Texas: Six sets and a Fair

Four historic spots, Part !

Texas! I’ve lived in Tennessee 51 years but once a Texan, well I consider myself one to this day, must be something in the water!

     I had a day off in Dallas and headed for the Texas State Fair, which I fondly recall from when my parents took us back in the mid-‘50s. Later, I walked through the Fairgrounds 2 or 3 times to attend the annual rivalry game between my alma mater, the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners. back when Darrell Royal’s teams ruled the Southwest Conference.

The fair runs 23 days and last year 2.3 million attended, averaging a cool 100,000 visitors daily.

It may seem to some that I’ve gone overboard on the Fair but realize here in Nashville our State Fair was on such a downward spiral, from at best mediocrity to the point where the Wilson COUNTY FAIR stepped in, took it over and moved it from the State Fairgrounds to their facility in Lebanon.

Here’s a bunch of pics from the Fair

The main entrance

Here’s the layout

The Fair is justifiably famous for its quirky food offering, a fact always mentioned by the TV crews in the lead up to the annual Red River Rivalry, now played, however, not in the Cotton Bowl but off in Arlington at the Jerry Dome

Here’s a smattering of the food items you are unlikely to find anywhere else and certainly not all in one area!

And here’s “Little Big Tex”,

replacing the original Big Tex, that stood 52 feet in the air but was destroyed by an electrical fire in 2012, leaving only the skeleton but turning the clothes to ashes.

You say you want some entertainment, some music? OK, feast your eyes on the 2024 lineup:

The Lagoon, used for various was ere shows

Many of the buildings, in fact three, are devoted to cars, so it’s a huge 2025 model auto show inside the Fair. Displaying their new vehicles.

Here’s a look at one of the buildings.

There are murals aplenty adoring the outide entry areas of the buildings, here’s a few:

The entire Fair is mind-blowing but in the Texas History building. . . well, you decide if this blows your mind or not:

There are also glass cases of exhibits of various playing cards as they developed over the years including one with cards of WW II airplanes for spotters to study for identification of enemy planes.  

Texas history gets featured also, with statues of Alamo

heroes like Crockett, Travis, Bowie et al as well as of Sam Houston,

who led the Texas Army in the climactic battle of San Jacinto, winning Texas its independence.

I stopped off in the craft building, packed with all manner of interesting items to bring home, tea towels, stuffed animals the size of chairs,

gemstones &, geodes,

and every knick-jknack you can imagine – dancing puppets anyone?

Here’s a cou0le more images from the Fair

I ducked into the men’s and spotted this small item of recognition of the famed Cowboys coach, Tom Landry victor in two Super Bowls frightfully enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame

Next up comes the six set, three days of performances which included approximately 700 miles in a Mazda Hybrid SUV with an entertainment center too difficult to use without Youtube videos and of cours t hey had the new USB for you to plug your cell phone in, not the standard cigarette lighter spot plug in. You cannot even reliably turn the damn radio on without going through far too many steps, don’t let them rent one to you!