The State Fair of Texas (The State Fair of the Great State of Texas) is an annual event held each October at the State Fair grounds around the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. The event is massive – car shows, live animals, a Midway and Ferris Wheel – and it all culminates in mid-October for the Texas/OU Red River Shootout.
On the advice of a few locals who claimed the State Fair was a must-do, I took the DART over to the grounds. The buildings are splendid examples of Art Deco architecture and have recently been refurbished so that they all gleam white under the Texas sun. Well, they would have, but it’s been cloudy and rainy all week.
You buy entry to the fair for $15 and then buy coupons at $.50 each to purchase food and rides and such inside. You are greeted at the main entrance by Big Tex, an enormous cowboy clad in Dickies (the brand, not the aberration).
About the biggest attraction each year at the State Fair is the food. New recipes abound and cooks compete for the title. This year some of the choices on offer were fried butter, fried cheesecake, and fried pork chips. Unsure of what to get, I wandered around looking for the longest line. Undoubtedly, it was outside of Fletcher’s Corny Dogs.
It was about noon, but I forked over some coupons, got my corny dog, and added some mustard. As I ate, I found a vendor selling cups of Shiner Bock six coupons. That’s $3. Again, it was only noon but, it’s five 0′clock somewhere. And, hell, I’m in the Great State of Texas so it’s whatever time damn well want!
After hours of meandering, I had seen stunt dogs, stunt birds, a petting zoo (with a giraffe) and, as it was Seniors’ Day, more electric Rascals than I’ve seen in a lifetime.
Perhaps the grandest site I witnessed all day was when I meandered into the livestock buildings. Past the sheep getting shorn was a huge sign: “CATTLE.” The building was low and expansive, with chain-link side. Inside, gates ran the length of the building with hay and straw and woodchips on either side. Clearly, when the building was full of cows, they would be tethered to the gates and would lie in the straw, facing another cow doing the same on the other side.
As the fair had been winding down and many of the auctions had already taken place, few heads remained. However, a half dozen brown cows near the entry caught my eye. They had beautiful lustrous chocolate-brown coats. There were a few females and one of the largest animals I’d ever seen. I spoke to one of the workers about this behemoth. Turns out, he weighed 2300 pounds. And he was only two years old! The farmhand leaned on his pitchfork, casually scooping a large pile of cowturd and heaving it sidelong into a compost dumpster. “We use him mostly for semen,” said the worker. Apparently, this monster was not going to end up topped with onions, but would spend the rest of his days getting pimped out to cattle ranches around the world. As far as bovine life goes, this one-ton wonder had it made.
Between the elderly, the infirm, and the obese, I was fearful for the safety of the lowest quarter of my body and called it a day amidst the veritable convoy of motorized carts.
