While attendance at this year’s East Perry County Community Fair in Altenburg was slightly down from recent years due to the weather, board member Fred Eggers is satisfied that the weekend was a successful one.
If anyone is qualified to give one’s opinion on the fair, Eggers, who has served as the fair’s publicity director for 43 years, is certainly among those who know what they’re talking about.
“It’s one of those things,” he said with a laugh. “With the fair, if you get a job, it’s hard to get rid of it.”
An evaluation
Offering a quick evaluation of this year’s event, Eggers rated it “a lot of fun, as usual” and noted that the committee was “very happy” with the results. The parade had more than 150 entries and lasted over an hour.
“The parade was wonderful,” Eggers said. “Of course, the kids love it, and they love the rides. Dr. Paul Winningham, the recently retired Grace Lutheran and Zion Lutheran Church pastor, was our grand marshal this year. We didn’t really have any major problems, but the attendance was down a little because of the threat of storms on Saturday,” he said. “Our sales were down a little, and we won’t know the total numbers for a while, but it will still be a good outcome for us.”
Asked why he thinks the fair has remained so popular throughout the years, Eggers took the practical route, saying, “Well, I think it’s because the fair is free. That’s important to a lot of people, but we like to have something of interest to all age groups. We’ve got our music — on Saturday afternoon, the music’s pretty much easy listening.
“The music on Friday and Saturday evenings is more for the people who like to dance and all of that. The 20- and 30-somethings are the main people who like the truck and tractor pulls. We’ve got all the livestock judging. That’s a tradition that has continued through the years, but as far as drawing outside people to the fair, the mule jump is by far the biggest attraction we have because it appeals to people of all ages.”
Mule jumping results
Speaking of mule jumping, these are the results from this year’s competition, which featured 17 mules:
Class 1 – Height of mule less than 47 inches: Mater, owned and jumped by Ethan Norris of Saint Robert.
Class 2 – Height of mule 47 to 52 inches: Pedro, owned and jumped by Rev. Richie Dement of Lesterville.
Class 3 – Height of mule more than 52 inches: Miss Kitty, owned by Cyndi Nelson of Cameron and jumped by Ethan Norris of Saint Robert.
Class 4 – Open: The top mules from the first three classes were: first – Miss Kitty, owned by Cyndi Nelson of Cameron and jumped by Ethan Norris of Saint Robert; second – Mackenzie, owned by the Paul Ruehling Family of Pocahontas and jumped by Mackenzie Gass, also of Pocahontas; and third – Pedro, owned and jumped by Rev. Richie Dement of Lesterville.
The winning jump in the open class was 60 inches, two inches under the East Perry Community Fair record of 62 inches. There is now a $500 bounty on the fair record and the world record of 74 inches.
Luke Ponder of Altenburg was the superintendent of the Mule Jumping Competition.
Sponsorship for the prize money was provided by Century Casino of Cape Girardeau and Coors Light through Kohlfeld Distributing of Jackson.
Ready for next year
According to Eggers, planning for the fair is a never-ending job.
“We started planning for next year’s fair yesterday,” he said. “We had a cleanup day. Pretty much everything’s put away. When we finished with that, the board and some of the other associate people met. We’ve got some improvements we want to make to the grounds and a little bit with the program. Then, we meet in January for our annual meeting when we have elections. In April, we’ll meet with all of our department superintendents to go over any changes they want to make.
“Then we get into August and September. Since the beginning of August, we’ve worked generally one night a week. We’re always ready to prepare for the next year. We’ve got nine people on our board, and then we’ve got six or seven that are former board members or people who are really involved. We talk things over when we get together officially and unofficially. We enjoy doing it. We’ve got a great group of people, and we all get along. We get along with all of our superintendents and we get along with our people that work with the entertainment and everything else.”
Eggers is well aware that the success of the “Best Little Fair in the Land” depends on more than the current and past board members who do much of the planning and organization each year.
“We certainly appreciate all the people that come and support our fair,” he said. “And we appreciate all the volunteers — there are about 300. What people need to understand is that we're not some governmental organization that talks down to people. We want to hear feedback, and we want to do what the people want.”
