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SUBJECT: And the fair is older than the state itself, which I think is interesting. So it was actually the Minnesota Territorial Fair to begin with. And it was at a time when Minnesota was a pretty remote place on the Western Frontier in the 1850s, and they were still trying to attract immigrants. And the PR back east was not very good on Minnesota. People heard that it had horrible winters and lots of snow.

INTERVIEWER: They still do.

SUBJECT: Yeah. All that true. And so people were reluctant to move here. So to attract immigration and to settle the land, the early pioneers hit on the idea of an agricultural fair as basically public relations, so they could take pictures of bountiful harvests. And they used to do things like build models of Fort Snelling out of apples.

That's also the origins of butter sculpture. It was boosterism. And it was a way to brag about the bountiful life on the prairie. And it was hoped that pictures would circulate back east and people would come out. So that's how it started.

INTERVIEWER: Is there as much agricultural activity at the fair now, Gale as there was back? Because you practically grew up on the fairgrounds. Or you did, didn't you?

GALE: Well, I think the barns have more cattle, and horses, and pigs, swine, poultry, probably in numbers more than maybe they ever had.

SUBJECT: If you actually talk to some of the old fair hands, as we did during the making of the piece, people who work the fair and work the circuit, will tell you that while Minnesota can no longer claim that ours is the biggest of the fairs, which at one time we were, we did make that boast. It's still, in a way, the fairest of the fairs, and by that they mean the most true to its agricultural roots.

It still is about farm people and animals, and grandma's bringing pies, and all those things we think about when we think of fairs. It still has that charming, homey quality, as opposed to a Texas State Fair, which is bigger, but it's like a theme park, where they have ride after ride repeated, and it's a big car show. So in terms of the large Midwest agricultural fairs that still have that true character, Minnesota still ranks right up there.

INTERVIEWER: Entertainment has always been a big part of the fair as well, and with some of the biggest names in show business are at the grandstand at the fair every year. Has that always been a part of the fair, too?

SUBJECT: Well, actually, interestingly enough, no. In the early days of the fair-- I mean, actually looking at entertainment as it's changed over the years at the fair is interesting. It's only really since about the '50s, since the advent of television, that we've had this main stage, grandstand, Ricky Nelson or a Garth Brooks kind of national act come through the fair.

Early in the fair's history, and Gale knows a lot about this and probably saw some of these shows, the fair always had its own special brand of entertainment, starting in the 1860s with giant spectacles, is the only word to describe them. They were these shows that combined sort of a passion play kind of melodramas with fireworks.

They would do like the fall of Pompeii live in the grandstand. And they'd actually have little cardboard houses cut out like Pompeii, and they'd have actors running around in Roman costumes. And then they would light off fireworks and you'd see this sort of biblical, pre-motion picture, grand spectacle. And those were very popular.

GALE: In the older days, they would have a fireworks show in these spectaculars, but they would also have circus acts and acts on the stage. I'm thinking one now, one of my favorites, the crazy carpenters. There were three related people, I don't know whether they were in the same family or not, but they were building a house on the stage.

And they would carry a big board. And then they would turn around with this big board and it would just miss somebody. And this was carried on through--

SUBJECT: Slap stick.

GALE: --their whole act. And it was fantastic. And the people just loved it, and laughed, and so forth.

SUBJECT: Well, the other chapter that we cover in the documentary, which is visually a treat, is these thrill day shows they had in the '30s, in the height of the Depression, where they would do really crazy things. They would wreck cars, model As, smash up cars, roll cars over. And then, of course, the most infamous of those incidents was a series of live train locomotive wrecks where they would take two steam locomotives and actually crash them into each other, going about 50 miles an hour, in front of a grandstand audience.

INTERVIEWER: So where are we going with the fair? What direction is the fair heading in?

GALE: Now, to me, the people used to come to the fair to come to a big gathering and a big party. To me, it's exactly the same thing. It's the big party, where you can come with your friends, see your old friends that work there, sit down and chat, come with a bunch of people on a bus to the big party.

SUBJECT: My answer to that, I think, is that there seems to be kind of two things going on in the fair simultaneously. One, the tradition and the history. It does have 150 years of history. There are many examples of ongoing traditions at the fair, particularly in the realm of the agricultural. And people stayed true to that.

At the other time, at the same time, the fair has always been about innovation. And so there's kind of a tension between those two things. But I think in terms of where the fair is going, it'll keep that charming atmosphere, I think, because that's really a quintessential part of the fair. And I think that's what people look and seek for the fair.

In a way, there is a spiritual component to the fair. It is still a harvest fair. There's still that feeling of going and seeing the bounty of the earth, and seeing what people have made. In many ways, it celebrates what's great about Minnesotans, their sticktuitiveness and their creativity.

And so people need that and seek that out. And I think the fair is a great expression of that. And so for that reason, it will always stay. However, the realities are fewer people are engaged in farming, so who knows about what the future will hold. The fair will adapt to it.