By Mark David Blum

So I am sitting around mulling over another Syracuse monumental football defeat with one of my favorite Fair food stand owners. In between frozen margaritas, we just had to laugh and wonder how much longer we have to suffer the ‘Robinson era’. It is almost midnight and only hardcore Fairgoers remain.

Out of nowhere, comes a guy to the restaurant. Clearly way over the top and totally shitfaced, and slurs out his begging for a couple of beers and a pizza. Notwithstanding beer hours stopped hours ago, this guy refused “No” for an answer and after several attempts at negotiation, he meandered off. We returned to our discussion.

It wasn’t 15 min later, the drunk returns. In his hand was a 3/4 cup of beer and a hamburger with all the fixins. Again, he asks to top off his ‘beer’ and is whining about his hamburger.

“Look at this pathetic hamburger”, he snorts. “It has everything but cheese on it. Can I have some cheese for the burger. Just one piece of cheese please; I will pay you $1.00 for one piece of cheese.”

Having mercy on the poor fellow and his intoxicated plight, my buddy goes and gets three pieces of sliced mozzarella … shredded mozzarella … and puts three shreds in the guy’s burger.

“What is this shit?” The drunk begins a tirade about what kind of game is being run on him. He asked for cheese, paid a buck, and got three shreds of mozzarella.

“Hey buddy”, starts my friend. “I gave you two more pieces of cheese than you asked for.”

At this point, my coffee was spit out of my mouth and shot halfway across the restaurant as I could no longer contain my laughter.

After some intense negotiations, the drunk offered to do a dance out there on the streets of the Fair if he could have a serious dose of cheese for his burger.

Yes, he did a quick jig, got his cheese, and staggered off … probably in search of more discarded and abandoned cups of beer.

And I got yet another Fair story.