SEMO District Fair opens

Having gathered momentum each year since 1858, not counting war years, the 155th annual SEMO District Fair opened its gates at midday Saturday with its usual multiplicity of attractions that will draw 90,000-plus visitors by the time it closes next weekend.

Some come for the rides, some for the nightly entertainment, and some for more serious purposes. Others are drawn by the agricultural exhibits or the food you find nowhere but at a fair.

Planning to visit the opening and closing Saturdays and one of the weeknights, Steve Parker and his wife Rachel of McClure, Ill., like the ambience of strolling around and watching their sons, Hunter, 11, and Andrew, 7, tackle the more challenging midway rides as their younger children Emma, 5, and Bentley, 18 months, watch.

Gregg Woody runs his racing pigs between shows of Woody's Menagerie on the first day of the SEMO District Fair Saturday, Sept. 7, 2013 at Arena Park in Cape Girardeau. Woody also races goats and dachshund dogs. More pictures of the fair are in a gallery at semissourian.com. (Fred Lynch)

"I like the food," said Parker, passing booths with snacks such as saltwater taffy, Filipino barbecue, pork butts on a stick, Polish sausage, cheese fries and hand-dipped corn dogs.

Tony Lowery of Lowery Carnival Co. of Houma, La., said the SEMO District Fair is one of the best ones he and his brother Willie work with 28 rides and 120 employees. "We're starting into the fall, so it puts people in a better mood," Lowery said.

"It's cooling off every night."

Staged among the tall trees of west-central Cape Girardeau in Arena Park, the fair opens at 11 a.m. Sunday, 1 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. Sept. 14.

Dr. Dan De La Cruz, a visiting chemistry professor at Southeast Missouri State University, and his wife Sherry were walking the midway after attending a tractor pull in the arena Saturday. "The Farmall tractors usually win," Sherry De La Cruz said, adding that she and her husband have a 1951 John Deere they use on their property but don't use it for competitions.

Dan De La Cruz will help man two booths this week, one that distributes Gideon Bibles and the other for the Team Jesus project, with the latter holding $500 drawings on Wednesday night and Saturday. "We ask people, are you sure you're going to heaven?" he said.

"If they say, 'No,' we ask, 'Would you like to?' Then we ask them to pray with us and let Jesus into their hearts. The Lord always picks the winners who need the money the most," he said.

U.S. Army Officer candidates Kayla Smith of St. Louis, Austin Henson of Sikeston, Brandon Lang of Sullivan, Mark Eberlein of Valley Park and John Hawkins of Festus, Mo. -- all students at Southeast Missouri State University -- were seeking enrollments in the Army's Show Me Gold Program in the Missouri National Guard booth, which Hawkins said "is quickest route to becoming an officer."

"It's not like ROTC, where none of the cadets have enlisted," Hawkins said. "We're all enlisted and have been through basic training. It offers 100 percent tuition, the GI Bill and drill pay."

John Rich and Jessica Ashcroft of the Community Counseling Center's TLC Crisis Line booth said their counselors are on call 24 hours a day at (800) 356-5395 and at local offices in Cape Girardeau, Fredericktown, Marble Hill, Perryville and Ste. Genevieve.

Rich said they're experienced with a variety of problems and are often able to help with things about which people would have difficulty confiding with anyone they know.