News & Observer | newsobserver.com | 2008 NCAA Men's Bracket

We couldn't let this year's fair end without talking about one of our favorite things -- the decorated cakes.

This year's entries are some of the most creative ever. A giant, spooky haunted house. An intricate Asian silk pattern. An overflowing toy box. 

There's even a cake designed to look exactly look a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We understand there are actual donuts inside. We'll have to take the word of fair officials -- they won't let us get too close to the cakes. (Likely with good reason!)

Still, our favorite was the cake designed to look just like Duff and the gang from Charm City Cakes, as seen on the Food Network's "Ace of Cakes." Just ponder that for a second -- a specially designed cake that honors the real cake decorators who are featured on a reality TV show all about creating specially designed cakes. Kind of makes your head spin, huh?

One of the most unusual experiences for adults at the fair comes not from a ride, but from the "Beer Goggles" demonstration at the State Highway Patrol's tent.

Try on the specialty goggles, then attempt to walk a straight line. The eyewear simulates how hard it would be to keep your balance and your wits if you were legally drunk.

There are usually giggles when folks are trying the goggles on, but the message is dead serious -- don't drink and drive.

The patrol's tent is near the back of Dorton Arena.

As the State Fair headed into its final weekend, attendance was up, then down.

Friday's attendance at the State Fair was 63,310 -- that's up a bit from 63,231 on the same day last year.

On Saturday, rainy weather early in the day dampened attendance, which topped out at 76,296. On the same day last year, the fair set a single-day record, with a whopping 145,955 attending.

The fair had a picture-perfect fall day for its finale today.

Are men and women really that different? Apparently when it comes to sweet potatoes, they are.

That’s the word from Russel Slate (a.k.a “Pa” Tater), a 62-year-old farmer from Lawsonville who oversees the potato exhibit at the Expo Center. Last year, he explained, eight men and eight women sampled two varieties of sweet potatoes - the Stokes Purple and the Beauregard. The results were revealing.

“All eight men preferred the purple potato because it was creamy with a firm texture,” Slate said. “But seven out of eight of the women liked the Beauregard because it was softer.”

However, when the women were told that the Stokes Purple was better for them - it has twice the Vitamin E of blueberries, Slate said enthusiastically - “they said they’d switch.”

Who knew?

Slate said he doesn’t sell his favorite variety of sweet potatoes. “The Covingtons and the Beauregards are the most popular types because you can get 650 to 750 boxes of them per acre,” he said. “But the Puerto Ricans are the sweetest and best. Thing is they’re the ugliest things you’ve ever seen, and you can only get about 150 to 200 boxes of them per acre.”

He paused, then added, “Farmers like to say ‘We plant many to sell and a few to eat.'”

Potters proved popular at the fair this year, at least among their crafting peers in the Village of Yearyear.

David Garner and Senora Lynch were voted “crafters of the year” by the 100 or so artists and crafters in the village. The village, in the domed Holshouser Building, is where woodworkers, soap makers, jewelry makers and a host of others demonstrate and sell their work.

Garner owns Turn and Burn Pottery in Seagrove, while Lynch does Native-American pottery in Hollister.

Old eyeglasses are lot like old books — you don't really need them but the thought of throwing them away just feels wrong. So they become a problem without a solution.

Until now.

The North Raleigh Lions Club is accepting eyewear donations — sunglasses, reading glasses, prescription glasses and even empty frames — at its booth in the back of the Commercial Building.

"We haven't been getting too many," said Leonard C. Wilburn. "It's not because they're not willing, they just don't know we're here. They say, 'If only I knew, I've got 14 pair at home that I need to get rid of.'"

Wilburn said the donated glasses are sent to one of the Lions Club's 16 eyeglass recycling centers where they are refurbished and then given to poor people around the world.

"For some people getting a pair of glasses means that they can finally see their grandchildren or they can get a job," Wilburn says.

For more information, visit the Lions' Commercial Building booth or go online at www.lionsclubs.org/EN/content/vision_eyeglass_sight.shtml.

The music was first rate but the lyrics left a little to be desired: hum-in-a, hum-in-a, hum-in-a, 2, hum-in-a, hum-in-a, 3, sold American.

At least that’s what the tobacco auctioneer’s sing-song cadence sounded like as he demonstrated his talent at the Exposition Center. The lovely sounds of his call — a mix of earthy folk blues and birdsong — only mattered to those pretending to buy the 200 pound sacks of golden leaf tobacco. Still some inquiring minds wanted to know: What is he saying.

“Mostly numbers,” explained 70-year-old G. Sherwood Stewart, who auctioned tobacco from Georgia to Kentucky for almost 50 years. “I say the bid, 81, 1,1 until I get two, then 82, 2, 2, 2, 83, 3.”

Stewart’s parents were tenant farmers in Smithfield. “I saw how hard my father worked and thought there has to be a better way than this,” he said.

He saw his first auction at age 10 and began working when he was 15. He stopped in 2001, as the tobacco industry phased out the auction system in favor of contracts.

Stewart said his wife had always told him he had musical talent. “She said that if I put as much energy into country music as I did into auctioneering, I would have been a star. But my heart was always in tobacco.”

Tommy Highsmith has been selling food at the State Fair since the 194Os - not for profit, but to support outreach programs at the Westover United Methodist Church in Raleigh.

“This has been a major fundraiser for us since the church was started in the 1940s,” said Highsmith, who grew up within sight of the fairgrounds. “That’s about the only thing that hasn’t changed.”

Today, church volunteers prepare ham biscuits, hot dogs, cheeseburgers and other foods on restaurant-sized griddles. Back in the early days, Highsmith recalled, “the women would bake pound cakes, brownies and other desserts at home and bring them here in baskets. They’d usually sell about half of what they had before they made it to our little cubicle with the flags flying on top.”

He remembers joining the large crowds at the railroad tracks on the Sunday night before the fair when the rides and exhibits would arrive. “The fair only lasted four and half days then,” he said. “When it closed midnight Saturday they’d take about two weeks to take everything down and clean up and then lock up the fairgrounds until the next year. Not like today where they have something going on everyday.”

As a child he loved the midget auto racing. When he got a little older, he would sneak a peak at the “hoochie-coochie shows they used to have here.”

These days he spends most of his time with the other church volunteers. The fair booth is their major fundraiser, usually clearing about $20,000 for outreach ministries, a rescue mission, programs for the handicapped and other charitable efforts.

“We’re a little down this year, maybe 8 percent,” Highsmith said. “But the mood is always good at the fair.”

The N.C. State Fair’s annual canned food drive generated more than 166,000 pounds of donated food on Thursday.

Fairgoers received one free admission ticket, valued at up to $7, for every four cans of food they brought to the fair. The cans were collected by the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, which provides food to local soup kitchens and food pantries in a 34-county area.

Known this year as Food Lion Hunger Relief Day, the canned food drive is one of the largest in the state. This year’s donations are enough to provide about 140,000 meals, according to the food bank.

Like fair attendance itself, the volume of food donations was down from last year, when 174,000 pounds were collected. The attendance Thursday was 80,094, or about 8,700 less than last year.

Thursday was another down day for N.C. State Fair attendance compared to last year, but fair officials have begun to take a longer view.

The attendance Thursday was 80,094, or about 8,700 less than last year. It was sixth day out of seven that fair attendance has lagged last year.

But today’s attendance announcement from state Department of Agriculture points out that the 20-year average attendance for Thursday is 70,504, so this year’s number looks pretty good by comparison.

Overall, 523,686 people had attended the fair through Thursday, down from 550,992 last year. This year’s total includes an extra half a day last Thursday that was supposed to help push total fair attendance to a new record.

Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler said bad weather, high gas prices and the souring economy have made this year challenging.

“I’m still hopeful that we’ll make up the numbers this weekend, when we’re supposed to have sunshine and the 70s,” Troxler said. “We’re probably not going to break last year’s record [858,611] but we should do better than 2006 [785,956] that was our lowest number for the last five years. My guess is we’ll end up somewhere in the middle of the five year average."