Fair recap

The rides have been dismantled. The food and novelty vendors are gone. And a 120-person crew has been cleaning up the fairgrounds and livestock barns this week and getting ready to repair the grounds. Yes, the SEMO District Fair has come to a close, and despite the rain, this year's event was once again a success.

Pete Poe, president of this year's SEMO District Fair board of directors, said that about 90,000 fairgoers attended this year's eight-day event. The total figure was slightly down due to the rain. For the six full days without rain, this year's attendance numbers were ahead of last year's.

Wednesday night's scheduled Heartland Idol contest was moved to Saturday afternoon due to rain, but Poe said the event went as well as organizers could expect. He also noted that ticket sales for the Thursday, Friday and Saturday night concerts with George Jones, Creedence Clearwater Revisited and David Nail were all on target.

Fairgoers, vendors and the carnival staff were all pleased with this year's event, and according to Poe, fairgoers impressed the vendors. "Many of the vendors commented on how nice their customers were, how enjoyable the fairgoers were this year," Poe said.

Thank you to all fairgoers, organizers, vendors and carnival staff for a great fair week, and we look forward to seeing everyone back at the fairgrounds next year Sept. 8 through 15.