Summary

In “Meet Me at the Fair (1962),” Pascual, Ernest’s friend, hands Ernest a note from Gracie. Gracie tells Ernest that she has gone to the fair and tells Ernest to go to the Space Needle. Ernest heads to the fair, searching for Gracie, noticing many changes from the last fair. Instead of neoclassical architecture, the fair has “visions of the future made manifest in painted steel and soaring walls of pastel concrete” (282). In contrast to the monolingual white American fairgoers of his youth, Ernest sees “beautiful, chattering, modern people, who all seemed to be speaking in different languages--Chinese, Japanese, the romantic languages of Europe, sprinkled among the assortment of American accents” (282-3). Ernest heads up the Space Needle in search of Gracie and finds Maisie instead. Ernest and Maisie are both happy to see each other, but...