All the way home the other night, my mind hummed Bob Dylan’s signature song, “The Times, They Are A-Changing,” and I found myself whining just as he did in each refrain.

Bob and I aren’t the only ones who lament the changes swirling around us like mosquitoes at a campfire. My latest hero, John Adams, (after reading his splendid biography by David McCullough) wrote in a letter to James Warren in 1776: “All great changes are irksome to the human mind. …”

It is irksome indeed to accept change, even the ones that aren’t so great. I’m irked every time I drive over a silent bridge that used to sing. Or read a newspaper whose typography is different. Or round a curve where an old house used to stand. Or see a chain restaurant instead of a farmer’s market or gray hair instead of brown.

Or visit a traditional country fair and see an ATM booth on the midway rather than a calliope.

All the way home, I counted change as though I were a bank teller, mentally placing into columns the debits and credits, as well.

In the livestock pavilions, there were no sows and squirming piglets to delight the young and old, but there were Nubian goats with floppy ears and comical antics. There were no rabbits or chickens in pens, but there were horses in caged stalls and Charolais cattle on hay, llamas and sheep and 4-H blue ribbons.

In the debits, there was no petting area due to concerns of hoof-and-mouth disease, no fireworks display at night because of drought conditions. On the credit side, there were quilts and cross-stitch samplers, giant pumpkins and gay sunflowers, gladiola stalks and paintings, pickles and blueberry shortcake.

There still were pony rides for youngsters but no barbecue pork on an open pit. There were no quarter games of chance, but there was fried dough and fresh lemonade and whirling rides and sheepdog trials.

Many of the changes at the fair over the years have been for the best. Gone are strip shows, beer tents and high-stakes gambling. Parking lots have improved, though traffic flow has not.

No one should expect her familiar fair to stay the same year after year any more than she could keep her long-ago children from out-growing bumper cars.

On the way home, I fought a losing battle against change. It may be irksome, but it certainly is inevitable.

The huge harvest moon glowed above the horizon like a fireball. But within minutes – and only a few miles – a smaller, whiter moon had climbed into the sky and illuminated the road. It, too, had changed before my very eyes.