Culture & Entertainment Notebook: 30-year SEMO Fair tractor pull volunteers to retire

After 30 years of voluntarily overseeing the tractor pulls at the SEMO District Fair in Cape Girardeau, Gary Kight and Sam Below said they are "retiring" after this week.

They would still attend the fair in the future, they said, but would no longer be involved with the planning and administrating of events.

"We'll still be here," Below said.

Kight added, "We're still going to be around. We've been around for a long time; we're not going to leave just like that. It's time for some younger people to step up."

Below and Kight are "the second two," Kight said, to take the reigns from Raymond Cox and Jerry Eggimann.

"We took their places. They started in '63 and then we took over. Hopefully the next people will keep it for 30 years," Kight said.

Below said Tom Horn will oversee the tractor pulls in the future.

"People get older, and it's just normal and tradition, I guess," Kight said. "That's the way things happen."

They both agreed that any kind of motor sport draws people, and they've seen that trend through the years.

When the pickups were added a few years back, it "really boosted things," Below said.

"Farmers relate to tractors, and farm boys relate to tractors," he said. "But the average person out here doesn't live on a farm; they relate to pickup trucks."

Kight said they hear from a lot of "tractor pull people from out of the North" that say they don't have near the crowds they used to, "but we can't say that."

"We practically sell out, and the demo derby is the same way," he said.

Through the years they both have supervised many tractor pull events, too numerous to count, but Kight said each one usually consists of the same -- or similar -- six classes.

A typical tractor-pulling event would consist of one or two classes of trucks, a stock diesel truck, a modified high performance-type truck and tractors from different weight classes, he said.

Kight said the event itself is "just a matter of how many feet you pull, the distance from zero to 300 feet," which is the length of the track," Kight explained.

Below added, "It's a lot of smoke, and a lot of loud noises."

Most of the fair's tractor pull participants belong to organizations such as Illinois Tractor Pulling Association or Xcaliber Pulling -- based near St. Louis, Missouri -- and the Bootheel Tractor Pullers from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, Kight said.

Below said there's a lot that goes on at the demo derby and the tractor pulls "that you don't ever see."

"That show out there," Below said as he pointed to the grandstand, "there are a lot of things that happen that nobody knows about."

Kight emphasized that the show "doesn't happen in 30 minutes." There is work and planning involved all year long, he explained.

Kight said, on average, each tractor pull event requires 10 to 12 people to manage.

But why have Below and Kight volunteered 30 years to the cause?

"We do it to help the community," Below said. "To keep the fair going."

Kight said if they didn't like it, they wouldn't do it.

They have enjoyed visiting with the different people involved, he said, because "it's kind of like a big family."

And according to Kight, everybody thinks the fair lasts for just a week, but it doesn't. It's also already in planning stages for next year, he said.

"A week before and week after, nobody sees that," Below said. "This fair will start the day it ends, for next year."

The SEMO District Fair runs through Saturday. Tickets for grandstand events and all other details are available online at semofair.com.

jhartwig@semissourian.com

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