Very sad news from the great State Fair of Texas today. An icon of the Lone Star State succumbed to an electrical fire and burned.
Non-Texans may not understand the scope of the tragedy. Our state fair is larger than any other. It takes up a huge chunk of downtown Dallas and draws crowds from all over the world. Our fair is so big it’s the only thing that can possibly host the Texas-OU war every year. Even the turkey legs they sell there must come from some kind of king turkey. Big Tex is the big man who hosts the whole thing.
Big Tex is a Texana figure dating back to the Eisenhower era. The 49-foot tall cowboy with the 50-pound belt buckle has greeted fairgoers since 1952. Every year he gets a new outfit and a new recorded greeting to welcome the world to Texas. One of my earliest memories is going to the 1976 fair and being awed by the benevolent giant.
The burning of Big Tex takes a bit of every Texan’s heart out.
Today, only his hands are reported to be intact. The rest is a burnt skeletal frame.
Rest in peace, old friend. And come back better than ever. The State Fair of Texas will not the State Fair of Texas without him.
This is Texas where we deal with adversity, clean up the mess and then move forward. Big Tex won’t be waiting around on Obamacare, his friends and family will pull together to get him back on his feet. He’ll be back and more splendid than before!
I thought the Burning Man Festival was:
1)In Nevada
2)Held last month.
Wow, how fitting for a republitard to tie this to politics.
Sorry, the Minnesota State Fair has a much larger daily attendance. Moreover, as a percentage of population, the MN State Fair is far larger and makes the TX fair look, well, small. Regardless, Paul Bunyan and Babe send their condolences.
I am extermely confident the people of Texas can rebuild Big Tex much faster–even accounting for the natural differences in project complexity–than the people of the New York are rebuilding the WTC site.
And – we’re on it! As I said, we don’t wait around. We clean up the mess, put things back to rights and get back to living.
from the Dallas Observer:
James Beshara, the Dallas native who co-founded the crowd-sourced fundraising site, emailed a couple minutes ago to let us know that a Big Tex CrowdTilt campaign has been started. Its name: “Big Tex Tragedy 2012: Let’s get him some new clothes!!!!” Its goal: Raise $50,000 to get Tex up and clothed and waving kinda creepily again.
“I remember dressing up as him for Fair Day at my elementary school in first grade,” 26-year-old Beshara, who lives in the Bay Area, told me by email. “To me, as a six year old, he was the fair. I mean, it’s funny to look back and think about the impact this 50-foot robotic cowboy had on my youth, but growing up in Texas he was the cowboy you know you’d get to see year after year. Was pretty sad to see the images of him burning up on my phone this morning.”
“Sorry, the Minnesota State Fair has a much larger daily attendance. Moreover, as a percentage of population, the MN State Fair is far larger and makes the TX fair look, well, small.”
Feeling inadequate up there in cold country? I’m sure Minnesota has a very nice fair, but is it necessary to one-up Texas? From Wikipedia:
The State Fair of Texas is the largest state fair in the United States by annual attendance, with 2,618,500 attendees in 2010. However, the Minnesota State Fair has a higher average daily attendance. [The Texas fair] no longer tracks attendance by ticket sales — the numbers always underestimated attendance due to the practice of free entry for local schoolchildren and senior citizens on certain days — the fair’s past estimates by various methods consistently suggested more than 3 million people visit the fair annually.
I believe in resurrection
SORRY TEX THAT YOU DEATH AND YOU ALREADY HAD 60 YEAR OLD THAT WY I WAS CRAYING TODAY CAUSE NEVER ON MY LIVE WENT IM 6O YEARS OLD LIKE YOU MY BIRTH DAY WAS 2 WEEKS AGO I WAS YOURE BIRTHDAY SORRY FOR YOURE LOSS
SORRY TEX THAT YOU DEATH AND YOU ALREADY HAD 60 YEAR OLD THAT WY I WAS CRAYING TODAY CAUSE NEVER ON MY LIVE WENT IM 6O YEARS OLD LIKE YOU MY BIRTH DAY WAS 2 WEEKS AGO I WAS YOURE BIRTHDAY SORRY FOR YOURE LOSS AND I MISS YOU WHERE DOES THEY PUT YOU LIKE THE DEATH PEOPLE