Night Shift
In the summer of 1982, I was living in a rented apartment in an old building at 399 Ashland Ave (Cathedral Hill) in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had completed my technical school education at Control Data Institute for electronics. Another student at the institute got a job as a night security guard at the horse barn at the Minnesota State Fair. He let me know there was another position and I took it.
For 10 days in a row, he would pick me up in the evening and drive us to the fair grounds. We wore a dark blue shirt, state fair hat (I still have it!), and plastic security badge. We had no weapons and no authority. Our job was to be the overnight contact point for people in the horse barn who had a problem – as well as keep our eyes out for any law breakers or security issues.
We took turns walking the stalls of the barn at night. This was mainly horses sleeping and some exhibitors checking up on them. The exhibitors slept in bunk beds in an adjacent building to the barn. When not paroling, we sat at a table in a break room listening to the radio.
One night I had to reprimand some kids I caught smoking in the barn. With all the dry hay, the place would have burned down quickly. Another night there were complaints from the sleeping quarters. Either a homeless man or one of the carnival workers had taken one of the bunks. I never encountered him. Our job was to call the ‘real’ fair security people to remove him from the premises.
Spectator
I have been to the Minnesota State Fair a handful of times as a spectator when I was a kid in the 1970s. Sometimes with my parents and sometimes with a 4-H group. We would always meet at the grandstand entrance at the end of the day. Otherwise, I was free to roam. My first stop was always to buy mini-donuts, made fresh at a booth on a miniature conveyor belt. Then off to the penny arcade, ‘strange creature’ exhibit, the Hippodrome to see vendor wares, then to see 4-H exhibits, and farm implements. I never cared for the midway, though.
I found a home video taken during the 1982 fair. You can see remnants of late 1970s clothing and early 1980s hairstyles.
