Wonders to behold
By Jim O’Neal
The Gazette
DES MOINES – The Butter Cow has heard enough complaints about the weather to turn her ears to popcorn topping.
In 1983, the hefty sculpted darling of the Iowa State Fair heard horror tales from the hordes huffed into her home by a 108-degree dragon of a day.
In 1998, wearisome bellyaching about the heat was capped by the boast that the fair had trundled in 418 tons of ice to cool 941,300 tongues.
But the estimated 83,772 people who turned out Thursday for the opening day of this year’s fair emitted strange kinds of lowing – grousing about goose bumps, murmurs of mildness.
If she’d had a butter brain, Duffy Lyon’s 2004 Butter Cow would have known that Thursday morning’s record-tying low of 48 degrees made the outside world only 6 degrees warmer than her stall.
And if her butter legs had been as sinewy as they look, the 550-pound beauty could at last have ambled out of the Ag Building to see the other sights that just this year earned the fair the No. 2 slot on USA Weekend Magazine’s list of Summer Fun Spots, behind only some big, gaudy city in Nevada.
Even the venerable and sophisticated Esquire magazine in June proclaimed the fair one of the “Fifteen Superlative Things to Experience Before Labor Day.”
What makes “The Big One,” celebrating its 150th year, such a treat? In a time when many county and state fairs draw more flies than families, why did its attendance top 1 million last year?
The answers crowd the majestic buildings on the 400-acre fairgrounds and spill onto the plazas and walkways. One is the Butter Cow itself. A fair tradition for more than 40 years, it is, like Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” an homage to life in the American heartland, a work so humble and pure it can take itself lightly.
The elegant ladies whose form it honors – Salers, Simmental, Maine-Anjou – march steadily about the Pioneer Pavilion alongside their gleaming offspring. FFA youngsters tap their legs with show sticks, prompting them into the stately posture favored by judges.
In the Cattle Barn, the cleanest, beefiest, most handsome bovines from the Mississippi to the Missouri lounge in wood shavings and chew tender green hay. Their droppings are quickly covered with fresh sawdust and spirited away from their polished hooves.
“You treat ’em better than normal dairy cows,” says Lincoln Gibbs, 13, of Epworth, whose passel of 4-H ribbons attest to the four hours a day he spends feeding and grooming his charges.
Lincoln is saving his show premiums to help him become a dairy farmer like his dad, Joe.
In the concession-filled lane between the Cattle Barn and daylight, Louis Pfeiler of Dubuque stops to rest, surrendering to the braking force exerted by three children.
Pfeiler, 35, gamely refers requests for hand drums and cowboy hats to his wife, Lenee Carpenter, also 35.
When his 10-year-old daughter begs for a stuffed animal, he informs her she has enough in her bedroom – but adds they might take home one of the prize bulls they’ve just seen.
She smiles like it’s Christmas morning and twirls away.
“And she just got a line of bull,” he says with a grin.
Don’t tell the Iowa State Fair Board, which has spent about $350,000 advertising the event, but the Pfeiler-Carpenter family came to Des Moines to visit Adventureland. Only after setting up camp did they learn “by dumb luck” that they were passing through at fair time, Pfeiler says.
At the petting zoo, Brandon Scholl of Carlisle cackles, startled by the gluttony of the baby goat gobbling seeds from the paper cup he holds.
“Whoa!” shouts the 7-year-old. “He eats too much!”
In an adjoining yard, 2-year-old Jaymeson Hardin of Altoona sits confidently atop a camel, smiling sweetly and gripping the saddle handle as she sways around an oblong route, braced from behind by her cousin Katie Reed, 16, of Lucas.
With a high temperature of only 69 degrees, Thursday is so cool that kids run around – not through – the sparkling waters of Pella Plaza. Pigtailed Haley Cox, 6, of Des Moines, approaches a fountain gingerly, reaching in a hand and recoiling with a giggle and shout, wary of getting sprinkled.
Outside the Dairy Barn, Scott and Monica Myers of Cedar Rapids snap a picture of their daughters, Skye, 5, and Julia, 2.
The setting is part of a nascent family tradition: The Myerses photograph their children at the same spot each year so the passage of time will show them growing, cups of ice cream in hand.
The palates of others aren’t so simply sated. Led by cravings stronger than any one stomach, fairgoers line up at some 150 food stands for barbecued beef, spicy sausages and icing-slathered cinnamon rolls.
Vendors serve up corn dogs, burritos and teriyaki beef sticks; tenderloins on buns and pork chops on sticks; and turkey legs so plump their original owners must’ve wobbled and swished.
State Fair concessionaires prove they can make any cornfed, curdled or chocolate-covered edible richer by skewering it, drenching it in batter and plunging it into deep, sizzling oil.
Lemonade has long been the leading wash-it-all-down beverage, but so far the weather has cooled demand a bit.
Phyllis Westmoreland of Queen City, Texas, owner of Westmoreland Concessions, saw steady business but no desperate thirst.
As afternoon rolls toward evening, street performers Bob Barkwill, 74, and Rod Cathcart, 68, pack their stringed instruments into their “Dream Camper” so they can drive the revamped 1923 Model T in the daily parade down Grand Avenue.
Barkwill shows how they’ve loaded the vehicle with the comforts of a hillbilly home, from a tub and washboard they call a built-in washer/dryer to the outhouse constructed on a downwind trailer.
Cathcart says Barkwill made a strong impression when they met 15 years ago.
“I said, `That guy’s as slick as I am,’ ” says Cathcart.
Rather than shake each other down, they joined forces on the endless highway.
In the Midway, rides offer little ones pleasingly circling modes of transport – Jeeps, copters, elephants.
Graduates of such tame fare climb into the bellies of four grinning bears and yank on wheels, spinning them on their axes as they revolve at a rapidly rising pace. To growing fairgoers, too much vertigo is never enough.
Bumper-car drivers ram each other in good-natured aggression. Ye Old Mill, the fair’s “tunnel of love,” gives lovers and friends a chance to snuggle and sigh.
Yards away, one of two sky gliders hoists fairgoers through a fluttering green chute carved in the treetops.
Over on Expo Hill, athletes dare the devil on bikes and boards. The Skyscraper thrill ride whips the willing to a height of 160 feet and then hurls them landward at more than 70 mph, flinging out screams.
Farther east, antique farm engines chug and wheeze in Heritage Village.
Beyond such racket, the rhythmic clanging of the printing press and blacksmith shop in Pioneer Hall seem almost sedate.
As the blue of the western sky deepens from cornflower to indigo, ringing guitar strings and stomping dancers reverberate through the hall.
“Grand right, grand left, meet your partner, promenade,” chants the caller. “Do-si-do, a little more dee, a little more do.”
When the first bar of “The Colorado Waltz” wafts from the stage, seven couples, practiced and brave, take to the floor, turning about so gracefully you’d think the concrete was a finely fitted wooden dance floor.
Still have questions?
Answers await.
This story was published in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, on Aug. 15, 2004.
Caption:
Laura Segall photos/The Gazette
Riders warm up for the FFA horse show Thursday night outside the West Arena at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Thursday was opening day for the fair, which is celebrating its sesquicentennial. The fair runs through next Sunday. Alan Miller and Sally Drahn, both of Boone, stand by the Starship 3000 carnival ride in the midway of the Iowa State Fair on Thursday. They visited the fair for the day to watch a friend compete in the Bill Riley Talent Search. An estimated 83,772 people attended the fair Thursday, its opening day. Jacob Hunter, 15, of De Witt, rests on his Angus cow in the Youth Cattle Barn after showing the cow Thursday at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. ABOVE: Alysen Sly jumps on the back of a friend, Kim Sparks, as they walk toward the carnival at the State Fair on Thursday. The 15-year-olds are from Altoona. RIGHT: Cinnamon roll judge Pat Berry of Urbandale looks over a few of the 200 entries at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Thursday. Riders warm up for the FFA horse show Thursday night outside the West Arena at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Thursday was opening day for the fair, which is celebrating its sesquicentennial. The fair runs through next Sunday. Alan Miller and Sally Drahn, both of Boone, stand by the Starship 3000 carnival ride in the midway of the Iowa State Fair on Thursday. They visited the fair for the day to watch a friend compete in the Bill Riley Talent Search. An estimated 83,772 people attended the fair Thursday, its opening day. Jacob Hunter, 15, of De Witt, rests on his Angus cow in the Youth Cattle Barn after showing the cow Thursday at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. ABOVE: Alysen Sly jumps on the back of a friend, Kim Sparks, as they walk toward the carnival at the State Fair on Thursday. The 15-year-olds are from Altoona. RIGHT: Cinnamon roll judge Pat Berry of Urbandale looks over a few of the 200 entries at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Thursday.