The mornings are getting crisp, the leaves are holding onto their last bit of summer life, and it is Mrs. Faber’s favorite time of year. The kids are going back to school.

While things may be different in your particular geography, for us in the Pacific Northwest, we tend to get very distinct seasons. The shortest of which always seems to be our summer. There is about eight months of rain and two months of summer. Here, summers are truly a gift from above, with beautiful soaring mountains; the Puget Sound’s cold, clear waters snaking around hundreds of small islands; and farmers sprinkling cow poop through their irrigation guns.

I’m never quite sure if the beauty of the Pacific Northwest is magnified a little by our Stockholm syndrome from living in rain and clouds for eight months. As you can imagine, it’s a bit of an emotional roller coaster as we see sun and warmth only for it to slowly wane away back into rain.

As a child, the end of summer was always signified by our local county fair. This was a week of trying to keep shoe polish on cows and ringworm, broken up by a show or two. There is something incredibly nostalgic and unifying for a community to have a county fair. It’s a place to meet up with old acquaintances and make new ones.

The highlight of our county fair is always the demolition derby. This is where the Faber Dairy ace mechanic crashes into cars all night with the hopes of not having to make a workman's comp claim on the dairy on Monday morning. Given the state of the Faber Dairy tractor fleet, this fine young man has been well groomed to get the very most out of a smoldering chunk of metal that used to resemble a car.

With Faber Dairy proudly emblazoned on the side of a decommissioned ’70s Crown Vic, our fearless mechanic snakes his way through the twisted metal attempting to line up the perfect hit. Unfortunately, the perfect hit invariably ends up being his younger brother, which reignites old flames and will make this year's Thanksgiving dinner awkward once again.

The chaos continues to unfold as he attempts to duck, dip, dive and dodge everyone he can. Historically, the end result has been a car sitting on top of an ecology block with a drivetrain in the dirt, three wheels still on and a radiator spraying steam everywhere. If insurance people had any sense of humor, they would be title sponsors: “Welcome to the Geico Demolition Derby 500.”

It’s not a county fair experience without getting an ice cream sandwich or whatever concoction has recently been added to the deep fryer. It truly is an American experience. All this was bittersweet as a young man, knowing that just around the corner was eight-hour days of geometry and writing assignments.

Here we are again.

Cheers to a summer that went by way too fast, and here’s to another school year of trying to figure out sixth-grade common core math.