The Great Minnesota Get-Together

mirror mirror on the wall, what's the greatest fair of them all?

Fairchild is the mascot of the State Fair

The Gauntlet

The gauntlet refers to my occasional tangents and updates. Tonight it is a request. My history book club is approaching nominations for next year’s reading list. I nominated a REAL BAD book a couple of years ago so I could use some recommendations on some good history non-fiction or historical fiction. Help is appreciated.

Today’s A Happy Story!

When you become a Minnesotan, you are quickly made aware of an event we all just HAVE TO LIKE and that is the Minnesota State Fair. The state is physically large but not densely populated. Midwesterners like their space and having room to spread out seems a priority. I think the only events where people seem to embrace being crammed together are the State Fair or Election Day.

Tonight I decided to write about the event that marks the time more than any other in Minnesota. Today is the 3rd day of the annual 12-day binge like no other. The Fair always ends on Labor Day so the children can return to school the following day. The patrons will consume about 36 million plus Sweet Martha’s Cookies in a good year. Sweet Martha’s is the most popular of the more than 300 food booths offering the most unusual of options each year. Here’s a link to the new foods this year. The Mov + Nqaij was my favorite since it is impossible to pronounce. There were 38 new foods and 10 new booths altogether.

Stoicism ya Know

I want to start first with my observations about why Minnesota? Over the years I’ve heard jokes about the Minnesota mentality as well as comedy sketches built around life in the upper Midwest. One joke goes something like:

When the Norwegians and Swedes landed in America they started trekking westward looking for a new start. When they got to Minnesota they were finally comfortable as they had found a place with lots of lakes and was cold and desolate just like home.

All ethnicities become part of the proverbial melting pot when they arrive in America. Insiders fret that it does not happen fast enough or exactly to their liking. Assimilation is in the eye of the beholder. My work career has led me all over and I marvel at the local customs that prevail. What seems to prevail here in Minnesota is some stoicism and mindfulness of your responsibility to your neighbors. I would imagine being raised in a culture near the Arctic Circle, Scandinavians did not have it easy. Procrastination in the face of the seasons would not be a good strategy. I think these sorts of values pervade here.

My theory is a State Fair fits perfectly into the Scandinavian mindset. Yeah, you betcha, we should have a great fair! Don’t want to spend any tax dollars though, people all need to pitch in to make it a success. Maybe let’s keep a logbook of who is volunteering. That way we will know when Verne and Lina aren’t doing their part. Maybe it’s time to drop by with a coffee cake and see what’s going on with them.

What does this mindset yield? The State Fair in Minnesota is run like a ruthlessly efficient operation. Never a dime of tax dollars to support it. The site is permanent and used in the off-season for swap meets and the like. Every building and booth and barn and stadium looks like it was recently touched up. The buildings are old but kept up and always ready for the twelve days at the end of summer.

There are few parking lots of note. The locals organize and park cars on their lawns. Most people take the bus and they run like clockwork. Each day of the Fair if you want to be there when the doors open, the lines will be long and orderly. No pushing, no shoving, no cutting in line. Try to break the unpublished rule and Mr. Lundquist will advise, hey there’s no saving spots in the line ya know.

Vendors make a killing and the waiting list to get a booth at the Fair is long and it doesn’t help to “know somebody”. The Fair runs as a quasi-private entity and is transparent in all of its operations. Many of the booths are the same and have the same homey appeal. Having a freshly husked ear of corn is a tradition I don’t miss. Legions of college-age kids working the booth in intolerable conditions. The temperature is likely in the 90s to start. Boiling and steaming corn and peeling the husks with protective gloves, dipping them in tubs of butter if you prefer. The patrons get to look at the posted thermometers above the workstations and realize the staff is facing temps in the 130s and 140s. The older folks might remark it’s a good experience for them and builds character. Of course, people will dutifully recycle their spent corn cobs at designated stations.

Farm First

Minnesota is first and foremost a farm state. I believe the fresh influx of children of farmers from outstate and frankly, as a hub for the same kids escaping a farm life in the Dakotas, Iowa and Wisconsin is what fuels the endless and steady growth of the Twin Cities. The agriculture market has been methodically moving toward larger and larger machines for generations. I remember meeting people who made the migration. They euphemistically say, yeah once I finished high school or college I knew I was going to move to “the Cities”. Children raised on a dairy farm are not averse to working hard their whole shift. I have a friend in the medical device business. The Twin Cities is the hub of medical device manufacturing in the United States. He explains that getting kids to work in the assembly who grew up on farms is ideal. They have been fixing stuff all their lives and can pick up the elements of how something is assembled quickly. The hours and pay at a Medtronic facility beat adjusting the combine at 9 pm with a flashlight.

The Twin Cities are the closest thing to the big city for so many young people. Those seeking the BIG CITY might be attracted to Chicago which is about 400 miles from here. The character of the two places is markedly different though. Chicago is just a little too crowded for midwestern sensibilities, at least in the Loop. As a kid who grew up in Buffalo, NY it is fun and interesting that even 100 years ago, Minneapolis was the place where grain was brought, stored, and milled. It is more interesting to realize the Twin Cities and Buffalo were linked as Buffalo, with its strategic location became the home of the first mechanical grain elevators!

I think one of the few times everybody gets up in everyone else’s business is the State Fair. The fair is held in the State Capital of St. Paul and has dedicated fairgrounds. Despite being a small state population-wise and a long drive for many of the residents (about 400 miles), so many make the annual pilgrimage to the Great Minnesota Get-Together.

Was it Crowded at the Fair?

When the weather cooperates, weekend days can draw more than 200,000 people per day. The record attendance is about 2.1 million people or an average of about 175,000 people a day. Even on the weekdays, you don’t get to mosey around without the crowd moving you ever so slightly. Based upon the long-term forecast this year, we might even top the record!

Why do so many people go every year? I think it is part tradition, part officially passing the torch at the end of summer. Despite the pressure to improve education that seems to pervade our society, Minnesota retains among the shortest school years in the land. Educational achievement remains top-tier and folks wouldn’t dream of sending the kids to school before Labor Day. The old public radio show A Prairie Home Companion (no longer a thing) had a fictitious town of Lake Wobegon where the women were strong, the men were good looking and all the children were above average. I think with all the tugs at modernity we all encounter in our lives, a State Fair might seem a bit corny and outdated. Traditions do bind us all together and I think that is what the fanfare is all about.

The Land O’ Lakes & Butter

There are things that you just want to stay the same every year. The Miracle of Life where you can watch animals being born is something I look forward to. About 1000 calves, lambs, and goats are birthed during the fair, all available now on remote cameras. One of the long-run traditions established at The Minnesota State Fair in 1954 is the crowning “Princess Kay of the Milky Way”. A representative of each of about 100 counties is nominated and the ten finalists are selected. Each enters a walk-in glass refrigerator and a master butter carver creates a statue of them from a 90-pound slab of butter. The ten finalists get to take their statues home and one woman gets a scholarship and is honored as Princess Kay of the Milky Way. Here is a crazy human interest story of a woman who has kept her butter head for more than forty years. Any day during the fair you can go to the dairy barn and witness the process. I love it!!!

How Do You Like Them Apples?

While I am sure others are working at it, if a young child asks a parent “Where Do Apples Come From?”, the safest great answer is Minnesota and more specifically the University of Minnesota Agriculture Experiment Station. For those of you that don’t need all of your food on a stick, I always enjoy walking through the Agriculture building. The University of Minnesota is likely the premier developer of apples in the world. What will it be this year amongst trademarked apples from the past like First Kiss, Honeycrisp, Rave, or State Fair. I am HOPING that we will be able to sample the newest breakthrough apple, “aptly” named the Triumph. The trees are expected to be available in volume by 2025 but I hope to grab an example at the Fair. Whatever apple(s) I settle on, I am then ready to check out the seed art.

Crowds & Traditions

The Fair is fabulously popular. While the Texas State Fair manages a slightly larger number of visitors most years, that is mostly due to extending its fair to 24 days. By any measure, a 5.6 million population state manages similar attendance in half the time of a state of 28+ million. I would imagine the BBQ and the rodeo is better in Texas but not much else. My conclusion is someone is desperate to say everything is bigger in Texas. Perhaps, in this case, it is merely interminably longer. I am glad I was not part of the record crowd back in 2018 when 270,000+ people went through the turnstiles in a single day! Here’s some stuff I like EVERY YEAR.

Impossibly detailed seed art. As you might expect, lots of rules govern the contest. This is breathtaking craftsmanship!

The runaway most popular food booth at the fair is Sweet Martha’s Cookies. They sell about 3 million cookies PER DAY and clear between 4 and 5 million dollars during the fair. They are close to the all-you-can-drink milk stand.

Last year, the ultimate butter expert retired after fifty years of carving. This is something I hope will never change at the State Fair. This profile from CBS Sunday Morning is awesome and a little bit offbeat.

The Fair is wonderful for so many reasons. I have shared that people-watching is my thing. I also love music and the grandstand hosts great shows every night. I would presume the planning meetings begin for 2023 in the coming weeks. That is what Scandinavians do.

If none of this is kitschy enough for you, you can mill around accumulating your 15000 or so steps, you can look for the Betty Crocker, Paul Bunyan, or Babe the Blue Ox statues. Here is the website for the Fair. Do not be surprised if it seems ultra-organized and informative. I would imagine every conceivable question is answered somewhere on this website. You can even sponsor a bench for the 12 days of the Fair for a tax-deductible gift of $2500. Keep it simple as you only get 14 characters :)

The Poll & Music

Tonight’s song is about embracing an adventure. The Fair is that for me.

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What’s Next

My next post is titled “A Six Percent Solution”. Our world is very complex. Sometimes we just ignore aspects of it. Often we just trust in the experts. Some things just don’t seem right and make no sense. Those are the things we need to think about and come to terms with. I decided to post about a couple of things that happened recently. I was left with my own intellect to try to figure out if what was going on makes objective sense. It was a fun one to write. I hope you enjoy reading it.