Man, I couldn’t wait to get on the Tilt-a-Whirl. Call me childish if you want, but a good thrashing on the Tilt-a-Whirl is just the way to get an afternoon started. Adrenaline stored deep down into the bones gets whipped into a froth and fed into the blood. It’s better than crack, that action, and I was looking forward to it.

But there was no Tilt-a-Whirl. No Zipper and no Pirate Ship either, and how do you like that?

Despondent, I headed over to the beer tent to drown my sorrows. But, blast the horrible misfortune, there was no beer tent and not a pint being offered up anywhere.

Grumbling and kicking random stuff on the ground, I began stomping my way toward a soothing cup of coffee. The needle marking my emotional barometer was dipping badly and I was facing a full-on plunge into self-pity.

A caffeine-free plunge, as it turned out, because there was no coffee to be had, either. I opened my mouth to express dissatisfaction, but the only thing that fell out was a bunch of exclamation points, ampersands and other characters meant to mask profanity. They tumbled in to the grass and got eaten by a goat who promptly passed them into a bucket to be carried away and recycled into rope and hats.

This was my introduction to the Common Ground Fair in Unity, a place where eco-conscious types go to sample earth-friendly wares, taste the finest in organic foods, and make rope out of four letter words.

Now, before you get your hemp in a knot, let me emphasize that I lean toward the environmental side. I recycle, oppose drilling and firmly believe that two more bad presidents might just render the planet a barren, smoldering chunk of charcoal.

But living organically? Forget about it. I know nothing. Witness the ignorance I displayed at the fair when I mustered the audacity to order a sausage (made out of free-roaming tree bark, I think) on a white bread roll.

A crowd of dozens within earshot stopped what they were doing. There were loud gasps and three men fainted. Women snatched up their children and covered their ears. Leek soup was sprayed out of shocked mouths and a half dozen people dropped their falafels in horror.

Murmurs went through the crowd and several scowling patrons aimed their Birkenstocks at my backside before realizing that my backside was made of impure cloth and might have soiled their feet.

I came for the rides, beer and coffee and almost got killed because I ordered something on white bread.

But you see, here is where you have to forgive me. I grew up thinking that white bread was among the most wholesome and salubrious things you will ever find. It was only recently that I learned otherwise, when my wife explained that white bread is refined and processed to the extent that there is no nutritional value left in the blah blah blah blah.

Imagine my surprise.

She also explained how orange juice is not the very essence of good health I had come to believe because you get a massive dose of sugar with no fiber to balance it out and yada yada ding dong dang.

You are dealing with a guy who thinks that a well balanced meal is a Bloody Mary and a steak grilled twenty seconds on each side.

I know right? A barbarian!

I don’t know how to turn turkey waste into a viable energy source or how to spin yarn from a live bunny. And you may think I’m cracking wise here, but an actual woman was spinning actual yarn from an actual live bunny that sat upon her lap at the fair.

The last time I saw something like that was at a carnival sideshow and there was screaming.

The fact is, I’m probably a hippie at heart, but I have no idea how dreadlocks are made and shiitake still sounds to me like something you say when you fall off a bar stool. I’ve never met a bean I liked and the only thing I know about beats is that they really sting when someone drills you in the lower back with one. The Beat War of 1982 in my neighborhood was brutal.

But I’d guess that there are more people like me than not. We put our cans and plastics into big blue bins and set them at roadside. We don’t drive monster cars because we tend to believe Al Gore’s take on things and we don’t kill things on the endangered list.

We mean well, but we are ecologically dim. When our minds were growing, the hippie days were over and the environmental movement had not yet begun. The only people who embraced nature were Druids. “Celebrating a Rural Lifestyle” meant you were poor and lived in a mobile home out in the sticks. The only thing we knew to do with hemp was illegal and eco-mindedness had not become the fashion it is today.

If I wore a natural fiber shirt with yoga pants and tai chi shoes back then, brother, I would have been thrashed every day on the playground.

So, my foray to the Common Grounds Fair wasn’t a joyous one, but I’m careful not to misconstrue that fact. It’s not that the fair and I disagree on things but only that I came with an intellectual disadvantage.

But I learned a bunch and anyway, who needs a Tilt-a-Whirl and a beer tent? That’s just a formula for upchuck, right there, and I have no idea how you go about recycling that.