A storm stop the State Fair? Not this year

The miracle of the 2007 Minnesota State Fair does not come on a stick, deep fried or in the form of a Princess Kay of the Milky Way butterhead sculpture.

"The miracle is that there is a State Fair at all this year," said Dallas Simonette, owner of the Bayou Bob's Gator Shack, flashing a smile as wide as a corn dog is long. His eyes glistened with an enthusiasm that defies the nightmare of 12 days ago.

It's hard to imagine today -- opening day -- that on Aug. 11 the sky above the fairgrounds reportedly turned green at 3 a.m. and winds estimated at 80 miles per hour ripped through the area.

Twenty-three trees were either uprooted or had to be removed, an additional eight to 12 might be removed after the fair closes and another 205 trees were damaged, fair officials said Wednesday.

One gust literally raised the Grandstand roof, with a section of the roof crashing against four rows of seats.

The Education Building flooded when its roof blew off and landed on Snelling Avenue. Sixty vendors' booths were hit -- some slammed to the ground, others completely obliterated. Crumbled link fences framed Heritage Square.

"Nobody dreamt for a split second that there would be no fair," said Jerry Hammer, the State Fair's executive vice president. "After all that has happened to Minnesota, we need the fair this year."

Year of disaster

Maybe the miracle of the 2007 State Fair is in the timing. What hasn't happened in Minnesota this year? The Interstate 35W bridge collapsed. Floods ravaged southeastern Minnesota. The Superior National Forest fire -- one of the most devastating fires in state history -- charred the Gunflint Trail. For the 12th time, a member of the Minnesota National Guard returned from Iraq to be buried. Drought. Trapped sewer workers in St. Paul.

The storm that hit the fairgrounds was Aug. 11.

John Keenan, whose family has owned Ye Old Mill, the fair's oldest ride, since 1913, called the storm "the worst thing that's happened to the fair." Keenan rushed to the fairgrounds that day to find one-fourth of the roof above Ye Old Mill gone -- about $10,000 in damage, he said.

But he also found Hammer, offering moral support to stunned vendors and directing structural engineers to the hardest-hit booths.

"We lost a lot, but never our morale," Keenan said.

While full damage will not be assessed until after the fair closes on Labor Day, the destruction required the around-the-clock maintenance work of 40 fair employees and dozens of contractors. The storm cost individual owners tens of thousands of dollars in repairs, many sleepless nights and a run on antacid tablets.

Yet, there never was a question about the show going on.

Since its inception in 1859, there have been only five years in which the State Fair was closed down: 1861 and 1862 because of the Civil War and the Dakota Indian Conflict; 1893 due to a scheduling conflict with the World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago; 1945 attributed to World War II-related fuel shortages, and 1946 because of a polio epidemic.

"Suppose this happened after the fair had started," said Danny Runyon, whose Juanita's Fajitas stand near the Grandstand was completely wiped out, but has since been replaced. "Nobody was hurt. We're lucky.

"The fairgrounds is like a little community. We cry together. We laugh together. We're in this together."

Time to rebuild

They banded together shortly after the storm. A crew from Maertens-Brenny, a Fridley construction company, already was working in the Grandstand and in Heritage Square when vendors arrived. Other workers were removing tree limbs that blocked nearly every road on the fairgrounds.

"I just use what happened as energy," said Simonette, whose booth's dining area was nearly destroyed. "Used to have a big old garage door that closed and protected all this, but it was pushed in by the wind, pushed right into all these wooden beams and boards that we had to replace. Probably cost me $10,000. Maybe more."

Simonette lived in Andover for years before moving to Las Vegas, but when it comes to the fair and the deep-fried alligator booth he has run for 11 years, he's no gambler.

"Let me tell you why all the vendors are here, why you can come to the fair and you'll hardly know there was a storm that blew this place apart," he said, his gray ponytail swaying as he gestured emphatically. "It's like when it rains. We don't get depressed. We just assume that tomorrow will be a record day for attendance."

Today, the stand that blew over by the DFL booth is back up, probably leaning to the left. The 8-foot facsimile of a turkey drumstick is back in one piece and atop the Heritage Square Turkey Drumstick stand. After vanishing in the storm, the Heritage Square stage is again set. Not a single State Fair booth closed because of storm damage, Hammer said.

Five windows and a bent door frame needed to be replaced at the Teriyaki Ostrich on a Stick stand. On Tuesday, 43 volunteers arrived at the stand to help, said Verle Paul, who manages the stand.

"It was completely unexpected to have so many volunteers help this one stand," he said. "It's enough to make anyone believe in miracles."

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419

Paul Levy • plevy@startribune.com