I'm safe in saying that the man and woman selling tickets from the booth were long since married, and probably on a return engagement at the side entrance to the Carver County Fair in central Minnesota. Three dollars each is all they asked. For this they would interrupt their conversation to wave you in with a smile. Inside, I waited while my friend Beth asked directions to the sheep's barn. I was duly informed by Beth, an Illinois farm-country native, that it is called the sheep barn, not the sheep's barn, as my naive city consciousness impelled me to suggest.
Sheep is plural.
I know that now. There are a million varieties of humanity found within the confines of this land of more than 10,000 lakes. But there is something that still seems to define us as Minnesotans. And it isn't Lake Woebegone. Oh, we all can probably do some rendition of Ole and Lena and speak in a head-nodding language the nuance of which true foreigners from places like New Jersey miss.