We were in Des Moines a couple of weeks ago. We went there to learn about soy beans, and some of our newly acquired knowledge will be discussed in this space shortly.
But the Iowa State Fair, the mythic grand-daddy of all state fairs, was in progress, so we spent a couple of days there. I’m a city kid, as I proudly proclaim, and part of my anthem comes from one of my favorite songs, sung by Judy Garland and stating, unabashedly, "I don’t breathe nuthin’ I can’t see."
But I like state fairs, and I’ve visited a number of them. I don’t like them enough to make special trips, but if I’m in the state, I may make a detour to get to the fair. When I was a young sports editor of the Columbia Missourian, I covered auto races at the state fair in Sedalia, and I did a couple of stories about the fair during my days at the Post-Dispatch, when I also shocked an editor by identifying a Brown Swiss and a Charolais, among others, in a set of pictures of cows.
I’ve visited the Missouri fair on 10 or 12 occasions, most recently when I even sat through half a concert by ZZ Top. One year, the carnival folks there were old friends who had spent the previous winter camping outside Petersburg, Va., where I was in the Army. I met some of the people, became friendly, shared a lot of beer during their winter layover. They offered me a job as an advance publicity man, and I was sorely tempted, but I had a commitment to graduate school. It was a great surprise to see them in Sedalia, but a very pleasant one.
During that prehistoric time, I was a soldier and managing editor of the Fort Lee (Va.) Traveller. One day I learned that a veteran master sergeant who not only was the pro at the post golf course but also was the brother of Sally Rand, the famous fan dancer and stripper, and she was appearing at the Virginia fair, some 30 miles north in Richmond. So I assigned myself the story, checked an Army staff car out of the motor pool and took him along. As we walked into the tent where she was appearing, he glanced up at the stage, then turned away and remarked that he’d seen the routine before.
Some years later as a young sports writer for the late, lamented Globe-Democrat, I covered several Texas-Oklahoma football games, played during the fair at the Cotton Bowl on the fair grounds and serving as a keynote attraction. For a handful of years in the ‘50s, the Missouri Tigers played SMU on the night before the Red River classic, and Bob Broeg, then covering the Tigers for the Post-Dispatch, was great company. On one football-stuffed weekend, we filed our stories on the Texas-Oklahoma game, then drove to Waco to see Baylor play Arkansas in former Mizzou coach Frank Broyles’ first game as head coach of the Razorbacks. On another, we drove to Fort Worth to see TCU against someone, then went to a party at Ben Hogan’s golf club.
And, while working for the Football Cardinals and serving as an advance man for an exhibition game against the Minnesota Vikings, I discovered the fair was in progress in St. Paul, so I spent a day enjoying it.
Iowa has the butter cow, a life-size sculpture, in pure butter, of a Holstein – wearing Harry Potter-style glasses this year and accompanied by a statue of Potter, also life-size. No pat of Potter here.
Iowa also features fair food, in both meanings of the modifier. Anything that can be deep-fried and stuck on a stick is up for grabs, from hard-boiled eggs (not fried) to pork chops (grilled). Among the battered and fried items were corn dogs (of course), Snickers bars, chicken, alligator chunks and corn on the cob. The list goes on, and includes cotton candy and a fine ice cream from an old pharmacy called Bauder’s. (They have a booth at the fair; try the peach or the mocha ice cream sandwich.) Iowans have not stooped so low as to add ravioli to the menu, but I’m sure it’s not far away.
The usual displays are nicely turned out, with an entire building devoted to the birth process and piglets, lambs, kids, calves, chicks and other baby animals. We saw a two-hour-old calf, hours-old pigs, day-old kids of the goat sort and so on. They were cute as hell, too.
Hundreds of RVs and trailers are on site, with many families spending all their waking time with their potential champion hogs, steers or horses – and llamas, turkeys, bulls and others – in the barns, where grooming is as constant a process as manure-shoveling. Pride, ribbons and lots of money are at stake, and when the animals settle down, the families retreat to their campers.
Lots of children, lots of the usual rides on the midway, the usual games of semi-skill to win a stuffed animal for the new-found girlfriend.
The Iowa State Fair, by the way, was the inspiration for Phil Stong’s novel, "State Fair," made into a move in 1933 with Will Rogers and Janet Gaynor. A dozen years later, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II made it into a musical, winning an Academy Award for best score, and a best-song Oscar for "It Might as Well Be Spring," an ode to the arrival of the season from a very different viewpoint than Fran Landesman’s "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," a decade later. Jeanne Crain and Dick Haymes were in this one, and a turgid remake followed with Pat Boone, Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret.
And I wondered, as I wandered, why Iowa was so successful and Missouri just another poot-water fair, ignored by the newspaper in the state’s largest city, despite the fact that the managing editor most recently was in Dallas, where the fair is a big deal, as it is in Des Moines and Dallas and St. Paul, with big newspaper and television coverage, even visits from politicians.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think visits from politicians are the last thing you want at a fair. Photo ops clog the lines to the rides and the exhibits, and interfere with the corn-dog and snow cone feasting. But I do think Missouri needs to rework its fair.
How?
Simple. Move it to Columbia or Jefferson City. Both are centrally located, both have lots of hotel rooms and display space. The Sedalia fair grounds are adequate, but there’s a woeful shortage of hotel rooms.
Beef it up a little – or pork or chicken it up. Spend some money on publicity, on advertising with a modern message. And don’t use the same style as so many other state agencies. They’re still in the dark ages, which is the way this state government acts – in the dark, behind closed doors, with limited skill and less imagination. Because I think the state fair is an endangered species, and I’d hate to see it disappear.
–Joe
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Hi, Joe and Ann,
My name is Samantha Ross, and I’m a researcher for the Food Network show Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. I’ve recently been assigned to research the St Louis/Southern Illinois area, and I (being a NJ native who went to college in Minnesota) have little to no idea where to start, so I thought I’d get in touch with local food bloggers to get an idea for some local favorites. Can you (or any of your readers) think of any awesome places that might fit into our format?
Thanks a bunch,
Sam