MPR’s Chris Roberts interviews Minnesota author Karal Ann Marling about random facts on the Minnesota State Fair. Topics include the lack-luster quality of prizes in the Midway, the Ferris wheel, and butter sculpture.

Karal Ann Marling is author of the book “Blue Ribbon: A Social and Pictorial History of the Minnesota State Fair.”

Transcript:

(00:00:01) The smell of the Midway. I'm here

(00:00:03) you're wearing your state fair black this

(00:00:05) morning. That's right. I said that we look like a road company of sprockets this morning sprocket that's public radio for

(00:00:12) you. That's right those public radio fools. Well, I know you you get the Midway fever and you ever hear probably won a lot of

(00:00:19) prizes there lots of prizes. Yes describe them. Well in my study at the moment among other trophies framed on the wall, that is my PhD Roma I also have a stuffed racing pig that I won at the fair the year. I started this book. I have a plush naked chicken hanging by its neck from the ceiling. I thought that was one of my favorite prizes

(00:00:45) good Heavens. What do you mean naked chickens look like

(00:00:47) well, they look like a rubber chicken only plush and stuffed. So sort of a cuddly naked rubber

(00:00:54) chicken. Have you given it a name?

(00:00:57) Thought I'd call it Chris great great. What's neat about state fair prizes is that they look so wonderful when you're trying to win them and they look so unone derful once you got them and I think that's part of the appeal the guys who run the rides and attractions used to call those things slum and that sort of reflects the contempt of the people who give them away for the nature of the prizes. they're pretty cheap stuff the only period in State Fair history, I can think of when they gave away really neat valuable prizes on the Midway was during the Depression when nobody had a thing and they used to run wheels and you'd come and you put your dime down and you might really win a piece of brand name merchandise in the original box or you might win a bag of groceries, but the local merchants in the Twin Cities and elsewhere objected vociferously to this because what you were really doing was buying a bag Bag of groceries everybody would wind up paying just about as much as the product was worth to take it home. There's also a really nice passage. I really evocative passage in in fils tongs. Great novel state fair from 1932 when farmer Frank's Son Wayne comes to the State Fair in Des Moines and tries the games of chance. He's particularly obsessed by a game called hoopla where they're a big plush discs and on top of Disc is a wonderful-looking prize a vanity case for your best girls dresser or are a genuine pearl necklace and the object of the game is to take a wooden hoop only slightly larger than this plush disc and toss it from a great distance and ring the prize you earned the prize in that. Well, that's right and Wayne has tried this in the past and hasn't been very successful. So he's gone home. He's borrowed his mother's embroidery hoops. And He's practiced all winter and he comes back to the fair and son of a gun. He wins every prize and when he gets the prizes, he looks at them and begins throwing them down on the ground. Every one of them is a fake the clock. He wins the ormolu clock that looked so gorgeous from a distance doesn't even have works. The vanity case is really a statue of a vanity case in cheap metal and you can't even open it. So he's profoundly Pointed by all these prizes until the Barker says to him and I quote. Hey kid, did you ever hear of intangibles as long as nobody wins those prizes? They're just as good as they look to be and so he comes away with a kind of lesson some wisdom indeed State Fair always imparts wisdom.

(00:03:46) Doesn't Chris. It's absolutely not worried about pigs and I'm learning something every

(00:03:51) moment. I never expected to hear which and barrows in the same sentence, but I've heard that this morning.

(00:03:57) Oh, well, let's talk about the ferris wheel. It's another Midway attraction. It's 100 years old this year and Minnesota got its Ferris wheel just two years after. Mr. Ferris himself premiered it in Chicago George

(00:04:09) Washington Gail Ferris built the first ferris wheel at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, which was such a big event. They actually canceled the Minnesota State Fair that year, so everybody could go and Ferris wheel was an incredible sized object. It was 250 feet tall. Not only that it had space on it for over a thousand people on every go around Ferris wheel was actually built to rival the Eiffel Tower in height and in Dimensions, so they dragged the ferris wheel around the country. They also built adaptations of it. And that's what Minnesota got in 1896 was a 60-foot wheel and I think it's interesting that people were as interested in how Oh, the wheel was built as they were with the wheel itself or riding it. In fact all the newspapers in the Twin Cities announced the day the ferris wheel was to arrive here and invited people to come out and watch it being assembled. So I've always thought of Ferris wheels as kind of magical pieces of late 19th century apparatus. They were exciting machines like bicycles were in those days and people were as concerned with how they worked and why they were As with anything else, they looked futuristic and mechanical and that was a great part of their appeal.

(00:05:34) I'm wondering where there ever any injuries as people rode the ferris wheel for the first

(00:05:38) time. Well, one of the most notorious accidents happened in nineteen six, when no fewer than three Ferris wheels were set up side by side at the fair housewife from Wisconsin who was sort of a daring and adventurous Soul persuaded her husband a I'd wear dealer who hated that kind of thing to go on the ferris wheel. So they get in the largest one which had plush seats and Brass trim and all of this and it begins going around and all of a sudden her car plummeted to Earth killing the poor lady terrible catastrophe written up in all the papers the ferris wheel operator tried to state that he wasn't liable for this because she thrust her parasol into the mechanical apparatus, but was ultimately Matt Lee found liable for operating a dangerous device and for a couple of years to 1913. In fact, absolutely. No Ferris wheels at the State Fair,

(00:06:36) my parents always told me never bring a pair of Saint on the ferris

(00:06:39) wheel and and that advice has served you well over the

(00:06:41) years has okay. Let's get to butter sculpture David Letterman

(00:06:46) David Letterman butter heads. I mean, I realized that a lot of people who listen to public radio have never watched television in their lives, but we need to pay tribute to the heroic efforts of In Burger of WCCO TV who did I think one of the finest pieces of Journalism in America this year? She she got a butterhead from the Minnesota State Fair a bust of David Letterman. She loaded it in an airplane. She took it to New York. She dragged it all across the city and attempted to get it on the Letterman show. One of the funniest pieces I've ever seen Letterman's folks said, well, we don't have no refrigerator here lady. You better bring it back later and she wound up setting up a card table on the street out. Side the Letterman show and serving the butterhead on crackers to New Yorkers who were needless to say almost as flustered by that experience as newcomers to the Minnesota State Fair are when they're offered tailings from the sculpting of the butter Queens this of course has brought butterhead carving to the attention of a whole new and wonderful Eastern audience

(00:07:48) news producer creating news as it should be that's it. Thank you very much. Carol Anne always a pleasure Chris Carroll and marling's book about the stay fairest. Called Blue Ribbon a social and pictorial history of the Minnesota State Fair Marling teaches popular culture and art history at the University of Minnesota. She's a regular guest here on weekend edition.