Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

JOHN BIEWEN: Some people say that Minnesotans have an inordinate fascination with their state fair. If that's true, then Gale Frost is the quintessential Minnesotan.

GALE FROST: I was down on the carnival just the other day. Yesterday, I think it was. I said, do you work here, do you, to a guy working around there. Yeah, he says, I work here. What do you do? So he says my nickname is "Handlebar Hank." And he runs the-- what they call it-- "The Wall of Death," you know, motorcycles around the wall. See, so that's his job.

Well, I chatted with him for half an hour. And he said, down at my place, I got a wheel that we crashed, you know? Well, we'll put a picture of the-- of his "Wall of Death" thing, 8 by 10, and the crashed wheel, you know?

JOHN BIEWEN: So you're always-- you're always looking for--

GALE FROST: Artifacts.

JOHN BIEWEN: --always looking for stuff-- artifacts, photos, stories.

GALE FROST: Sure.

JOHN BIEWEN: In the last 17 years since his retirement as a traveling salesman, Frost has collected, compiled, and labeled the hundreds of artifacts, photos, and posters that cram the small state fair museum. As museum curator, Frost is the more or less official state fair historian. He says about 200,000 people come through the fair museum every year.

GALE FROST: We find a lot of grandfathers telling their kids that they saw this, you know? And this is one thing I like about the museum. People are-- they have their memories kind of jogged about the things that they saw here. They have no scrapbook of pictures that they took here. So we're showing them a scrapbook of stuff that-- that they might have kept of things they saw.

They'll go by, and they'll say, I saw this. I saw that. I was here that time, you know? And the kids like that, too, you know, because it's different than-- than what's now.

JOHN BIEWEN: Some things are different. Frost has a photo of two locomotives crashing head-on in a state fair stunt from the 1930s. They don't do that anymore, but other things have stayed constant. For example, there's always been a freak show at the fair.

Now, what is this? This catches my eye here-- "The Giant's Ring."

GALE FROST: "Giant's Ring." That was a giant in the sideshow.

JOHN BIEWEN: And what we've got-- what it is is a-- it's just a big green--

GALE FROST: Plastic.

JOHN BIEWEN: --plastic--

GALE FROST: Finger ring.

JOHN BIEWEN: --ring screwed onto a piece of wood.

GALE FROST: Yeah, he was here about 1959. That's--

JOHN BIEWEN: Do you remember him?

GALE FROST: Oh, yes. Chatted with him. You bet. Had a nice talk with him.

JOHN BIEWEN: Frost is a second-generation state fair buff. His father worked at the fair as a poster salesman and concessionaire from 1906 to 1975. The elder Frost compiled a book about the fair's early years. Gale Frost's first memory of the fair goes back to 1919.

GALE FROST: Sitting on my dad's house-- my-- our house-- on the roof, watching the airplanes over here. And the--

JOHN BIEWEN: Where was that? Where was your dad's house?

GALE FROST: Just down the Commonwealth, about half a mile. And I could see the airplanes flying and the guys jumping from one to the other.

JOHN BIEWEN: Frost has a special interest in the racing and daredevil acts that have always been part of the fair. His own paintings of race cars and wing walkers hang in the museum. He also created "Speedy's Garage," a museum exhibit featuring auto, motorcycle, and snowmobile memorabilia from state fairs past.

GALE FROST: You'll see that we have car parts. Those are all parts of cars that have hit walls in our races. And on the day-- on Tuesday morning, after the races are over, I go up in the racetrack and throw these parts in my trunk of my car and collect these, you see. So I had some from last year.

JOHN BIEWEN: Has anyone ever been killed in a-- in a car racing accident?

GALE FROST: Not for many years. And the old dirt track, when they had the old dirt track, there-- there was people killed here. I would offhand guess five or six drivers and some wire walkers.

JOHN BIEWEN: For all his fascination with what he calls the dirt and grime of the state fair, Frost says he doesn't envy those who make their living organizing or cleaning up or selling things at the fair.

GALE FROST: You got to set it up every year. You got to clean it out. You got to meet all the health standards on food, you know? And you're-- it might be that your equipment isn't working right-- just right, or you can't get anything from the supplier. And there's all kinds of reasons why you don't make any money.

So I never wanted to get into the money end of it. This is fine, and this is easy, and this is what I like, so.

JOHN BIEWEN: You're having more fun than they are.

GALE FROST: Yeah, well, I have more fun than they are.

JOHN BIEWEN: State fair museum curator Gale Frost says the fair still offers more low-cost fun than do pro sports or a casino or even the mega mall. I'm John Biewen, Minnesota Public Radio.