Fry Kool-Aid and they will come.
Attendance has been strong this year at the North Carolina State Fair, said state Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler, who oversees the N.C. State Fair Division of the Department of Agriculture and Human Services. The Fair runs Oct.13-23 at the fairground in Raleigh, which hosts food stands, crafts shops, rides and agricultural competitions.
“It’s going absolutely wonderfully,” Troxler said. “The thing that I judge the fair by is, are people having fun? And they are.”
The State Fair aims to enhance understanding of agriculture in North Carolina, Troxler said. The Cultivate a Career exhibit, for example, presents the options that make up agricultural careers. Cooking contests and livestock competitions consistently draw entrants from across the state.
“We want people to understand what agriculture in North Carolina is all about,” he noted. “Here we have the ability for kids to look at the livestock, the horticultural exhibits. Yesterday, the line was out the door of the expo building for kids to milk a cow.”
Attendance between Oct. 13 and Oct. 15 totalled 256,861—nearly 12,500 under the numbers for the same time last year, said State Fair spokesman Brian Long. Fair attendance was at a record high last year with 1.1 million during its 10-day run.
In the fairground’s Midway, stalls of food vendors called out to customers. Vendors such as Tootsie’s Funnel Cakes, Poppie’s Fresh Onion Rings and John the Greek—“good and delicious food concessions since 1980”—offered a range of items from Polish kielbasa to Carolina barbecue. Many said the food was the main attraction.
“[I came for] the food,” said Rick Drysard, an information technology recruiter from Wake Forest. “And the kids want to do the rides, and we’re hoping to check out some of the exhibits.”
Although cheese steaks and roasted corn can be found elsewhere, the Midway boasted culinary innovations unlikely to be served in most restaurants—deep-fried desserts.
Attendees enjoyed fried Snickers—the classic candy bar submerged in batter and fried until crispy on the outside, with a core of melted chocolate and crunchy nuts. Fried Oreos, however, tasted more starchy than sweet.
Fried Kool-Aid, however, was the blue ribbon, award-winning new item. Katrina Davenport, a fried-dessert vendor, likened the gooey ball of dough to a cherry-flavored donut.
“I think [it was invented when] somebody tried it at home, but it’s a winner now,” Davenport said. “I’m addicted!”
The Fair also includes a selection of amusement park rides, such as Pharaoh’s Fury, which rocks passengers in a boat-like structure up and down, and Fireball, in which a car works itself further and further up each side of a circular track until its momentum carries it all the way around the loop.
“It made me nauseous just looking at it,” Dysard said.
In the arcade area surrounding the rides, flashing rainbow-colored marquees competed in chromatic brightness, with prizes such as neon-orange and yellow knit caps and SpongeBob Squarepants stuffed toys. Eager fair-goers tossed rings at glass bottles and shot basketballs to win human-sized Rastafarian bananas. A raised pavilion advertised the “World’s Smallest Horse”—one dollar to take a look, no photos allowed.
Every so often the sound of the bustling crowd, the rides and the vendors succumbed to a deafening roar as a modified hot-rod tractor shot out across the Grandstand arena, towing a piece of machinery as far as it could in the event known as a Tractor Pull. Next weekend the grandstand will host a demolition derby championship, a latter-day gladiator fight in which “100 drivers without fear... crash their cars in deliberate automobile mayhem until only one remains,” according to the Fair’s website.
Visitors in the Heritage Village, which celebrates North Carolina’s past, listened to live bluegrass and peeked into a historic tobacco house to see how people cured leaves 150 years ago. Dave Glauer, who looked after a couple of mules in the village, said these exhibits commemorate a way of life that grows increasingly rare in the United States.
“It’s good for people to see what it was like then and compare to what it is now,” Glauer said. “That’s a tradition that we’re going to lose unless we show young people like you what was done.”
Troxler said he hopes attendance remains strong, weather permitting, but that the main focus is making sure people have a good time—something to guarantee attendee’s return visits next year.
“We kind of judge the Fair on a couple different criteria,” Troxier said. “Number one, everybody goes home alive and unhurt, number two, the lights stay on and number three the toilets flush, and if we do that we’ve got a good day.”
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