I'm reading a book this week - "The Art of Mending" by Elizabeth Berg - in which a portion of the story takes place at the Minnesota State Fair. It's a good read and has evoked all kinds of memories of that wonderfully big and lavish fair.

Once you've cast your eyes upon the likeness of a dairy princess carved from a 90-pound block of butter, you just don't forget it.

The butter sculptures are one of the Minnesota State Fair's claims to fame.

Every year, the young woman who's crowned Princess Kay of the Milky Way - the official good-will ambassador for the Minnesota dairy industry - gets to pose in a walk-in, glass-walled refrigerator while the sculptor whittles away at the butter and visitors gawk through big windows. Other princess finalists also get their own butter busts.

Princesses take their butter sculptures home with them at the end of the fair and I heard awhile back that one of them melted hers down for a popcorn party. A better use of that much butter might be a lutefisk dinner.

I attended the state fair four or five times throughout my years in 4-H. If you won grand champion on something at the county fair, you won a trip to the state fair.

I was forever giving demonstrations in those days, at the annual Dairy Day in my hometown (you've realized by now that the dairy industry is a big deal in Minnesota) and at the Clay County Fair. One time a blender lid flew off as I was churning up some fairly disgusting concoction that had cottage cheese and Jell-O in it. Didn't get champion on that one.

For dairy demonstrations, the recipes, of course, had to have plenty of dairy products in them.

I think I was a junior in high school the year I won a purple ribbon on my food demonstration and had to schlepp suitcases full of the makings of my "Beef & Biscuit Casserole" from Northern Minnesota to the Twin Cities. Actually, I had enough ingredients for two casseroles, since you had to show the finished product.

It was a fairly nerve-racking trip because you had to perform before a live audience, with big mirrors overhead so people could see what you were doing. Everything would have been fine, except that just before I was ready to slip into my white dress, I realized someone deliberately had squeezed toothpaste all over it.

Living quarters at the state fair's 4-H building were institutional barracks full of triple-decker bunk beds in rows and rows on concrete floors with absolutely no privacy. It could have been anyone playing a practical joke, though I still suspect my very competitive cousin who also was competing in the demonstration competition.

I hurriedly sponged off most of the toothpaste and no doubt smelled mighty minty fresh as I headed for the kitchen.

Other than that one near-disaster, I have nothing but fond memories of wiling away time at the 320-acre fair - no chaperones or parents, just bunches of teenagers on the loose, going from one carnival ride to another. I still remember the thrill of the double-decker Ferris wheel, and the delicious chow mein at one of the food booths.

I went back to the fair one time as an adult to see Johnny Cash in concert, but that was 31 years ago. I'd love to see how the fair has changed and expanded since then, but if I never get back to that state fair again I've always got those indelible visions of butter princesses to remember.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com