The Dixie Classic Fair offers students a true Carolina experience

By Jane Stevener
Old Gold and Black Reporter

Each year in late September a transformation takes place on the grassy expanse behind the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Steel frames, adorned with thousands of glowing light bulbs, interrupt the usually bare skyline. Pungent smells of funnel cakes and livestock mark the air. And crowds of thousands are drawn down from the cities and hills of North Carolina to a 97-acre space in Winston-Salem. These telltale signs can mean only one thing — the Dixie Classic Fair has risen for another year.

This year, Sept. 28 marked the fair’s opening on the Coliseum’s Fairgrounds. The fair runs through Oct. 7.

As the state’s second largest fair, it attracts a crowd of 300,000 each year. What has now become a Winston-Salem institution had humble beginnings as a Salem grain exhibition in 1882. The Piedmont Tobacco Fair debuted in 1897 at the Piedmont Park and the two merged to become the Winston-Salem fair.

A 1952 property donation by Charles H. Babcock provided the move to the current grounds and in 1956 the name was changed to the Dixie Classic Fair for Northwest North Carolina.

The Dixie Classic offers university students a chance to kick back and let the kid at heart have a day at the fair. It is not uncommon to view a student couple holding hands in line for the Ferris wheel or for the determined student to try and beat the odds at a carnival game.

Freshman Rebecca Cook, wearing her university sweatshirt and eating a funnel cake called it “an all-American experience.”

This year’s Dixie Classic Fair looked more patriotic than in years past. Exhibit halls were adorned in red, white and blue; radio stations gathered donations for relief efforts for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; American flags graced many of the booths and a stilted seven-foot-tall Uncle Sam stood ready to shake your hand and say “God bless America.”

Uncle Sam, played by Dick Haines, felt that his role in the fair was to encourage people in coping with the attacks. “A lot of people want someone to talk to about it, so that’s why I’m here,” Haines said. “Tell me this is not the best job at the fair.”

The fair offers students the chance to sample traditional southern cooking as well as carnival staples.

Students can indulge in the classic caramel apple, funnel cakes, McBride’s Carolina barbecue, cotton candy, Polish sausages, and elephant ears, a fried dough treat.

The Winston-Salem Journal Macaroni and Cheese Classic offered a $150 first- place prize for the best macaroni.

“The judges are in the industry or just volunteers,” food editor Michael Hasting, ’82, said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

Local farmers came out to the fair to showcase their produce in competitions. The largest pumpkin weighed in at 720.6 pounds, and the heaviest gourd was 173.8 pounds. Sunflowers with 16-inch diameters were also on display.

The fair entertains with acts ranging from a bull riding competition, a bengal tigers presentation, a chainsaw artist and bluegrass music playing from the Clock Tower stage.
The Swifty Swine production was a favorite of many students, featuring not only pigs racing on hoof, but swimming piglets as well.

“I enjoyed seeing pigs racing for a giant Oreo cookie and also fat pigs doing nothing but eating,” junior Nisrine Libbus said. Exhibit halls hosted Better Health Cooking shows, food samples, and a train track with a replica of the city and fairgrounds.
For some students, the highlight of the fair was the Demolition Derby, which thousands attended to watch six cars covered in graffiti crash into each other in effort to be the last car still running.

As the moon shone over the scene of car parts flying into the air and the lights of the midway glittering, freshman Grant Brown said the demolition derby was “almost as fun as driving on campus.”

Students said that going to the fair feels like you’re miles away from campus and lets you experience things besides college life.

“Going to the fair was something new and different, but you could still see Wait Chapel from the top of the Ferris wheel,” freshman Ashley Batts said.

The Dixie Classic Fair is open tonight until midnight, Friday from 11 a.m. to midnight, Saturday from 9 a.m. to midnight and Sunday from noon to 11 p.m.
Fireworks begin at 9:45 p.m. each night.

The admission price for adults is $6, but many students find the price well worth it.
“The fair here is cheaper than the state fair, and it’s just as good,” Batts said. “We had so much fun!”

Perspectives Editor Lisa Hoppenjans