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PAULA SCHROEDER: State fair goers today must first battle with traffic. Long lines of cars creep slowly down Snelling and Como Avenues, their drivers occasionally turning into side streets to look for the elusive parking spot. It's a problem now, but prior to World War II, Gale Frost says public transportation was the favored mode of travel to the fair.

GALE FROST: Lots and lots of people came by train. We have records here of special train programs, you know, where there would be maybe so much for a roundtrip to the fair. Well, then, the streetcars would provide the transportation for people coming in from Saint Paul and Minneapolis and Whitebear and Stillwater and Minnetonka. And there was lines out to those like Wildwood-- and maybe you've heard of Wildwood-- and Excelsior Park in Minneapolis. So all those people could maybe drive their horses over there or walk to their streetcar.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Frost is curator of the State Fair History Museum located in Heritage Square. He's been at the fair nearly every year since 1922. His father and grandfather ran the grandstand concessions around the turn of the century, when lemonade sold for $0.10 a glass and roasted peanuts for a nickel a bag. In those days, auto racing and thrill shows were the highlights at the grandstand, and Frost can still remember the big attraction the year he was seven.

GALE FROST: They flew an airplane around the old mile track with a rope ladder on it. And Lillian Boyer rode around in a car. And so the first time around, why she would miss the rope ladder on purpose. Then come around, and she'd get a hold of it. And the airplane would take her up in the air.

Now, that airplane went, I suppose, 20 feet above the ground, right in front of the grandstand in 1922. Now, that was thrilling.

PAULA SCHROEDER: The stunt shows sometimes were disastrous, though. In 1952, a plane looped too low and crashed and burned in front of the grandstand. Two people were killed in that accident. Another year, a man died as he performed a simulated hanging routine.

Insurance requirements have put an end to most of the daredevil stunts. The grandstand has given way to big name musical acts, the forerunner of which, according to Frost, came along in 1930s.

GALE FROST: In Saint Paul here was a group of singers called The White Brothers and Stendal. There were three of them, and they had a white convertible. And they would drive that up and down in front of the track at night with a big spotlight on them, and they would sing in a megaphone. No-- no amplification, just sing. And this was great.

PAULA SCHROEDER: But then everything at the fair is great, as far as Frost is concerned. His enthusiasm is shared by a number of long-time fair goers. The champion is probably Clarence Mielke from Otter Tail County.

CLARENCE MIELKE: This will be 64 years I put the Otter Tail County booth on at the Minnesota State Fair. This will be 59 years I've been working in the grandstand at the Minnesota State Fair. I started in club work in 1913, and I was nine years old. And I have exhibited at the Minnesota State Fair with the 4H booth for 73 years. And I think that I'm the oldest 4H club member in the world that's still living.

PAULA SCHROEDER: I'm Paula Schroeder.