My Day at the Texas State Fair by Bea Tifton

 

This year, I got to do something that brings me back to my childhood. I grabbed one of my most agreeable and fun loving friends and we went to the Texas State Fair.  It’s been welcoming fairgoers since 1886 and has only closed twice; once for W.W. II and once during the Pandemic lockdown. It runs for 24 days, making it the nation’s longest running fair and one of the biggest.

My friend and I are not carnival or midway fans, but there are many games and rides at the State Fair, including a huge Ferris wheel called the Texas Star and a sky tram called the Texas Sky. But there are also many other things to see and do.

Like eating. Every year the State Fair has a competition to see what outlandish dishes, usually fried, food vendors can create. I love when those finalists come out in the paper because it means that the fair is approaching.  This year’s winners didn’t disappoint in their , um, uniqueness. The best taste for a savory is the Fried Charcuterie board. Meat, cheeses, and fruit are wrapped up in a wonton wrapper and fried. The best taste for sweet is the Peanut Butter Paradise. It’s a deep fried honey bun injected with caramel, topped with peanut butter, and sprinkled with powdered sugar. The most creative winner is the Cha-Cha Chata, vanilla ice cream blended with horchata and poured into a cup rimmed with cinnamon and caramel, then topped with whipped cream. I think I  gained five pounds simply by typing this paragraph.

Fried Charcuterie

Big Tex is a giant statue with a loudspeaker system. A man speaks into the loudspeaker, always opening with, “Howdy, folks,” and welcomes people to the state fair. But Big Tex didn’t start out as a staple at the state fair. In 1949 in Kerens, Texas, he was the largest Santa in the world and he was erected to encourage local shopping. He looked downright scary. But in 1951, the State Fair bought Santa and did a few things to transform him into Big Tex. He didn’t speak until 1953.  Each year Big Tex gets a new set of clothes. In 2012 an electrical short actually made Big Tex burn down and people were devastated. SRO Associates in the little town of Boerne, Texas, carefully rebuilt Big Tex in time for the 2013 opening.

We visited the exhibit halls. One building is called GO Texan. Vendors from all over the state come to market their Texas made products, everything from salsa to fudge. And every booth gives out these tiny free samples. We munched our way through the building, talking with the vendors to find out their stories. I had a small sample of Desert Door Sotol that would have knocked me on my patooti if it had been a full glass.  And at the Craft Pavilion, we looked at the best of the best for Texas photographs, quilts, canned jams, and a host of other food and craft items. We were just like kids at the petting zoo. I love llamas and my friend loves pigs. We saw these adorable piglets playing and rolling around just like puppies. Hard to believe they start out so small and grow so big. We saw more exotic animals like camels, water buffalos, and kangaroos.

We were exhausted, and it was time to go. On the tram to our distant car, we talked about our favorites. We both said the petting zoo, then the Go Texas. (Hey, free samples!) We’ve already made plans to do some things we didn’t have time to do next year, like riding the Texas Star and the Texas Skyway. See you at the Texas State Fair, my friend.