A Mecca Along the Midway

"Our state fair is a great state fair!

Don't miss it, don't even be late!

It's dollars to donuts that our state

fair

Is the best state fair in our state."

Nearly 30 years have passed since Dana Andrews pursued Jeanne Grain across the Des Moines fairground to the accompanying strains of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Andrews is a grandfather by now, and Jeanne Grain makes the rounds of TV talk shows, but the state fairs of the Midwest remain almost immutable. From Des Moines, TIME'S David Wood reports on this year's extravaganza:

It is all very simple. You pay your $1.50 and walk through the 50-ft. metal gateway poles hung with red-and-blue banners. You leave behind inflation, traffic jams, Watergate and the impending struggle of the autumn harvest. Ahead of you, the Ferris wheel arcs into the blue sky over beyond the livestock barns; a lemon-shake stand squeezes between a tractor exhibit and the milking parlor; on your left, the Pleasantville Community School stage band is warming up for a concert, and over there, an hour from now, the quilt-making demonstrations will begin. Pick up some cotton candy along the way.

"The Iowa State Fair is a small city unto itself," says Fair Director Ken Fulk. "In fact, it's a mecca." Mecca indeed. This year the 400 acres of fairgrounds in Des Moines have attracted nearly 650,000 visitors in ten days. Farm families from Iowa towns like Burlington, Belle Plaine, Indianola and Clearfield come to show their livestock, spend a few dollars on the midway, ogle the new farm machinery and see what their neighbors' hogs look like.

No Wink. Kenneth Grouwinkel's hogs look pretty good. He has seven of them, which he brought 150 miles from his farm in Wapello. While his ten-year-old son Kenny tries the 40-ft. giant slide outside, Grouwinkel and his wife and younger son Michael, 3, spend most of their time watching over their animals in the semidarkness of the swine barn. The three-year-old keeps tapping the hogs with a short stick, in order, his mother says, "to keep 'em awake. Lordy, little Michael keeps those hogs so awake they've hardly had a wink of sleep since we got here."

The highlight of Grouwinkel's week comes when he gets 15 minutes to prod his hogs around the kelly green sawdust of the prize ring. "They judge them for conformation," says John Miller, another hog farmer, as he leans against the fence. "What's conformation? If you see a girl walking down the street, and she walks pretty good, and she has good lines, and you just want to grab her, well, that's conformation." Miller later spots a breeder boar with good conformation and buys him for $3,700.

In the sheep barn they are judging black-faced Suffolks. As the owners hold their animals' heads with one hand and rumps with the other, a judge crouches in the center of the ring, staring each bleating contestant in the eye. He gets up, walks over and sticks a finger into a sheep's chest to see how firm it is. If firm, the two dozen spectators murmur approval: if the judge's finger sinks deep into the sheep's chest, a groan goes up. After half an hour of prodding and measuring, groaning and murmuring and bleating, the judge straightens up and signals for the Suffolk Sheep Queen to come out and distribute ribbons to the winners. She strolls out in a red gingham dress, stepping carefully around the manure.

Outside in the bright sun, the fair beckons in every direction. A middle-aged woman in a purple dress directs a dozen kids playing accordions in unison. A youth in a Fu Manchu mustache does card tricks to show how you can cheat with a shaved deck; he then offers shaved decks for sale.

Like the farm lands around it, the state fair is big business now. Seeking to lure people away from their TV sets, the State Fair Board spent $1.3 million to give a showbiz touch to the event. This year's theme is Hawaii, and so lots of the girls appear in ersatz Hawaiian print dresses. Ordinary sno-cones become "Hawaiian delights," and the entrance to the fairgrounds is crowned by wooden cutout pineapples. Fair Director Fulk offers a rationale: "People in the islands eat a lot of pork, and Iowa is a big producer of pork, so we should know all about Hawaii!"

As the sun sinks and the livestock barns take on deeper shadows, the crowds drift toward the midway--the merry-go-round, the octopus, the roller coaster and dozens of unnamed rides that promise squeals of terror. Bottle-and coin-toss games offer stuffed animals, drinking glasses and table lamps as prizes. Off to the side, barkers bellow the fascinations of a 500 look at the three-legged man, the two-headed baby and the incredible snake girl. And the burlesque show: "Come on in closer, folks. We're going to offer you some entertainment, spice-wise. Yessir, we have nudity, but we do not have filth!" The fairgoers stop to gape at the barker, but not many buy tickets. The biggest line forms at the Ferris wheel, where dozens of fairgoers scream in delight as the huge jeweled wheel revolves in the darkened sky.

Soon after midnight, it is over for the day. Young farm boys drag themselves back to the livestock pens to sleep on aluminum lounges beside their hogs or sheep or cattle, while their parents catch the last shuttle back up the hill to where the family camper is parked. Even the midway finally shuts down, and an unaccustomed calm falls over the fairgrounds. Fairgoers somehow find their cars in the mammoth parking lot, load in the family and drive out the gates back to their own lives. Out side the fair, there are harder choices than whether to see the milking contest or the quilt making, and the world of blue ribbons, cotton candy and lemon shakes is something fanciful and far away. Until next year, at least, and the return of the best state fair in the state.

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