Our day is just beginning as we stand outside the ticket kiosk at the State Fair of Texas. Ben is looking forward to seeing the Flying Cats show, but he thinks Dad takes way too many photos. Photo by Glenn.
From the ticket counter you pass under a cowboy arch to enter the fairgrounds. Most rodeo cowboys probably aren't this bow-legged. Photo by Glenn.
This was a simple little advertising specialty a communications company was giving away, a squeezable texas toy. But Roni liked hers so well that Ben had to go back for one of his own. This became Roni's favorite Texas souvenir. Photo by Glenn.
Here we are tilting at windmills, or rather tilting the camera at them. The tail of this one is painted up to honor the 2004 state fair. Photo by Glenn.
Roni tests out the hats at a western wear shop. She preferred black over white, although this isn't the one she wound up buying later. This Stetson ran about $53, and she only wanted a souvenir, not a permanent wardrobe addition. You can easily spend as much on good western attire as you would on a business suit. Photo by Glenn.
Here's another shot of Big Tex. According to Texas trivia books, those are the largest pair of blue jeans in the world. Photo by Glenn.
It wouldn't be a fair without a carnival. The Super Midway at the State Fair of Texas stretches nearly a quarter of a mile. Photo by Glenn.
There were dozens of places to buy food, of course. If it was baked, boiled or deep fried, chances are it was available for purchase. Ben enjoys a hamburger for lunch. Photo by Glenn.
Glenn is happy with his polish sausage on a stick. Photo by Roni.
The Lone Star Ferris wheel towers above the fair no matter where you stand. This is taken at the entrance to the Dallas aquarium. Photo by Glenn.
A pumpkin carver drew an audience at the Taste & See exhibit. We asked where the large pumpkins that he was carving came from and he told us Salinas, Calif. Should have guessed. This design is supposed to look like Shrek. Photo by Glenn.
Not quite sure what this was doing here, but it is a female stiltwalker dressed as a large mechanical bird. Ben isn't quite sure what to make of it. She had great fun with him. Photo by Glenn.
It has been a long time since we've had garden railway photos in this newsletter. This was part of an exhibit put on by Home Depot. There were close to a dozen trains, each running on its own track over bridges and water features. If only it really were that easy to do at home. Photo by Glenn.
Texas is supposed to be a huge oil state, but this is the only oil rig we saw on our trip, and it wasn't operational. Photo by Glenn.
Another shot of the Lone Star taken from the entrance to the midway. The fun house is to the left. Doesn't this just scream fair to you? Photo by Glenn.
Here is the famous Cotton Bowl football stadium, which sits in the middle of the fairgrounds. There are college football games scheduled here during the fair. Photo by Glenn.
Now this is the entertainment we came to see... or rather that Ben came to see. This is the Flying Cats show during which average housecats were made to do tricks such as leaping through hoops and walking on tightropes. Here, the trainer and his cat perform a stunt. Photo by Glenn.
A cat jumps through a flaming hoop. This show would never "fly" in California, where animal rights types would shut it down in a heartbeat. Photo by Glenn.
It took us awhile to find the livestock pens. This is a group of dairy goats. Photo by Glenn.
Roni appears to be having a great time as she watches a horse-riding demonstration. Photo by Glenn.
It's late in the afternoon and we've been walking around all day. Time for a foot massage. A quarter buys a precious few seconds of vibrating relief. Photo by Glenn.
On our way back to the car, Ben says his feet are killing him. He's loaded down with his bag of fair goodies and is wearing the cowboy hat Roni bought at a souvenir booth. Looks almost like Tim McGraw, don't you think? Photo by Glenn.
X's mark the spot on Elm Street in Dallas where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Photo by Glenn.
Even though it is late in the day there are still dozens of people lingering around the Kennedy site. This is looking across Elm Street south past Dealey Plaza. The X's appear as a white smudge in the center traffic lane. Don't let the emptiness of the street in this shot fool you, Elm is a major thoroughfare and was teeming with traffic this Sunday evening. We just caught it in between traffic lights. Photo by Glenn.
The memorial in Dealey Plaza at sunset. Photo by Roni.
A couple of blocks north of Dealey Plaza on Main Street is the Kennedy Memorial. It isn't much to look at, just four walls and a black square in the middle. The artist's concept was that this was a place to reflect joy and absence. Photo by Glenn.
The former Texas Book Depository building is most famous as the spot where Lee Harvey Oswald shot the president. The Sixth Floor Museum is located inside. It was too late in the day to visit the museum. Photo by Roni.
Dallas is a very modern city, so most of the skyscrapers have a futuristic look to them. This one is fairly representative. We didn't have enough time to really look around Dallas, and avoided Fort Worth all together. Photo by Glenn.
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Fair ground
Sunday, September 26 (Day 10) — Everything's bigger in Texas, or so the saying goes, and that seems to hold true for the state fair as well. Today was the first time since New Orleans that we spent two consecutive days in the same place, which meant that we could explore a bit without having to worry about getting somewhere by the end of the day. That was important, because our plans had us going to the State Fair of Texas to see if we could find some of the Lone Star State's culture we'd come for. I've been to the California State Fair a couple of times, but this would be my first visit to a fair of this magnitude in another state.
We got on the road a little after 10 a.m. and followed I-30 to the Fair Park exit. Fair Park is also home to the Cotton Bowl, and it was a good thing I knew this because all of the directional signs pointed to the Cotton Bowl and none to the fairgrounds. I had expected heavy traffic as this was only the fair's third day and Dallas is a huge city with a broad metro area to draw from, but we were one of maybe a half dozen cars heading to the entrance at almost 10:30. Either everyone was in church this morning or they just don't get an early start for such things in this state. They hit us up for $8 to park in a distant lot. Not a big deal, as we easily walked our way to the entrance where they hit us up for another $32 — $12 for Roni and me, and $8 for Ben. The way they determine the admission fee for kids is anyone over the age of 2 but under 48 inches tall gets the kids' rate. I don't think Ben qualified technically, but the ticket lady was good enough to give us the discount.
Moments after stepping through the gate we were assaulted by the big commercial booths -- folks trying to sell us cellular phone service, vacation homes and other services we had no use for. Then we came upon the booth being run by Chevrolet. They had about a dozen of their current line of cars on display and were offering free T-shirts in exchange for filling out a questionnaire, so both Roni and I went ahead and got our free shirts. Ben quickly found a bag at another booth so we could carry the shirts, and just like that we were carting around fair stuff. We ogled the new spas and then found our way to the souvenir stand. Roni found a T-shirt she liked, but it was too early in the day for that kind of stuff. We'd come back at the end of the day to avoid carting around the purchases.
Roni has been on a quest for a cowboy hat this trip. She said that when we got to Texas she would get one. We visited a western wear store that had a lot of nice expensive clothing, but no hats. One of the clerks, a woman dressed to the nines in cowboy garb, noticed Ben's T-shirt from New Orleans with a picture of an alligator on it. She stopped him so she could read it and asked if we were from New Orleans. Roni said no, that we were from California and were just visiting the South. The woman was curious as to why we would come to Dallas, like folks never come to Dallas just for fun. That seems to be a prevailing attitude in the places we've visited -- either you're there because you live there or know someone who lives there, and not because you choose to be there. Very interesting. We looked at a couple more commercial booths nearby before being distracted by a show just starting in the livestock arena. Turned out it was a dog show, with dogs catching Frisbees and jumping into tanks of water. Fun stuff. Ben had a tough time at first getting into the show, not liking the loudness of the arena. He settled in after a few minutes and by the end of the show was enjoying himself. After the show we resumed our hunt for Roni's hat. She found several she liked and that looked very good on her at the Stetson distributor. But Stetsons are for serious cowboys and carry serious prices -- $50 wasn't uncommon. We both decided that was a bit out of our price range and moved along.
By the time we reached International Boulevard where the food was, it was past noon and we were beginning to get hungry. The weather was beautiful today, with temperatures hovering around 90 degrees and a light breeze, not a lot of humidity. Roni wanted a soda and we were trying to talk Ben into an ice cream. This was when we discovered that the booths only accepted scrip for purchases, which meant you first had to buy tickets at 50 cents a pop from the ticket vendors. We decided to start with $20 worth, or about enough to buy a couple of sodas. Ridiculous. Ben finally found his ice cream, and from there we ventured into the craft and commercial booth area. In the building behind this one there was a massive car show where all the major manufacturers were represented. Unlike the dealerships, you could actually sit in these display cars without being accosted by salespeople. If I were in the market for a new car, this definitely would have been a worthwhile place to hang out and investigate all the features.
We worked our way over to the Texas Lottery booth to rest our feet a moment and find out where we wanted to go next. Big Tex, the fair's giant cowboy mascot that once served as a Santa Claus figure but now graces the center of the fairgrounds, was cheery as always in his garden at the center of the fairgrounds. The statue's claim to fame is that it supposedly wears the world's largest pair of Levi's. We took several photos.
We stopped off at a food booth selling deep fried bananas. I just had to try them, because what else is a fair if not the bizarre foods you can buy there? My bananas didn't look or taste much like the fruit I'm used to at home, but they weren't awful either doused in chocolate syrup and whipped cream. This put everyone in the mood for a real lunch, so we wound up dining on the food plaza in front of the Cotton Bowl. I had a polish sausage on a stick while Roni ordered a foot-long hot dog and deep fried stuffed olives. Ben had a hamburger. After that, we paid our $5 admission at the Dallas Aquarium, mainly for access to the drinking fountain and a chance to replenish our water bottles with cold, free water as opposed to the $2.50-per bottled stuff outside. This was no Monterey Bay Aquarium. In fact, we were able to cruise through its two wings of display area in about half an hour. The theme of their display was venomous fishes of the world.
Time was passing us rapidly and we needed to be back at the livestock pavilion by 3:30 in order to catch the flying house cat show that Ben had been dying to see. That left us just enough time to check out the Taste and See attraction that included a garden display, pumpkin carving and a garden railway exhibit. By the time we were finished with that, we were running late to get back across the fairgrounds in time for the start of the cat show. Ben ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Roni and I puffed our way along, exhausted from all the walking we had already done. As fate would have it, we arrived at the cat show just a minute too late and they had already closed the doors. We would have to wait for the 4:15 showing. You'd think that Ben's favorite cat had just died from the reaction Ben gave to the new we had missed the show's start. We killed half an hour watching some young guys on stage doing their rap moves, then we lined up for the cat show. Ben thought the show was great stuff, especially the part where the cats had to jump through flaming hoops and leap over each other while balanced on a pole suspended in midair. A few people walked out in the middle. I don't think the show would have played well in California, especially because the presenter was basically forcing the cats to do stuff they obviously didn't want to do. But cats are a pretty independent lot. This and the dog show were sponsored by Purina. I wonder what Purina thought it was getting with its sponsorship.
We wrapped up our day at the fair by visiting the sheep and swine pavilions, then watching a horse handing demonstration that appealed more to Roni than Ben. He was really wilting by 5 p.m., which should have been expected after almost seven hours of walking around the fair. On our way back to the exit Roni finally found a booth selling cowboy hats for the more reasonable price of $20. She bought a black hat that looks like she was just born in it. I'm not a hat person myself, but she seems to adapt well to them.
Ben was ready to head back to the hotel after our fairgoing, but there was one more place we needed to stop before. We drove right into downtown Dallas and found the site of the President Kennedy assassination at Main and Market streets. Even though it was a Sunday evening there were still many people milling about with their cameras. It just goes to show what a dramatic cultural impact that dark event of Nov. 22, 1963, still has on our country. The exact location of where Kennedy was when the bullets struck his motorcade is marked with a simple cross in the middle of Market Street. The former Texas School Book Depository building, from where Lee Harvey Oswald is alleged to have fired the fatal bullet, still stands and contains a sixth floor museum dedicated to memorabilia of the assassination. The museum was closed by the time we arrived at 7 p.m., but you can easily make out the window Oswald used if you look up from the street. We walked up a couple of blocks from Dealey Plaza where the Kennedy Memorial is constructed. It is built to resemble a 20-foot high concrete fence with openings at the front and back inside which is a single black square platform engraved with President Kennedy's name. I'm glad we were able to visit the memorials today, because I wouldn't want to have to drive through Dallas during commute traffic on Monday morning.
On our way back to the hotel we picked up dinner from a place called Jason's Deli. The food was very good but very rich. I had a roast beef wrap with melted cheese and green peppers and onions with au jus dipping sauce and a side order of Texas chili. I'm paying the price for it as I write this, having just downed a Tums tablet in hopes of neutralizing the acid in my gut. We went down to the spa after dinner for 15 minutes to soak our sore feet. I think that did wonders for me, but unfortunately it relaxed me too much and I fell asleep before I had a chance to finish this entry. Forgive me that this is not more detailed, for now it is 3:37 in the morning as I have come back to the table to finish up following a two-hour "nap." OK, now I'm finished and will go get my real sleep so I'll be rested enough to head out on our drive to San Antonio in the morning,
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