Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Sunday, September 03, 2006
For one man, the Minnesota State Fair has been an annual ritual for a quarter-century
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Larry Ellis Reed stood in the WCCO Radio plaza at the Minnesota State Fair on Wednesday, watching the broadcasters banter over baseball and weather.
It was 6:45 a.m., 28 minutes after Larry had turned over his pre-purchased ticket to a sleepy-eyed gate attendant.
With an antiseptic wipe, Larry scrubbed the last remnants of breakfast from his hands and sipped a cup of water from the booth’s tap.
“Look at the crowd here gathered in front of the WCCO booth,” host Dave Lee said into the microphone.
Larry was the only one there. He didn’t notice the joke. He was commenting on how the Glenwood Springs water the booth used to have was better and telling a story about how the late WCCO newsreader Dave Moore had once mailed two boxes of Isabel Burke saltwater taffy to an old woman in Fairmont who could no longer walk well enough to attend the fair.
At 44, Larry isn’t concerned about a similar fate. This year was his 25th consecutive visit to the fair. Still, he approaches the fair like a privilege that might be taken away at any time.
Before his streak of 25 visits, Larry had attended the fair seven other times, beginning in 1968, when he was 6. That was the year after his parents surrendered custodial rights and sent Larry to live in a Minneapolis group home.
Larry is schizophrenic and dyslexic. He receives disability checks and works some mornings at the Sterling Motel on Gilmore Avenue. He has spent most of his life under some form of supervision — state hospitals, group homes and special education classes as a child, day programs as an adult.
Fair visits were a tradition at many of the places he stayed, and his annual trip became the only consistent escape in a childhood of new towns, pills that made him feel ill and merciless teasing.
His streak would be 38 years, except for six “forced lapses,” the result of one illness and the reluctance of managers at some of his homes to visit the fair.
Larry does the fair
Larry rode a Jefferson Lines bus to St. Paul on Tuesday and checked into the Midway Motel on Snelling Avenue, a half-mile walk from the fair. After sunset, he watched the fireworks from a bridge, then returned to his room and set his wristwatch alarm for 5:30 a.m.
Wednesday morning, he put on a red, orange, yellow and black tie-dyed Wisconsin Dells T-shirt, elastic waist shorts and black sandals. He pinned four buttons to his shirt and strapped on a fanny pack with his money inside.
He was ready.
By 10:30 a.m., Larry had crossed Dan Patch Avenue at least 10 times. He had walked the food building twice and thoroughly investigated the Varied Industries building under the grandstand. He had eaten teriyaki chicken, tried out a battery-operated massage pillow, bought a microwave rice cooker, a toothbrush, a shower squeegee and a wall calendar of Bratz, based on the collectible doll series. He filled four plastic bags with things before loading most of it into a free University of Minnesota backpack.
Larry pays for his fair visit with his renters’ tax credit refund, and while he tries to frequent booths that have coupons in the fair’s Blue Ribbon Bargain book, he doesn’t worry too much about his finances at the State Fair. For one day, he can splurge.
For Larry, as for most, the fair is about taking in exhibits, eating greasy meals and sweet snacks and buying things that interest him.
But Larry goes alone and walks through a sea of visitors, with whom he rarely interacts and sometimes doesn’t notice, unless they happen to have a noteworthy T-shirt slogan.
Which is maybe why for Larry, the fair also means an inner drive to meet vendors.
In his first few hours, Larry visited more than a dozen. He talked to each vendor and said “Good morning” to every 10th person he passed. It was important to him to inform vendors of his milestone, and a big part of the fair was of course to chat with people, see how the fair was going. Because Larry sometimes greets people and then makes comments without waiting for a response, apropos of nothing, and he receives a wide range of reactions.
“This line isn’t open, sir,” said one employee at a cheese curd stand, who didn’t understand that Larry didn’t want to buy anything.
“Ah, good morning!” he said to no one in particular at the Drive 105 radio booth.
“I’m from Winona myself, and this is my 25th consecutive year at the TGMnGT,” Larry said to a young man in the booth. “You might find it interesting to know that this is my 32nd visit in 38 years.”
The man whistled long and loud. “You gotta like that, man. What’s your favorite part?”
“Ah, the food,” Larry replied. “And of course Fairchild and Fairborne.”
The man frowned, apparently unfamiliar with the fair mascots. He opened his mouth to say something, but Larry had already turned and begun to walk away.
A long day’s journey into afternoon
Larry’s journey through the fairgrounds resembled a Family Circus cartoon in which Billy gets from Point A to Point B. No checklist. No itinerary. When he walks, his arms swing like he’s using an exercise machine. He frequently outpaces people in motorized carts and wheelchairs.
Besides stopping for food and standing to watch the 2 p.m. parade — where he clapped for the Winona Senior High School marching band — Larry hardly stopped moving. He studied hundreds of exhibits in the 4-H building, walked the Education Building twice and read books at the International Bazaar.
He lingered only over public transportation.
Larry passed a dozen displays for Harley-Davidsons and Hummers and hybrid vehicles without a glance but paced around three Metro Transit and Southwest Transit buses on display. The yellow Northstar Commuter rail button pinned near his right shoulder drew praise from the woman working the booth.
At the Minnesota Department of Transportation booth, he asked questions about a snowplow, filled out a survey and read up on the history of the Interstate Highway system.
Visitors at the Minnesota Historical Society’s house were invited to submit entries of people or things that changed the state’s history. Larry sat at a computer and wrote 11. His nominees included Jefferson Lines (buses); the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway (iron ore and taconite trains); and the Hiawathas, high-speed passenger trains he described in his entry as “the toast of American rail travel.”
Larry isn’t sure why he favors certain topics over others. But without a driver’s license, buses and trains are his primary access to the world outside Winona.
At 3:50 p.m., Larry checked his watch and abruptly did an about-face and began walking down Dan Patch Avenue toward the Visitor’s Plaza.
“It’s about time to make my way over to see Fairchild and Fairborne,” he said.
Second to none
Fairchild and Fairborne, the fair’s gopher mascots, make two daily appearances at the Visitor’s Plaza, where they run around for 20 minutes or so, hugging toddlers and teasing unsuspecting teenagers.
For Larry, they are the highlight. He’s not sure why, except that they’re “irresistible.” Last year, Fairchild and Fairborne were so late for their 11 a.m. visit that Larry got sick of waiting and left. He later criticized them in an open letter he posted on his weblog, “The Daily Phosdex.” A fair organizer who read the letter mailed Larry a mascot pin and a free ticket to the fair, which gave him a reason to go a second time.
Larry sat on an empty bench facing the corner of the plaza where the mascots were scheduled to appear.
Four p.m. came and went. Larry checked his watch.
“The one thing I’ve learned after last year is that you have to be patient and you have to have faith,” he said.
He sat motionless for minutes at a time, watching the street. He stood, bought some nut rolls to take home, and returned. He yawned for the first time all day. He checked his watch again.
Finally, Fairborne bounded around the corner and high-fived a young boy.
Larry smiled broadly. He leapt from his seat and strode toward the mascot.
The mascot walked away. Larry spun left and followed. Fairborne stooped to hug a small girl, waved at a family, then walked on.
Larry caught up to the furry mascot, stepped in front of him and shook his hand. He told Fairborne about the microwave rice cooker he bought. He told Fairborne about the buildings he had visited at the fair. He offered Fairborne a moist towlette.
Fairborne, like most mascots, was mute. He nodded and walked away.
Then Larry followed Fairchild, hovering over him, laughing loudly. People took pictures of Fairchild with their kids, and Larry was in the background of every third one.
This continued for 15 minutes or so, until the mascots hopped into a golf cart driven by two young people in T-shirts that read “Mascot Security.” Larry stepped in front of the golf cart, but it swerved around him, did a U-turn, and drove up Dan Patch Avenue toward the administration building.
He chased it two blocks until it stopped at the building and the mascots went inside.
Larry looked around, sweating and heaving, and then asked Julie Magnuson, one of the mascot security members standing by the cart, if Fairborne and Fairchild would consider posing for a photo.
Julie smiled and spoke into her radio. Then she waited with Larry, asking him questions about the mascots’ history. Fairchild, she learned, debuted in 1967, Fairborne in 1982. Their uniforms have changed over the years but have always been green.
Larry told her his idea for Fairchild and Fairborne bobblehead dolls.
“Yeah, that’s cool,” Julie said, nodding her head. “I’d buy one of those. Do you think it would happen?”
“Well, I’ve pitched it through the official channels,” Larry said.
Eventually Fairchild emerged from the building, posed with his arm around Larry for a few photos, and disappeared. Larry smiled, waved goodbye and walked off down the street.
As all good things must
At 7:15 p.m., having eaten a chicken dinner at the Ballpark Café after studying nearly every exhibit in the Agriculture and Horticulture Building — from honeycombs and crop art to award-winning pumpkins and ears of corn — Larry went looking for a bench.
He found a blue one directly under the glowing "G" of the grandstand. He pulled off his backpack, sat carefully in the middle of the bench, his open palms pressed against his knees. He rubbed his right hand against his forehead and over the grey hair on the back of his head, matted with sweat.
Fair attendees milled past, middle-aged couples and families headed toward the exit, clusters of teenagers and trios of police headed toward the Midway.
The grandstand walls blocked the sun, casting the bench in a pale blue-orange light.
Larry was tired. He hadn’t spoken to a vendor or passerby in nearly 20 minutes.
At 7:58 p.m., Larry sighed. He wiped his forehead and neck, stood up, strapped his backpack to his chest, retrieved the plastic bag with the rice cooker and walked east up the street. He purchased an Orange Treet, then walked back for a third time to the agriculture building and looked at seeds.
“It’s looking like I’ll pretty much be on my way,” he said.
He looked over his shoulder and walked up Dan Patch Avenue towards the gates.
“Well, it’s a milestone,” he said, without breaking stride. “An incredible, continuous milestone.”
He walked out the Snelling Avenue entrance, bathed in cold fluorescent light. At the intersection, he looked left, looked straight ahead, then turned right and headed for the bus stop.
Reporter Brian Voerding can be reached at (507) 453-3514 or bvoerding@winonadailynews.com
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