightings from Saturday, I scored 179 total sightings at this year’s Iowa State Fair, below average overall but still four more than in 2016.  While a lot of factors came together to make this a weak night, it really shouldn’t have been a historically terrible night as it was.  On previous Wednesday evenings at the fair without top-tier musical enter,tainment, I still managed more than 50 sightings.  The complete dearth of teen sightings despite a pretty prolific presence of attractive teen girls there last night, was particularly troubling.  And of course I did see a couple of teens vaping, which was all the more troubling.  I’m trying to respect that Saturday was a great day and I have to take the bad with the good, but I can’t help but feel that last night’s poor performance will not be that extraordinary moving forward…and that we’re at the point of significantly diminishing returns with sightings of attractive smoker girls.  The good news is that I still have three more days at the fair to come in the coming weeks, starting with my maiden voyage to the Indiana State Fair on Saturday followed by two weeks at the Minnesota State Fair the following two weekends.  God I love this time of year!

2017 Iowa State Fair, Day 1

I had a pretty darn good day at the fair on August 12, 2017.  I was describing the previous week how the hypothetical perfect day at the fair for me featured sunny skies, low humidity, highs of about 82, and puffy fair weather clouds that occasionally gave some relief from direct sunlight.  And that’s exactly what I got yesterday.  And there was quite a party crowd there yesterday and it helped me score 142 sightings, one short of my record for a day at the Iowa State Fair.  It was a retro 90s theme for the grandstand with abbreviated sets by acts such as Vanilla Ice, Salt N Pepa, Coolio, Young MC, and Color Me Badd, and it was a disorganized mess unlike nothing I’ve ever seen before getting the crowd into the grandstand, but that worked to my advantage as it meant long lines extending onto the concourse that lingered for more than an hour, providing me many sightings.  More details on that later in the writeup.  Over the course of the day and night, I scored a lengthy list of great sightings, perhaps none at that top-of-the-upper-tier level and only a couple of the amazing teen sightings that were so prolific at my county fair last week, but I’d still say it was my best day at the Iowa State Fair since 2014.

I boarded my shuttle bus before 11 and the line wasn’t nearly as oppressive as I expected to board the bus, meaning I was already inside the fairgrounds by about 11:20.  Morale was high with the beautiful weather and is often needed for those late morning and early afternoon hours where sightings typically aren’t that prolific at the Iowa State Fair.  Thankfully, about five minutes after arrival, I’d score Sighting #1, this late 20s blond in a black-and-white striped dress who was in a group where only her and her boyfriend were smoking.  It was a good appetizer for the day and nice to be on the board.

A few minutes later on one of the side streets, I came across a group where an early 30s blond cowgirl was hanging back outside of a building smoking a cigarette.  She had a straw hat covering her head and shoulder-length blond hair with a brown tanktop and tan shorts on her bottom.  She had a great body and long smooth legs.  I got my first pic of the day and it was a good one, catching her in mid-drag.  It took me a moment to notice that Sighting #2 was accompanied with another early 30s blond in her company who also smoking.  Sighting #3 was wearing a blue and white striped dress and was decently attractive but didn’t have the IT factor her friend did.  She had her back to me so I didn’t see much of her smoking.

My first extra-base hit of the day was Sighting #4, up the hill on the east side of the fairgrounds on a remote side of the live music stage.  Approaching was an early-to-mid 20s couple where the guy was already smoking.  I was briefly annoyed since his dark blond girlfriend in her pink top and jean shorts was such a cutie and it appeared on first glance that only the boyfriend would be smoking.  But lo and behold, she approached the table at the back corner of the stage’s seating and opened her purse to extract a pack of Marlboro Reds.  I was thrilled to see her pull one out and light up, and was more thrilled to see her engaging style with deep, nicely timed drags and cloudy exhales.  I was not so thrilled about the fact that I took about three pics of the proceeding but would later discover that they were all disasters.  I’ve gotten increasingly paranoid about picture-taking with all the times I got caught last year and the result is I accidentally move the camera before the pic is complete, resulting in me not capturing the intended image.  Anyway, I stayed for most of her cigarette, which wasn’t that long because she was hitting it quite regularly.  It’s not every year I score any kind of sighting up that east side hill as I generally only go up there two or three times a day, but it certainly came through with a memorable sighting yesterday.

I was scoring the sightings at a respectable clip in those early afternoon hours and would really hit the mark with Sighting #9, a dark blond young mommy who looked strikingly familiar but I don’t believe I’d seen her before.  She was in her late 20s and in the company of what I presume was her two kids and her husband, but only she was smoking.  She struck quite a pose too, with a very wholesome face and outfit to match, a turquoise tanktop and conservative dark blue jean shorts, standing there with cigarette in hand next to the husband as the kids sat in the grass.  There were no bells and whistles about her style, but she didn’t seem at all like a smoker and just looked out of place there with a cigarette.  And unlike the previous profiled sighting, I had tremendous success with the pics on this one, capturing four pretty good pics, one in mid-drag and another when she was exhaling.  I had middling success with pics yesterday, but hers were some of my best.  Her husband went off to get some food so she and the kids were alone at one point.  It was clear she was gonna stick around so I didn’t linger in pursuit of the butt ID.  It was only 1:15 but the day already had some momentum.

The alley behind the east side beer gardens can always be counted upon to produce some sightings, and the smoker girls were at it early yesterday as I spotted Sighting #14 in the early afternoon, an early 20s dark blond in a flattering black tanktop and pale blue jean shorts enjoying a cigarette.  There was a guy standing near her smoking who I first assumed was with her, but after my first pass, he went back into the beer gardens leaving her to stand outside and smoke by herself.  It was isolated to the point that I couldn’t get too close with the camera, but she was distracted by her phone which allowed me to take three modest pics and capture her aura.  The pics didn’t really do justice to her though as she was more attractive than she appeared from the distant shots.  She was a quality smoker too, taking well-timed drags and producing some impressively cloudy exhales.  Towards the end of her cigarette, a persistent haze of smoke lingered in front of her face.  She crushed out the cigarette and I approached after she went back into the beer gardens to discover it was a Marlboro Light.

The first sighting of the day poised for some end-of-year recognition came with Sighting #16.  I approached the seating area behind the Depot bar and grill and spotted this attractive young brunette mommy attending to a stroller next to a bench, and happened to lay eyes on her at the second she handed a freshly lit cigarette to a middle-aged lady I presume was her mother while she attended to the little one in the stroller for a minute or so.  Checking out the body of this cute little thing, she definitely had that “still-sexy young mommy” vibe about her, dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail with a flesh-revealing gray tanktop and short tannish jean shorts with some smooth stems flowing out.  I’d guess she was about 23 and even the small tattoo on her shoulder wasn’t enough to make me lose interest.  And just my luck there was an open bench very closeby where I could sit and watch.  Seconds after I took my seat and prepared my camera, the girl would step away from the stroller and reclaim her cigarette from mom.  At the time I thought she was the only smoker in the family (there were two or three other younger people with them) but I would later see mom and dad both smoking as well.  She interacted in conversation with the whole group, but mostly with a younger girl across the table from her which was very convenient because it brought the girl and her cigarette closer to me, where I nailed a couple of pics, one of her standing and in mid-drag on her all-white that I was close enough to see was a Marlboro Light Special Blend.  She was a solid smoker too with nicely paced drags and good-sized exhales.  You could tell she was a regular at this whole smoking thing.  In minutes, she’d finish the cigarette off and drop it to her feet, but unfortunately the family wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  With that in mind, I returned to the same spot about 15 minutes later….and the cute brunette was smoking again!  I stopped and sat at another nearby bench and checked out some of that show too….

This gal was already poised to be one of my top sightings of the day, but her body of work in the ensuing hours before dark would solidify her stature as I would see her smoking twice more before 6 p.m.  Once, she and her parents were seated on the east side of this building that is across the street from the karaoke bar and a common destination for nicotine-starved fairgoers seeking their carcinogenic relief.  The next time was at the bathroom on the northeast side of the grounds where she was standing with the family, cigarette in hand for the fourth time I had witnessed that day.  Her back was to me so I wasn’t in as good of a position to observe as before, but I still got a nice rear shot where the cigarette is perched visibly in her right hand next to her ass as she chatted with the family.  This girl had IT factor to spare in the first place, but seeing her smoke four times over about a five-hour stretch is enough to grant her pretty high honors for the day.  It made me wonder how many more cigarettes she smoked yesterday that I didn’t catch….and how heavily addicted her young child must be having her as a mommy.

I would continue to stitch together some vaguely memorable moments as early afternoon transitioned to mid-afternoon, such as the tall 20-something blond with her hair up in a ponytailed bun who was Sighting #19 and a young brunette mommy who surprised me when she fired up a Camel Light Menthol and became Sighting #28 while waiting for the nonsmoking husband to get a drink, but surrendering it way too quickly after just a few drags as they began wheeling the stroller onto the concourse.  The best points of the day were still ahead though.

And one of those points would come just after 4:00 when I was back at the east side beer gardens area and spotted a handsome young couple proceeding to an isolated grassy area north of the beer gardens.  The girlfriend was a medium-brown brunette who looked about 23 and had a gorgeous face and body, supplemented by a red top and a pair of those lacy white shorts that always look so feminine.  She was on my radar right away but about 30 seconds after spotting her, she opened up her purse and extracted a pack of Marlboro Reds.  My heart skipped a beat as she was about to become Sighting #30, inserting the cork filter cigarette into her mouth just as I got my camera ready.  I snapped the photo certain that I nailed her in mid-lightup.  Best of all, the boyfriend wasn’t smoking….he was just waiting out his gorgeous girlfriend to fill her body with cancerous carcinogens.  I took a couple more pics but was too isolated to linger there with the camera, opting instead to cross the street and watch from afar as she was making pretty quick work of the cigarette with nicely timed drags and solid exhales.  Thus far today, she was probably the most striking face and image to be associated with cigarette smoking.  Unfortunately, another duo of friends joined them.  The good news is the dark blond in the flower-print dress would light up to become Sighting #31 (and again her boyfriend would not light up!) but the bad news is all these people obstructed my view of the brunette hottie, and it was a struggle to position myself in a place where I’d be able to see more from her.  I finally had to walk away as I was drawing too much attention to myself trying to catch her…plus at least I had those great photos right??  Right?  I checked my camera and discovered in absolute horror that none of them turned out, and that I just missed capturing her in the shot, apparently again moving the phone away too quickly after taking the shot out of fear of being spotted.  I got a portion of her face in a small corner of the shot but not even enough to appreciate her beauty let alone see her smoking or to do justice to her body in that outfit.  This was my biggest photo fail of the day…and I’m still sick about it despite how good of a show it was.

It was a modest consolation prize to get a sighting and a successful photo of Sighting #35 in front of the main beer gardens a few minutes later.  It was a dark brunette in her late 20s wearing sunglasses, a black top, and dark jeans out smoking with her boyfriend.  I got two photos, one of which was in mid-drag, but I’d nonetheless trade 100 pics of her for one good one of the Sighting #30 girl I had just missed.

My hit-or-miss photo taking largely failed me again with Sighting #37 on a block full of food vendors where I spotted another dark brunette, this one with a boyfriend/husband and a group of friends, wielding a freshly lit cigarette.  She was probably 30 but was very pretty, accentuating her beauty with a blue tanktop and a very sexy pair of medium-blue jean shorts that framed her perfect lower body and legs beautifully.  While walking to her side, I captured a couple headless shots with cigarette in hand that nicely captured her body but missed her face.  My subsequent efforts to get a shot of her face also bombed, but I did get to see her smoke most of the cigarette, and that was a joy as she was another gal who very clearly knew her way around a cigarette based on her style.  While this girl didn’t really come across as “wholesome”, her boyfriend/husband seemed older and very blue-collar, so they were still a bit of an odd couple with her far and away the “better half”.  While I’d never get another chance to get pics of her, I would get a chance to see her again.  In fact, I’d see this couple three more times before the day ended, and two of those times this hot brunette was smoking a cigarette.

At the nexus of the concourse and the south side block, I ran into a mixed-gender cluster of about eight guys and girls in their early 20s.  I was at first incredibly annoyed because all of the guys were smoking and none of the girls were.  But the girls were eating and I figured if I stuck around I might see some smoking.  I did, but strikingly little as one blond in the group would take two or three drags from the boyfriend’s cigarette.  The good news was that the Sighting #40 blond was the most striking member of the group, a tall blond in a short, yellow summer dress with memorably attractive features and long, smooth legs.  She was packed pretty tightly in the friends’ group when she was taking her drags so I didn’t see a lot but I was able to see some pretty intense smoke clouds in front of her face in the aftermath of her exhales.  The group drifted to the main beer gardens stand and took a chair.  I hoped to see more of her later in the evening, and perhaps the other females in the group as well, but wouldn’t see them again.

My next sighting of note would be one of THREE cigar sightings I scored yesterday.  I came upon a trio of two girls and one guy in an alleyway outside one of the commercial buildings next to the bathrooms and noticed right away one of the girls was vaping while the guy was smoking a Black ‘N’ Mild cigar.  I stuck around just in case the cuter of the two girls would share the cigar with the guy, and my instinct proved correct as in a minute or so he passed her the cigar and she became Sighting #43.  She was a beautiful girl, about 19 or 20 years old with a pretty face and a long mane of dark brown hair, but she was hard to get a good visual on because she sat on the cement ledge in a crouched position, a long-sleeved shirt tied around her waist obstructing her jean shorts.  Making matters worse, she was looking towards the guy to her right, so being seated on her left I wasn’t able to see as much as I’d have liked and my pics never got a great visual on her face.  The upside was that she was dominating that cigar.  She may not have been the one in possession of it when I arrived on the scene, but she was puffing on it two-thirds of the time I sat there, and I got to see about eight drags and that cigar perched between her fingers.  This one had the potential to be a classic but my weak visual and her oddball crouched position took some of its power away.  Nice to get three cigar sightings yesterday though, and this was my favorite of the three.

Moments later, I was back at that bathroom area near the east side beer gardens which seems to be delivering more and more frequently in recent years.  Yesterday, I spotted this long-haired dark blond who looked about 30 years old and was wearing an interesting outfit combination of a black ball cap and a tight-fitting gray dress that crested well above her knees.  Oh…and she was also smoking a cigarette, making her Sighting #44 of the day.  Now for all of the instances yesterday where I thought I nailed perfect pics only to find out later I missed the mark entirely, there were also a few instances where I figured I would have a mess but ended up nailing a pic.  This one was the latter as I somehow managed to score a great photo of her in mid-drag.  She was on the last few drags of the cigarette so I stuck around to watch the abbreviated show, but it would actually be a couple of hours later when I’d see her again at the exact same spot smoking again that would be the more memorable encounter.  She was in the company of a male friend when she took an interest in some random 18-ish guy with some writing on his T-shirt.  Out of nowhere, she asked him what the slogan meant and then proceeded to debate him whether the dime-store philosophical comment on the shirt was true or not.  She didn’t seem intoxicated out of her mind, and perhaps she wasn’t, but debating a total stranger half her age about the philosophical comment on his T-shirt is a strange thing to do sober.  The young guy seemed a little intimidated by her but the guy in the smoker girl’s company took some pressure off with a quick comment and a high-five, all as the blond continued to contaminate everybody’s airspace with the exhales from her cigarette.

The next sighting of note came at the back of the beer gardens at the edge of the midway, and it was a stunner.  Sighting #48 struck an amazing pose leaning against the railing outside of the beer gardens fence all by herself, texting away on her phone and smoking a cigarette with nobody else around.  Hers was one of the more innocent-looking faces of the day, a curly-haired dark blond who could have passed for 17 but I figured she was at least 21 since she was hanging around this beer gardens.  Making the scene even sweeter was that her clothes perfectly fit the wholesome presentation, with her white tanktop flowing into a pair of medium-blue jeans with holes in the knees.  Hard to overstate just how girl-next-door she came across, corrupted only by the cork filter cigarette she was repeatedly dragging from.  I got one semifrontal pic but given her isolation I had to stand to the side to get subsequent pics.  None of them does full justice to her beauty, but I got a couple pics of her in mid-drag that nails her fantastic presentation.  I got to watch almost her entire cigarette, and while there was nothing distinctive about her style, seeing cigarette smoke casually flow from the mouth and nose from this sweet face as she texted made for one of my best images of the day.  After about five minutes, she finished the cigarette and tossed it to the pavement, absolutely obliterating it with her shoe before heading back into the beer gardens.  The sighting got some yummy additional context as she took a seat right behind the railing where she’d been standing in the company of her family, the only smoker in her group reeking of fresh tobacco and conversing with them, all with her pack of Marlboro Light Special Blends sitting in front of her on the table.  I’d sure have loved to have seen more from this girl yesterday but that’s all I would get.  Still, that presentation with the yummy follow-up context may be enough to qualify for year-end recognition, and definitely one of my top-five sightings of the day.

As that sighting was playing out, I missed out on most of another great sighting occurring a few yards into the midway as an attractive early 20s couple were briefly macking on each other with freshly lit cigarettes in their hands.  The Sighting #49 girl was a blond in a white T-shirt and jean shorts who really seemed on cloud nine in the company of the guy with her cigarette in hand.  Unfortunately, they drifted out of sight and I wasn’t gonna leave the #48 girl just yet.  I saw them on the midway a few minutes later, their cigarettes gone.  That would be about as close as I’d get to a sighting of note on the actual midway yesterday.  It’s a venue that’s been declining in recent years, although most years I still get at least one extra-base hit on the midway.  They renovated the midway since last year, and it didn’t end well since all of the soda/pop machines were removed.  This was a great option for a $2 soft drink in a bottle not packed with ice and has been for the last 12 years, but apparently they decided the machines were hurting the vendors selling pop packed with ice for twice as much…and they were right.

There’s a crowded area where the edge of the grandstand, the midway, and the beer gardens merge that has always produced a good number of sightings and yesterday was no exception to that.  There are booths outside the beer gardens in this area, the same booths where I first saw the legendary “Brittny” (ISF #6) as the only smoker in her family back in 2008.  While the area didn’t produce anything of her caliber yesterday, there was an attractive 20-something blond in a black top and dark jeans, her right leg concealed in a post-injury boot who was sitting with a friend at the table smoking a cigarette and becoming Sighting #52.  The positioning made it impossible to watch for long but I hovered at the outer edge of the tables and watched to see what I could.  She was a very slow smoker so I was only able to stay for a couple of drags before my presence stuck out like a sore thumb and I had to depart.  Fortunately, I’d get a brief encore late in the evening when I saw this same duo of friends outside the bar on the south side of the grounds, with the blond again wielding a cigarette.  She was a very slow smoker once again, but I was at least able to take an empty bench and watch a few drags in the dark before I grew bored with her slowness and moved on.

It was now around 6:00 and the evening was about to bust wide open.  Whenever I started venturing one direction, I’d run into a smoker hottie that would lead me back in the direction I came from.  It was a good problem to have!  And rarely better than when I walked straight into the oncoming Sightings #54 and #55, most likely the two youngest smokers I saw yesterday.  The girls looked 17 or 18 and were shameless about strutting down the center of the concourse amidst hundreds of other fairgoers with cigarettes in hand.  Jumping out at me most was the girl to the left, whose long auburn hair flowed over her shoulders onto her black tanktop.  Below the waist she wore this crazy short pair of pale blue cutoffs, so short that you could see her ass dimples, with long, smooth legs flowing out.  She had an unfortunate tattoo on her right thigh, and anybody who has read my writeups in the past knows I’m not a fan, but her the rest of her presentation was so sultry I barely noticed the tattoo and was able to block it out.  The friend was a more girl-next-door type, still quite cute and looking less like a smoker of the two, with bookish glasses and light brown hair flowing onto a pink top with black leggings on the bottom.  The two complemented each other nicely image-wise, but the one thing they had in common was a shameless dependency on nicotine, taking regular drags on their cigarettes as they walked.  As hard as it is to get pics generally, it’s even harder walking rapidly to people’s sides in a crowd and nailing a pic in motion, but I managed a couple decent ones, and one pic in particular that captures both of them.  I caught several of their drags after I surrendered the photo-taking, ultimately following them to behind some vendor booths where the hottie of the duo dropped her cork-filter butt to the ground and didn’t bother to crush it out.  The debris she littered was an oddball variation of Marlboro with a neon green print.  Maybe it’s a menthol version of Marlboro Blacks…not sure.  By the time I caught up with them, the brunette’s cigarette was nowhere to be seen.  Great show…and not the last I’d see from them!

I ventured westward again after that detour, and only moments later would end up on another detour following another smoker hottie on the concourse as she headed east.  Sighting #56 was a girl after my own heart because of her outfit.  She was a dark blond wearing a shoulderless pale pink blouse and nice-fitting white shorts on the bottom.  White shorts are the top of the pyramid for me for summer attire, and it’s not nearly common enough to see cute smoker babes wearing them anymore.  I got a couple of good in-motion side shot pics of this girl, who looked about 30.  Her face was a little harder than her soft presentation suggested, but she was still attractive and got an A for effort with that outfit.  She was walking in front of a nonsmoking middle-aged couple who I assumed were her parents, making her smoking all the more exciting.  She dropped the butt to the concourse and I was all the more excited to approach and discover she had been smoking a Marlboro Red.

The stretch of hits kept coming in the next few minutes with a double-bang shot playing out simultaneously between two groups in the general vicinity of this semicircle of benches behind the grandstand.  Capturing my attention first was this slightly chubby but adorable blond who looked about 19 or 20 and had two long braids flowing over her shoulders onto her white “Grandstand Staff” T-shirt and jean shorts on the bottom.  She was sitting on this big rock with her bare legs crossed, smoking a cigarette while a friend waited and a middle-aged couple who I would quickly figure out were her parents sat across from her on a bench.  The oddest but most delicious context from Sighting #59 was that, like me, her mom was pointing a camera phone at her and seemed to be requesting that she pose holding her cigarette by her face.  WTF!  “Mom!”, she said in an understandably embarrassed tone.  I’d love to have been able to overhear even more context from this but wouldn’t, instead just enjoying watching her smoke, taking a couple of pics of her and catching her just before her cigarette went into her mouth in one of them.  After finishing the cigarette, she pulled her T-shirt off and revealed a skimpier tanktop underneath, which implied to me that her shift working for the grandstand had ended.  Unfortunately, the removal of the T-shirt revealed a couple less-than-flattering tattoos on her arm, but it was still a nice show.  However……

…..to my left an even better show was going on with Sighting #60.  The girl in question was an absolutely gorgeous dark brunette in a skimpy pale pink tanktop and equally perfect jean shorts, her smooth legs exposed from the upper thigh on down.  Seeing this girl in isolation I’d have figured she was about 16 as she just exuded innocence and wholesomeness…and didn’t look AT ALL like a smoker.  But she was in the company of a couple of older guys who looked about 21, so I figured she was likely closer to their age.  It’s crazy how more and more women in their 20s still have the look of teenagers.  I saw several instances of it yesterday, with this girl being the pinnacle of it.  She was smoking to my left at the same time as the previous girl was smoking to my right, so it was a constant carcinogenic cloud show in both directions. This girl put on the better show though, mostly just because of her soft look but her timely drags and dense, cloudy exhales didn’t hurt either.  I had a hard time nailing a “perfect” photo but got what I figured were a few good ones.  One of the guys in her group finished his cigarette first and the girl made a special point of insisting he toss the butt in the garbage can, so I figured that probably meant I’d be denied a butt ID when she finished hers.  The three of them walked off, the cigarette still on the final couple drags of her cigarette, and I thankfully followed to get a couple ass shots before she squeezed the cigarette out between her fingers and tossed it in the next garbage can.  I say “thankfully” because when I looked later, I discovered all of my frontal photos of her were dark, just like most of the pics of one of my best girls was last year.  Apparently the culprit is taking pics to the west at whatever the sun angle is at the 6 p.m. hour in August.  It was highly unfortunate because, once again, pics were disgustingly dark of one of my hottest girls of the fair and it’s hard to make her out, let alone her cigarette.  She was still one of my top-five sightings of the day though and combined with the blond fair worker the other direction, I was pleased with the show.  On top of all that, there were two hot 19ish girls in between them who were vaping.  Vaping does nothing for me, but that was still a lot of girls in a very narrow area doing naughty stuff.

I’d finally find my way off the concourse after that intense stretch, moving towards the main beer gardens area where huddles of people stood out in front, and one of them was Sighting #62, this long-haired late 20s platinum blond with a very pretty face.  Unfortunately, she was taking her final drag when I spotted her and then dropped the cigarette to the ground, expelling a snootful of smoke in a downward trajectory.  She was in a cluster of several friends and was the only one smoking, and even though I didn’t get to see much of her smoking, I still wanted a pic and made a few attempts to get one, but mostly just capturing her ass, not that there was anything wrong with that!  She was wearing a bright yellow tanktop and pale blue jean shorts, and looking at the photos today I’m really struck by how big her boobs were.  Definitely wish I would have seen more smoking from her.

Moments later, I’d wander through the south side seating area, a location that delivered multiple times in years past but was lukewarm yesterday.  However, I spotted a blond and her boyfriend lighting up while taking a seat on the cement and resting, and I struggled to find a good place to observe Sighting #63.  Given the angle that she was sitting and the location of her boyfriend to her right, it was very hard to even be able to watch her smoke let alone take pics.  It was weird because I was close enough to hear her conversation with the boyfriend (about work), but most of what I could see was the expulsion of smoke from her face in the seconds after her exhales.  She was decent looking, not a bombshell but still had an IT factor that made her interesting, accentuated by her shapely body concealed in a light blue tanktop and pale blue jean shorts.  I walked away realizing my vantage point was not gonna improve before she finished the cigarette, but an hour or so later I’d see this couple again in the presence of another couple, both lighting up another round of cigarettes and I’d get a little bit better show the second time, impressed with her stylistic bells and whistles that were particularly evident in her cloudy exhales.

From there, I ventured down the alleyway past a set of bathrooms and towards the end of the alley I came across a couple of familiar youthful faces, the most striking of which being that sexpot 17ish chick in the daisy dukes strutting down the concourse with cigarette in hand only about 15 minutes earlier with her friend (Sightings #54 and #55).  Well here they were again, seated in the grass next to each other and looking at their phones.  Only one of them was smoking this time, but it was the right girl….that sexy little auburn-haired cutie with those impossibly long legs coming out of the equally impossibly short shorts.  Her elbow was covering the tattoo on her thigh nicely as I proceeded to snap a few more pics, a couple of them with her in mid-drag.  It was approaching dark and the photos were blurrier than I’d prefer but it was nice to get a couple more shots of her and see her smoking another cigarette so quickly after her first.  Still, no chance of a girl her age giving me a third show later in the evening, right?  Right?  We’ll see.

My next extra-base hit would come behind The Depot, where I came upon a duo of fair employees on a smoke break on a remote bench that was regrettably behind this golf cart-like “club car” that is used to ride around the grounds.  I say regrettably because the car’s presence obstructed most of the killer body of Sighting #69, this very wholesome mid-20s long-haired light brunette who was smoking her cigarette on that bench.  However, I was close enough to get some nice pics, including one fantastic shot of her in mid-drag.  Here was another girl who didn’t look at all like a smoker, but she disproved that notion every time she took a drag and belched out very impressive amounts of smoke in her follow-up exhales.  I got to see the vast majority of her cigarette but knew based on the isolated location that when she crushed out her butt that I would not be able to sneak in there and get a butt ID since there was a guy sitting inside that club car, but I did take note of her “Built Ford Tough” T-shirt and the much bigger “Built Ford Tough” banner about 20 yards behind her.  She was working the Ford booth….a young professional this cute but addicted to nicotine nonetheless.  As soon as she got up to go back to the booth, I jumped up and followed her to get an ass shot, and if you could see how great her body looked with those long legs coming out of a pair of black shorts, you’d know why as I just couldn’t tolerate her lower body to be denied photo immortality simply because it was blocked by that Club Car while she was smoking.  Another solid sighting from a day where the solid sighting count was really becoming impressive.

Moving on to another sighting likely poised for end-of-year acclaim was Sighting #73.  At the edge of the midway and the beer gardens, I came across this odd dynamic of two middle-aged, blue collar guys standing smoking cigarettes with a cute 21ish blond.  She was undoubtedly the daughter of one of these guys, or else a girlfriend young enough to be their daughter, but if she was a daughter the apple fell far from the tree as she was a very wholesome-looking sweetheart.  Looking at this trio hovering near the water fountains smoking their cigarettes, it sure wasn’t hard to discern which was the odd person out. Her long blond hair flowed all the way down her back and onto her waist, with a white blouse that left several inches of exposed midriff and tight-fitting pale blue jeans underneath.  The tightness of her jeans made it all the more obvious to observe that pack of Marlboro Smooths stuffed into the back pocket of her jeans, ready for business for a night of partying with the old guys.  And sure enough, a few drags into their cigarettes, they couldn’t wait any longer and one of the older guys announced, “Let’s go drink some beer!” and they wandered in the direction of the beer gardens across the street.  The blond still had cigarette in hand, intermittently dragging from it as she maneuvered through the dense crowd lingering near the beer gardens entrance and exhaling her smoke clouds with reckless abandon.  I got more pics of her than any other girl yesterday, but none were perfect as it was approaching sunset which adds to the blur factor and smudged the image of her pretty face more than once.  I got a couple really nice ones though and even though she was partially cut off in it, I got one pic of her in mid-drag.  It was a great sighting through and through with the odd demographic dynamic, the hot smoker girl and her thin exhales, and the sexy outfit complete with cigarette pack squeezed into her ass pocket.  Whatever direction you happened to be looking at this girl from, there was something to get excited about!  She finished the cigarette and dropped it to the pavement seconds before going inside.  She had smoked the cigarette almost to the filter and there was barely enough evidence on the butt to discern that it was a Marlboro Smooth.  This night continued to deliver!

And crossing the street heading towards the south side, the evening delivered again when I came upon Sighting #74, an athletic-looking mid-to-late 20s dark brunette in a pink T-shirt and baggy athletic shorts who didn’t look at all like a smoker but was nonetheless wielding a freshly lit cork filter and standing all by herself smoking near a tree.  I was able to walk on up and snap a side pic, albeit a nonsmoking one, and catch a couple of her drags.  Not sure if she knew I was stalking her or if she was just restless, but she migrated a few feet to her left to this trinket vendor and started chatting the girl up, holding her cigarette to her side as she talked.  It would have been fantastic if she had taken a drag directly in front of the vendor in mid-conversation but she held back, holding the cigarette until the vendor girl moved away.  It was still a very nice sighting though and one of the least likely smoker girls I’d run into yesterday.

Next, in close proximity to the east side beer gardens, I’d get my second of three cigar sightings of the day with Sighting #76.  A trio of one guy and two late 20s women were standing together, and the two women were passing a Black ‘N’ Mild back and forth.  The one woman was heavy and unattractive, but the other was quite nice, a light brunette in a low-cut pink top showing off plenty of cleavage and dark jeans below.  I won’t say she didn’t look like a smoker, but she certainly didn’t look like a cigar smoker!  I was able to take a bench and watch as much as I could of the show with thralls of people walking in front of me on this packed sidewalk.  I made three attempts at photos but only one stuck, and unfortunately you can’t see her cigar in it.  The brunette hottie seemed to smoke most of the cigar between the two of them but prematurely leaned down to stub it out.  As I was walking away, she nonetheless put it in her mouth and took a couple of additional drags that still produced some smoke and stench, which seemed odd since she had been attempting to snuff the thing out.

The sightings were adding up hot and heavy now well into the 7:00 hour, and the bulk of the activity was playing out on the concourse as the aforementioned lack of organization in getting concertgoers into the grandstand for the 90s hip-hop acts was really becoming a logistical disaster.  It was fast approaching 8:00, when the concert was supposed to start, but lines hundreds of people deep were extending all the way across the concourse and making it even harder to get around.  I’m guessing there were very slow-moving bag checks significantly delaying entry.  While the long lines were a nuisance to everybody, including fairgoers like myself trying to navigate the concourse, the upside was that there were quite a few nicotine-starved females in line for the concert who couldn’t wait any longer for a cigarette.  The crowd generally skewed older given that it was hip-hop acts popular more than 20 years ago, but amongst them  were a good dozen women in their late 20s to late 30s attractive enough to count as sightings, the best of which was a foursome of late 20s gals who visited the bathroom east of the grandstand and exited with freshly lit cigarettes between all of their fingers.  None of the women were individually gorgeous, but Sightings #85, 86, 87, and 88 all brought something to the table and had enough variance in their outfits, hair color, and body type to make it a comprehensive visual, particularly since they were all copiously dragging on their cigarettes as they walked down the concourse preparing to get back in line.  A brunette in a black tanktop and jean shorts was the best smoker, taking the deepest drags and producing the cloudiest exhales, but a short-haired blond in a white tanktop and tight medium-blue jean shorts struck the most attractive pose of the four and looked most distinguished in possession of her cigarette.  I followed them till they found their way to back of the long line where they took their final drags and stomped out the cigarettes fairly quickly.  Always a treat to get a multiple-girl sighting, and they are getting increasingly rare in recent years.

And not far from the back of the line where the foursome arrived, a dozen or so people ahead of them in line were a middle-aged mother and a 30-ish daughter who were both smoking right in the densely packed line of fairgoers.  It was hard to hover and watch people in line so I only got to see a couple of drags from Sighting #89, but as I walked away I stumbled upon a trio sitting in a corner next to a lemonade stand that would produce Sighting #90, my third of three cigar sightings from last night.  There were two guys and a girl, the guys both smoking cigarettes while the tall, 19ish dark brunette girl had a Black ‘N’ Mild cigar all to herself.  She was hitting it pretty regularly too and struck a pretty impressive pose in her black tanktop and dark jeans covering up a body that appeared to be at least six feet tall from her seated position, nearly emasculating the two guys next to her with her imposing size and her larger cigar versus their cigarettes.  But there was one glaring downside to this sighting….all three of them were higher than a kite, drugged out of their minds on something that was pretty obviously worse than pot.  I watched for a couple of minutes but lost interest as it was clear how wasted all of them were.

The concourse would deliver one more time in a major way as I headed westward from there, and stumbled into a girl who had already delivered in a major way…twice.  It was my 17ish auburn-haired chain-smoking sex kitten in the daisy duke cutoffs doing her favorite thing again….smoking yet another cigarette, at least her third in just a little more than an hour.  The cute but nerdy looking friend in the black leggings was still with her, but just like the previous time she was not smoking herself.  This show belonged entirely to the hottie with the shorts so short I was watching her ass dimples wiggle with each step.  It was so damn sexy to see her so confidently strut down the packed concourse dragging from her cigarette repeatedly and exhaling with a devil-may-care attitude.  I got in on about seven more nicely paced drags before she dropped the cork-filter cigarette with the neon green Marlboro logo to the pavement, again failing to crush it out.  There was no doubt the first time I saw this duo smoking they’d be high on my list of favorites for the day, but having seen three cigarettes from my favorite of the two is enough to get her up to my third favorite sighting of the day.  The best news is that still leaves my two favorites for the day yet to come!  And just a warning, first impressions just might be misleading moving ahead.

I was on quite a tear from about 6 p.m. to 8:30, but after sunset my pace slowed considerably and I came upon some frustration.  I had had a few heartbreaks over the course of the day with girls vaping, but it was still more the exception than the rule and I was seeing enough quality smoker sightings to shake it off.  But I drew the line when I found myself seated on a bench in the south side seating area across from a trio of 19ish babes, with two of them revealing themselves as vapers.  Apparently, the smaller vape pens with the glowing tips and the thin vapor exhales are making a bit of a comeback because I saw a couple of teens using them at Summerfest along with the two girls here.  One was a dark brunette with long braids going down her back, and she seemed to be hitting her vape pen the hardest.  The other was a dark blond who was strikingly attractive and doing most of the talking amongst the threesome (and talking about sex at that!), who more casually hit her vape pen.  The third girl was the most gorgeous of the three, this agonizingly wholesome blond sweetheart in a pink top and a conservative but sexy black skirt that crested several inches above her knees.  She was never vaping, and at one point, she stood up and faced the other girls while they vaped, as if she was annoyed even being around their “secondhand vape”, although perhaps she had other reasons.  While I had a half a woody going watching these three who I had really taken an interest in, I eventually walked away and became depressed for the first time yesterday that girls like the two in this group that would surely have been smoking five years ago were vaping today and had no idea what they were missing. About 10 minutes later I’d find myself behind two of these girls again, the non-vaping blond and the braided brunette, the latter of which still had her vape pen in hand.  Couple these images with a slowdown in sightings and my morale was the lowest for the night.

The sightings slowdown lingered until well after dark and I finally got a halfway memorable encounter with Sighting #96, a dark blond in a ball cap and a matching black top and black shorts who was walking with her group on the south side of the grounds and wielding a cigarette.  There was a bit of a bottleneck at the location I spotted her and it worked to my advantage and I found my way behind her and was able to walk very slowly right behind her and take in some of her secondhand smoke.  The girl was a “strong single” in terms of a sighting but had a great presentation and I admired her moxie in walking through this dense patch of territory with cigarette in hand.

In the next 10 minutes or so I migrated to the east side beer gardens area that has been such a gold mine in recent years and it was about to deliver again in the most unlikely way with my best sighting of the day.  Crowds hover outside the beer gardens’ west entrance, often times people stepping outside for a smoke, but Sighting #100 was no ordinary “someone”.  The vision of feminine beauty a few feet in front of me with a freshly lit cigarette between her fingers was none other than the adorable 19ish blond in the black skirt who I had spotted in the south side seating area only about a half hour earlier, the only of the three girls who wasn’t even vaping at the time!  Now I had assumed based on her failure to join in on the vaping earlier–and her church youth director looks–that she was every bit as squeaky clean as she appeared.  Instead, she was standing amidst a cluster of guys and the braided brunette friend dragging from an analog cigarette and seemingly enjoying the hell out of every drag!  As I watched her indulge in that out-of-place cigarette, ingesting cancerous chemicals into such a pristine face and matching body, it struck me that perhaps the reason the trio of girls sat in that south side seating area in the first place was so that the blond could smoke a cigarette while the friends vaped…and that she had finished the cigarette before I got there.  There’s no way of knowing if it happened that way or not but it was a sweet thought.  It was after dark and I knew my photos would be a blurry mess, but I nonetheless took a handful, including one of her in mid-drag.  None of the pics turned out and her beautiful face was too blurred to appreciate, but at least I captured her jaw-dropping presentation in that pink top and conservative black skirt.  What a stunning find she was….and I know now why I was so instinctively drawn to her group while watching on the south side.  She finished off the cigarette and dropped it to the pavement, quickly walking with the braided brunette into the beer gardens.  I guess it was possible she was 21 but she sure didn’t look it and neither did the brunette friend or the dark blond friend earlier.  She was holding a nonalcoholic slushie while she smoked and perhaps was hanging around inside the beer gardens just for the live music or to be with friends.  Either way, she quickly worked her way to the top of my list for the evening and whatever momentum I felt I had lost was back now!

And proving again that it’s feast or famine at times at these fairs, a few feet behind my favorite girl of the night (Sighting #100) was Sighting #101, a stunning mid-20s long-haired blond wearing a black top and tight medium-blue jeans, also smoking a cigarette while standing with her boyfriend.  While in the process of observing my favorite girl, I got a couple of side glances at #101 and caught her in a couple of drags, even managing a quick (and blurry) backside pic.  And when I say backside, I’m describing her best quality as she had a perfect ass accentuated by those tight jeans.  She vanished after only about a minute, deserving more attention than I was able to give her.

I was riding high at this point, for obvious reasons, which was good because the next half hour or so didn’t feature anything too memorable.  There’s a spot across the street from the midway and beer gardens that has typically been a teen hangout after dark, and still was to a degree, but they made some renovations to the grounds and moved a few things around, which seemed to affect crowd placement to a degree.  As is typical though, I didn’t see any teens in the residual huddle smoking, but just south of the benches was a sexy feminine profile of a long-haired platinum blond in a white tanktop and pale blue jean shorts, which is always a top summer girl image for me, wielding a cigarette in the company of a nonsmoking boyfriend.  Sighting #107 had a bit more of a harder look than I hoped for based on my distant observation but she was still attractive and it was nice watching her take a few drags, particularly when another nonsmoking couple who recognized them offered greetings and chatted for a bit.  Sexiest of all though that a girl dressed like this was smoking while the boyfriend wasn’t.

I headed back to the east side beer gardens not quite a half hour removed from my sighting of the night, crossing my fingers for a follow-up but trying to hold expectations down.  Before I got there, I stumbled upon Sighting #108, a tall and attractive blond in a black top and dark jeans.  The more I looked her over, the more surprisingly wholesome she seemed, particularly in the context of being in a mixed-gender group (two guys and three girls) and she was the only smoker of the five.  It was an intriguing image, but I had bigger fish to fry and walked away pretty quickly, but I got a follow-up to this sighting only about 15 minutes later when I spotted the same group of five sitting under the canopy in the open-air Depot…and once again, blondie was the only one smoking another cigarette, her pack of Marlboro Lights resting in front of her on the bench.  As wholesome as she looked, it was a jarring (and wonderful) image to see her smoking in a spot where I’m sure smoking is formally banned and would be considered bad manners by most nonsmokers in that setting.

Anyway, back to the east side beer gardens.  I was glad I held expectations down because I walked past the entrance area where I saw Sighting #100 about a half hour earlier and there were no impossibly wholesome blond cuties in pink blouses and black skirts to be found.  Nonetheless, I progressed the extra 50 yards up to the bathroom north of there, and lo and behold, out came the blond and the braided brunette, exiting the bathroom en route to the beer gardens area again.  My prospects were improving as I did a 180-degree pivot to follow them.  Sure enough, she stopped next to the same group of guys she was with earlier and was fishing around in her purse.  Unbelievably, out came the pack of Marlboro Reds.  She placed the unlit cigarette in her mouth and fired up.  The girl I thought was too wholesome to sit amongst her vaping friends less than an hour earlier was now smoking (at least) her second cigarette of the last half hour.  She was already my sighting of the day so this encore presentation was just gravy.  I didn’t bother with picture-taking this time and just stood at a nice angle and watched, catching her every adorable drag and watching in disbelief every time a blast of smoke flowed out of her beautiful face.  And even though the braided brunette was still wasting time with her silly vape pen, blondie was gracious enough to hand her the cigarette on a couple of occasions for a quick drag, which helped make the friend Sighting #109.  After smoking the cigarette nearly to the filter, she crushed it out on the cement again and they stepped inside again and unfortunately that would be the last I’d see of them.  I returned to the east side beer gardens three more times before the evening ended and they weren’t around.  But never in a hundred years could I have imagined when I was sitting on the south side at 8:00 demoralized at the friends’ vaping that I’d be getting two moments of this caliber from that girl.  She was easily the high point of August 12, 2017.

Extra-base hits continued to abound as I headed to the west side of the concourse in front of the Depot around the 11:00 hour and spotted a distinguished mid-20s platinum blond wearing an oddball but ultimately satisfying outfit of baggy athletic shorts coupled with white fishnet stockings.  The combo sounds alternative but everything else about the girl seemed anything but as she otherwise had a wholesome Midwestern face.  Her African American boyfriend was sitting on the bench eating but I began to take notice when blondie stood up and began fidgeting in her purse.  Sure enough, out came a cigarette and she lit up to become Sighting #115.  And at the very moment she lit up, another couple was walking past where the attractive long-haired early 20s dark blond female in a red top and dark jeans was smoking while her white trash boyfriend was not.  Sighting #116 and the boyfriend took a bench about 10 yards up the concourse and since I would be able to take a seat across from them and watch her show, I took that option.  It was a dark spot and I was positioned in a way that I had to look right to see her so I wasn’t able to watch the whole cigarette, but the darkness made it easier to appreciate the glowing red cherry every time she took a substantial drag from her cigarette while her boyfriend, who looked far more like a smoker than she did, quietly sat next to her and let her smoke.  Once the awkwardness of my vantage point became a logistical problem, I took advantage of the other option playing out near me and returned to the platinum blond in the white fishnet stockings, still standing near her seated boyfriend and continuing to smoke her cigarette.  For a couple of minutes, I wandered back and forth between the girls and was able to catch some drags from both.  I loved the dynamic here where both attractive females were smokers while their boyfriends were not.  In no way could I complain about how this night was going!

And the evening would offer up one more incredible moment as I walked past the main beer gardens entrance and came across a very familiar face.  It had been two years since I had seen this blond of Hollywood-caliber beauty, but she was my #7 sighting from 2015 and back at the location that made her a star.  A face as pretty as hers is hard to forget, and coupling it with the same beer gardens spot where I saw her on two different nights in 2015 was a perfect trip down memory lane.  For the record, two years ago I saw her smoking twice on Saturday night but returned five nights later to her marquee moment of the year, when she was decked out in a little black dress and had to get playfully physical to retrieve her cigarette when a guy friend walked off with it, all playing out at this same spot in front of the main beer gardens.  Back to 2017, she was Sighting #122 tonight and the sighting appeared poised to be brief and uneventful as she was standing in front of the bar with her back to me, sharing a cigarette with a guy friend.  But even that little appearance yielded some x-factor given that she knocked the ball out of the park again with her wardrobe, decked out in a shoulderless leopard-spotted tanktop and a pair of extremely tight-fitting jeans spliced in all the right places.  I remembered being impressed by this girl’s one-in-a-million ass back in 2015 but these tight jeans took it to an entirely different place, and since she was standing up to the bar with her back to me, I took the opportunity to snap a couple pics, and even as blurry as they are, it’s impossible not to notice that ass in the center of the dark and blur.  I stuck around a few minutes but it appeared as though she had lost custody of the cigarette for good, and it also appeared that she was severely drunk, so I wandered off just happy for the brief encore of an ISF classic from years past.  Still, this girl smoked three cigarettes in the three instances I saw her in 2015, so I had plans to keep tabs on her in the remaining hour.

It was at this point I ventured off the east side beer gardens and didn’t find anything too memorable, feeling an overwhelming instinct to return to see if Hollywood had any more tricks up her sleeve.  I didn’t even make it all the way back to the main beer gardens area when I spotted her and the guy friend from a few minutes ago drunkenly walking from a food stand where he picked something up to eat.  Given how wasted she was and the fact that I’ve seen her at the beer gardens repeatedly two years ago and tonight offers some strong anecdotal evidence that this girl has a bit of a problem with her alcohol.  But my God….dat ass!  As the guy and girl ventured back to the beer gardens area, I followed and for inexplicable reasons, the guy went inside and left her to herself.  I sat on the curb just to wait things out a bit when things got even weirder and she sat down on the curb as well, not five feet from me.  She gave me a passing smile as we made eye contact, minimally flirtatious and leading me to believe she might actually be about to strike up a drunken conversation with me.  She didn’t, which made things easier for me on a number of levels as it allowed me to continue to be anonymous and kept me from being seen as taking advantage of a severely drunk girl whose male friend was not far away.  Anyway, moments after she parked her incredible ass on the curb, she opened her purse and started fidgeting around.  Here it was, I thought…cigarettes are coming out.  But actually a dollar bill came out and she stumbled her way back up to approach a trio of middle-aged women who were all smoking.  She was gonna buy a cigarette from them!!!

She immersed herself briefly in the huddle as one of the women produced an all-white cigarette.  Her ass again looked incredible and I snapped what would be my best pic of it as I sat there.  One woman lit her up and she kept chatting with them for a minute or so before returning to the curb a few feet from me and gave me a front-row seat to her smoking show.  I was close enough to take a few action pics that turned out even in the dark.  It was just incredible luck.  A couple of guys walked past her and gave her a sympathetic high-five in passing, recognized how badly shit-faced she was.  I didn’t get to make physical contact but the close-up smoking show I got was even better as I watched her take one very intense drag after another on the all-white, exhaling rich clouds of smoke from her blackened respiratory system for the next few minutes.  She kept sitting there after finishing the cigarette so I wouldn’t get the chance to ID the brand.  I know she smoked Marlboro Ultra Lights two years ago, but this was a mooched brand so I have no idea what this was.  All too often, those responsible for the best sightings in the past have a way of delivering nearly every time you see them, and Hollywood definitely proved that again, giving me what would end up being my second-best sighting of the day.  I hope I’m wrong that she’s an alcoholic but the anecdotal evidence is not promising.

There weren’t many extraordinary moments in the last half hour but as close as I would come was Sighting #127, a mother-daughter duo in a dark spot near some food vendors on the east side of the concourse.   The darkness was an unfortunate obstruction but I was impressed with the mid-to-late-20s dark blond daughter, particularly with the black leather jacket she was wearing with her pale blue jeans.  I was only able to linger for a couple of drags given the terrible location before I had to depart but would be fortunate enough to see the mother and daughter walking together a few minutes later, obviously sans the cigarette, in a better-lit location.  The daughter wasn’t a knockout per se but had a modest beauty about her accentuated by the black leather jacket.

The concert let out around 11:30 and the departing crowds were pretty heavy, making me confident I’d break my all-time sightings record before the end of the night and surpass 143.  I walked past the grassy area outside of the grandstand a few times and put together a few decent sightings of 20-something smokers, the most memorable being the attractive brunettes who would be Sightings #135 and #136, but my standards were high after my great finds in the last couple of hours and nothing was rocking my world.  The older-skewing crowd was producing plenty of smokers who were too old to interest me as well.  As it got to be 11:45, my feet were exhausted and I decided to make my final walk to the shuttle bus.  I expected with the concert having just departed, there would be a lot of people waiting to board and just by standing in line a few minutes I’d break my 2011 record by counting the girls having one final cigarette before boarding the bus.

Before I got to the final stretch, I saw a duo of smoker girls on a bench near The Depot, the cutest of which was Sighting #139, a mid-20s Asian girl in a white and black striped dress standing while her friends sat.  It’s always hot to see an Asian girl smoking generally, and as I watched her take a drag from her all-white, I noticed the cigarette was crooked.  I don’t see the crooked cigarette a lot but it’s always kind of cute when I do, particularly when the girl has a prim and proper look about her generally but sucking in carcinogens from a less than perfect cigarette.

I was on the final stretch of pavement heading to the shuttle bus and as I saw the line for the bus wasn’t nearly as long as expected, I decided that I miscalculated and should have lingered a bit longer on the concourse in pursuit of that all-time record.  A duo of modestly attractive mid-20s gals was standing off to the side near some machinery smoking to become Sightings #141 and #142, but unfortunately the evening would end there.  I wasn’t that disappointed that I didn’t break the record given that so much of what I did see was very high quality, but in retrospect, an extra five minutes on the grounds would have really made this day one for the record books.  They announced Saturday’s attendance on Sunday night at it was 123,000, one of the highest-attended days of the ISF and 20,000 or so above the first Saturday of the fair last year.  As I’ve said before, the more bodies on the fairgrounds, the more likely some of them are attractive female smokers, so big crowds are always my friend.

I hopped on the mostly full bus and found myself sitting next to this still-attractive blond who chatted me up the whole 10-minute ride back to the Capitol.  She was 50 years old but was dressed like she was 21 in shorts and cowgirl boots.  At first I thought she was drunk and possibly looking for a lay, but as she started talking it was clear she was sober as a judge and just being friendly.  It was a nice chat and I was grateful that the lack of humidity didn’t turn me into a sweaty lobster that scares away women and children as it often has in the past at the end of a long day on the fairgrounds.  It was 12:40 before I made it back to my place but my feet held up better than usual.  I’m lucky I got such a nice and productive day for Saturday because it’s supposed to be rainy on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, the only nights I’ll be able to make my midweek journey this week since Thursday won’t work this year.  I’m crossing my fingers and hoping the forecasted rain has moved out by Wednesday evening, but there’s a real chance of it being a disaster.  From there, it’s the Indiana State Fair on Saturday.  The pressure is on for the remaining fair venues to deliver the way Iowa did for me this year.  It was my best day at the ISF since 2014, and I am so grateful in the current era of plunging smoking rates that days like yesterday are still possible.

 

2017 Local County Fair

Tuesday

Now that’s more like it!  After a disastrous Summerfest in early July, my morale was low heading into this year’s local county fair in southern Minnesota.  I just didn’t know if I was gonna get ANY worthwhile sightings.  Making matters worse, the forecast for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this week is calling for far below normal temperatures, making for uncomfortably chilly late-night concerts and girls dressed in sweaters and jeans rather than tanktops and shorts.  And when I pulled into southern Minnesota this afternoon, I watched in horror as I saw the local weather forecast showing a wall of storms rolling into disrupt what was easily the warmest day of the week.  I left for the fair around 4:30, earlier than usual but hoping to get some fetish time in before the early evening rain forecasted.

It wasn’t a great start to the fair week, but I did have cause for optimism as the evening’s musical entertainment was up-and-coming country singer Kane Brown, who despite having no big hits has a huge following (with a decidedly young and female fan base) and I had heard reserved seating was long ago sold out.  Tonight was likely gonna be the best night for my preferred demographic all week as the rest of this year’s grandstand lineup skews older.  So how did I do?  Pretty damn good all things considered.  I scored 36 sightings on Tuesday, well above average for a night at the local county fair.  And it was a huge relief to see there was a decent-sized demographic of younger smokers to be found, without the male smoking gap or the domination of vaporizers that I saw at Summerfest this year.

I got to the grounds right around 5:00, and it was hot and sunny still, with the girls dressed agreeably for a summer evening at the fair.  Every year older I get, the more heartbreakingly sexy these shapely young hotties look.  I’ve been living on borrowed time in being able to get some of them to date me but I’ll be turning 40 later this month and suspect that will be the point of no return for me dating virtually any girl under 25.  Anyway, the first place I walked was by the lemonade stand to see if the sultry chain-smoking brunette who worked there last year (and was my best FCF sighting since 2014) was back.  She wasn’t back tonight.  Not a good start!

From there I picked up my gyro, ate in peace, and then went trolling for nicotine girls, painfully aware I can sometimes go more than an hour before I see the first one even on the best days in those late afternoon hours.  It was only about 20 minutes tonight as I walked behind the Mexican food stand and a late 20s blond worker was having a smoke break.  Nothing too memorable, but it sure felt good to put a point on the board right away.

I strolled around for quite some time before I saw anything else, but about a half hour later I stumbled into a group of five 20-somethings and four of them were smoking!  They had come in from the parking lot and were hovering in a grassy area where a lot of smokers finish their cigarettes before heading into the more populated parts of the fairgrounds.  Three of the gals were brunette and one was blond, and while none of them really stood out as incredible beauties, they sure did strike a pose standing in this cluster smoking away on their cigarettes.  The best of the bunch was this tall brunette in a white country dress with a red flower pattern.  There wasn’t a great place to observe but I stood from afar and watched for a couple of minutes as they produced a nearly constant stream of smoke with four smokers amongst them.  The foursome didn’t have the IT factor to be singled-out for any year-end honors or anything like that, but it sure was a relief to see some young females smoking and gave me a needed morale boost.

Unfortunately, I’d need every molecule of morale boost I could get as darker and darker clouds were starting to roll in around 6:00.  It was abundantly clear that it was going to rain, and that it wasn’t gonna be a light sprinkle.  Worse yet, these dark clouds took their time getting there.  I wanted it to hurry up and roll through so there would be the least possible disruption with the concert but as the minutes passed it became clear this storm cell wasn’t in any hurry.  In the meantime, I continued to stitch together some decent sightings, mostly from people waiting for the concert.  Standing in line at the gate was this group of young ladies that included a mid-20s dark blond in a tanktop and jean shorts, with a green pack of Marlboro Menthols proudly stuffed into her cleavage and on open display protruding from the tanktop.  It was a helluva presentation and enough to count her as a sighting even though I hadn’t yet seen her smoking.  But I kept pacing past that area in hopes that I’d eventually catch her, and I wouldn’t have to wait long to do so as she was seated on the berm just off to the side of the line, puffing away on one of her Marlboro Menthols.  My vantage point was terrible so I was only able to watch a couple of drags but it was definitely a solid reward to follow up on that presentation where the Marlboro Menthol pack had become part of her wardrobe.

The long, painful tease with the dark clouds and looming thunderstorm continued for another half hour or so and it was about 6:45 before the rain started.  I took cover under a canopy and it was so demoralizing to be losing out on this fetish time, knowing that the weather was very likely suppressing attendance.  And while the skies never completely unloaded, I was wishing it would if it meant the storm would roll through quickly, but instead it rained lightly for more than an hour.  Mercifully, the storm at least facilitated a couple of great sightings. Whenever the rain let up some, I ventured around, paranoid I was missing something, and ended up burrowing under another pavilion or canopy whenever the rain picked up again.  I ended up in an obscure building full of benches and found myself looking at a carnival worker standing in between two of the carnival’s semi trailers, under a canopy of her own and smoking a cigarette.  She was a shapely blond and since I was a good 20 yards away I couldn’t tell how old she was or how pretty her face was, but she sure looked good from afar and had an incredible body draped under that carnival uniform top with jean shorts on the bottom and a ball cap on her head protecting her from the rain.  Best of all, seconds after I laid eyes on her she commenced with a long-distance dangle that lasted about 15 seconds as she messed with her phone.  It was clear by her dangling technique that this girl was skilled and well-practiced.  Would she be this year’s lemonade stand girl?  That was a pretty high bar but she was definitely off to a good start.  I stood there staying dry in that pavilion with all the time in the world to watch her show and it continued solidly with some nice drags and impressive exhales.  I was settling in for a full sighting but she managed to drift off back towards the carnival even though it was raining, surrendering the cigarette before getting back to the kiddie ride she was running.  Unfortunately that was all I’d get from her, but I did get a closer look at her later in the evening.  She was decently attractive but not a bombshell and looked to be in her late 20s or possibly early 30s.  That opening dangle was good enough to qualify her for an extra-base hit but I’d be lying if I said she didn’t disappoint a bit after that tremendous first impression.

A more lasting memory from the evening came with my next sighting, an instantly familiar face who I’ve seen smoking in two previous county fairs (2014 and 2016).  I was walking northward on the grounds with a continued light rain coming down when I saw at the back of a mixed-gender friends cluster this blond bombshell with long blond hair flowing down to her waist, decked out in a maroon top and dark cutoffs, walking unashamedly with cigarette in hand, the only smoker of her group of five.  I figured this girl was 18 when I first saw her smoking in 2014, and I was lucky enough to get a photo of this stunning blond bombshell that year.  Last year, she was smoking with a middle-aged woman I presumed to be her mother and was my #17 fairground sighting of 2016.  In both instances, she made absolutely no concessions about smoking publicly and that dynamic was certainly continuing here tonight as she walked with her friends directly into the busiest block on the fairgrounds with cigarette in hand, dragging regularly and clearly not giving a second thought to anyone who didn’t like her smoking, friend or stranger alike.  I was following her at this point, and noticed that her cigarette was slightly wet from the continued rain.  She was gonna get her nicotine fix no matter if was wet or dry though, continually dragging and producing some pretty nice exhales.  The group cut in between two vendor trucks, apparently en route to the bathroom.  As drop-dead gorgeous as this girl was, her outfit was sexy but utilitarian, and she didn’t seem to have an air of conceit about her at all, enjoying her cigarette publicly in a way increasingly few have been doing at recent fairs.  I was hoping to ID her butt but as she and her group approached the entrance to the bathroom I could see her pinching the cherry on the cigarette to crush it out.  I waited outside the bathroom just in case she came out and light up again, but she didn’t.  I had a feeling I’d see more of this girl and I would…

In fact, the context of when I’d see her again would carbon date her as about 10 minutes after that first encounter I watched her and the rest of her group enter the beer gardens.  As I said, back in 2014 when I first saw her, I figured she was 18.  She wasn’t going into the beer gardens when I saw her last summer but now on the very first night of the 2017 county fair, here she was taking the opportunity to go inside the beer gardens.  It seemed pretty obvious that she was 21.  And the good news was that if she stayed in the beer gardens, she would be on the other side of the chain-link fence from the designated smoking area outside the grandstand, so I just might be able to keep taps on her the entire show.  And while the show was gonna start late because of residual lightning well after 8:00, when I made my way into the soggy grandstand, there she was right outside the fence holding a beer and chatting with friends.  Oh this could be golden!  Unfortunately, she and the friends wandered to a distant tent on the east side of the beer gardens furthest from my vantage point…and moments later wandered to the northwest side out of my view.  But as they wandered, blondie had a freshly lit cigarette in hand.  I was able to watch her take one lovely drag with a tight cone-shaped follow-up exhale straight in front of her face as she progressed.  This girl was definitely ready to rock the beer garden’s world, but why oh why couldn’t she be standing closer to me?!??!!  Eventually she would, but it take at least another half hour before she made her way back to the south side.

In the meantime, there was other solid smoking activity on both sides of the beer garden fence as I sat there waiting for the concert to start.  A solid mid-20s blond in a conservative T-shirt and jeans was standing with a friend chatting and swilling beer in the lead-up to the concert.  The friend unfortunately didn’t smoke but in the 45 minutes or so I sat there before, the dark blond adeptly smoked three cigarettes, powering through each of them at an impressive clip before the duo got lost in the crowd after dark when the concert started.

Another young female duo in the 19-20 range exited from the concert and surprised me when they hovered in the smoking area, poised to light up.  Both of them were attractive but the light brunette of the duo was very cute and innocent-looking and sadly she didn’t smoke.  There was nothing wrong, however, with the darker brunette friend in a black T-shirt and jeans who did extract her pack of Marlboro Lights and fire up.  She had a natural no-frills smoking style and like my blond bombshell in the beer gardens I was pleased to see a girl her age smoking without any apparent hint of self-consciousness or shame.  This girl was apparently a pretty heavy smoker as she came out and smoked another one just before the concert and then left a few minutes early to smoke a third cigarette when the concert was about to end.

Another memorable concert sighting was this long-haired platinum blond in a blue tanktop and pale jean shorts who left the concert about 15 minutes in for a smoke.  Her back was to me for most of the cigarette but her presentation was extremely wholesome and it was exciting to see the pack of Marlboro Light Menthols in her hand as she took a steady diet of drags standing all by herself in pursuit of nicotine relief.  After finishing the cigarette, she used a port-a-potty and I was able to briefly get a closer look at her face as she stepped out of the port-a-potty and ventured back into the crowd.  In many ways, the face matched the presentation as she was wholesome and didn’t look like a smoker.  She didn’t have any real IT factor but I was still thrilled that she smoked.  I was even more thrilled about 15 minutes later when she walked out of the concert and into the smoking area again, only this time with two female friends, one of whom was attractive.  Unfortunately, this time she just waited for one of the friends to empty her bladder in the port-a-potty and then the trio migrated to the beer gardens never to smoke or be seen again tonight.  But speaking of that beer gardens…..

Just before Kane Brown took the stage, a familiar face I prayed I’d see more of emerged on the south side fence inside the beer gardens, not in an ideal location but at least in my line of vision.  It was my return offender in the maroon tanktop and jean cutoffs with her friends, the prettiest girl at the fair.  I kept tabs on her and it didn’t take long for her to deliver, inserting a cigarette between her lips and firing up within about five minutes of arrival.  She was too far away to fully appreciate, but I was able to witness all of her drags and some of those nice exhales I got a sample of earlier.  Again, amazingly, she was the only smoker in her group of five, which added to the storyline some but was a bit disappointing as the two other girls would also have looked great smoking.  The rest of them must have long ago accepted that befriending this girl meant a steady diet of secondhand smoke in your presence in just about any setting.  She polished off that cigarette in a few minutes and from there I figured the sky would be the limit for additional sightings.  Strangely, not the case.  She was pretty restless, heading back and forth to the building and to the port-a-potties over the course of the concert, but always came back to that bench with her friends in my line of vision….only she never lit up again for the next hour.  She was holding cell phone in hand, presumably recording the concert, and holding her beer in the other, leaving no free hands for cigarettes.  It was a little disappointed that I didn’t get the chainsmoking extravaganza I expected I would from her but having seen her smoke three cigarettes in a couple of hours, I couldn’t complain too loudly.  After the concert, I saw her on the grounds walking through the food vendors with her friends, still without a cigarette but looking amazingly hot and already taking on the telltale “smoker girl” features that most of us seasoned fetishers can often recognize.  In all honesty, she looked very much like a smoker already when she was 18 but really does at 21.  I’m really hoping to see more of her in the nights to come.

The Kane Brown concert wasn’t bad I guess.  I’m not a huge fan of the “bro country” direction country is taking and this guy definitely fits the mold.  He has a deep and interesting voice, but I’m not really sure his vocals are as incredible as much as the odd presentation surprises people.  He is biracial, full of tattoos, and looks like a hip-hop star, so nobody really expects this deep country voice to come out.  Whatever he’s doing though is working as the crowd was huge, despite more than an hour’s worth of rain preceding it and left teeth-chatteringly cold weather in its aftermath.  And as he was singing his final song of the night, I exited the grandstand to get ahead of what I hoped would be a departing wave of smoker girls.  Not sure if there was really a “wave” but I nonetheless was able to take in my best sighting of the night….

Earlier in the night, I caught a mother-teen daughter duo that I got an immediate smoker vibe from.  Mom was probably early 40s and an average-looking blond with a cowgirl hat, but the daughter was petite and a firecracker, with shoulder-length blond hair, a black bare-midriff tanktop and jean shorts.  Like my blond bombshell from earlier, she had the telling features of a smoker despite a presentation that made her look 15 from a distance.  She had an unfortunate but small tattoo on her shoulder that led me to believe she was probably 18 or 19.  I took a mental note of this girl when I saw her walking around outside the concert earlier in the evening, so when I saw mom, daughter, and two other 18-21 girls hovering outside the smoking area as the concert was dismissing, I was ready for them!  I suppose the best-case scenario would have been the other two young female friends smoking as well, but they didn’t….it was only mom and daughter.  A bench was open giving me a front-row seat to one hell of a sighting.  All of my attention was trained on that barely-legal daughter and I wanted so much to take a pic but the departing crowd was dense enough that my prospects for a good one, especially at night, were not good.  Anyway, the daughter was a slow smoker with frustrating pacing on her drags, but when she did take a drag, sweet Jesus did she ever drag.  The all-white cigarette approached her lips and spent all summer there, my eyes and mind getting lost in watching her respiratory system turn that cherry bright red.  Her first drag that I witnessed lasted at least seven seconds, and the exhale didn’t really seem to do justice to expelling the full contents of what her black lungs consumed, suggesting much of the smoke was staying inside of her.  Not every drag she took was THAT intense, but a couple more were, lasting at least seven seconds and completely putting to shame the mediocre smoking performance of her mother….

The group of four then became mobile and mom wanted to buy a bottle of water from a nearby stand before departing for the evening, and I just had to follow as that cute little stinky daughter who was still smoking her cigarette.  Adorably, she waited until she was in the middle of the biggest bottleneck on the busiest block of the grounds before placing that two-thirds cigarette in her mouth and taking a drag every bit as intense as the first I saw from her, lasting a good seven seconds, right in the middle of a huddle of humanity.  Her reckless exhale made no effort to spare any of the dozens of innocent people in close proximity to her exhaled filth.  Mom was done with her cigarette by now so the daughter was the only one smoking, and it was no easy task keeping pace with her in this heavy crowd, but I managed to and didn’t miss any of her last three drags which were all intense and all taken in the presence of multiple bystanders, undoubtedly some of whom were taken aback by this girl’s petiteness and cuteness and believing as I did on first look that she was probably a mid-teen.  As we hit a bit of a clearing towards the end, I got to admire her ass in those jean shorts in between drags one last time before she took a final drag and dropped the all-white to the pavement and crushed it out.  I approached and discovered the butt was a Camel Light Menthol.  So far, this is the sighting to beat for the 2017 FCF.

I was on a roll and would get one more extra-base hit in the moments after the last sighting ended when I migrated to the grounds’ primary bathroom in hopes of seeing some girls enjoying a smoke after relieving themselves following the concert.  Just to the north of the bathroom structure was a group of five 18-year-olds, three guys and two girls.  I saw immediately one of the guys was smoking, but standing deepest into the grass was a guy and girl that was clearly a couple, and only the girl was smoking.  And while she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, she was a wholesome short-haired blond who didn’t look at all like a smoker, decked out in a sweatshirt and a pair of black leggings perfectly sculpting her shapely female form.  A bench was closeby and I had no problem taking it and enjoying the show.  Her drags were solid and it was clear she was a regular, addicted smoker, but she got the highest style points for her exhales which were exquisite, perfect streams of straight-ahead smoke sailing in front of her mouth coupled with a thinner stream pouring from her cute nose.   I caught three drags, each with those vividly stirring exhales that, coupled with her sexy body draped in those tight leggings, made for a hell of an image.  Better yet, she was bantering off and on with the nonsmoking wholesome blond guy who was clearly her boyfriend, patiently waiting for her to finish filling her body with stinky carcinogens.  But the rest of her friends’ group beckoned her to follow before she was done with the cigarette and only moments later found themselves at the back of a teen huddle near one of the livestock buildings.  Blondie kept her distance at the back to finish the last couple of drags from her cigarette as I hovered awkwardly behind.  She dropped the cigarette to the ground and I tried to keep tabs on the location for a future butt ID if possible, knowing they likely wouldn’t leave right away, which they didn’t.  I encircled the spot until they left but it was too hard to definitively identify which cigarette butt was hers.

While there wouldn’t be any additional extra-base hits, I’d continue to stack on another seven or eight sightings in the last half hour of the night, most of which were coming from girls 21 and under!  It was just what the doctor ordered as young girl sightings have gotten so scarce, and I was so grateful that the weather didn’t completely fuck up this Kane Brown concert as the demographic in attendance was everything I hoped it would be and more.  Most of these sightings came on the midway, and sadly there was one large huddle of teens on the midway that was passing the vaporizer around.  Had I just seen the vaping teens without all the actual cigarette smokers, I’d have been depressed, especially seeing how hot two of the girls were in this cluster of vapers, but I got enough other quality cigarette sightings to put my mind at ease some.  The cutest girl in the cluster looked about 16 wearing a red tanktop and extremely tight pale blue jeans.  She was making direct eye contact with me for about five seconds as I walked past her watching her drag from her friend’s vaporizer.  Thankfully this story would have a partial happy ending as the next time I lapped the midway about 10 minutes later I saw a guy in the group smoking an actual cigarette…and the same teen who made eye contact with me while vaping was now approaching this smoking guy with her arm extended for a drag.  Sadly, she was too immersed in the cluster by the time she got the cigarette in hand so I didn’t get to see the drag but it was comforting to know she likes the hard stuff in addition to vaping, suggesting there is SOME overlap between vapers and real-world smoking.  Still, this girl emerged from the midway when the midway shut down for the night in the presence of a guy and a gorgeous teen blond who was in unapologetic possession of a vaporizer.  Seeing a girl this hot carrying around a vaporizer instead of a cigarette was a brief flashback to the nightmare that was Summerfest last month.

The evening ended around 11:30 with one final sighting.  Approaching the north exit was a mid-20s, curly-haired brunette in a tanktop and tight khaki pants who was complimented for her “nice ass” by another female (undoubtedly drunken) who just happened to be walking past her.  The brunette in possession of the “nice ass” was taken aback as she relayed to her male and female friend who didn’t hear her the message that a complete stranger, and a girl at that, told her she had a nice ass.  She did have a nice ass for the record, but it was something in her hand that intrigued me more as it appeared to be a cigarette.  She and the friends discussed going to explore one of the livestock buildings before leaving and ended up doing so.  On two occasions this white cylinder that seemed to be a cigarette approached her lips, but I never saw and smoke arise.  Granted, it was a dark spot, but I was beginning to doubt whether she was actually smoking until she dropped the white cylinder and stomped it out before proceeding.  It was a Camel Crush butt.  Why didn’t I see any smoke?  My guess is it was a combination of the darkness and the likelihood that she had let the cigarette go out and wasn’t getting any smoke from her drags.

I made one final loop around the grounds but didn’t get anything else noteworthy and crossed the street to my grandma’s garage where I’ve parked my car while attending the county fair for more than 15 years now.  Still, it’s been years since I got 36 sightings in one night at the FCF, putting me at almost 40% of what I scored over five nights at the 2016 FCF when I only got 98 sightings.  But again, Tuesday night is almost certainly gonna be my top night of the week as Kane Brown is the only younger-skewing grandstand performer.  I couldn’t have been more pleased with the demographic he brought to the fair and some of what I saw gave me hope that youth smoking hasn’t fallen off a cliff and that even the vaping phenomenon is leading some kids to experiment with smoking.  With oldsters performing the rest of the week and some very cold nights coming on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I’m nonetheless prepared for disappointment moving forward.

 

Wednesday

Back to reality!  I had no expectation of a great night of sightings on Wednesday but since it’s gonna be the last night of anything approaching summer weather before a major cool down for the rest of the week, I was still hopeful that I could keep up the momentum from Tuesday night’s decidedly above-average haul.  Considering the demographics at tonight’s fair, I actually did okay, scoring 16 sightings.  Even five years ago, that would have been an embarrassingly low number but with smoking rates going the wrong direction and tonight’s grandstand act skewing older, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time enough to keep the night from being a disaster.  I walked into the fairgrounds at around 6:20 tonight with no threat of rain and no call for temps in the 50s, which by itself made it a serviceable night by this week’s standards.

It would be about 15 minutes before I scored the evening’s first sighting, and it came at the periphery of the bathroom area where I scored all of my sightings from last year’s epic lemonade stand brunette.  It delivered again tonight with a handful of sightings before the concert started, the first being a 20-something blond in a black T-shirt and tight black leggings sitting in the grass smoking a freshly lit all-white that she was still dangling off of the light-up.  I took a seat in reasonably close proximity to her, missing most of the impressive opening dangle but observing her steadily paced drags and cloudy, voluminous exhales rocketing out of her mouth and nose.  There was a damn fire hydrant obstructing my photo taking but I did a work-around as best as possible, carefully snapping a single pic but unfortunately she was only holding when I snapped the pic.  She seemed to be observing her surroundings so I didn’t dare to get too brave with the camera phone and ended up just watching most of the sighting.  She made quick work of the sighting and crushed out the cigarette next to where she sat before getting up and progressing towards the booth.  She was wearing the carnival’s standard uniform but I was still suspecting she was an employee.  Turns out I was right as I saw her later…at the lemonade stand.  2017 has its own lemonade stand smoker who likes to wear form-fitting leggings.  I’m holding out hope I see her smoking more as the week progresses, but she has a very tall order to beat last year’s lemonade stand babe and her nine-cigarette fair.

The same spot delivered again with a two-for-one about 20 minutes later.  Sitting close to the building was this long-haired light brunette in a bare midriff top and matching skirt.  I’d guess she was probably about 30 and had a mediocre face but a really nice body.  She didn’t look like a smoker so it was a nice treat to see her sitting by herself enjoying a cigarette.  I was able to get pretty close and lean against the wall, but unfortunately she was turned away more often than not making it hard to see as much as I’d have liked, but on a couple of occasions she turned my direction just in time to take a drag from her cork-filter cigarette and follow-up exhale.  Even better than this girl was the blond hottie in the background about 15 yards beyond her in an area isolated enough that I dared not get any closer and just had to be content to steal a glance from the blond when my eyes were darting to watch the light brunette’s performance.  The blond was about 23 and had shoulder-length hair flowing into a striped black and white top and a pair of beautifully fitting jean shorts covering her shapely lower body.  She came with a boyfriend and he was sitting down to smoke, but thankfully given the distance the blond decided to stand, her summery appearance striking on its own right but made perfect with the sight of the long freshly lit all-white cigarette between her fingers that she took regular drags from.  Her smoking style was relatively average but she looked so damn hot with the cigarette.  I’d probably rate her the prettiest face of the night that was wrapped around a cigarette.  I would see her a handful more times on the grounds with the boyfriend but unfortunately wouldn’t see her smoking again.

The same grassy spot by the bathroom would produce two more sightings before the show, the first being a brunette who was working one of the games in the carnival.  She was probably in her 30s but was very pretty as I was able to better determine later in the evening as I walked past her in the carnival.  It was hard to observe her where she was seated but I caught a couple of drags.  A blond late 20s mother was smoking near the bathroom a few minutes later.  She was average-looking, but smoking right in front of a young daughter as she was made for a nice takeaway to head to get my dinner and then head to the grandstand for the concert.

The evening’s grandstand entertainment was 90s country singer Collin Raye.  I knew when I walked into the two-thirds empty grandstand and saw mostly people over 50 that it was gonna be a rough night.  Collin Raye cranked out like two dozen top-10 country hits in the 1990s but when I recalled that his most recent hit came in the year 2000, it became real that most of my preferred demographic wasn’t born yet or was still in diapers.  Even so, it was quite a contrast between last night’s entertainment who only now has his first song on the top-20 in the charts versus a guy who in my lifetime had more than 20 big hits and had a lukewarm and mostly gray-haired audience.  Anyway, believe it or not a prior Collin Raye concert at a fair yielded a legendary sighting (MNSF #19).  Raye performed on the free stage at the Minnesota State Fair in 2004 and seated behind me was a young couple smoking cigarettes who refused to move when an older lady started bitching about their smoking.  I had hoped history would repeat itself 13 years later and Collin Raye would deliver another classic sighting, but no such luck.  In fact, the smoking area and beer gardens produced ZERO sightings from around 8:00 when I got there until 9:45 when the concert ended.  As I left the show, I had my work cut out for me to make up lost ground with only six sightings so far for the evening.

Soon after leaving the concert, I got my requisite “Sarah” sighting of 2017.  I first saw Sarah as an 18-year-old blond hottie in white shorts back in 2014, but by the following year she was wise to me and whispering into her friends’ ears when she saw me hovering and watching her smoke.  From that point forward, I’ve had to keep my distance from Sarah.  She’s still attractive and probably 22 years old now, having first gone into the beer gardens last summer, but she’s a bit chubbier than I’d prefer despite appearing to be a pretty heavy smoker.  She was headed the direction of the beer gardens tonight too in the company of two guys, freshly lit all-white cigarette in hand and decked out in a red tanktop and jean shorts.  I could only watch over my shoulder for a bit as she walked out of sight with the cigarette.  I’d see her again about 45 minutes later though, on a bench outside the beer gardens with another fresh cigarette in hand and some odd context as she was huddled up to some elderly lady in her 60s or 70s and some guy was taking a pic of the two of them, Sarah with cigarette in hand.  Was she her grandmother?  Or just a random old lady she befriended?  I wished I could have stuck around for the context but there was no good vantage point and I don’t want to push my luck with Sarah anymore so I kept walking.

It was a trip down the midway about 10:20 that shot my numbers up skyward with sightings of the most key demographic.  Clusters of teens hovered in the back of the midway in close proximity to the “big kid rides” and when I saw a teen boy smoking amidst a mixed-gender huddle, I got particularly interested and quickly took note of this cute little 15-16ish girl of some Hispanic pedigree in a tanktop and pale jean shorts standing across from him stealthly cupping a freshly lit cigarette in her hand.  It was unfortunate the logistics were so challenging and teen smokers have to be this discreet this day and age.  I managed to get a seat on a nearby bench and would catch another break as this relatively petite Hispanic smoker girl walked over to a line for one of the rides and handed the cigarette to a chubby friend.  They passed the cigarette back and forth and I got to see a handful of nice drags before they crushed it out.  Back to the huddle where the girl originated from, there was another 16ish cutie in the group with long light brown hair and tight pale blue jeans who was standing nearest the guy smoking.  Her back was to me and I didn’t get to see much, but I did catch the guy handing the girl the cigarette and even though I didn’t see the drag I knew she took one.  I’d see this group a couple of more times tonight and about a half hour later, I’d see this same girl in the tight jeans cupping another cigarette that she was smoking on the sly.  Despite the fact that I didn’t get to observe as much as I’d have preferred of this sighting, seeing actual teen smokers at my county fair was in itself a relief.

And only seconds after my observation of this group of teen smokers at the back of the midway, I spotted a duo of girls standing behind the rides and spotted one of the two dragging from a cigarette.  They were a good 15 yards away in a spot too dark to fully appreciate but I had a convenient bench to watch the smoking and would be able to get a closer look when they emerged back into the midway.  The smoking girl was a brunette in a blouse and black shorts.  The blond friend, who appeared to have more IT factor from a distance, wearing a white top and pink shorts, didn’t look to be smoking, or if she was had finished her cigarette already.  I was able to see the cherry glow three times when the brunette took her drags, and I was excited to get a closer look and hoped these girls would be mid-teen.  When the brunette finished her cigarette, the girls were walking my way.  Neither was a bombshell and the blond nonsmoker was indeed the more attractive of the two, but I was still pleased knowing that brunette was a smoker as she looked about 18.

I was really on a roll seeing four teen girls smoking in about three minutes, but the final 45 minutes of the night was pretty weak as I’d add only two new girls to my evening tally.  The crowd was thinning much more rapidly than the night before and I was becoming quite familiar to the point of knowing I’d need to split not long after 11:00 or risk getting called out.  Right before I left, a fight between two teen girls started and I could have sworn I saw my cousin’s daughter in the middle of it.  Sure enough, I heard a guy tell his friend the fight involved the girl who is my cousin’s daughter.  Crazy that I was only the second-most misbehaved person in my family at the county fair tonight!

A couple of tonight’s sightings had the potential for greatness but I’m definitely not walking away with much fodder for my year-end list from tonight’s haul and was extra grateful that I did better the night before.  I wish I could be optimistic about the nights ahead but Thursday night in particular has another retro 90s-era country act in the grandstand and after a day of rain and very unseasonably cold temps, it’s supposed to be down in the 50s for tomorrow night’s concert, with only modestly warmer temps forecasted for Friday and Saturday.  I managed to exceed expectations last year on the night Charlie Daniels performed, so I’m not giving up on the rest of the week but I’d be shocked if any subsequent night this week fared better than opening night.

 

Thursday

I only got eight sightings tonight….and while a night at the county fair with only eight sightings would normally be a disaster, the eight sightings I did scored packed a helluva punch.  I also scored a couple of key repeat sightings from past nights that I didn’t include as “new” sightings in tonight’s haul.  Based on how low my morale was driving into the fair tonight, I was wondering if I was even gonna get one sighting!  I’ve been going to evening concerts at my county fair since the 1980s, but tonight was the chilliest night I’ve ever spent at the fair.  It was a whopping 55 degrees on my drive to town at 7 p.m. with a biting 20 mph north wind.  It would have been a chilly night even for October 3 let alone August 3, and I was absolutely sick about it since my nights for fetishing at fairgrounds are so limited.  Furthermore, tonight’s grandstand entertainment was 90s country group Diamond Rio who I didn’t figure would bring very favorable demographics.  I was prepared for a disaster worse than the Titanic, Chernobyl, and the Hindenburg combined, but somehow I got just enough key sightings to walk away from the evening not only pacified but comparatively impressed.

Anticipating a miserable night with limited crowds and few sightings, I didn’t even get to the fairgrounds until 7:30.  I am usually pretty stubborn about refusing to wear a sweatshirt or jacket during the summer months, but I had to cave in and dig out my fall jacket for tonight.  There were more people there than I anticipated, and I once again heard some conversation of people talking about how much they LIKE this weather.  I shouldn’t take it personally but it always ticks me off that we typically get about 10 weeks a year in the Upper Midwest of not being cold and some jerks even want to take that away from me during the fair!  And even though I figured even the hardest-core polar bears would draw the line with wearing short sleeves and shorts tonight, there were a couple dozen guys and girls I saw in short sleeves and shorts….not sure how they could stand it.  I had plenty of time to observe these things because there was no smoking to be found for a good 45 minutes after my arrival.  The concert was behind schedule and started about 20 minutes late because Diamond Rio had a seven-hour bus breakdown in Iowa and didn’t even get to town until around 7:00.    That gave me more time to walk around before the show and I ran into my cousin and had a good 10-minute chat, not really feeling like I was missing much.

In the end, Diamond Rio’s bus broke down for a reason as it kept me out and about after 8:30 in time to see something great in the midway.  I was at the back of the midway overlooking the thrill rides when I spotted a cluster of four teen girls lurking behind the rides.  I scanned them fairly closely and didn’t see a cigarette on first inspection, but stuck around a few seconds as I watched them become mobile and filtered back into the main part of the midway.  At this point, I noticed a cigarette between the fingers of this 17ish blond a split second before she took a drag.  The group was walking past the line for the Zipper when blondie exhaled a snootful of smoke that nailed some poor kid in the back of the line.  It didn’t make sense that they were hiding behind the rides smoking but now this girl was re-entering the midway with cigarette in hand, no longer feeling the need to hide it.  I certainly wasn’t complaining though!  The blond continued walking my direction with a partially smoked cigarette in her hand and with each step closer it was clear that she and her group were still high school girls and that her cigarette was almost certainly an illegally smoked one.  It was a bit of a bummer though as I could tell she had an insanely sexy body, but she was frumped out in a red sweatshirt with pretty boring jeans on the bottom.  There was nothing wrong with the outfit but as she walked within a few feet of me it struck me that she could have really knocked ’em dead had I seen her either of the previous nights when she’d likely have been in a tanktop and shorts.  She did her best to make up for it though as she came to a stop a few yards past me and beckoned her friend over.  The 17ish brunette friend who intrigued me at least as much as the blond pulled out a lighter from her purse and cupped her hands around the blond’s cigarette to re-light it.  I was surprised her cigarette had gone out since I had just seen her take a drag 30 seconds earlier.  It was also intriguing that the brunette possessed a lighter.  I hadn’t seen her smoking but was excited knowing she likely did since the blond needed her for a light…

Anyway, the blond was the only one of the four currently smoking, so I followed to watch her show.  She took a pretty steady diet of drags right in the heart of the midway, her long golden hair still managing to glisten a little even without any sunlight to illuminate it.  Her body type in those jeans very much giving away that she was a teenage girl and it was a nice treat to watch her publicly smoking.  One of the friends stopped at a ticket booth and picked up more rides tickets for the midway, at which point they turned around and headed back towards the Zipper.  I got to see three more drags as she finished off the cigarette and stepped in front of a series of occupied benches and tossed her cigarette to the ground right in front of a group of people, crushing it out in the mud and heading towards the line with her friends.  I walked up to her discarded butt and immediately IDed it as a Newport.  Much as I hoped I’d see this group again after the concert, I never would.  I’m certainly hoping that in the next couple of nights I get an encore, ideally including the brunette friend who lit her up!

I needed that boost before the concert started at 8:50 and was very lucky I got it because the crowd skewed older again, meaning there was once again zero sightings for more than an hour during the show in either the smoking area next to the grandstand or the beer gardens on the other side of the chain-link fence.  I enjoyed the concert and appreciate when older groups with a lot of hits perform and I know just about every song they sing.  As it was clear there would be no smoker sightings though, I nonetheless got restless as 10:00 approached and left the show a bit early, to no avail.  Right around the time of dismissal though, the open space behind the mini-donut stand which is in close proximity to the grandstand delivered with a two-for-one sighting that I had a front-row seat to on an open bench. There were three players to this sighting, two females and a male.  The first one I noticed was this slender early 20s brunette with her hair up in a bun and decked out in a black sweatshirt and gray leggings.  Seconds after I laid eyes on her in possession of a cigarette, she took a nice drag and proceeded to tilt her head up and release her exhale in ring-like spurts with a pleasured look on her face.  This was a girl who was enjoying that cigarette!  She was hitting that thing with some very frequent drags, and while none of her follow-up drags included any rings, it was still clear that cigarette was provided some needed warmth to this girl’s insides.  There was a boyfriend standing next to her and I had a feeling she was gonna share the cigarette with him, and it was only when she handed it his way that I even noticed a dark blond early 20s girl standing across from her was smoking a cigarette of her own!  The blond was a tad chubbier but not disqualifyingly so, accentuating her curves in a tight pair of leggings.  The brunette was prettier and had more IT factor, but the blond certainly provided a good option for my eyes when the brunette was not in possession of her cigarette.  And while the brunette was a fast-paced smoker, the blond was taking her sweet time.  She was average on style points to boot, content to be shown up by the brunette who seemed to smoke about 80% of the cigarette that she was officially sharing with the boyfriend and always dragging from it at an impressive pace.  The brunette finished her cigarette a good three minutes before the blond did, but I stuck around for the blond to finish hers too since there didn’t seem to be much else going on on the grounds.

And there wasn’t a lot going on, but about 20 minutes later I saw a familiar face from Tuesday night who raised her game dramatically.  I took passing interest on Tuesday in this long-haired, light brunette, late-teen cutie who had a pair of glasses that made her look very studious to the point of being a touch nerdy.  Here she was tonight walking with a group of three other female friends in the 18-19 age range from the isolated north side of the grounds towards a more populated part of the grounds, the only girl of the four wielding a freshly lit cigarette.  Part of the reason I didn’t take a huge interest in her on Tuesday night was that I was at an inconvenient location to fetish when I spotted her, but that certainly wasn’t the case tonight as I was able to pivot and follow her group.  And while I grumble about the cold weather diminishing the quality of the summer clothing on most female fairgoers, modern cold weather fashion isn’t as bad as it was 10 years ago with the advent of leggings, and this girl was rocking a pair of very sexy black leggings hugging her shapely lower body.  There’s just something about the way leggings fit the female body that can sometimes be unbearably sexy, and even more so when the female inside the leggings happens to be shamelessly smoking a cigarette.  In this case, her group was walking down the food vendors block with the densest crowd, dragging from her cigarette on several occasions without inhibition.  There was nothing earth-shattering about her style, but matching the body with the smoker girl and knowing she was the only smoker in her foursome nonetheless made my rear view of the proceedings pretty euphoric.  I managed to briefly get ahead of them when I saw they were heading into the midway, hoping to get a final frontal view as they walked by.  I pulled it off and as she walked past me she took a final drag from her cigarette and dropped it to the ground.  I approached to ID the butt and discovered it was a cork-filter Camel Menthol.  Less than a half hour later, I saw this girl and her group immersed in another group of 18-20 years olds and she was smoking another cigarette.

It was nearly 11:00 and approaching the time when the midway closes for the night, and I still only had five new girls for the evening.  Even though I had had impressive sightings, five new sightings for the night wasn’t acceptable and I was getting frustrated, but as I headed northward that frustration would again turn to euphoria as I saw the impossible again.  Two guys and two girls about 16 years old were walking past me in a dark, isolated setting, but the cute long-haired brunette girl in the cluster was cupping her right hand and even in the darkness appeared to have something cylindrical in it.  I took a peek at her innocent mid-teen face and figured I must be seeing something but nonetheless turned to follow her as she walked into a spot with better lighting.  Seconds later, I discovered my instinct was right….she was cupping a cigarette in her innocent teenage hand!  The group was heading into the midway which was probably the best spot they could go for my purposes even though I’d have to be content with mostly watching this sighting from the rear.   There are certainly worse fates that could befall a man though as the rear profile of her slightly curvy medium-brown hair flowing onto a white sweatshirt with a pair of pale blue jeans below the waist was a nice combination, improved upon whenever that cigarette she was lugging around so stealthly approached her lips for a drag.  The drag and especially the exhale was clearly the work of a beginner just learning the ropes on a smoking habit she will undoubtedly stick with.  Her group was walking quickly and it was a challenge to keep up and not get spotted, but I pulled it off, spotting her every drag in a sighting that played out a good five minutes before she unfortunately got into a crowd at a bottleneck on the midway and emerged from it no longer possessing her cigarette.  I wasn’t gonna get a butt ID but from what I saw I’m pretty sure it was an all-white.  Not sure I got quite enough from her to launch her into this year’s best sighting list but if I’m lucky the next two nights could prove to be a tiebreaker.  I saw the girl a few minutes later in a group with friends and while she wasn’t smoking, it was nice to see the adorable face and confirm she couldn’t be a day over 16 but was nonetheless publicly smoking at my county fair.

The same 30ish fair worker who was my first sighting on Wednesday night,  a ponytailed blond in shapely leggings, was back at her same spot a little after 11, sitting on the grass having a smoke in the company of fellow smoking carnival employee.  I could only watch in passing but managed to see a nice drag and smooth follow-up exhale that spilled out of her mouth with the same flamboyant zip I remembered from the night before.  I still miss last year’s lemonade stand sexpot, but even in her absence, at least the venue was still offering up a credible consolation prize, another girl I hope to have a more intimate sighting with in the next two nights.

The night was beginning to fade quickly after the midway lights went out shortly after 11, a problem that started with the new carnival operation in 2014 and has persisted, denying me an hour’s worth of additional midway sightings every night compared to the previous carnival which went until midnight.  The additional downside is that once the midway lights get dark, the young people start to split and the already small fairgrounds becomes that much smaller, forcing me to leave earlier than I’d prefer because I’m out of maneuvers and am way too familiar to those still there.   Thankfully, before the night ended, I’d land one final three-point shot with my favorite girl so far this week…..

I’ve mentioned in previous years that there’s a cluster of kids who line dance in front of the 4-H to some piped-in music and there’s frequently a crowd of onlookers as the dancers bop around.  It’s usually wholesome 4-H kids so it’s pretty rare that I’ve gotten a sighting over the years, but as I approached tonight, I immediately laid eyes on this pretty 18ish long-haired blond in a black sweatshirt and tight jeans with an unlit cigarette between her fingers standing amongst three guys who were also in the 18 range.  I was able to score a bench at the 4-H booth and not only blend in nicely to a crowd of young people, but also got a front-row seat as the girl was chatting up the guys, none of whom were smoking, while repeatedly flicking her lighter to try to spark the cigarette, the wind not cooperating with her desperate desire for nicotine.  After about 30 seconds of failed attempts, she had reached her wit’s end and moved closer to the 4-H building to vaguely shield herself from the wind, loudly and exasperatedly muttering, “I can’t even light my cigarette!!”  She then proceeded to bend her head down over a wooden railing in front of the 4-H booth seating and made eye contact with this adorable 15-ish blond girl sitting next to me at the moment she successfully flicked her lighter and brought her cigarette to life.  I was hoping she’d inadvertently blast the girl with smoke from her light-up but pulled away before the other girl got splattered.  From there, she went back to the guys in her group, who had their backs to me and were occasionally obstructed my view since the blond was moving around in front of them, I mostly got to watch her smoke, and it was a real treat to have such a close-up view since I’ve been positioned far less optimally for so many other of this year’s local fair sightings.  Blondie continued to be a ball of energy, pacing back and forth in front of the three guys while intermittently dragging from her cigarette and tilting her head skyward to deliver her exhales….

Much as I’d have loved if she was the only smoker amongst all those guys, one of the three guys did light one up over the course of her cigarette, and they briefly bantered about smoking, and I didn’t get the full context of the conversation but I did hear her say that “I go to Iowa to get my cigarettes”.  Iowa’s cigarettes aren’t necessarily cheap but they’re still a couple dollars a pack cheaper than outrageously-priced Minnesota, and it’s only about a 15-minute drive to Iowa from this town hosting the fair.  I was struck that she must be a pretty committed and regular smoker for her young age if she’s already making runs to Iowa to pay less in taxes for her smokes!  And it was just wonderful matching this sweet late teen face with the knowledge that she crosses state lines to buy the cigarettes her young body is addicted to. Her drags were a little slow since she was doing so much jabbering, but given the beautiful vantage point I had, I was in no hurry so just enjoyed the show, at one point beckoning one of the nonsmoking guys to dance with her when a new song started playing.  The whole sighting played out over a good 7-8 minutes before she dropped the cigarette to the pavement and crushed it out.  The quirky storyline for this bubbly girl helped make an already great sighting that much more enriching, making her the new girl to beat for the 2017 FCF.

This ended up being quite a writeup for a night with only eight new girls smoking, but I’ll take it.  What I’m lacking in quantity this week I’m making up for in quality, despite two less than ideal weather nights running interference on me.  Tonight’s eight sightings put me at 60 sightings for the week, exactly on pace to meet my annual goal of at least 100 FCF sightings, although to be honest, I’m not that optimistic I’ll get there this year.  I’m sure glad I ran up the score to 36 on the opening night or I’d have no chance.  The weather is supposed to be a little warmer but still chilly on Friday.  The important day is Saturday though, as country singer Martina McBride is likely to be a pretty big draw to the grandstand, and sadly the weather is supposed to cold and rainy for Saturday.  All I can do is hope it comes early or late, or better yet misses this county altogether.

 

Friday

The fourth of five nights at my county fair produced 16 new sightings, including one great sighting and a handful more extra-base hits with a continuation of the surprising trend of robust teen smoker sightings. All things considered, that’s not a bad night.  I got to the fair at around 6:40 tonight.  It was sunny and in the 70s, which is ideal for afternoon temps but particularly with clear skies, I knew the temps would plummet after sunset.  But after Thursday night, pretty much anything seemed like paradise by comparison.  Tonight’s grandstand entertainment was the classic rock band Kansas.  I knew they’d bring an even older demographic than the 90s country acts from the past two nights, but figured the fact that they were a rock group and that it was a Friday night and the only decent weather night of the final three nights might make up for it.  I traversed the grounds for an hour and a half before the concert and it was a struggle though.  I only managed three sightings and they were all pretty tepid.  I got to the grandstand to take my preferred seat at around 8:10, and the crowd definitely skewed older.  There were some 20-somethings in the beer gardens though and I was hopeful to get something over the course of this concert, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t be sticking around for the entire show.

A good 20 minutes passed before the concert officially started and the landscape looked very bleak, but just as I was about to lose hope, the most beautiful face of this year’s fair popped up from out of nowhere front and center inside the beer gardens.  A vision of pure feminine perfection graced my eyes just in time to see her lips wrapped around a freshly lit all-white cigarette.  Whoa!  She was a medium-height blond with shoulder-length hair wearing a jean jacket and a black dress that crested above her knees.   She looked to be in her late 20s and it’s impossible to overstate how beautiful she was.  There was a familiar air about her and it may well have been any number of hot smoker girls I’d seen at the local fair in years past, perhaps one I even put in prior rankings, but I couldn’t place her specifically.  Whatever the case, the Kansas concert just got more interesting as I watched her puff away with very nicely paced drags and pleasant if unmemorable follow-up exhales.  She was amidst the same cluster of 20-somethings I’d taken a mental note of earlier, but at least early on she was the only one smoking.  This didn’t last long though as a guy emerged from the crowd who was very clearly her boyfriend and was smoking a cigarette of his own.  Sitting up on my grandstand perch, it hit me how great of a vantage point this is, particularly before dark, as there was almost no chance of my being spotted even as I stared lustfully at her every drag.  She smoked it right down to the filter before crushing it out in the grass, and given her insanely feminine presentation in that puffed-out black dress, the image of her stomping out a cigarette she just smoked was a great contrast.

I had high hopes she’d chain-smoke through the entire concert as it became clear she and the boyfriend were gonna stick around at this very convenient location where I could keep close tabs on her the whole show, but she made me wait for the next one.  Every time she started reaching for her purse, I got giddy, but time after time she let me down.  When the boyfriend smoked another one about 20 minutes later and the girl didn’t, I was starting to think she was just a social smoker who had merely indulged a single cigarette with her beer, but nearly an hour after the first cigarette, after 9:30, she reached into her purse and this time delivered, extracting a cigarette from her unidentifiable pack.  It was after dark now so I couldn’t see the kinds of detail I did on the first cigarette, but she smoked at the same fast pace as the previous one and her cherry was glowing bright red every 10 seconds or so when she filled her lungs up with more poisons.  I exited the grandstand when she finished, knowing she wouldn’t smoke another one before the show ended, and walked right past the fence to get a close-up look and see if she was as beautiful as she looked like from 20 yards away.  She most definitely was.  The boyfriend seemed like a cleancut blue-collar type…and I hope he knows how lucky he is to have a smoking girl this beautiful.  And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get more from this girl before the evening ends!

The Kansas concert was a frustrating sit in between her two cigarettes as almost nothing else happened sighting-wise….almost nothing.  Just before blondie lit up her second cigarette, this dark blond in a tanktop and pale blue jean shorts came out of the grandstand with a green pack of cigarettes (either Marlboro Menthols or Newports) in hand.  It was hard to tell her age as it was dark, but the presentation made her look like a  teenager.  I’m guessing she was in her 20s but it was very hard to tell.  Whatever the case, she opened the pack and was fishing around inside a little before extracting half of a cigarette.  She’d undoubtedly just smoked part of it earlier and saved the rest for later, a common practice nowadays with as expensive as cigarettes are.  It was a brief but rewarding show as her drags were nicely timed and her girlish image in that outfit added an extra layer of yumminess to seeing her publicly smoking a cigarette.  She polished it off, crushed it out, and hustled back into the concert.  I was tempted to run down the steps and try to get a close enough look at the face to get a better handle on her age.  She’ll just have to remain a mystery on that front though, and I’m glad I didn’t run down to find her because 10 seconds later the blond inside the beer gardens lit up for the second time and she was still was my top priority.

After the show, I traversed the grounds hoping to score as many finds as possible, and luckily the crowd held up better later into the evening than it did the previous night.  But I’d have an unfortunate sidetrack when I ran into my cousin, the same crazy cousin I saw the night before.  And tonight he wanted to talk…and talk…and talk.  It was apparently only about 15 minutes but it seemed like forever.  The guy’s interesting to talk to, but not at the expense of my limited time for fair sightings!  He finally cut me loose at about 10:10 and I was able to score a sighting of what I’d later learn was a young mommy in a dark spot between food stands.  As I approached, I saw this shapely late 20s strawberry blond in a white top and tight pale blue jeans standing by herself smoking while on her phone.  I’ve seen girls smoking at this spot before and the downside of it is that there’s no place to observe that isn’t conspicuous.  I ended up sitting on the nearby berm but she was to my side and I had to turn my neck to watch her, which was risky.  I caught several drags, and she was another smoker with very nice pacing and a cute technique where her cigarette was at a 45-degree upward angle in her mouth every time she took a drag.  I noticed this the first time and thought it was cool, and then discovered she did it on every drag.  As I was becoming too familiar, I took off but kept tabs from afar until she finished her cigarette, and then proceeded to move behind the berm where I sat and met up with a chubby dude that I assumed was her boyfriend/husband, and he was in the company of a young son in a stroller.  It was a hot dynamic that the nonsmoking guy took care of the kid while the shapely baby mama smoked her cigarette.  He was clearly another very lucky fellow given his chubby size to be not only banging an attractive young gal with a hot body, but a skillful smoker to boot!

While on the south side of the grounds, I spotted two familiar faces at a food stand….my blond beauty from the beer gardens during the Kansas show and her boyfriend!  As I noticed they were walking towards the north exit while snacking on fair food, I wasn’t confident I’d get another sighting as I knew they’d probably be leaving for the night, but I nonetheless walked in front of them and timed my walk in a way that I just might be looping around to see them again moments before they left.  And lo and behold, it worked!  As I looped around from the northwest, I spotted the blond approaching from the northeast and about 100 yards from the north exit, her face was illuminated by the sparking up of the third cigarette I’d get to see her smoke tonight.  Talk about great timing!  Better yet, her boyfriend wanted to take a closer look at some of the ATVs on display, so he was drifting to see those and left the girl to stand by herself smoking.  I had a perfect bench about 15 yards away to watch yet another smoke show from her, and her style continued to be beautifully consistent with frequent drags and modest exhales.  It would have been ideal if she finished the cigarette there and gave me a chance at a butt ID but I wouldn’t get quite that lucky.  After about 90 seconds, the boyfriend was done looking at the equipment and the couple was heading for the exits.  I was tempted to follow to get a final look and hopefully ID her butt, but ended up calculating she’d be out of the grounds before finishing the cigarette and that would be awkward so I let it go.  Still, to call her the star of Friday night would be a huge understatement.  What an amazing beauty!

It was slow going for the next half hour and I was beginning to panic that the night would end with only eight sightings again, as I had scored the previous night.  But things came alive in the final half hour, first as I again walked on the sparse north side where I had recently seen the blond spark up her third of the night.  Earlier in the night, I had taken note of this light brunette with frizzy hair who looked about 17 and struck the profile of a likely smoker.  As I maneuvered past the tractors on the north side, I saw this girl and a blond friend walking in between the tractors with cigarettes in hand.  I was able to take a bench and watch much of the show as they slowly walked.  The blond friend was chubby and seemed at least five years older than the light brunette, so all my attention was on this cute teen with a bare midriff top and a flower print-patterned skirt.  I watched her take a couple of very nice drags with some high-volume exhales as she walked, but everybody was taken aback a little when some clown teen boy inside one of the tractors started to honk the horn, presumably at the girls’ benefit.  He’s got good taste, but the girls didn’t like it and my underage light brunette quickly crushed out the cherry on the cigarette, apparently not wanting any attention on her while she smoked.  The guy undoubtedly screwed me out of a couple more drags.  The two girls were walking towards the north exit, which is completely in the dark.  I got to see a couple more drags from the blond as they walked away but she wasn’t really cutting it for me compared to that brunette.  I’m hoping the light brunette is back and delivers on Saturday night because I’d sure like to see more from her.

It was just after 11:00 and I was making a bee line for the midway to try to get one more loop in before they shut it down for the night, knowing I probably wouldn’t make it.  On the way, I spotted a cluster of early 20s couples (two guys and two guys) standing outside the bathroom area and one of the girls took a final drag from a cigarette.  The timing was frustrating as I missed most of it, but saw the girl, a dark blond in a pink sweatshirt and jeans who was very cute and would have made for a nice show had I gotten there a couple of minutes earlier.

I got halfway through the midway run as they started to turn the lights out.  My options were gonna be very limited moving forward, confined to the main two blocks of the grounds and setting myself up to where I’d have to leave in the next 15 minutes.  Luckily, those last 15 minutes produced some nice follow-ups to previous sightings and would-be sightings.  I saw a burst of smoke emerging from a huddle of teens and quickly identified a familiar face.  Remember on Thursday night when I saw that hot teen blond walking around with a cigarette that went out and a brunette friend had to relight it for her?  Well the second I laid eyes on the brunette who I wished I’d seen smoking the prior night, she was in the midst of an exhale.  Unfortunately that’s all I’d get from her because she was in the middle of a tight huddle and my vantage point was terrible to nonexistent.  However, also in the huddle was the same blond from the night before, and she was holding an unlit cork filter in her hand.  The blond was taller and at the edge of the huddle so when I took my bench my prospects were better at getting to see another show from her.  Tonight, the golden-haired blond was wearing a red flower-print top and leggings.  I’d still have preferred to see this girl rocking a pair of white shorts or jean shorts but her presentation was still nicer than the night before.  Unfortunately, it took forever for her to manage to find a light for her cigarette.  A good five minutes passed before some guy lit her up.  She came through when it was lit though, producing some beautifully cloudy exhales, much more voluminous than what I saw on the midway the previous night, presumably because of Thursday night’s wind.  I’d catch a handful of drags and they were all cloudy.  Seeing them come from this pretty teenage face was an outstanding supplement to a girl who already likely has a place on my year-end countdown from her show the previous night.

And while that blond was the star of the show, the huddle would produce a couple more moments before it ended.  For the previous three years at the FCF, I’ve seen this pretty but chubby brunette who smokes pretty heavily.  I figured she was 18 when I first saw her smoking in 2014 and have seen her every year since.  She was back tonight and seemed a little old to be keeping company with teens, but there she was smoking with a group of them.  And the best news for her is that she clearly lost some weight since the previous year.  Like Sarah, this girl has busted me in the past fetishing on her so I’m keeping my distance from her, but she didn’t see me last night and was only around a couple of minutes in the cluster with the blond.  But before she parted ways, another girl hanging with her became my final sighting of the night.  This adorably wholesome 15-16ish dark blond was standing with her and requested a single drag from her cigarette.  She complied and I was struck with the drag from this presumably novice cutie, leaning in to take a heavy drag and then expelling a very impressive snootful of smoke that was cloudier than anything I had seen from the main event regular smokers in the group.  It was dark and she walked away without any additional context or capacity to evaluate her, which was unfortunate because I fell in love with her after just that one drag and exhale.

I left the grounds around 11:25 feeling pretty good about that last hour and the night in general.  I haven’t had any nights that have been disasters thus far and continue to be pleasantly surprised by all of the teen smoking, the most I’ve seen at the local county fair since 2012.  I had 16 sightings on the night which puts me at 76 for the fair so far and slightly behind schedule in quest for 100 sightings with only one night to go.  Martina McBride should be a pretty good draw for my preferred demographic on Saturday, but it’s possible I could be stuck with my friend Corey and his wife for at least part of the night and that could theoretically pose logistical problems.  They had a kid now though so can’t be at the fair every night the way they have in the past and may not be able to stay even for Saturday’s show if they can’t find a babysitter.  Much as I like to reconnect with Corey this time of year, my sightings are the top priority so I won’t be too heartbroken if he has to call it a night early.

 

Saturday

My final evening at this year’s local county fair did not go particularly well, despite a bombastic final act.  I had a couple major sidetracks that probably hurt me, but with the large crowd that grandstand act Martina McBride drew in, there was no excuse for me to get only 13 sightings. It all speaks to what we already knew…that smoking among the preferred demographic continues to decline.  I’ve been fortunate to get some real quality among the sightings I have scored, and tonight had a couple great finds as well, but it’s terrifying to walk around the fairgrounds in the evening for 45 minutes and see zero young women or girls smoking.  All I know is that I’m grateful for Tuesday night where I got more than 40% of this year’s sightings over the five nights.   It tells the story of how bad things would likely be had Tuesday night been on par with the other four nights numbers-wise.  Anyway, I got to the fair early today…at 3:00 in the afternoon.  My friend Corey and his wife were gonna be there for the first and only time this year.  They’re parents this year, so they were only gonna get one day at the fair and since they didn’t have a babysitter for the little guy, they weren’t sticking around for the concert.  This was ideal for me since I could hang out with them for the low-volume afternoon hours and then have the evening to myself.  I got to the grounds mid-afternoon and called him up to get his location.  He told me the spot behind the commercial building and I was close, so I told him I’d be there in a minute.  But it would end up being more like two minutes….

I’d largely given up going to the local fair in the afternoon because sightings were so rare, but lo and behold on my short walk to where Corey and his wife were, a 20-something brunette wearing a Tom Thumb Donut sweatshirt and black leggings was walking back toward the Tom Thumb booth where she worked and was wielding a cigarette.  She was quite attractive, and it was an unexpected afternoon treat to put a point on the board and watch her take one final drag from her cigarette before climbing into that food truck reeking of fresh cigarette and exposing her male coworker in the truck to her stench.  From there, I walked over to visit Corey and his wife.  They were unfortunately in the company of his wife’s siblings and their significant others making it harder to visit in the way I had hoped.  As usual with these two, I ended up going through livestock buildings, watching horse shows, checking out lawn mowers and ATV’s….all the things that would drive me crazy if I was stuck doing it with them during key sightings hours.  Even so, it was a long 3 1/2 hours before they announced they were gonna split.  It was about 6:20 before I had my freedom to fetish, and I happily flew the coop the second I got my get out of jail free card.

The crowd was encouraging with a substantial line already forming to get into the grandstand.  It looked like the rain was gonna hold off and I had some optimism for a pretty robust night for sightings.  My first sighting after saying goodbye to Corey was my second best sighting of the night and kept that optimistic vibe alive.  She was a tall and slender brunette mommy in a blue long-sleeved top and jeans.  The daughter hovering in her general area looked about seven years old and was waiting for mom to finish her cigarette.  She had a pretty face….one of the most wholesome-looking smoker girls of the night as she stood mostly by herself pulling smoke into her body with a solid pace and delivering some impressive high-volume exhales.  I’ve been quite bearish with photo-taking this week because the consequences of getting busted at this venue where I know so many people would be dire, but I took a few snapshots here, unfortunately only one that turned out at all.  It was a nice five-minute sighting as I was able to watch every drag and delicious exhale.  She crushed out the cork filter butt and walked away but there were just enough people around to keep me from wandering up and scoring a butt ID.  I’d see the woman again on the midway waiting for her daughter to get off a ride.  She was definitely the sexiest young mommy I saw smoking this week.

Pickings got slimmer after that and I wandered for more than an hour and only got one more sighting before deciding I needed to get up to that grandstand if I wanted to get my preferred seat for the Martina McBride concert as it was filling up quickly.  While the crowd still skewed a little older, there were more people of all ages than the previous three nights so I was reasonably confident that the smoking area and beer gardens would deliver something of consequence tonight….but it didn’t deliver a ton!  Before the concert started, I noticed two early 20s couples seated on benches inside the beer gardens and that a dark brunette was smoking a cigarette.  The vantage point wasn’t great but I saw she was sitting right next to a woman in her 60s and I thought it was kind of hot that she was subjecting  this old lady to pretty direct secondhand smoke.  I was fortunate enough that the foursome ended up moving closer to me inside the beer gardens and the dark brunette lit another cigarette (the other girl apparently didn’t smoke at all).  There were no bells and whistles about her style but she smoked at a nice pace and produced some solid exhales, and I was able to get a farrow-to-finish sighting of her before dark at the beginning of the concert.  The beer gardens was packed and it was hard to see much after dark during the majority of the concert, but I would catch that dark brunette with a cigarette two more times before the show got out at 10:00.

Beyond that, there was a petite late 20s blond who came out and smoked by herself in the middle of the show.  She was pretty cute and offered some welcome smoky visuals for a few minutes.  And there were a couple other modest young women who came out to light up during the concert.  But that was about it….a huge disappointment given the crowd and a relatively favorable demographic.  It was depressing because there was simply no way to dismiss the lack of smoking here with any other explanation than the fact that smoking is in major decline.  Fifteen years ago during Martina McBride’s heyday on the country charts, I can only imagine how many young and attractive smokers I’d have seen in the smoking area and inside the beer gardens.  But tonight, all I could muster was a handful of sightings, and only one of them an extra-base hit.

Still, the concert dismissed at 10 p.m. and I was pretty confident I’d have full clearance for an hour and a half of undisturbed sightings.  Sure, most of the crowd would disperse pretty quickly after the concert finished but surely there would be some rewards.  But then came a very unfortunate sidetrack from out of left field only a few minutes after the concert ended….I heard my name called and recognized it was an old friend from high school named Ryan I run into at least once during the fair each year.  He actually was a bit of a wingman at “Cousin Jamie’s wedding” in 2002, still atop my list of best random sightings of all-time.  Suffice it to say he wouldn’t be enabling any new sightings classics 15 years later though.  He typically only chats about 10 minutes when I run into him so I thought I’d be okay, but his wife was off at a wedding and he had no place to go….so we talked…and talked…and talked.  It was an interesting conversation but as it pressed on I was getting more and more restless.  We were at least standing in a place amenable to eyeballing passersby and checking them for cigarettes, but I saw zero young women or girls in possession of cigarettes and eventually was crawling out of my skin.  Finally, after about 40 minutes of getting robbed of key fetish time, I forced an adieu and split.  This is a cost of doing business at my local county fair, where the potential for lengthy sidetracks is real and remains so every year.  This one hurt though!  Did I miss two dozen epic sightings during those 40 minutes that I was sidetracked?  Probably not…but I undoubtedly missed some….and it would hold my numbers down by evening’s end.

It was 10:40 when I was finally fetishing again, and the only thing colder than the continued chilly air was my long-running no-sightings streak.  I only had 20 minutes before the midway went lights out so I made three passes through it in hopes of salvaging something….but there wasn’t a smoker to be found and the midway actually went lights-out a few minutes before 11 tonight.  Most of the concert crowd had departed by now and the situation was fading fast.  There was a hot 16ish blond in outrageously sexy white shorts line dancing and shaking her booty in front of the 4-H stand who I kept watching every time I walked past in lieu of any smoking activity.  The only smoker to be found was that blond lemonade stand worker sitting in her usual spot on the grass outside of the bathroom smoking away on two occasions.  I was too familiar to her to linger, but I slow-walked past her and enjoyed a couple of her tight, voluminous exhales.  I also enjoyed her fantastic ass draped once again in skin-tight leggings as it had been on previous nights.

It was 11:15 and my sightings count since the concert ended remained at zero.  My morale was cratering but right when it was at bottom, the county fair would deliver one more incredible moment for me in 2017.  Emerging southbound from the cluster of line dancers into a relatively sparse stretch of walkway was a foursome of teen girls, and the cutest and freshest-faced girl of the bunch was extracting a cork-filter cigarette from a pack I couldn’t identify, then placed the pack back into her purse and let the cigarette dangle from her lips as she walked in an area generally crawling with cops.  Seeing this girl in isolation I’d have figured she was about 14, and she certainly carried herself like a younger teen, but the fact that other girls in her group looked more like 16-17 gave me pause.  Still, it was entirely possible that she has older friends and that a girl who will only be entering 9th grade next month was the one girl of the four with a pack of cigarettes in her purse, unhesitatingly walking around a public section of the fairgrounds with a cigarette dangling from her mouth.  In a week with a surprising number of teen smokers, hers was the youngest, freshest face I had seen yet, with a headband on her upper forehead pushing back her long, light brown hair.  It was a cool night, but she was still decked out in a gray tanktop and a pair of short black shorts.  They were those baggy athletic shorts I normally don’t care for, but it added to her innocence and showed off her smooth, shapely legs from the upper reaches of her thighs on down….

As I said, their location was relatively sparse so I had to get creative to sneak a peek, finding a cluster of benches in between food vendor trucks where I’ve successfully spied sightings before.  The girls came to a stop at a convenient location just in time for me to see the cutie spark up her cigarette.  I hadn’t seen a girl this young smoking at the county fair since 2014, and the image of an adorable mid-teen girl innocently standing with her friends with a freshly lit cigarette perched between her fingers with her arms hanging down to her waist was an image I had gone far too long without seeing.  My perfect vantage point over time became obstructed by other friends arriving and encircling the original cluster, but I still got to see four or five drags and my heart melted each time that in 2017 it was still possible to see girls like her smoking.  The rest of the girls in the group were either Hispanic or black and one of the Hispanic girls got a couple of drags from my favorite girl’s cigarette, but 90% of it was the young chick’s.  After the Hispanic girl passed the cigarette back to her for the second time, I caught the last of the drags I’d see from her and an exceptionally cloudy exhale, the only time I spotted one of her exhales directly.  A more direct view of this would have been ideal, but I still did pretty well all things considered.  Once I noticed the cigarette was no longer, I paced up and down the fairgrounds block to get a frontal view as upclose as possible.  I still swear she looked 14 or 15, and at one point in passing she was even using her fingers to pull down on her lower lip in a way that looked far too immature for the age group of her friends.  I really can’t imagine this girl was 16 or 17 based on the way she looked or carried herself.  What a sweetheart!

In my final 10 minutes at the fair, I caught a duo of late 20s or early 30s couples in a seating area where a wholesome light brunette girlfriend was the only smoker of the four.  It was too dark to see much from my vantage point but it was nice to put a couple of final points on the board between her and another late-teen Hispanic girl.  It was around 11:40 and with fewer and fewer people on the grounds it was time for me to get lost before I aroused too much suspicion.  I was walking out of there on the final night with mixed feelings about the week.  I was extremely grateful for the robust haul on Tuesday night and even more grateful for the tidal wave of teen smokers I was seeing.  I was very concerned that every teen I’d see would be “vaping” as was mostly the case during the disastrous Summerfest this July.  And while I missed a few would-be smokers to vaping, and one particularly heartbreaking 18ish blond with a Barbie-doll figure who I saw vaping constantly but never smoking, but by and large vaping was not dominating the teen scene.

On the other hand, even after 36 sightings on the opening night, I wrapped up the week with only 89 total sightings over five nights, a new record low and down considerably from last year’s 98 sightings, the previous record low.  And I have had to spend a record amount of fetish time in recent years to stitch together these diminishing returns, several more hours than it took to get 144 sightings in my best year, 2010.  I can point to some issues holding down my sightings numbers….the midway closing an hour earlier than it used to, the diminishing population of my home county where young people before and after high school are shrinking in numbers, and the fact that the grandstand acts increasingly skew to an older audience in the current seller’s market for live music where most hot young acts that used to perform at fairgrounds now have far more options than they used to for bookings.  But those excuses are only affecting my numbers on the margins.  The inescapable bottom line is that smoking is down from 2010…way down.  It’s incredibly encouraging to have seen so many teens of both genders publicly smoking this past week, but I’m still not filled with encouragement about the overall trendlines.  If Martina McBride can pack a grandstand and the night still only produces 13 new smoker sightings, we got a problem.  The best I can do moving forward is hope for a few more pleasant surprises like I got this week and limp along on borrowed time for the near future, continuing with the Iowa State Fair, Indiana State Fair, and Minnesota State Fair the next four exciting weekends.

Trevor’s Thanksgiving Dinner Guests

Bemidji, Minnesota–Last June

Lauren Nelson sat on the wooden dock on the beach of the northern Minnesota lake where her family had a cabin.  A look of serene satisfaction was splashed across her adorable 15-year-old face as a slight breeze whipped her way from off of the water, a welcome respite from the intense heat and humidity of early summer in Minnesota.  The breeze gently tussled the dark blond hair flowing past her shoulders and felt great on her mostly exposed upper body contained in a light blue flower-print bikini top.  Her feet hung over the dock and her toes barely reached the surface of the lake water, and she gingerly kicked them to create a small splash, which sent a few beads of water up onto her smooth, tanned legs and her pale blue denim cutoffs which crested well up her nicely toned calves and revealed the bottom dimple of her asscheeks underneath as her legs rose to kick the water.  When the breeze withdrew for a moment, Lauren raised her freshly lit all-white cigarette to her lips and took a relatively modest drag, filling her insides with luscious smoke that felt as good inside her body as the cool breeze off the water felt outside her body.  The look on Lauren’s face as she exhaled the smoke she had just ingested made it abundantly clear how pleasurable it had been.

Lauren was a fairly introverted teenage girl to begin with, and just loved the isolation of the summer weekends at the cabin with the family,  particularly these moments alone on the lake with nobody around.  But unbeknownst to Lauren at the time, she wasn’t gonna be alone for long….

From up the hill at a nearby cabin, a voyeuristic mid-teen boy was slowly heading towards the dock himself shortly after his family’s arrival at their cabin, but he stopped about 50 yards before he got there when he noticed the pretty blond his age sitting on the dock in a bikini top and cutoffs.  After the long drive up from the Cities with his family, the boy had smoking on his mind, but after seeing how wholesome the girl looked he quickly dismissed the possibility of her being a smoker.  But a split second after the dismissal, he was stunned to see her insert an all-white in her lips and take a drag.  His instinct was to do what he usually had done when taking a mental note of a pretty girl in his path….to turn around and run.  But as he watched her exhale her smoke and innocently splash her feet onto the surface of the lake water, he felt he was being given a sign.  He had just made a bargain to himself on the ride up with his family to let go of his inhibitions and approach a pretty girl he saw this summer, particularly if she was a smoker, to see what kind of reception he might get.  And now he had one right in front of him in the very direction he was heading.  Could he possibly get a juicier meatball thrown down the middle of the plate to take advantage of?  It took all the courage he could muster into his 15-year-old body, but he took those final steps en route to the pier to introduce himself to this smoking cutie…

It wasn’t until the sound of footsteps began thumping on the wooden dock that Lauren knew she was no longer alone.  Briefly startled, she looked over her shoulder to find a boy her age coming her way, and she quickly turned her face straight ahead towards the lake and lowered her half-smoked cigarette to the right of her body, curling it below the board she was sitting on.  Particularly with the pack of Marlboro Lights 100s resting next to her right asscheek, Lauren knew she was probably busted, but was still instinctively shy about being revealed as a smoker to an approaching teenage boy.  The boy walked up to her left side, fully aware she was smoking but pretending not to notice or care.

“Mind if I join you?  My name’s Trevor,” said a visibly nervous Trevor McPherson, smiling awkwardly through his nerves as Lauren turned to get a closer look.

With even more apprehension in her voice, not to mention a face that was candy apple red with embarrassment, Lauren slipped out a halfhearted, “Okay” with a nervous smile.

Trevor sat down next to her, but made sure to leave a couple of feet between them to avoid invading her space and perhaps lessen their mutual awkwardness at least a little.  When Lauren remained silent, Trevor once again powered through his reluctance and inquired, “So do you have a name?”

A flustered Lauren nervously giggled and responded, “Oh I’m sorry…my name is Lauren.”

Trevor smiled and extended his right hand to shake hers, knowing full well that the cigarette Lauren thought she was hiding was in her right.  Lauren paused for a second and instead used her left hand to awkwardly clasp Trevor’s.  Trevor discovered it was kind of fun to toy around with Lauren over her smoking, and proceeded to tell her about himself.  They got more comfortable in each other’s presence the next few minutes as they told their respective stories and marveled that they lived only two suburbs apart west of Minneapolis and ended up only three cabins apart on this lake. Smiles of comfort and attraction emerged on both of their faces as they continued to chat, with each finding the other attractive, genuine, and easygoing given the introductory situation for the two bashful teens.

But there was still the unresolved matter of Lauren’s cigarette, which she had been holding under the edge of the dock for about three minutes now and figured it was probably about to burn out.  She was frustrated that as she was getting to know this nice boy, she was in this pickle of not knowing how to reveal to him that she was smoking and thus not fully enjoying herself or concentrating enough on what he was saying.  She was about to drop it into the water and pretend she never had it in the first place, but after thinking about it further, decided she might as well face the music now.  Plus she really wanted another drag.  When there was a pause in Trevor’s conversation, Lauren mustered up the courage to ask, “Do you mind if I finish my cigarette?” with an extra flourish of bashfulness.

“Sure…not a problem at all”, Trevor responded with a flourish of his own which he hoped would convey just how little of a “problem” Lauren’s smoking would be.

Lauren smiled and then lifted her cigarette up, tapping an ash that had grown to more than an inch and taking what ended up being the final drag from her cigarette.  Trevor watched as her cheeks hollowed to pull in the smoke on the unattended cigarette that was very close to extinguishing itself.  He recognized the look of nicotine relief on Lauren’s face as she let loose an exhale that was much thinner and sparser than the respiratory gymnastics he had just watched for several hours in the company of his heavy-smoking sisters, but nonetheless saw something he could easily work with in the face on this most unlikely smoker girl.   Lauren tossed the remainder of her cigarette into the lake, further exciting Trevor as she went into defensive mode and assured Trevor, “I really don’t smoke that much.  I know it’s a bad habit”.

“Oh it’s no problem at all for me!” Trevor said with a level of understatement that Lauren could sense was genuine and that there was perhaps more subtext behind it than Trevor was letting on.  She was now officially comfortable in his presence and became more talkative, with a dialogue ensuing for the next few minutes and the two teenagers with little to no romantic experience connected with one another more than they ever had with anyone else.

The momentum was killed about 10 minutes into their memorable introduction when Trevor recognized the husky voice of his mother Becky calling him from the cabin.  “Trevorrr!  Time to eat!”

A look of disappointment was instantly evident on both of their faces as Trevor said, “That’s my mom.  Gotta go for now.  But you want to meet back here later tonight?  I’d like to hang out with you more!”

A sweet, beaming smile on Lauren’s face was all the body language Trevor needed to appreciate he had sealed the deal with this girl.  “I would LOVE to, Trevor!” she added, eagerly awaiting Trevor’s pending departure from the cabin after his evening meal.  Trevor smiled back and got up to leave just in time to see a younger boy approaching the dock.  Trevor and the boy made eyes with each other but never introduced themselves as they crossed paths.

Once Trevor had left the scene, the 11-year-old boy approached Lauren and immediately sensed an ecstatic excitement in her he’d never seen before, and took advantage of it the way an annoying younger brother is supposed to do, asking through a shit-eating smirk, “Who’s your boyfriend?!?!”

Lauren could barely contain her jubilation but muttered out an entirely unconvincing “Nooobody!”, knowing full well that her younger brother Brian would continue busting her chops about it, as he did.  Lauren tuned him out and resumed her posture of staring out onto the open lake, only now with her heart a-flutter, wearing on her face that she was flying while sitting still.  Her brother was unable to get a rise out of her, and she reached to her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s knowing that would knock him off his stride even more, extracting a cigarette and her lighter from the pack and bringing the cigarette to life.

Brian ramped up his merciless teasing after his sister lit up, rhetorically asking “if your little boyfriend knows you smoke and smell like an ashtray!”  His taunts sometimes got to her, but they were elevator music to her this afternoon.  This was the first cigarette of her life after meeting Trevor, and damn was it refreshing….

——————————————-

Suburban Minneapolis–Late November

Lauren rested in a similar pose with the same satisfied smile as she did that day she met Trevor, quietly seated in the backseat of her parents’ car looking out the window and daydreaming of that fateful June day that changed her life.  Now, her family was about to meet Trevor’s family for a Thanksgiving meal, and while she was nervous about the imminent encounter, her heart was filled with joy recognizing how far she had come in five months.  She was still immersed in blissful daydream when she reflexively reached into her purse and pulled out her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s.  The daydream finally broke when she inserted an all-white cigarette into her lips and fired it up.

“What the hell?!?!” Brian shouted Lauren’s direction a split second after she lit her cigarette.  “Why do you suddenly think you can smoke around me?!?”, he added with genuine annoyance at his sister who was seated only a few feet to his left in the backseat.

Lauren had genuinely spaced out Brian’s presence when she lit up, but she’d been increasingly brave about exercising her smoking freedoms in recent weeks, courtesy of the normalization of the lifestyle Trevor’s family had treated her to, as well as the escalation of her own smoking consumption.  She even requested and was granted the freedom to smoke in her bedroom at home.  Brian continued to piss and moan about her smoking, how bad she stunk, and how he hated having to walk around smelling like Lauren’s cigarettes all the time.

Lauren had been used to Brian being the typical “annoying little brother” and usually took it in stride, but the displeased grimace forming on her face made it clear that sometimes his taunts got to her, hitting too close to home to some of the bullying she endured at school.  The combination of Lauren’s beauty and her good nature made her easy to take advantage of by some bullies at school, and she’d been quietly enduring that for a couple of years now.  A year earlier, at the onset of her freshman year of high school, the insecurity of the bullying was the primary catalyst that drove Lauren and her best friend Carly to experiment with smoking, and the habit eventually stuck.  As Lauren continued listening to her brother’s taunts, she reminded herself that the smoking habit she picked up almost certainly contributed to the fateful summer meeting with Trevor and their ensuing relationship.  This epiphany brought a smile back to her face.  She looked up at Brian who seemed to sense from Lauren’s naughty smirk that his provocations were backfiring and he quit talking in time for Lauren to take a deep drag from the cigarette and exhale the smoke directly into his face.

Brian appeared on the cusp of a meltdown as his sister’s smoke crashed upon his face.  “Dad!!!” he tattled as he furiously waved the cloud of smoke away from him, “Lauren just blew cigarette smoke into my face!  And she did it on purpose!”

Lauren was undeterred, maintaining her diabolical see-what-I-can-do-to-you smirk from before the exhale, even as her parents scolded her.

“C’mon now, Lauren!” her dad Craig barked.  “We just have a few miles left to drive.  Let’s not have a big melee just before we walk in the door.”

Lauren’s mom Michelle piled on, adding “We’re giving you more freedom with your smoking Lauren.  Don’t go and ruin it for yourself.”

“Sorry,” Lauren responded while maintaining eye contact with her brother, very pleased with herself for asserting the whip hand in the situation as her brother continued to sulk in exasperated defeat.  Seconds later, Lauren noticed out of the corner of her eye that she had provoked her parents to light up cigarettes of their own, cracking the car windows on the cool November morning and clearly upsetting Brian even more.

The more permissive smoking culture in the Nelson household had come about entirely within the last month or so.  After Lauren witnessed the smoking culture at the McPherson home, she became bolder about asserting more freedoms for herself at her own home….and it was rubbing off on her parents!  They were always careful to go outside when they smoked, catering to Brian’s disgust at their habit, and since Lauren had started smoking they insisted she did the same.  But over the course of the last month, her impact had clearly rubbed off on them.  At no point before the last couple of weeks could she have imagined her parents lighting up a cigarette in her brother’s presence, but here they were today, following her lead and doing just that.  She felt empowered as she took another intense drag from her cigarette and didn’t put forth too much effort to make sure she directed her exhale out her cracked car window.

And as Lauren noticed the family car was pulling into Trevor’s neighborhood, she took another look at the sulking Brian.  If he thinks he has it bad sitting in this car with three smokers, he really has an unpleasant surprise for him when he walks into the McPherson home in a few minutes, Lauren thought to herself.  Her parents would too obviously, and that made her a little nervous, but just as Trevor had made the gamble with her a month ago, Lauren was making the same gamble with her parents today that the McPherson family smoking culture might rub off on them and normalize smoking in Lauren’s family life even more.

A few minutes later, the Nelsons pulled into the McPherson family driveway, with everybody a little bit nervous about how this gathering was gonna go.  As they climbed out of the car, Lauren noticed a ruffling of the curtains followed by a familiar face peaking out.  It was her beloved Trevor, getting his first look at her.  She smiled and took the final drag from her cigarette before flicking the butt into the street and blowing him a smoky kiss from afar, hoping her parents didn’t see her.

As the family approached the front door, Trevor admired his beautiful girlfriend and knew that she dressed up to suit his preferences, decked out in her stylish black leather jacket and a pair of tight white pants he remembered telling her she looked sexy in on a past date.  As they knocked on the door, it was time for Trevor to greet them.  He was just as nervous as Lauren and her family, recognizing the risk of her family connecting some potentially awkward dots in the presence of his mother and sisters and their shameless heavy smoking.  He hustled on up to the front door as he heard his mother opening it, wanting to be there to recognize the first impression of Lauren’s parents and brother.

Craig, Michelle, and Brian walked into the McPherson home amidst the warm greetings from Becky, with lit cigarette in hand as always.  Trevor and Lauren briefly made loving eye contact with each other but also peered at the faces of the other new arrivals as the tidal wave of tobacco stench crashed upon them.  Craig and Michelle tried to suppress their gag reflex and soldiered through it, but Brian’s face wrinkled up like a prune as the stale cigarette smoke was more than he could have possibly prepared for.  Suddenly, the smell of smoke from Lauren’s bedroom in the past month seemed pretty pale by comparison.

Lauren had tried to soften the edges of this inevitable encounter as much as possible in the past month, never missing an opportunity to inform her parents that Trevor’s mom and sisters were all heavy smokers whenever they asked her if Trevor smoked or if he minded that Lauren did.  Still, no words could do justice to the McPherson home and the degree to which it was a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s regarding smoking prevalence and acceptance.  And Lauren’s eyes darted the landscape to notice Courtney and Haylee approaching from a distance, both wielding cigarettes of their own.

Introductions were made, courtesy of Becky and Michelle, to acquaint the respective families, and Lauren’s parents and brother tried their best to pretend they weren’t a little stunned that all three females in the house, including two teenagers, were smoking as they greeted their houseguests.  Trevor and Lauren darted their eyes back and forth between each other and their family members to lock in as much body language imagery as possible, particularly savoring Brian’s awkward introductions to the friendly Courtney and the aloof Haylee in between drags of their cigarettes.  Suddenly, Lauren’s smoking in the car on the drive over didn’t appear so oppressive to him anymore.

Thanksgiving dinner was almost ready to be served and Becky instructed their guests to take their seats amidst multiple conversations by both the adults and the young people.   Trevor made sure he got a seat next to Lauren while everybody else worked their way around the table.  Brian found himself next to Haylee and across the table from Courtney, intimidated by both girls but especially Haylee since she was closer in age yet clearly light years more “mature” than himself.  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing as both Haylee and Courtney brought their cigarettes to the dinner table with them, and was even more stunned moments later when they rested their respective butt bucket ashtrays and packs of cigarettes right next to their plates of food.  Hard as Brian was trying to avoid eye contact with Courtney and especially Haylee, it was impossible for him to avoid observing this outrageous spectacle.

Craig and Michelle were helping Steve and Becky in the kitchen as they were taking multiple dishes out of the oven and range at the same time.  Steve was carving the turkey while Becky was nervously bringing the dishes towards the kitchen table clouded over with a fresh haze of cigarette smoke, adding to that with a half-smoked Marlboro Red dangling from her own lips.  Seeing Haylee and Courtney sitting there smoking at the table reminded Becky to offer similar accommodations to their guests.

“Craig and Michelle, you’re both smokers….would you like us to set you up with ashtrays at the table?”

Craig and Michelle were busy in the kitchen and hadn’t fully taken notice yet of the table arrangement complete with cigarette packs and ashtrays until they looked that direction.  The couple looked at each other with a silent shriek at the site of two teenage girls smoking at the dinner table, but gathered their bearings in a moment when Michelle spoke for both of them and tried to appear as unflinching as possible in the situation, responding, “No thanks.  I think we’ll be happy with eating all this delicious food before we think about our next cigarette.”

“Sounds good,” Becky responded warmly before turning to Lauren at the table and asking through another talking dangle, “How about you Lauren? Would you like an ashtray?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Lauren warmly responded with “Yes please,” charming Becky with her winning smile and then placing her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s on the table next to the plate just as Courtney and Haylee had done.  As Becky fetched another ashtray, Lauren made sure to look Brian’s direction out of the corner of her eye to measure the extent of his dismay, which she figured had to be considerable.

Seconds later, Becky was back with Lauren’s ashtray and hurriedly said, “There you go, dear”, in her husky long-time smoker’s voice before returning to the kitchen to help with the main event as dinner was about to be served.

Lauren wasted no time taking advantage of the opportunity as she opened up her cigarette pack, extracted one, and dangled it from her lips as she handed her lighter to Trevor.  Trevor was caught a little off-guard by her abruptness but responded in kind, sparking up Lauren’s cigarette for her and admiring the bubbly effervescence glowing on her face and throughout her general body language while tilting her head just a little bit skyward to release a long plume of exhaled smoke following her first drag. Lauren knew how much Trevor must be loving this as they looked longingly at each other, or as longingly as they dared to in front of both of their parents.  She also occasionally looked Brian’s way knowing how much he must be hating the whole spectacle!  She tried to avoid eye contact with her parents, expecting they probably weren’t the biggest of fans of her lighting up at the kitchen table.

The final entrees were all coming towards the table now at the hands of the various adults transporting them.  The gigantic turkey was set in the middle of the table and Steve trained his eyes on Brian as he said “Let’s eat!”

While the food looked good to Brian generally, the haze of cigarette smoke commingling with the food was taking away his appetite.  His attention was diverted away from the food yet again when he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Haylee sitting next to him was digging out another cigarette from her pack.  She was texting on her phone with her left hand while flicking her cigarette to life with her right, letting the cigarette dangle loosely from her lips while the smoke gushed out of her mouth and nose in a way that Brian had never witnessed before and found positively disgusting. Even with that cigarette in her mouth partially obstructing her facial expressions, there were bursts of glowing smiles that came and went on Haylee’s face as Brian eyeballed her.  He figured she must be texting a boyfriend, and he was right.

Haylee’s recent fling with Grant, who she had met at the Willow Creek Mall a month ago, was stuck in neutral based on their difficulties in finding ways to see each other given that neither of them drove and that Grant’s parents were in no way gonna tolerate him dating Haylee.  But absence made the heart grow fonder as was clear by the grins on Haylee’s face as she distractedly texted away, dangle-dragging from her cigarette and ignoring the table full of guests.

Becky and Courtney quickly followed suit and lit up cigarettes as the food was being passed around.  The faces of nearly everyone at the table were discreetly observing this insanity with varying degrees of shock and awe.  Lauren and Trevor were watching admiringly, Craig and Michelle were observing in stunned disbelief, and Brian was watching with otherworldly disgust….a disgust that escalated as he watched sexy Courtney take her first drag from the cigarette and then exhale one of her torrential blasts of smoke straight forward.  An explosion of smoke erupted from Courtney’s mouth and nose, sailing about three feet in front of her face and covering nearly the entire table of food with a blanket of toxic carcinogens.  Brian, Michelle, and Craig made brief mutual eye contact as if to say “does nobody else find this bizarre?”

But for Brian, the tough times were only beginning as the food items were getting passed around counterclockwise, with Haylee handing him each successive dish.  Brian was most looking forward to the potatoes.  Craig handed Haylee the potatoes while she was finishing a text.  She briefly put the phone down, kept the cigarette dangling from her lips, and took hold of the bowl of potatoes.  As she scooped out a couple of spoons full to put on her plate, her lips puckered up around the dangling white-and-pink cigarette for an intense drag, and Brian watched as the smoke poured out of her mouth and nose in a downward trajectory right into the potato bowl, accompanied with a mild smoker’s cough, the instant before she handed it to him.  Brian no longer wanted any potatoes and passed it along to Lauren, still smoking herself and merrily taking hold of the bowl and scooping some out.  Brian was thinking to himself that he might be the first person ever to walk away from a Thanksgiving meal still hungry!

Haylee returned to her phone to fire off another text when her father had had enough.  “Haylee!” Steve exclaimed, startling his youngest daughter.  “We’re at the dinner table!  Put that phone away!  It’s rude to the guests!”

Haylee responded with the typical look of a 14-year-old girl with a chip on her shoulder, setting the phone on a stand behind her.  Brian, Michelle, and Craig were all thinking the same as Haylee surrendered the phone but continued smoking her cigarette….that texting at the dinner table was about the LEAST rude thing that was going on at this table!  Haylee returned to alternating between bites of food on her plate and drags from her cigarette in the butt bucket next to it.  Lauren had finished her cigarette and was just eating her dinner now, but Becky and Courtney continued to smoke shamelessly across the table from Brian, with Courtney cloaking the dishes of food in one after another monster exhale rocketed out of her face straight ahead for everybody there to choke on.

The meal ensued, at one brief point without anyone at the table smoking and the haze temporarily contracting, with only the thick residue of lingering tobacco smoke odor hovering in the dining area.  But as the meal began winding down and desserts started busting out, the temporary cigarette reprieve ended, with Becky, Courtney, Haylee, and Lauren all lighting up again as the men cut the pies.

Courtney wouldn’t last long though, checking the clock mid-cigarette after finishing her pumpkin pie and noticing it was 1:30, then announcing a familiar refrain to members of her family.  “Oops…almost 2.  I gotta go.”

Craig looked confused.  “Where do you have to go?”

“Work,” Courtney responded.  “Tomorrow’s Black Friday so we have quite a bit to prepare for.”

As Courtney bantered with Craig and Michelle about her job at House of Leathers at the mall, while casually dragging from her Marlboro Light Menthol 100 and expelling giant snootfuls of smoke in talking exhales, Steve and Becky looked at each other with some suspicion, an intangible feeling that Courtney’s excuses weren’t adding up.  In particular, this “preparatory workday” at a leather store in the mall the day before Black Friday seemed like a convenient excuse for her to leave a house full of company.  On its own, they wouldn’t have been so suspicious, but it was becoming a pattern and they were starting to believe Courtney was hiding something.

Courtney left the room to get changed for work and the table full of guests resumed their dialogue, with Becky once again offering, “You sure you guys don’t want an ashtray?”

Michelle and Craig looked at each other as if deliberating before Michelle decided for both of them, “Sure, that does sound good actually.  You can just bring one and we’ll share it”.  Becky went to fetch another butt bucket, as Michelle and Craig broke out their cigarettes, fully aware Brian was pissed at them.

Lauren, meanwhile, was beaming ear to ear, recognizing that the McPherson family culture had rubbed off on her parents in less than an hour, and that that portended nothing but good things for normalizing smoking behavior in her own home.  Having had a taste of this freedom, it would be hard for her parents to return to going back outside every time they wanted to smoke just to spare Brian.   She didn’t even realize the extent to which her boyfriend’s calculated deviousness had rubbed off on her in such a short time.

Courtney zipped on by towards the front door with as little fanfare as possible, decked out in skin-tight black leather pants and pretending to be in too much of a hurry to bid everybody a formal goodbye.  The males in the room didn’t fail to take a passing interest in Courtney’s shapely female body draped in the black leather but quickly reverted to the conversations they had been immersed in at the table.  Steve and Becky, however, gave each other one more skeptical look watching Courtney leave the house….as if both wondering why Courtney has to or would want to wear leather pants on an inventory day at work where there were no customers.  Despite their skepticism, they resumed their ongoing conversation and discovering they got along well with the Nelson family.  And as Courtney was walking out the door, her purse went briefly horizontal and a single metal key fell onto the floor, which Courtney and everybody at the table failed to recognize.

———————————————————————

Last August–Willow Creek Mall

Kurt Collins sat behind the register of the House of Leathers store he had been managing at the mall for six years now.  He was working the register by himself in the quiet mid-afternoon weekday hours of the late summer, and sitting there he couldn’t get his mind off of the new 17-year-old employee Courtney McPherson who he hired a month earlier, who was currently out behind the store on one of the many smoke breaks she takes every shift.  He had a forbidden attraction to her on the day he hired her, taken in by her beauty, but it had really escalated lately, consuming his every thought.  The fact that she flirted with him shamelessly and seemed pretty genuine about the flirtation only fueled his fire.

Curt’s secret fetish for girls in leather helped lead him to this job in the first place, and his successful early manipulation of Courtney with his interview warning that “employees are strongly advised to wear leather themselves as a visual aid for customer benefit” was actually heeded by Courtney, who used her employee discount to stock up on leather outfits and now wears them for all of her shifts, driving Curt absolutely mad with desire.  The fact that he was 43 years old with a utilitarian appeal and a beer gut who happened to be the underage Courtney’s boss was not wasted on him, but his raging middle-aged hormones were getting the better of him….and he was about to take a risk and briefly abandon his post on this dead weekday afternoon to test her interest in a setting outside the official store while she’s smoking.  As he looked down the corridor of the mall to see nobody in sight, he realized this would be his best chance.

Curt opened the door and briefly walked through the store’s backroom before going through the employee exit behind it, turning the corner to see the gorgeous Courtney leaning against the mall’s exterior taking a deep drag off of her two-thirds-smoked cigarette.   The image drove him nuts, particularly as he noticed the volume of smoke charging out of Courtney’s mouth and nostrils like a raging bull ready to charge a matador, sailing at least two feet in front of Courtney’s gorgeous face.  Curt had never really found cigarette smoking sexy before meeting Courtney, but her passion for the habit made for visual carnival shows that managed to seduce Curt, particularly with the backdrop of her beautiful features, long blond hair, shapely and feminine upper-body, and those tight leather pants framing her even more spectacular body.  The entire aforementioned image, which Curt was taking in as he approached Courtney at this moment, was what compelled him to follow his primal male instincts when his brain continually told him to not get too close.

It was too late now though as Courtney noticed him exiting the store and approaching her.   “What do you want?!” she asked with a mock sassiness that had become part of her repertoire with Curt and stood up straight after having leaned against the wall.

Curt grinned to make sure Courtney knew this was all in jest, responding, “I want your butt back inside to get some damn work done, girl!”

Courtney’s playful smirk expanded as she played along with a sassy “Kiss my ass!” and partially turned her leather-draped posterior towards Curt, who was now right in front of her, while quickly becoming distracted and dragging from her cigarette.

Curt looked down to that stretched-out tight leather on Courtney’s ass and temporarily lost control, taking advantage of her while distracted and giving her a swift and highly unexpected smack on the ass with his hand.  Courtney yelped in surprise, throwing her cloudy and voluminous exhale off kilter from its typical straight line ahead as she turned to make eye contact with her sexual harasser, penetrating his soul with an intense look of deep surprise.  Curt was paralyzed with fear as he surveyed the look she was giving him, thinking he had crossed a point of no return and could face massive consequences for it.

But just as Curt’s heart began to flood with “what was I thinking?” paranoia for letting his impulses control him, Courtney’s stern scowl turned into a seductive smile.  She always thought her relationship with Curt would stay in the flirty, sexual tension zone, despite her inexplicable sexual attraction for him, but now that he had gone where she never thought he would, she was eager to further, and let her body language convey that with increasingly lovey-dovey eyes towards Curt.  Whatever inadvisable instinct led Curt to make that journey outside to taunt Courtney during her smoke break had led him to the point that he had spent the last couple of weeks fantasizing about as he and Courtney pulled together to kiss.  A passionate lip lock ensued with tremendous tongue action and Curt tasting the warm and tobacco-laced flavor of Courtney’s mouth while lowering his hand to fulfill another simmering fantasy of stroking Courtney’s leather-draped ass.  Neither could have imagined even 20 minutes earlier that their sexual tension would ever actually come to life, but as wrong as it felt for this adult boss/teenage employee courtship to be playing out with this extended makeout session behind the store in the middle of the afternoon, it felt oh so right to both Curt and Courtney.

——————————————————–

Courtney’s Car–Thanksgiving Day

As Courtney was driving, she daydreamed as Lauren did about her first unlikely romantic encounter with the boss who would become her lover.    They’d been having a top-secret affair for three months now and even though she felt guilty about the lies to her loved ones and the peril she was putting Curt in by having a sexual relationship with a minor and an employee, it was just too satisfying to stop.  Amidst her daydream, she took another intense drag from her partially smoked Marlboro Light Menthol, her thoughts distracted by Curt’s loving as she exhaled another missile that sailed straight into the front windshield, the smoke parting and spreading left and right as it hit the glass.  She was returning her cigarette hand to the steering wheel when the long ash she’d let accumulate while daydreaming about Curt dropped to her lap and landed on her leather pants.

“Shit!” Courtney exclaimed as she approached a traffic light, recognizing she’d left an imperfection on the most expensive pair of leather pants in her wardrobe…and the personal favorite of both herself and Curt.  As she stopped at the red light, she placed the cigarette in her mouth and dangled it while trying to figure the best way to remove the ash without staining the pants, ultimately choosing to flick it off onto the floorboard of the car.  A small gray spot remained on the otherwise perfectly smooth black leather near her crotch, and she used a Kleenex to gingerly wipe it clean before the light turned green.  She sped off with the cigarette still in her mouth, unaware she had a curious young male voyeur observing in the car next to her.   She drove right on past the entrance of the Willow Creek Mall, which she told her parents was her destination.  Courtney had a different destination this Thanksgiving afternoon.

Ten minutes later, Curt was pacing the floor of his apartment, knowing he was about to have company, both nervous and excited about his forbidden visitor.  He knew she was coming but Curt was startled nonetheless when his doorbell rang.  He walked over to the door and quickly opened it.  As expected, there stood Courtney McPherson decked out in her leather jacket and leather pants, cigarette in hand and looking badass as hell.  He drug her on in to minimize the exposure as much as possible for his neighbors, lest they find out he had an underage girlfriend.  Courtney didn’t make it easy for him.  Smoking was forbidden throughout his apartment complex, and was particularly unwelcome in the hallway where Courtney had just thoughtlessly walked through with a cigarette.  He mentioned to her before to please wait till she got into the apartment before smoking, where he could at least camouflage the odor a bit, but with as ingrained as smoking was in her lifestyle he figured she wasn’t even conscious that she was doing it.  He didn’t even bother to scold her about again as she was too frisky to be contained, lunging for him to stick her tongue into his mouth where they remained for a couple of moments.

The couple wasted no time moving towards Curt’s bedroom.  Curt sat on the edge of his bed while Courtney sat on his lap, taking an occasional drag from her cigarette in between kisses until the cigarette was finally at its end and she crushed it out on the ashtray he left for her on his nearby nightstand.

“You know you can’t smoke in her you little criminal”, Curt playfully snarked, moving his hand up the thigh of her leather pants towards her crotch.

“Well what the hell are you gonna do about it???!” she fired back just as playfully.

Curt fluttered his eyebrows before delivering his one-word response, “Discipline!”

Courtney let out a playful little scream and Curt proceeded to put her over his knee, her leather-draped ass fully exposed, and then began spanking her repeatedly and with increasing intensity.  Their ensuing banter played right into the stereotype of a couple with this many years between them, with Curt’s proclamations of her being a “naughty little girl” countered with Courtney’s equally cringeworthy “Sorry, daddy!” responses.  Curt had never had a thing for girls Courtney’s age before and found himself an unlikely source of indulging a teenage girl with daddy issues and he swatted her ass….and Courtney had never really had tangible daddy issues until they surfaced in Curt’s presence.  She had no specific sexual attraction to her father, but the memories of her father whooping her ass as a girl–and then being the older sister who watched her younger brother and sister get belted by their father years later–had quietly manifested themselves into Courtney’s sexual identity.  And there was no foreplay with Curt that was as titillating as when he put her over his knee and beat her ass until it was candy-apple red.

Once the ass-whooping was complete, Courtney climbed back onto Curt’s lap, overcome with passion and began to unbelt his pants.  She pushed Curt back on the bed and he gladly let her take the power position, knowing what she was about to do.  In seconds, his erect cock was poking through the fly of his pants and Courtney’s mouth attacked with even more ferocity than the many cigarettes a day she ripped to shreds.  Curt watched as Courtney morphed into a primal beast, thrusting her mouth over his cock and gyrating her body up and down as she fellated on him, her leather-draped ass and hips zigging as her mouth zagged, performing a seesaw motion that drove Curt absolutely wild for the moments she performed.  Curt used to ask if she wanted to taste it, but at this point they had been lovers long enough that he knew she always did, so he gave her a split second worth of warning before delivering a giant blast of male fluids into the mouth of this 17-year-old seductress who had so infatuated him.  Every moment that Courtney was not around Curt, he thought of himself as crazy to put his job and perhaps even his freedom on the line for this underage girl, but in these moments when they’re lovers, everything felt right even if it was incredibly wrong.

Courtney’s face rose from his crotch with a dribble of cum running down her chin that she wiped off.  She made quick work of removing her blouse and then began undressing Curt.  Curt groped her hips and ass one last time before working that tight leather off of Courtney’s lower body.  It was never physically easy to remove Courtney’s tight leather outfits that turned Curt on so much, but after nearly three months of regularly molesting her, he had gotten his rhythm down and made reasonably fast work of it.  He trusted Courtney fully when she insisted that she was on birth control, so he didn’t give it a second thought when she removed her panties and approached his still-erect cock with the oval inferno that was her moist vagina.  In seconds, her body was atop his midsection and she perforated herself on his dick, then proceeded to maintain the penetration with manic thrusting motions, pleasuring herself to no end with his middle-aged manhood and knowing that she was providing just as much pleasure to him.  She reached for a cigarette on the nightstand and flicked it to life in the kind of speedy motion that only comes from an experienced smoking pro.

Curt looked up admiringly at Courtney’s body as she rode him like a rodeo bronco.  The gorgeous young face dragging from a freshly lit cigarette….the perky young breasts bouncing up and down along with the cigarette….the well-toned stomach and hips so aggressively working his body….it was all so surreal to him that a young girl of this caliber was regularly banging him.  He never had a girl like Courtney even in his prime, and figured 20 years ago that his days of ever having a girl like her were in the past.  And that made it that much more satisfying to be enjoying it now.

For her part, Courtney was looking down through her self-induced smoky haze at Curt.  The average-looking middle-aged facial features….the thick coat of unflattering chest hair….the paunchy middle-aged stomach….it was surreal to her that she was so inexplicably attracted to this man.  Whenever thoughts popped into her head that her forbidden relationship with Curt was nothing more than a thinly veiled release of sexual energy intended for her father, she forced herself to let those feeling pass and reminded herself that Curt looks nothing like her father.  Still, the stealthy disguised eroticism in the way Curt looked at her when she smoked her cigarettes was a look that was all too familiar from the looks she got from her father ever since she started smoking as a young girl.  Just as she was mentally connecting those dots, she became distracted as she begun to climax.  The decibel level rose in the room as the fornication approached its end, so much so that Courtney missed the buzzing of her phone on Curt’s nightstand next to her cigarettes….with the “Mom” spelled out on the caller ID.

—————————————————————————-

Meanwhile, back at Steve and Becky’s place, the after-dinner conversation pressed on, with eight people still seated at the kitchen table getting to know each other better.  Cigarette smoke continued to be omnipresent, with five of them attending to a fairly steady diet of cigarettes.  Lauren and Trevor were frequently chatting with each other but also immersing themselves in the conversation with the adults, as inquiries about their life stories were raised by their respective parents.  At one point, Lauren pulled out another cigarette from her pack of Marlboro Lights 100s, and before Trevor even had the opportunity to get excited as he always did when Lauren was about to smoke a cigarette, she once again handed him her lighter in a reflexive motion.  He had gotten used to lighting Lauren’s cigarettes for her in the past month, but the fact that she was now so boldly initiated the exchange felt a bit awkward for Trevor, knowing her parents were taking this in and quite likely connecting some dots, which they were.  Lauren didn’t seem to be bothered with it at all though and welcomed her boyfriend’s light that brought her long, all-white cigarette to life.

As Trevor’s parents began grilling Lauren with questions about school, Trevor took the opportunity to watch his girlfriend smoke her cigarette.  She sat there in his favorite smoking position, her right elbow resting on the edge of the table and holding her cigarette only inches from her face.  It so perfectly captured her cusp-of-womanhood aura, a very innocent looking teenage girl giggling that adorable laugh of hers while indulging an adult pastime that she had really begun growing into in a major way.  When Lauren took a drag, Trevor admired her form, thinking back to six weeks ago when Lauren first sat at their kitchen table in this same position the night he introduced her to his family.  Her drags had grown deeper and more confident, while her ensuing exhales were more voluminous, which was no surprise as her cigarette consumption had noticeably soared since that first night.  Lauren was still nowhere near the caliber of smoker as his sisters were, but she had come so far since that night six weeks ago and even further since that day on the dock at the lake when they met. As the smoke sputtered from Lauren’s mouth and nose in the form of talking exhales, Trevor could feel his pants rise and it was gonna be pure torture to have Lauren sitting right next to him for this entire afternoon with little hope of a return foray into the bedroom.

While Trevor was licking his chops admiring Lauren as she smoked, a more complicated series of observations was playing out a couple of seats over at the dinner table.  Haylee’s parents had long ago given up keeping her away from her phone as they had done during the meal, and she was now sitting there ignoring everybody and incessantly texting back and forth with Grant, a smirk constantly splashed across her face.  In addition to the smirk, an incessant chain of Camel Pink No. 9s could be seen dangling from her lips as she texted, stiffening between drags and going limp as she exhaled, getting removed from her mouth only every couple of minutes when she ashed and then snuggling in her lips again, with semiregular soft-core smoker’s coughs being the only noise she made.  Sitting next to her and able to steal glances every few seconds, Brian was 90% disgusted by Haylee’s crude smoking display, but as the show went on, the other 10% of him was becoming increasingly intrigued, despite the fact that Haylee seemed cold, distant, and aloof, barely acknowledging him the whole time he sat there.  As he glanced over, he couldn’t help but admire how the constant stream of cigarettes–never more than three minutes or so apart–were almost like a part of Haylee’s person, the stream of smoke she kept producing almost blending into her residual freckles, curly light brown hair, and gorgeous facial features.  And the pink logo on her cigarette was a perfect match for her pink top that she wore so nicely that crested onto the pair of tight black leggings that framed her lower body which Brian was also getting a trace of prepubescent excitement for.  Even though this girl ruined his Thanksgiving dinner and was responsible for his watery eyes, burning nostrils, and intensifying headache, this image was nonetheless gonna leave a lasting impression on him.

All of the Thanksgiving dinner time hijinks were briefly interrupted by an abrupt thwack at the front door.

“What the hell was that?” Steve asked rhetorically.

Becky responded, “Oh I bet it’s the newspaper. With all the Black Friday ads for tomorrow, the paper is extra thick.  Let me go grab it.”   Becky got up to walk to the front door to retrieve the paper, Marlboro Red hanging from her mouth as usual, and as she opened the door to pick it up, she noticed a shiny metal key on the ground that had a familiar look to it.  Her eyebrow furled as she tried to figure out the key’s origin when a light appeared to go off in her mind.   She hustled back on into the kitchen and sat next to Steve, whispering to him that she thinks this is Courtney’s key and that it looks like her key for the store at work.  Steve nodded and concurred that this would be an excellent opportunity to check on the truth of Courtney’s story.

Becky excused herself again briefly to make a phone call, dialing Courtney’s cell phone and impatiently sitting through multiple rings before it went to voicemail.  Courtney knew better than this, Becky thought to herself, knowing that if her mother was calling her, it was for good reason and that she’d better damn well pick up.  She approached her husband to break the unfortunate news.

“Call her at the store,” Steve said as a back-up plan, really hoping his daughter wasn’t up to anything untoward but agreeing with his wife’s instinct that she well may be.  Becky nodded and the family’s visitors were starting to pick up on the unsettled vibe in the room.

Becky did a quick search on her phone for the landline number of House of Leathers and then placed the call with an urgency in her eyes.  The phone rang and rang in the empty store in the empty mall with no answer….and Becky had become visibly hotter than the cherry of her Marlboro Red, looking at Steve and announcing with frustration, “No answer here either!”

Craig and Michelle could tell the vibe had abruptly changed and when Becky got off the phone, they offered to leave so they could tend to their family issue.  Steve and Becky thanked them for coming and offered to break bread again, but it was clear their minds were elsewhere.

“Let’s go to the mall and see what’s going on with that girl”, Becky said to Steve, eager to get to the bottom of the mystery and knowing she likely wouldn’t enjoy learning the truth, whatever it may be.

The four children at the table could tell the afternoon was coming apart too, and Trevor and Lauren saw their opportunity for an extended visit rapidly slipping away.  Trevor knew he didn’t have a play here so he looked desperately at Lauren as she finished off the final drag of her cigarette, knowing it was in her hands to keep their day going.  Lauren immediately picked up on it and looked towards her dad, knowing he’d be the easiest sell.

“Dad”, Lauren called out.  “Do you mind if I stay with Trevor for a while?  He can drive me home later.”

Craig and Michelle looked at each other with anticipation and then looked at Steve and Becky, who had other priorities but also had their doubts about leaving the horny young teens alone together.  But as they looked at Haylee sitting there, they realized they wouldn’t be alone and figured she would be a needed buffer to keep anything inappropriate from happening.

“Pleease”, Lauren begged.  “I won’t get to see him again for days!”

Craig got the blessing from Steve and Becky as they prepared to leave and nodded in approval towards Lauren, who perked up and squeezed Trevor’s hand.  Trevor then took his hand and stroked Lauren’s leg in those tight white pants he’d been lusting for since they sat down, knowing the line of vision of his elders camouflaged the view.  As Brian got up and followed his parents out the door, with a flustered Steve and Becky following, Trevor looked at Lauren with naughty eyes, knowing that with Haylee there or not, that leg stroke he just sneaked in was definitely not gonna be the last opportunity he’d take to get physical with his girlfriend that Thanksgiving.

Haylee was oblivious to her brother and his girlfriend’s situation as she was also thinking of Courtney, sympathizing with whatever she was about to get busted for and knowing that it was probably something that could get herself in trouble over one day. Recognizing this, she switched the ID on her cell phone from Grant to Courtney.  She lit yet another Camel Pink No. 9 and let it dangle from her lips like those before as she began to type out a warning message to her older sister.

———————————————————————–

Across town, Courtney laid in Curt’s arms after their intense round of copulation, sweat covering their faces and Courtney indulging in a heavenly postcoital cigarette and burrowing her face into his chubby and hairy chest while exhaling plumes of smoke that got lost in it.  Their playful banter continued until Courtney’s buzzing phone got their attention.  Courtney may have missed the buzzing phone in the climax of their intercourse,  but in the quiet aftermath she certainly heard it.  She casually reached over to pick up the phone, the relaxed and satisfied look splashed all over her face rapidly dissipating as she read the message.

“Oh my God!!” Courtney shouted, snapping upright off of Curt’s chest.  “It’s my sister.  My parents know I’m not at the store and are driving to the mall to prove it!”

“How??!” Curt fired back, becoming very concerned himself about the implications if their sordid love affair were to come out.

“Long story…..” a shaken Courtney began following by a pause, “…..I lost my spare key for the store, my parents found it, and now they’re on the way to the mall.”   She looked at him with desperation in her eyes.  “I gotta get to the store!  Like right now!”

Curt concurred as Courtney’s naked body shot up of the bed.  He helped her get dressed as quickly as the possible, the cigarette dangling from her mouth as she put her bra and panties on as well as her blouse.  Curt was all too happy to help Courtney back into those tight leather pants.  She jumped onto the bed, bouncing up and down to get the pants to fit right with Curt’s assistance, zipping and buckling them on after the pants crested her shapely hips.  Courtney raced for the door, once again entering the hallway of his apartment with cigarette in hand.  Not that long ago, Courtney bringing her cigarette into his apartment was Curt’s biggest fear.  But he had much bigger concerns now, hoping Courtney could make it to the mall before her parents did.

Courtney climbed into her car and peeled out, brushing her sex-tussled hair frantically with one hand while holding the wheel in the other and dangling a cigarette from her mouth.  She was fortunate to be closer to the mall than her parents’ place, but had no idea how much of a head start they had.  In another 10 minutes, she’d know for sure, for better or for worse.

————————————————————————

Back at the McPherson home, Haylee retreated to her bedroom, continuing to text Grant but eagerly awaiting feedback from Courtney to see if her sister had dodged the parental bullet train coming her way.

But on the couch in the living room, a much more active scene was playing out with Lauren sitting on Trevor’s lap, indulging in a heavy makeout session.  Per Trevor’s request, Lauren put that leather jacket he liked so much back on and his hands were going wild moving from her leather jacket to her white pants, feeling up every curve on her young body as she similarly moved her free hand along his body, but being carefully not to burn him with the smoldering cigarette in her other hand.   They pulled apart from their lengthy open-mouth kiss and Lauren took a huge drag from her cigarette, pulling closer to blow the smoke into Trevor’s mouth.  He accepted her smoke, and coughed as he inhaled it, temporarily interrupting their makeout session as his body wasn’t used to inhaling smoke directly.  Lauren giggled as the smoke spilled from his mouth and nose and he coughed a few more times.

“You gonna be okay there?” she asked sweetly, trying not to be emasculating although having a hard time not projecting some pride that Trevor couldn’t handle the smoke he loves so much coming from her.

“I’m gonna be way better than okay!” Trevor reassured her as he regained control of his respiratory system.

Lauren bit her lower lip while staring into his eyes lovingly, her persistent tell for being on the cusp of serious arousal.  Their young bodies were on fire with desire, and they couldn’t let this opportunity pass.

Moments later, Haylee heard a knock on her bedroom door.  She told the visitor to come in and Lauren opened the door.  Haylee barely looked up from her phone as she continued texting grant, Lauren got the awkward duty of making the request, “We need a big favor from you Haylee.”

“What?” Haylee asked, finally triggering enough curiosity to raise her head from her phone to see Trevor and Lauren with their arms around each others’ waists looking impossibly frisky.

“Can you keep our secret for us?” Lauren added with clear embarrassment flashing her eyebrows at Trevor in a way that Haylee would know was a signal they were about to have sex.

“Ewwwww!” Haylee exclaimed with genuine disgust, and perhaps a touch of envy, at the thought of her brother having sex.  With a half-smoked cigarette perched from her pouty early teen lips, Haylee nodded yes but added through a messy talking exhale “Hurry up though before mom and dad get home or I’ll be in more trouble than you two!”

The young couple looked at each other even more excitedly before Trevor chimed in with “Thank you so much, Haylee!” before closing the door to leave Haylee to herself.

It was a short trip one door down to Trevor’s bedroom and the young couple wasted no time disrobing each other, with Trevor having fun removing Lauren’s leather jacket and that tight pair of white pants he loved so much on her, revealing her nubile young body in bra and panties for only the second time that he was able to thoroughly enjoy.  They consummated their relationship in Trevor’s parents’ bed a month earlier, and had messed around a little since then, but found that the backseat of Trevor’s car was less than ideal for sexual activity, and both had bruises trying to navigate around the sharp buckles from the seatbelts poking out of the backseat.  This would be the first time they’d be able to make love again in the comfort of a bed.

After Lauren removed Trevor’s clothes and his shorts, she did the honors of putting the condom on his hard cock, while Trevor returned the favor by lighting Lauren’s cigarette, knowing that adding smoking to the sex for the first time would make the experience that much more enriching.  They both knew time was of the essence and couldn’t wait any longer anyway, so Lauren foisted her naked lower body on Trevor’s and took the “top bunk”, lavishing the feeling of vaginal penetration from above.  Trevor did all the work their previous times but was getting into the new position, watching from below as Lauren indulged in her two biggest pleasures at the same time…..cigarettes and sex.  Lauren’s impassioned moans grew louder as Trevor hollowed her out, and the girl Trevor found so impossibly sweet and innocent took on an entirely different look atop him yet still evoked that same trademark Lauren Nelson innocence, squealing with pleasure as her boobs bounced up and down.  From his current angle, Trevor definitely noticed that Lauren’s boobs were bigger now than they were that first day he saw her on the lake in her bikini top.  And as he savored the physical pleasure, Trevor’s daydream resumed where Lauren left off…on that day in Bemidji where they met  It was a magical day, and a gift that has just kept on giving ever since.  As for Lauren, she looked down to Trevor with only one thought on her mind…..that she’s soon gonna need to have a very tough talk with her mom about getting her on birth control.

Next door, Haylee grumbled at the sound of Lauren’s loud moans as she fucked Haylee’s brother.  She was still texting Grant, and without any additional context, messaged him that “Trevor owes me big after the favor I just did for him!”

—————————————————————————–

Steve and Becky peeled into the mostly empty lot of the Willow Creek Mall.  They knew where House of Leathers was in the mall and where the back entrance was….and they were headed for it like heat-seeking missiles as they parked their car.  In seconds they were at the employee-only back entrance for House of Leathers and Becky began pounding on the door with her right hand while furiously smoking away at her Marlboro Red with her left hand.  After about 30 seconds of pounding, a familiar face they didn’t expect to see opened it

Courtney put forth an Academy Award-worthy acting performance pretending to be surprised and shocked by her parents’ presence.  “What are you guys doing here?” she asked, doing her best to hide the breathlessness in her smoked-out lungs after sprinting into the store only a couple of minutes earlier.

Relieved but still angry, Becky fired back with “Why the hell didn’t you answer your phone when we called?!” in her raspy long-time smoker’s voice.

Courtney’s put-on umbrage continued to be convincing as she snarkily responded, “Because I was worrrrking!” then pausing to add, “What the hell did you think I was doing?”

Steve chimed in this time with “Wait…why didn’t you call or text back?  It’s been like 25 minutes since we called.”

“I didn’t hear it”, said Courtney.  “I must have set down my phone somewhere while I was working”.  She then casually peered to the table in the break room where she was standing.  “Here’s my phone,” she pointed, walking over to the table where she had only moments ago set the phone.  “I got busy working and forgot to take it with me back into the store.”

Becky and Steve were nowhere near convinced, with Becky taking the lead for the follow-up question.  “We called the store too, Courtney….on their landline.  You didn’t pick up there either.”

Thankfully Haylee had given Courtney the heads-up that they called the store too, so she had an alibi at the ready for this one too, again pretending to be offended at their doubting her. “I’m sure I was unloading the truck when you called.  We got the shipment in that I came to work in the first place today to unload about 20 minutes ago.  I had more to do than just wait by the phone on a day we’re closed just in case you guys want to call to check up on me!  I mean, what were you guys calling about anyway?”

Steve and Becky continued to track her body language, not buying this perfect little yarn she was weaving, and still having one unsettled matter to potentially hang her up with.  “We called because of this,” Becky answered, pulling the key she found at the doorstep out of her purse and showing Courtney.  “Isn’t this your key for the store?   How’d you get in without it?”

Courtney was again prepared, lying through her teeth to respond, “Yeah that’s my back-up key.  My primary key is still in my purse.  Wanna see?!??!” she said exasperatedly, sensing their frustration at not being able to crack her.  Steve and Becky followed her into the store as she approached her purse, pulling out the store key that she had gotten from Curt before leaving his apartment.

Steve and Becky were quickly coming to grips with the fact that they had nothing, even though every instinct in both of their bodies convinced them she was covering something up.  Steve took one final swing, asking her “Didn’t you say your boss was supposed to be here today too?” inadvertently stumbling upon the source of the deception.

“He was.  He came to help me unload the truck but has Thanksgiving with his family so he left me to set up the new stuff on the displays.”  She paused for dramatic effect before snapping back with “Any moooore questions?!”

Steve and Becky admitted defeat and were forced to eat crow, consoling an agitated Courtney with “we only do this because we love you” consolations and suggesting the entire incident be forgotten and that Thanksgiving leftovers would be waiting for her when she got home.

Courtney milked their conciliatory tone for everything she possibly could, talking them out the door as quickly as possible because “I still have work to do”, even though the work was entirely invented and nonexistent.  As Steve and Becky walked out the door towards their car, Courtney closed the back door and sighed with sweet relief.  She wasn’t supposed to smoke in the backroom but Curt always let her get away with it, so she fired up a cigarette, taking an immense drag and letting out a titanic exhale consistent with her emotional relief. She then picked up her cell phone that she planted on the back room table and began texting Curt,   “Crisis averted!  My parents bought the story!”  As relieved as she was, Courtney knew Curt had more on the line and was even more relieved to be on the receiving end of that message.

—————————————————————————-

Several hours later, it was late evening in the McPherson home, after Thanksgiving leftovers had been feasted on with the family beginning to wind down.  Steve and Becky were watching TV but the kids were in their respective bedrooms.  Trevor approached Haylee’s door and knocked on it.  After she welcomed him in, Trevor expressed his gratitude.

“Haylee, thanks for covering me today.  It means a lot.” Trevor offered while looking at his sexy sister smoking another freshly lit Camel Pink No. 9.

Just as Haylee was about to respond, Courtney peeked in behind Trevor with her own appreciation.  “You really saved my butt today, kid.  I owe you big-time”, Courtney said with a smile, failing to offer additional context for what Haylee saved her from and trusting Trevor wouldn’t inquire further either.

Haylee sat up in the bed confidently before responding with “Oh don’t worry!” pausing for dramatic effect and taking an intense drag from her cigarette, “You two will be returning the favors very soon!” with wisps of smoke slipping out of her mouth and nose before forming an O with her mouth and exhaling an intentional blast of smoke in a straight-forward jet that emptied out the contents of her black lungs, her demeanor taking on the aura of a mob boss who had some lowly shopkeepers right where he wanted them.

Courtney and Trevor looked at each other with confusion, unsure what Haylee meant but figuring it probably was related to the boy she’d spent the entire Thanksgiving afternoon texting.

 

 

 

 

 

“Deep Inhale”: Another Outstanding Smoking Blog

Ever since starting Mark’s Smoke Blog six years ago, I’ve come across a couple other smoking blogs on Word Press, but a fellow blogger contacted me a few days ago and introduced me to her new smoking blog “Deep Inhale”.  I’ve been reading it pretty regularly since and strongly recommend it to those who enjoy this blog.  The blogger is named Anabelle.  She’s in her mid-20s and started smoking when she was 15.  She has an interesting background with a French mother and an American father, and has traveled a lot internationally, offering a unique personal perspective on her own heavy smoking and its reception in other places she’s lived, including southern California and southern Florida.

Anabelle has touched upon many different topics in only about a month or so on “Deep Inhale” and offers some fantastic insights and an excellent writing style that draws the reader in and keeps him interested.  Just in general, it’s great to see a female speak so eloquently and enthusiastically in the male-dominated smoking fetish world.

I look forward to reading more of Anabelle’s blog entries moving forward and strongly recommend others do the same.  Here’s the link:  https://deepinhale.blog/

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 3,979 sightings at the Minnesota State Fair.  The list has become so long that I’ve written my own shorthand version of a top-350 sightings of all-time from the MNSF.  And even that list only represents less than 10% of total sightings over the last 20 years.  From there I’ve narrowed it down to a top-100 list…

Below I will make a list documenting the total number of sightings I scored each year at the Minnesota State Fair since I started keeping count. …

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

2014, Trip 1–178

2014, Trip 2–182

2015, Trip 1–183

2015, Trip 2–164

2016, Trip 1–170

2016, Trip 2–220

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-75
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.  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-75 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 by 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-

2014, Day 1–It’s regrettably getting increasingly rare to head up for a day at the Minnesota State Fair with an all-clear weather forecast.  It makes such a difference for morale to head up there knowing you’re gonna have a nice day with no chance of rain, but no such luck on my first Saturday there this year with a decent chance of rain in the forecast, and even though it never materialized outside of a few sprinkles, it dampened my enthusiasm.  The relatively modest haul of sightings was also pretty dampening, with a particularly glum start to the day, and an overall Day 1 that was generally pretty average. There were enough extra base hits and blockbusters thrown in the mix to keep the day from becoming a bust though, and I salvaged a mediocre evening with the best sighting of the day.  I was pretty consistent numbers-wise with Day 1 from the previous year which I considered a success giving the shrinking rate of smoking in Minnesota.  Grade:  B

2014, Day 2–An improvement over Day 1 but still not a Hall of Fame day by any stretch.  Nice weather and gigantic crowds (an all-time one-day record) were both a blessing and a curse as I most likely lost some great sightings in the suffocating crowds.  On balance though, I had a steadier drumbeat of extra base hit sightings and a bit of a crescendo as the day proceeded, particularly in the evening where I really had some great finds, and one in particular who ran away with the 2014 Minnesota State Fair.  The biggest disappointment was in the overall sightings numbers, which on prior Labor Day weekends hovered just above or below the 200 threshold.  I fell far short of that with only 182 this year, a worrisome sign of potentially diminishing returns in the years ahead.  Grade:  B+

2015, Day 1–I got lucky with the weather on both days of the 2015 Minnesota State Fair but Day 1 was the more perfect of the two, and making it even more perfect was the string of sightings I scored between the mid-afternoon and the early evening, one of the best stretches of extra base hits I’ve scored in recent years.  The evening hours actually seemed like a disappointment at the time, but looking back, those evening hours weren’t bad at all either….they just didn’t live up to those outstanding afternoon hours that produced six Hall of Fame sightings.  Carrie Underwood was the grandstand act and seemed to draw the right demographic, resulting in 183 sightings over the course the day, slightly better than my first day at the MNSF in the previous two years.  Considering how rotten the smoking climate has gotten in Minnesota since the massive tax hike, that’s not a bad result.  Grade:  A

2015, Day 2–The temperature digits went up and the sightings went down on the second day of this year’s MNSF.  It was still a pretty good day with a steady drumbeat of extra base hits, and the hot 90-degree temperatures produced a lot of bare midriffs that complemented some of the day’s best sightings.  Still, with the very impressive crowd for the day, it was disappointing to find myself behind my sightings baseline at every stage of the day.  The evening in particular offered only modest rewards and I ended up with only 164 sightings, my weakest performance for a full day at the Minnesota State Fair ever since I started staying at the MNSF the entire day and evening, indicating that the point of diminishing returns for sightings even at my best venue may have arrived.  Even so, there was enough great sightings over the course of 15 hours to walk away mostly satisfied with the day.  Grade:  B

2016, Day 1–For the first time in years, I didn’t go to the Minnesota State Fair on Saturday this year because of a cool, rainy forecast, choosing to go on Sunday instead.  The move paid off as I had a much nicer day and managed the only genuinely impressive day of fairgrounds fetishing I would get in 2016, scoring 170 sightings with a particularly nice penchant for second acts, where the best girls of the day resurfaced later in the day with another cigarette and additional context to sex up the sighting.  Most of my great finds occurred in the late afternoon and early evening hours, while the hours before and after were hit or miss, but I still did well for myself on a year where I generally struggled at the fairgrounds.  Grade: A-

2016, Day 2–A very strange day with two conflicting storylines.  The very heavily populated fairgrounds on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend produced my biggest one-day sightings haul of all-time at the Minnesota State Fair, with 220 sightings.  I was well ahead of my baseline all day and the sightings kept coming at a pace that would have seemed blistering even 10 years earlier when far more attractive young females were smoking.  Unfortunately, of those 220 sightings, not very many were particularly great.  Never have I encountered so much smoking with so few unforgettable moments.  I had one electric moment in the final couple of hours but by and large the rewards were modest and it was a wet blanket on a day that should have had my adrenaline at all-time highs based on the numbers alone.  Grade:  B-

 

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.

MNSF #8. Flirting And Smoking With the DJ On Live Radio

Here’s another epic sighting from the early evening of the 2001 Minnesota State Fair, only about 15 minutes after I scored my #16 sighting from this list.  I was walking past this radio station broadcasting live and interacting with people on the sidewalk hovering in front of their booth. This radio station booth has produced a number of great sightings in the years since, but nothing even in the same ballpark as this one….

The deejay on the stage broadcasting live was talking to two extremely attractive 16-17 girls with long dark brown hair who were both smoking cigarettes like seasoned pros. These girls were kind of in the “in-between” territory as whether they looked like smokers or not. I wasn’t necessarily surprised to see them smoking, but I was surprised that they were copiously dragging from their cigarettes while talking to an adult male deejay ON LIVE RADIO….with a cluster of people behind them listening to their banter with the deejay!

And like I said, these girls were no amateurs. Their inhales were deep and intense. Their exhales were thick, extremely cloudy, and came in tight synchronized streams. I watched in awe for several minutes, not necessarily hearing what they were talking about with the deejay but being too mesmerized by their smoking show to care.

After the girls finished their cigarettes, I decided to take off, naturally expecting the show was over, but still making a mental note that this best sighting of the day just might not be finished yet. I walked a quick loop around the block and returned to the radio station booth no more than 10 minutes later….and girls (maybe sisters, maybe just friends, I’m not sure…but they looked quite a bit alike) were still there….smoking ANOTHER round of cigarettes with the same amount of gusto they put into their first round of cigs, and still flirting with the deejay on the air.

I kind of wish I could have heard the discussion to catch if the deejay was flirtatiously scolding the clearly underage cuties for their heavy smoking. You gotta wonder if that deejay had the fetish himself. Why else would he indulge these smoker girls into such a long discussion as they spewed their carcinogens in his direct path? And I also wondered what some of the people in the crowd were thinking watching this illegal display of tobacco consumption by beautiful underage dark brunettes with zero inhibition.  I would soon meet up with my parents en route to an evening concert, but my evening had more than been made after this epic.

MNSF #9. Only 14 And Blowing Smoke at the Cops

Another epic from the 2007 Minnesota State Fair, and in this case the most memorable 30^th birthday gift the fair would provide me that day.  I was journeying towards the midway in the late afternoon hours of that fine day where I would be on the receiving end of my most epic sighting of the day. Throughout the day, I would always see clusters of impossibly cute early teenage girls on the fairgrounds, the kinds of hotties that every junior high boy lusted for back in the day, and every time I crossed such a cluster, I wished that at some point in the day, the opportunity would arise to see just one of them with a cigarette in hand in the year 2007. Well, my time was now…..

A group of four dollish 13 or 14-year-old girls were working their way from the midway to the Heritage Square area of the fairgrounds. Sometimes when there is only one girl, it’s hard to discern if she is really as young as she originally looks, but there were four girls in this bunch, and they were very clearly in that 8th grade age range. One of them, an adorable blond in a red and white striped tanktop and white shorts, had herself a cigarette extending from her fingers as she walked by. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and proceeded to follow the group of girls en route to Heritage Square.

But the sighting was about to take on an entirely new dimension as the group would wander directly past a parked squad car with two police officers sitting inside. I took notice of the cop spotting the young girl smoking the cigarette, and so did one of the other three girls in the group (a light brunette cutie in a denim miniskirt), who nudged her friend in the shoulder and muttered something to her that was inaudible from my distance, but that I figured was a warning that the cop spotted her smoking. With God as my witness, this blond babe….who didn’t look ANYTHING like a rebel….turned herself completely around a released one of the cloudiest exhales I’ve seen in recent memory directly pointed to the squad car she had just walked by!!!!! The gesture was a thousand times more fierce than a middle finger would have been….and it was coming from this 14-ish girl that looked like she should be a “B squad” cheerleader.  I had all I could do to restrain myself from bursting out into cartwheels.

The group of girls would press forward, and the blond smoker handed off the cigarette to the miniskirted light brunette (every bit as cute as the blond) who warned blondie about the cop watching. The brunette took a few puffs of her own. By this point, I was standing directly behind them and ingesting the headwind of every exhale their young lips spewed, all the while admiring their adorable early teen butts in the respective shorts and denim skirt. As the girls ascended the steps into Heritage Square, the blond (who got the cigarette back after her friend took a couple of drags) dropped it right on the steps. It was a Marlboro Red! These junior high princesses were smoking full-tar Marlboro Reds! Any wonder why this masterpiece is an entry in my all-time top ten??!?!?!?!?  I wouldn’t get another sighting that great for the rest of the day, but it was the sighting that really set the pace for the wildly productive ensuing late afternoon hours.

MNSF #10. Storing Up on Nicotine Before The Hinder Concert

My first day at the 2010 Minnesota State Fair was fairly unsubstantial for most of the day, but around 6 p.m. in my final hour of sightings before meeting up with the family I scored a monster blockbuster that changed the trajectory of the day and ushered in a very impressive final hour, with nothing even coming close to measuring up to the quality of this dramatic gem that took place in the seating area to the east of the grandstand. ….

Sitting next to a boyfriend was a super-cute 22ish dark blond wearing a white tanktop and a perfect-fitting denim miniskirt that looked adorable on her.  Right away as I approached, I saw a cigarette in the hand of both the guy and girl.  I made a second pass to get a better look at the girl.  She wasn’t a knockout beauty, but very cute and wholesome-looking, a solid 8.5 on a scale of 1-10 who added to her allure significantly with that hot little skirt.  There was no place to sit next to the girl, so I had to sit next to the guy and as a result flew pretty close to the sun having to peer over him to get an occasional look at his girlfriend.  It was worth whatever risk though as I saw that first drag as cutie took a good four-second inhale before I watched the thick ball of creamy smoke disappear into her throat for a few moments, resurfacing again in about three seconds with one of the strangest exhales I’ve ever seen.  The smoke spewed out of her mouth first and the jet of smoke fired skyward while the spillover from her nose came later and fired downward. Usually these “jet stream” exhales tend to combine coming out of the mouth and nose to form one stream of smoke, but with this girl, a skybound stream of smoke lasted a couple of seconds before the second act emerged, a nasal stream of smoke plunging downward.  I would see a couple more drags from her, but none that upclose, so I’m not sure if I just caught her in a special drag or if this is the way she regularly smoke.  Either way, you can’t imagine how much I wanted to leap over this boyfriend, hike up this girl’s cute little skirt, and fuck her brains out right there on the cement slab.

Whatever the case, that was only the second hottest part of the sighting.  The boyfriend finished his cigarette first but within about 30 seconds, girly wrapped up hers as well, stubbing it out and dropping it to the pavement below her feet.  I expected they would soon get up to leave, but my adorable and feminine blonde friend had different ideas as she proceeded to extract her pack of Marlboro Lights from her purse only about 20 seconds later and was determined to keep the stink alive.  She fired up another one, and as I said, I didn’t get a very good view of her drags, but I was amazed at how quickly she made the cigarette disappear, apparently taking pretty deep drags into those black lungs of hers.  The boyfriend did not initially light up another cigarette and was a fairly quiet guy.  The girl wasn’t a motor mouth by any stretch, but she still did 90% of the talking as she pulled out her tickets from her purse and commented on how they bought the tickets in June, yadda, yadda, yadda.  But then the conversation got epic…

The girl told the guy he better have another cigarette because it would be a long time in the concert before they’d get their next chance.  The guy acted like it didn’t matter to him one way or another, but did heed her advice and fired up a second cigarette.  The girl was approaching the end of her second cigarette and continued speculating on the length of the concert.  And that’s when it happened.  The girl looked at her fast-diminishing cigarette and said to the boyfriend “I’m thinking of having another one!”  Are you kidding me, I thought to myself.  Three cigarettes in a row back-to-back!  How much nicotine does one girl need??!?!  Unfortunately, the boyfriend shook his head no, indicating he didn’t want to sit through yet another of his foul-smelling girlfriend’s cigarettes.  What’s the matter with you, man!  ANY TIME a hot girl tells you she wants another cigarette, the answer should be an emphatic “YES!!!”.  This time, the girl took a final drag from her cigarette and dropped it to the pavement still smoldering….

In just a few short moments, the two of them got up en route to the grandstand show.  This finally gave me the opportunity to see what she looked like up-close.  Suffice it to say she lived up to expectations completely, with a petite little body about 5’3”, very nice boobs poking out of that white tanktop, and a lower body framed beautifully in that little denim skirt of hers.  Naturally, I thought her walking off would finally be the sunset to this incredible sighting, but she just wouldn’t go quietly.

The boyfriend was still smoking his second cigarette, but the girl blew me away when she held out her hand and grabbed hold of the boyfriend’s cigarette.  He may have denied her the third cigarette she wanted, but he was gonna pay for that by sacrificing some of his own.  I watched as she finished off his cigarette, not even giving him the option of having a final drag himself.  Where do I find these girls?!?!  She was the nicotine girl equivalent of a camel storing up on fat before making an epic journey across the Sahara Desert. Suddenly, the mediocrity of the hours leading up to this point had become a distant memory.

MNSF #11. Mother And Early Teen Daughter Sighting Is Throwback To A Better Era

While the daytime hours during my second day at the 2013 Minnesota State Fair produced a pretty good clip of sightings, there weren’t many that really blew my mind….with one incredible exception in the mid-afternoon.  The moment that still seems surreal to me months later.  It’s when I saw Sighting #40 of the day, the kind of sighting I thought existed only in the past….the kind of sighting I never expected to see again….

Wandering on the block on the north side of the beer gardens block and looking up toward one of the more remote smoking areas, I would be stopped dead in my tracks one bench before I got there.  A family of three occupied a bench.  Dad wasn’t smoking, but mother and daughter were.  I was taken aback on first glance and kept approaching, and with each footstep it became clear that this daughter was young….and I mean very young.  She had a sweet face, filled with bubbly youthful energy and long straight blond hair flowing past her shoulders.  Maybe in 1990 it wouldn’t have blown my mind to see a girl of this pedigree with a cigarette, even smoking in front of her parents….but in 2013 it was downright unthinkable.  I snapped an early photo that was pretty mediocre as it was from a little too far away, right before she took her first drag.  The drag itself was not one of an amateur.  There were no stylistic flourishes per se but this was not this little girl’s first cigarette.  She and the parents watched the extreme ride in front of them as mother and daughter smoked and all appeared amused as they observed.  It was amidst this backdrop that a third party entered the scene and changed the trajectory of the sighting…..

A father approached the bench with two young kids to take a seat, asking them if they minded sharing the bench.  The family was all smiles, particularly the bubbly young blond smoker who, for whatever reason, was absolutely beaming.  At first I thought they knew each other because the dynamic didn’t otherwise make sense, as this clearly WAY underage smoker girl would never be so casual and uninhibited while smoking in the presence of complete strangers.  But as this father got his first good look at the family he was now sharing a bench with, it became quickly obvious that they didn’t know each other.  He took a second look, and then a third look, clearly blown away as I was at this at the sight of this young girl publicly smoking with parental acceptance.

The smoking part of this sighting had one more dynamite moment for me.  My girl took her fourth (and sadly final) drag that I witnessed of the mostly smoked cigarette, and then tilted her head upward.  Keep in mind that this bench was very tightly packed now with so many people on it, so her exhale was bound to invade somebody’s airspace…and in this case it was that of her overweight, working-class nonsmoking father.  A gorgeous mushroom cloud of smoke erupted from this girl’s still-developing respiratory system and while there wasn’t a direct blast into dad’s face, his nostrils were no more than an inch away from his early teen daughter’s air pollution.  I had all I could do to keep my knees from buckling at that moment.  Unfortunately, the smoking part of the sighting was gonna come to a close at least a drag sooner than it should have…..

I couldn’t hear exactly what the young father with the two kids who sat next to this family said to them, but he was pointing to the bathroom area near the beer gardens and I suspect he said “you know, the smoking area is over there”.  Just that quickly, the smiles and good times of mother and daughter smokers vanished….and the daughter crushed her cigarette out onto the bench and dropped the butt to the ground.  Not a word was said otherwise, and apparently the father who made the comment didn’t know they were one bench away from another smoking area.

But even though the smoking portion of the sighting was done as the daughter was concerned, there were still all kinds of additional revelations yet to come.  The daughter stood up from the crowded bench and continued to look at the extreme ride spinning around in front of her.  For the umptieth time in this sighting, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  Up to that point, I was being very conservative in guessing that this girl was 15, but seeing her presexualized body in a vertical position, it became clear she was at most 14 and probably even younger than that.  She had no hips at all and just a couple nubs for boobs in her green tanktop.  Her ass had the beginnings of a curvature in a skimpy pair of brown and white jean shorts. I snapped a full frontal photo and studied it again today, and am convinced that this little cutie is only about to start seventh grade!

The father with the kids got up and left, perhaps annoyed that the mother was still smoking.  The final part of the sighting smoking-wise included the mom stubbing out her cigarette and handing it to the daughter to throw into the trash, which she did, adorably leaving her own cigarette sitting on the ground even as she was tossing mom’s.  I was gonna ID this butt if it was the last thing I ever did so I had to wait out the family continuing to sit there.  While waiting, I looked to the right to the aforementioned smoking area only one bench over from this family, and standing there was ANOTHER mother and daughter smoker duo, where the daughter was a beautiful early 20s light brunette in a very feminine light blue dress.  I caught her in mid-drag at one point looking my direction.  At any other time of the day this girl would have been a huge fetish target, but right now this incredible family had me completely captivated.

I made the connection right away as this sighting was unfolding, but sitting here watching them observe the extreme ride, it struck me just how similar this was to MNSF #2, the most popular sighting on my blog and my second-best sighting of all-time.  Now this girl was an absolute doll, but she lacked that “hottest girl in the middle school” IT factor that my 13ish blond from 2000 smoking with grandpa did.  Still, the fundamentals were the same….an unashamed public display of cigarette smoking from a bubbly, long-haired blond early teen who was giddy watching the extreme rides from a half block away in the company of her accepting elders.  I never thought I’d see any sighting of its kind again after 2000, but I should have learned to never underestimate the Minnesota State Fair.

After another couple of minutes, the family got up to leave, never to be seen again yesterday.  Breathless with excitement, I sat down and checked out the girl’s discarded cigarette butt.  A sighting that was a flashback to 2000 up to that point suddenly became a flashback to 1978.  The cigarette she was smoking was a Merit!  I have NEVER seen a Merit smoked by a girl I’ve fetished and can’t recall anybody smoking the brand since some point in the 80s.  Who was this family?!?!?  Whoever they were, they single-handedly made my second visit to the 2013 Minnesota State Fair unforgettable.

MNSF #12. Grandstand Worker Cutie Supersmokes On A Quick Break

I already cited how despite being the gloomiest day that I ever visited the Minnesota State Fair, the year 2000 produced a few of the best sightings I would ever score and transform it into one of the metaphorically brightest and sunniest days in the history of my fetish.

This was the last year I spent any time at all with the parents going through the commercial exhibit buildings, even though for about two-thirds of my day I went off on my own.  But it was my parents’ presence that gave some yummy context to this sighting. We went underneath the grandstand during the low-traffic morning hours and I saw this one commercial exhibit station peddling some sort of velcro harnesses. I didn’t really pay much attention to the harnesses, but assumed they were for emergencies of some kind. Anyway, one of the three workers there was this very attractive early 20s brunette in a skimpy blue tanktop and well-fitting khaki shorts that perfectly accentuated her curvy bottom. She was showing a customer how the harnesses worked as I walked by and I thought to myself, “She’s cute” and kept walking.

About an hour later, I was walking outside the grandstand by myself, feeling liberated and enthusiastic in one of my maiden solo voyages in search for smokers when I suddenly found one….her! She flew out of that grandstand like a woman on a mission and I immediately recognized her as the girl selling the velcro harnesses.  She quickly fired up a Marlboro Light that seemed to come out of nowhere, and was soon to become the first girl I had ever seen “supersmoking” a cigarette in a public setting. This girl was FEROCIOUSLY pulling nicotine from that cigarette into her black, tar-stained young lungs.

I walked past in a state of bliss, and after scoring that astounding appetizer, I went inside the grandstand building then looped around to the next door so I could go back outside and make the same incredible journey again. I did this three times, watching this girl continue to take intense and lengthy drags from that cigarette every time, always in rapid fire succession. I kept thinking to myself that the filter was gonna burn her fingers she was dragging so hard. After the third time walking past her, I noticed she went back into the grandstand, much as I wanted to see her fire up another smoke.

I almost wanted to go visit that grandstand exhibit so I could have her help me “try out those harnesses”. If the same thing had happened today, I probably would try it. The thought of this girl fastening something on my body ripe with the stench of fresh cigarette smoke still gets me excited all these years later.  And amazingly enough I still had one sighting that day that would be even better.

MNSF #13. A Family of Smokers Watches a Parade

This was my first epic sighting from the epic Minnesota State Fair year of 2006, a sighting that I occurred in the early afternoon and which loved at the time but has continued to grow on me in my fantasies since.

This sighting transpired near the haunted house on the heavily traveled Judson Avenue on the south side of the fairgrounds. It started simply enough with a modestly attractive 19-20ish dark blond dragging on a freshly lit all-white. As I began to visually track her, I noticed she was in the company of a much more attractive college-age brunette wearing a pair of white sunglasses and denim capris and dangling her own freshly lit all-white from the corner of her mouth, looking as badass as is possible for a girl to look. The two girls progressed across the street and my eyes were glued on that long-haired dark brunette carrying on with one of the longest-lasting dangles I’ve seen from a young girl as she walked, almost as if showing off to the world just how beautiful it is for a gorgeous young girl to smoke a cigarette. It must have been a good 45 seconds before she removed that dangling cigarette from her mouth in time to meet up with what I assumed to be her parents and younger sister. Both parents were smoking, and it was clear I had come across a family of smokers.  Already breathless, this sighting was only getting started.

The dirty blonde didn’t look like the other two girls, so I’m not sure if she was part of the family or just a friend, but the sighting would soon add a third player thanks to her as the brunette kid sister, who looked about 18, opened the backpack of the dirty blonde and extracted her pack of Marlboro Lights, wasting no time lighting herself up.  So here we had two long-haired dark brunettes, one likely 20 and the other 18, who were almost certainly sisters and looked exactly alike publicly smoking with their family and friends. Then, a virtual storybook metaphor for this excitement ensued when the Minnesota State Fair’s daily afternoon parade was approaching the scene.

The family of smokers, all still in possession of burning cigarettes, got up to leave, apparently to follow the parade. The younger brunette was in the front of the crowd, so I couldn’t see her very well but I was more interested in the older sister who performed that incredible long-distance dangle only minutes earlier. The girl was right in front of me, dragging copiously from her cigarette and coming to a stop facing the parade float.  I could tell from the inverted filter that she was smoking a Parliament, occasionally using her cell phone to snap pictures from the parade, deftly balancing both the phone and her cigarette in one hand.   She took a couple of final drags before squashing out the cigarette beneath her shoe finally bringing to a close this eventful sighting.  It would have been great to see a little more out of the younger sister but even so it was a bona fide epic that stuck with me for months of future fantasies (particularly that dangle)  and I’m eternally grateful to the Minnesota State Fair for making it happen.

 

MNSF #14. Closing Out The Day With An Amazing Trio of Teen Blonds in Shorts

I had pulled off a second abbreviated day at the 2009 Minnesota State Fair on a sunny Sunday during Labor Day weekend, and the day was going very well.  Nonetheless, I was approaching the final 20 minutes of the day before the agreed-upon departure time at 6 p.m. and I still hadn’t had an epic sighting that day or on any of my trips to the Minnesota State Fair in 2009 for that matter.  But the girls of the MNSF would come through in the clutch.

I was heading southbound from the grandstand area to the beer gardens. Approaching me was a trio of teenage girls, all very wholesome-looking and not particularly raising my radar as potential smokers as our footsteps continued to draw us closer to one another. The girl on the left dominated my attention because she was so beautiful, about 16 with the face of an angel and curly blond hair with pinkish streaks flowing past her shoulders, wearing an ultrafeminine pink tanktop and an equally feminine pair of white shorts. She began to rummage around in her purse, but I’d been seeing girls like her rummage around in their purses for cell phones all day and it was gonna be the same story with this girl, I told myself….But just in case, I looked over my shoulder as she passed me to see if maybe, just maybe, she was gonna be the one wholesome-looking teen beauty queen I would see all day who retrieved something from her purse that wasn’t a cell phone. I remember saying to myself in a state of near shock, “Oh my God!” as her left hand extracted a pack of Marlboro Smooths and I quickly turned around……

I made a point of walking in front of them briefly to get a closer look. There was a definite pecking order to their beauty. The blond was by far the prettiest looking like an absolute angel, while the tall girl in the middle was modestly attractive, and the girl on the opposite end was a plain jane, with obvious acne issues covered up by a thick layer of makeup. After sufficiently viewing their faces, I held back to follow them once again. They may have had varying quality to their 16-year-old faces, but all had equally impressive bodies to observe from the rear, all decked out in shorts. After about 10-15 seconds of these general observations, the beautiful teen blond finally got around to inserting the cigarette into her mouth. She let that thing dangle unlit from the corner of her mouth for a good 20 seconds while digging through her purse, apparently unable to find her lighter. She then had to recruit the least attractive friend to find a different lighter in her own purse, which she soon did. At last, this beauty had everything she needed to spark up her cigarette….

She brought that thing to life and started dragging. The look of pleasure on that pretty face as she filled her bloodstream with desperately needed nicotine made my heart melt, but as I was taking in this amazing display, she managed to catch me off guard again by removing the cigarette from her mouth and then hacking up a lugie so large and juicy that it literally splashed when it hit the pavement.  As I walked past it, I had to admire that generous pool of saliva deposited from her gorgeous smoky mouth.

She took a couple more drags, both with impressive frequency and better-than-expected volume to her exhales coming from a girl so young. At this point, she handed the cigarette to the tall girl in the middle who got her first drag. She then stood there with the cigarette in hand for nearly a minute before finally taking her next drag. The hot chick, having none of this lengthy spans between drags by her friend, all but swiped the cigarette from the other girl’s hand after that second drag and then took three rapid-fire drags of her own. It was a thing of absolute beauty to behold.

Naturally, a sighting would normally have been best if all three had been smoking, but the dynamic of this specific shared-cigarette sighting added to its allure. The primary reason is that the hottest of the two girls smoked about 80% of the cigarette and completely upstaged the taller girl. The third girl who provided the lighter, strangely enough, never got her hands on the cigarette. It was just the two prettier girls. I was in a position to walk directly behind the cluster of girls at points, taking in a few of their exhales directly into my face and admiring from closeup their trio of perfect teenage asses bouncing and wiggling in their skimpy shorts with each step, with flawless legs extending from those shorts without even a trace of cellulite on them. At other points, I would move more to their right side and observe their drags and exhales. Again, the beautiful blonde upstaged the tall light brunette friend on both fronts.  Damn she was sexy.

After dominating the cigarette for most of the walk, the blond handed over the cigarette to the tall friend for the last two drags. She would take those two drags and then crush out the cigarette under her flip-flop. I was a little surprised to see it was a cork filter as I walked past as I always thought Marlboro Smooths were all-whites. I have not been able to get the image of those three teenage butts wiggling in front of me, especially the white-shorted ass that belonged to my favorite sighting of the 2009 Minnesota State Fair.