While covering the Illinois State Fair this year, I was offered a chance to ride in the starting gate car prior to one of the races.
The car — a mobile start gate — basically is a modified white limousine with two front ends that has an automated starting gate on it. The men inside the car activate the gates at the appropriate time, and they swing out on either side of the car. The racers then line up in their designated spots behind the gate, and the limo takes off with the horses following. The limo speeds up and gets out of the way of the horses just as they cross the start line.
But that’s not the end of it. The car continues on around the track along with the harness racers. Inside the car are two patrol judges who monitor the racing to make sure no infractions take place. A driver at the other end of the car drives it around the track.
I used the Flip video cam to film the one-mile race from inside the car.
Norma Bowers of Dallas shows how to make a deep-fried hot fudge sundae at the ever-popular Fried What! stand, which is inside the Main Gate on Main Street across from Ethnic Village at the Illinois State Fair.
I shot this video of the folks at Sub Zero Ice Cream demonstrating how they use liquid nitrogen to freeze ice cream before customers’ eyes. The company , based in Utah, was at the 2009 Illinois State Fair.
This year I again landed the gig of Illinois State Fair blogger for the newspaper, which is fine with me because I really don’t mind the fair. Plus, it’s nice to work away from the office for a stretch.
Just as I did last year, I donned jeans, sneakers and sunglasses, grabbed a laptop computer and backpack, stocked up on extra batteries and headed out with a point-and-shoot camera, Flip video camera, the computer equipment and miscellaneous fair schedules and news releases.
I blogged six of the 10 days of the fair, plus preview day, logging nearly 70 blog posts that documented everything from vendors and attendance to the weather and fair food. I rode out two mid-afternoon summer storms, including one that prompted officials to set off the fairgrounds’ tornado sirens and sent people running for cover in the tunnel beneath the Grandstand.
I saw concessionaires fry up Pepsi and sundaes, rode the Sky Ride for the first time even though I’m terrified of heights and learned a little bit about harness racing.
The 2009 Illinois State Fair is in the books now, and I expect 2010 will be just as memorable.
In June my neighbor’s mother told me she’d unsuccessfully been trying to reach SJ-R columnist Dave Bakke to tell him about a story idea she had. Her great-grandson at the end of the week was going to be the fifth generation of the Roderick family to get his first hair cut by Springfield barber Bob Brown.
Bakke was on vacation, and I knew this would be a fun story to tell, so I volunteered to do it. The result is the story below, which ran on Page 1 of The State Journal-Register. The photo above was taken by Justin Fowler.
Ten-month-old Quinn Roderick wriggled, shrugged and smiled his way through his first haircut Friday morning the way many toddlers do.
He sat on a booster in the big red barber chair looking around at a room full of smiling faces as barber Bob Brown tucked a white smock into the collar of the boy’s dinosaur overalls.
Parents often cherish their child’s first haircut, going so far as to take pictures or tuck away locks of baby hair. But Quinn’s had even more significance. He is the fifth generation of Rodericks to have his hair trimmed by Brown, who has been a barber in Springfield since 1955.
That’s not all. Quinn’s father, Seth Roderick, brought him here all the way from Stafford, Va., so Brown could give him his first haircut. Brown also did Seth’s first haircut around 1975 [...] Read the rest of this entry »
A mechanic suffered severe burns in this fire, which happened the morning of April 21, 2009, when he dropped a fuel tank he was changing out on a truck and the fuel ignited.
The last F-16 assigned to Springfield’s 183rd Tactical Fighter Wing thundered into the air Sept. 23, 2008, and then circled back over the base to make a final pass. With the plane’s departure at 9:36 a.m., the unit’s 60-year tradition of flying fighters out of Springfield ended.
Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin and City Water, Light and Power general manager Todd Renfrow talk about the power plant explosion the day after it happened. The explosion was Nov. 10, 2007; this news conference was convened Nov. 11, 2007.
I covered the funeral of Illinois State Police trooper Brian McMillen, who was killed in an early morning crash east of Springfield. The funeral was in Taylorville on Oct. 31, 2007. I shot video, and SJ-R photographers Justin Fowler and T.J. Salsman shot stills. The result was this touching tribute.
