A Rainy Opening Day of the State Fair of Texas — 1967
by Paula Bosse
A damp day at the fair… (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
It’s been raining pretty heavily today. And the State Fair of Texas is underway. I always feel bad for the people visiting and working at the fair when it rains like this. What a disappointment!
It rained so much on Opening Day of the State Fair in 1967 that the downtown parade ended up being canceled, as did the ceremonial ribbon-cutting which was to have been performed by Governor John Connally. That day — Oct. 7, 1967 — was also Rural Youth Day, and newspaper reports estimated that more than 100,000 “farm boys and girls” from more than 200 Texas counties had traveled to Dallas for what turned out to be a soggy day at the fair. (But kids never seem to mind being out in the rain as much as adults do.)
Watch rainy footage of the parade preparations downtown and wet-haired teenagers at the fair in an atmospheric clip shot by WBAP Channel 5 News cameramen, collected and digitized by UNT (see bottom of this post for more info). The 1:47 film footage can be viewed here (be sure to watch it in full-screen mode).
Below are a few screenshots.
At the top, a girl from Carthage, wearing a Future Farmers of America jacket (it was Rural Youth Day, and the FFA was well represented) as well as a couple of ladies in coif-preserving plastic rain bonnets.
Below, a rain-drenched downtown.
El Chico float getting soaked.
Marching band guys taking shelter.
Grandma as human umbrella.
Quadrupedestrians. (Pretty sure horses shouldn’t be trotting along sidewalks….)
A break in the precip — rides are revved up.
Menacing clouds as seen from the top of the Comet.
San Antonio Express-News, Oct. 8, 1967
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Sources & Notes
Screenshots are from the video titled “News Clip: 1967 Texas State Fair Begins, Parade Rained Out.” It is part of the KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection and was provided by UNT Libraries Special Collections to The Portal to Texas History, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries. More info — including the video itself — can be accessed here.
More rainy-day SFOT weather can be seen in this clip from 1970, courtesy of SMU.
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Copyright © 2018 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
[…] rainy opening day of the fair in 1967. Watch the filmed report and see other damp screenshots at “A Rainy Opening Day of the State Fair of Texas — 1967.” (Source: KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection, […]
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