After 152 years, Mid-South Fair tears its last ticket in Memphis

It was at the Mid-South Fair that Pam Cook took her first and last roller coaster ride.

Her heart was beating in her ears and then in her throat as the linked cars paused at the highest peak before plunging straight down the tracks, threatening to smash into the earth.

Thirty years later, it's her two teenage sons who are the thrill seekers, while she and her husband come more for the fried delights and buttery corn on the cob.

Cook has rarely missed a fair, and when her boys were young, she recalls pushing their strollers through the crowds.

But on Sunday she steered her family through the smell of corn dogs and the screams of carnival riders for the last time.

The city's plan to redevelop the Midtown fairgrounds has left the nonprofit fair no option but to change locations. Fair organizers plan to reopen next year on 150 acres of donated land in Tunica County, Miss.

With the distance from her Arlington home and the price of gas, Cook said it's unlikely her family will make the trip.

"It's sad to see it go," she said.

The Bluff City has been home to the fair for 152 years, and there were few people enjoying the annual extravaganza on its last day who didn't have memories of the long-running event.

"There used to be a lot of rides," said Darrell Stallinges of Binghamton, who had just paid a dollar to see "The World's Smallest Woman."

Stallinges, 46, once worked at Libertyland, the shuttered amusement park next to the fair.

He misses the days when both Libertyland and the fair were open at the same time, bringing people out in droves, he said, noting the comparatively thin turnout by early Sunday afternoon.

"It's not like it used to be," he said.

Amid the aroma of sizzling steak burgers and not far from where a man was being shot out of a cannon onto an air mattress, a voice boomed from a booth of stuffed animals and plastic toys.

"Last day of the fair, folks, come on in," prodded Will Jordan, 51, who was having little luck persuading folks to pay $1 for him to guess their age, weight or birthday.

Pausing for a break from trying to appeal to the crowd, he said the fair has changed since he first started coming to it 32 years ago.

"It's missing its spirit. It's missing its umph," he said.

The crowds have gotten smaller and the fairgrounds have become a stretch of broken pavement and potholes, he said.

"It used to be a beautiful fair."

Jordan, who hails from Savannah, Ga., might not follow the fair to Tunica County, but he said the move is a blessing.

"You need something fresh," he said.

Despite the perception among many fairgoers, attendance through Saturday night had actually gone up by nearly 3,600 compared to the previous year, according to Mid-South Fair president Jim Rout, the former Shelby County mayor.

As of Saturday night, 260,951 people had come through the gates, compared with 257,357 in 2007, he said.

"It's a traumatic time in a sense, but you can't keep looking back," Rout said. "Will there be nostalgia when the lights go out? Sure there will. But it's not the death of the fair."