If the recession is affecting this year’s Lorain County Fair, it wasn’t evident at Thursday’s Junior Fair livestock auction.
A record was set for grand champion single fryer rabbit. The buyer — Lorain County Sheriff Phil Stammitti — paid $800 for Jacqueline Squires’ meat rabbit, resetting his own previous record of $725 paid in 2004.
“He just couldn’t let anyone have his record,” said Garrett Schwedt, 2009 Junior Fair king and a Junior Fair Board member.
“The bids weren’t affected as much as I thought they might be” by the recession, Schwedt said.
Fair attendance has been relatively “in line” with recent years, according to Senior Fair Board President Brian Twining.
Wednesday, with 14,088 people, was actually a record-low Wednesday since the Fair Board started verifying attendance figures a decade ago. But Monday was a couple hundred up from Monday last year, and Tuesday was just a couple hundred down from Tuesday last year.
“With the economy, we didn’t know what we would run into,” Twining said.
The only major incident so far this week happened in the rodeo ring. A participant in Wednesday night’s Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association rodeo was thrown from his horse and kicked in the head as he participated in bareback bronc riding early in the program.
Nelson Miller of Coshocton was in stable condition Thursday, according to a spokeswoman at Metro Health Medical Center in Cleveland, where he was LifeFlighted from the fairgrounds.
Jim Bainbridge, senior public relations coordinator at the PRCA, said Miller suffered a concussion and a collapsed lung but is out of the hospital’s intensive care unit.
Several fairgoers caused a scene Wednesday when a power outage temporarily shut down the fair’s kid’s rides. The outage lasted about 25 minutes, according to workers selling tickets that afternoon.
Several parents became irate and several were threatened they might be removed from the fairgrounds, but “as soon as the rides were back up and running, everyone was happy again,” according to a fair worker.
As a result of the outage afternoon ride passes that day were honored an extra hour, until 6 p.m.
Otherwise, fair week so far has been “very, very smooth,” according to Twining.
“Just little things here and there,” sheriff’s Capt. James Drozdowski said when asked about fair incidents. “It’s been fairly quiet. Everyone’s been really good.”
He doesn’t foresee problems this weekend.
“Traditionally we haven’t had any issues,” Drozdowski said. “When it gets hot, we get issues, but this year the weather’s been steady.”
Jim Pilati, who was working the his brother Dick’s packed skee ball trailer Thursday afternoon, said business has been “down some but not a great deal.”
“We have an advantage with skee ball,” he said. “It only costs a quarter.”
Several vendors called business so far this year slow, but that wasn’t the case at the Wellington band’s doughnut booth.
Band director Toni Novotny said it’s been “a little busier” than other years and noted that the Sunday before the fair’s official opening, “setup day,” saw record sales for them.
“The weather’s cooperated for us,” she said. “But it really doesn’t matter if it’s hot or raining. At the end of the night, people come over and they buy their dougnuts to take home with them.”
Entries in the fair’s 4-H competitions were about the same as previous years, Schwedt said. Some categories were up slightly, and others were down slightly, he said.
The Junior Fair royalty competition, in which Schwedt was crowned king, had more entries than any year since the ’80s. And the Junior Fair Board this year added some new awards — premier exhibitor titles in the beef, horse, fowl, swine and sheep categories.
Most of the week’s 4-H activities have wrapped up, Schwedt said. Left this weekend are goat and dairy shows Friday and the hog and beef auction Saturday.
Other weekend highlights include a tractor pull Friday night, combine derby Saturday and moto-cross races and demolition derby Sunday.
“If the weather holds out, we anticipate a couple of great days days this weekend,” Twining said.
