I recently read your article about the State Fair and several things came back to my mind.

I am now 88 years old so State Fair in my time was at Northeast 10th and Eastern.

Fair was a great time for us who had various types of farm animals. I myself had sheep. Fair time meant we could miss a full week of school to go to the Fair to “show our animals.”

I must admit I never had that great of a group of sheep, but Fair week was fun.

We worked several hours trying to make the animals look good on our “Omega property boxes.”

We slept in the pen with our animals, wearing the same clothes during the entire week with no showers.

I’m sure we smelled like the sheep when we went home.

Showing our animals did not take up all of our time as we would crawl under the fence in the evening to watch the races and night programs.

There were also several tent programs which we would crawl under the back of.

One I still remember was the “House of Linda.”

It was girls who would come out in bikinis, but we were country boys.

The midways during this time were all covered with wood chips and all entry to the attraction was paid for in cash.

I stop here to mention we are talking about the mid 1950s and all the coinage was silver. If a coin was dropped in the wood chips it was gone.

Of course, it always rained at Fair time and the area where cars parked (east of the fairgrounds) left tracks. The wood chips were collected to fill the tracks.

Going forward now approximately 50 to 60 years, the parking area is now the 9th fairway of an east side golf course.

Four of us metal detector nuts, with our research, came to the idea that there would be a great area for potential silver coins.

Problem now is that it is a public golf course’s 9th fairway.

With a little research we discovered that the “golf pro” of the course liked rum.

Now with a few bottles, he said “you hunt out there and if anyone says anything to you tell ‘em I said it way OK.”

Metal detectors in hand, we now descended on fairway No. 9.

We were able to hunt several weekends, finding over 300 silver dimes and numerous silver quarters.

I also found two Jack Earl the giant rings and one large cent (1843).

Larry Biehler