It took me 45 minutes to get from Center City to the Middletown Grange Fair last Wednesday afternoon. A grange fair, as I did not know before meeting my present girlfriend, is the rural American institution where people win blue ribbons for the best rhubarb pie, the best tomatoes, etc. My girlfriend's dairy-farmer cousins participate in Middletown's fair, and I thought it might be worth my time, in this era of "two Americas," to see what it was about. So I went to watch the grange select its grand champion pig.

Driving out to the fair, you do not feel as though you are making a Green Acres-like transition. The surrounding area falls midway between suburb and exurb, with pleasant, if synthetic, housing developments, a proverbial "cute" Main Street and office parks — the most noticeable being the shared campus of Holy Family University and Lockheed Martin. Upon entering the fairgrounds, however, you find yourself amidst crowds of tractors and livestock, including, of course, the evening's competitors, who snort around in the hay while their teenage managers spray them with hoses. The pigs seem to come in two shapes: thick, strong and saggy around the gut, like an aging heavyweight fighter, or else smooth and solid, like a swimmer. They are disinterested.

Only five teens raised pigs for this year's show, with about 15 pigs competing in all. A veteran of the event recollected that when he was younger, about 30 humans had competed. There were several reasons for this decline, he said, but the most interesting was the suburbanization of the region: The many small farms that used to fill the rolling hills here have made way for the expanding commuter spheres of Philadelphia and New York. That means fewer kids with the know-how, the facilities or really, the interest, to raise pigs.

It also means that communal events like the grange fair acquire a hybrid quality. You might see Maggie Fisher's blue-ribbon crochet, and, standing over it, a teenager with an earring and a Hollister jersey. It gives the lie to the two-Americas trope.

I often wonder whether suburban kids with farmers for neighbors experience the same occasional disconnect that I, as a secular, urban Jew, sometimes do with my girlfriend's rural, Christian family. It's not as though we argue over displaying the Ten Commandments in school (we might differ on that, but it's never come up). Rather, we each assume certain things to be obvious, even instinctual, when they're not. At the pig show, for instance, it occurred to me that my girlfriend's 15-year-old cousin had spent the last six months with his pigs — feeding them, cleaning them and gaining from them that heart-melting look of pure dependence that domestic animals offer. On Saturday, the beasts would be auctioned off and promptly slaughtered. I asked him whether he was struggling with his pig's fate.

"Nope," he said, smiling and smacking the pig on its haunch, or "ham." "This is pure bacon."

I asked him how he avoided building an attachment, expecting to hear either a practical strategy or a rationalization.

He shrugged. "You just can't," he said — much the way I might explain why I don't worry about my car being stolen. Sure, I could string together an argument about the statistical likelihood and blah-blah-blah, but the reality is, with time and routine, we grow comfortable in our place. It would take time for someone from someplace else to get comfortable there.

Just before the show, the kids began busily preparing their swine: clipping hairs, brushing backs. Spectators with lawn chairs gathered around a fenced pen, and the judge, a globe-stomached professor from a local agriculture school, was introduced. The first pigs were brought into the ring.

It was at this point that my allergies kicked in. I don't know if it was the pigs, the hay, or what, but all of a sudden I was sneezing every 10 seconds, and I couldn't see. Meanwhile, my girlfriend's cousins are asking me why I'm not writing things down and I can't tell one pig from the next any better than I know Peter from Paul.

Look, here's a smattering of observations: All of the kids have changed into collared shirts. They herd the pigs around the pen with old-timey canes. It's a "tough situation" when your pig is chewing on the judge's boot. There are several different contests, and kids smile shyly when they win.

The grand champion hailed from the heavyweight division. Because of its title, I was told, it would bring the best price at auction. I was curious to get a good look at the winner, but I was starting to feel like I was stuck in one epic sneeze, and anyway, as I had been reminded numerous times throughout the night, the animal only won because of how it would look as bacon. In the car on the way back, unaccustomed to the lack of streetlights, I drove with my brights on.