Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 5, 1993 TAG: 9308050193
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
It sure isn't fair Vice President T.C. "Bud" Walsh's golf cart - which he picked up at a yard sale for $250.
The cart conked out Tuesday afternoon.
Still, it lasted long enough for Walsh to take a visitor on a tour of new sights.
Like:
The midway is bigger. And repaved.
There is a circus (see below, under "5. Snakes").
The livestock area is bigger.
There are - not that you'd notice - a few new lights and 48 new, mostly unused acres. There is a family farm exhibit, where city folks can pet a whole menagerie of winsome calves, ducks, rabbits, pigs and goats, and thus get the feel of farm life.
But taken all in all, the 1993 fair is a little bit new and and whole lot tried and true.
Or as Walsh puts it, "just a little bit bigger and a little bit better."
Indisputably this fair, which began Monday, is the same fair in spirit that many thousands of New River Valley residents and their Southwestern Virginia neighbors have flocked to for years. Attendance this year is up, Walsh said. Monday's night's crowd was close to 8,000 people.
The fair is:
Endless circles about a midway crammed with food and folk. Rock 'n' roll music blaring from the gates of bone-rattling rides.
Several grandpas with granddaughters. Several thousand teen-agers. Ruritans, Jaycees and Lions all serving up barbecue chicken, hot dogs and cornbread and beans. Cheap.
It is huge metal sheds chock full of prize-winning potatoes, lima beans and corn stalks, dahlias, carnations and begonias.
It is funnel cakes.
And pork rinds.
Ever study a pork rind? Really study one?
"It's the inner layer of the hog, smoked and fried," explained pork-rind scholar Joyce Smith of Blacksburg - who makes them right in her little trailer, just off the fair's midway.
Smith has plain and barbecued pork rinds for sale, both of them fried in cholesterol-free peanut oil. She also has cold root beer and sarsaparilla.
But the fair is more than that.
More than pork rinds, more than dahlias, more than golf carts, the fair is the sum of all its parts, from grandads to snakes.
Specifically, systematically and scientifically, then, the 1993 New River Valley Fair is:
1. Country music.
The Pirates of the Mississippi performed Wednesday night; fiddle prodigy Alison Krauss performs Friday night. John Conlee performs Saturday night. Tracy Lawrence performed Monday, the teen-aged Six Shooters on Tuesday. None of these people do Van Halen covers. Admission to the 8 p.m. shows are included in the $5 fair admission fee.
2. Animals.
Cows, horses, ducks, pigs, leopards, dogs and goats, to name a few. Snakes (see below). Sheep.
Andrea Johnson brought two sheep. She just got them a week ago, but still harbored hopes for a ribbon in the fair-sponsored 4-H competition.
"To me, they look better than some that I've seen," said Johnson, who lives in Wytheville and is 13.
3. Games.
Most of these involve the unexplained allure of stuffed animals, which can be won by any of several nearly impossible methods involving such things as rings and bottles, air guns, basketballs, softballs, darts and balloons.
Consider the Bowler Roller.
The goal of the Bowler Roller player is to roll a bowling ball down a steel track and then over a little hump - without rolling it so hard that the ball ricochets off a bumper and back over the little hump, to end up right where it began.
If that happens, you lose.
Most people lose.
Wytheville-born Sheree Macaroni, 11, has her patter down pat:
"It's only a quarter," said Macaroni, rapping into a microphone with all the cool competence of the Artful Dodger closing in on a wallet. "All you have to do is roll the ball slow and easy. Just enough to make it stay in the alley."
Some sucker tried.
"My little baby cousin can roll better than that," Macaroni observed. "And she's only 18 months old."
Sigh.
4. Rides.
Without going into detail, suffice it to say that most of these rides are designed for the certifiably insane, or immortal, or both.
Teen-agers, that is.
5. Snakes.
These - for people who like snakes - can be found in abundance at the Royal Palace Circus, behind the grandstand at the New River Valley Fair.
Of course the circus - which has performances scheduled for today and Friday at 5 and 7 p.m., and Saturday at 3, 5 and 7 p.m. - isn't just snakes.
You also can see a leopard jumping through a ring of fire. A pretty girl in a bikini hanging by one ankle from a rope. A man in an Indian costume throwing knives at a woman in an Indian costume - (there seems very little that is correct about this scenario, politically speaking, but never mind) - who is spinning around on a board. Apparently, he tries not to hit her.
But if you enjoy snakes, the Royal Palace Circus was designed especially for you.
The circus has a whole trunk full of snakes.
Pythons.
One of them is so big it takes two people to lift it, and it stretches all the way across the performing arena.
You'll have to imagine what the circus people do with all these snakes, or see the show yourself.
But the most amazing thing, in this reporter's opinion, is that at the end of a recent show, the announcer said anyone who wanted his or her picture taken with a living python, could.
Three bucks per person. Five bucks per group.
There was a line.
by CNB