Georgia’s largest fall fair bears a name that is something of a fair-y tale

PERRY — On a recent sunburnt fall afternoon at the Georgia National Fair, which in truth is a state fair with a snazzier ring, the subject of that grandiose name arose.

In part because the “national” part begs it. For it signals an almost ginned-up shine that catapults its moniker into the Tilt-A-Whirl lexicon, into the realm of words like JUMBO, FUN and SUPER, in a shrieking carnival universe where come-ons rule.

And in part because a reporter wondered if anyone knew why it is called that: the Georgia National Fair.

It turned out that some people do know why. Most of them are older. They were around when the state-owned, $25 million Georgia National Fairgrounds & Agricenter officially opened in 1990 and was dubbed by its chairman as “the Super Bowl of Fairs.” When, at a ceremony here that October, someone set off firecrackers and Gov. Joe Frank Harris deadpanned, “I told you it was going to open with a bang.”

It seems, however, that most fairgoers do not know why the word “national” appears in the name.

Because it’s national, many guess. Because people come from around the nation?

Well, sort of, maybe, but nah.

Its naming genesis is maybe loosely akin to that of Georgia’s other “nationally” named entity of renown, the Augusta National Golf Club, so dubbed at its inception to attract broad membership.

There’s a bit more to it than that, though, which we’ll eventually get to, but not quite yet.

The other day, a couple from Columbus found shade beneath a picnic pavilion near the VIP gate and a Ferris wheel. When asked about the reason for the fair’s name, Shirley Williams, 56, wondered, “Because it comes every year maybe?”

“Whole lot of people from different areas come — Florida, Georgia, Alabama,” her husband James, 68, a New York native in a Yankees cap, figured. And he wasn’t exactly wrong. The fair last year attracted more than 600,000 people, plenty from surrounding states.

Then he struck on something that many Georgians, especially those in these parts, have come to refer to it that cuts through the naming fog: “We always call it the Perry fair.”

Here along I-75, about 100 miles southeast of the state Capitol, the fairgrounds are an eye-catcher this time of year. Carnival lights and packed parking lots give off the sense that something is happening here. Something big. Something national even.

Fairs are an exercise in enticement, in the incredible, the itinerant. This one’s 11-day run ends Sunday.

A young woman from Pooler, over near Savannah, was standing with friends beneath a canopy. Nearby, a sign bearing a white silhouette of a bunny with an arrow pointed to the left: “Rabbit Exhibit Horse Barn 1.” Calli Comeaux, 26, said she had just gotten off the phone with her father. She’d told him she was on her way to the Georgia National Fair and that he replied, “It’s just in Georgia, it’s not national.”

Jim Kopel, a retired professor of accounting and finance in Illinois, in the mid-1990s began a decade-plus-long quest to visit (and later rank and review) every official state fair and “unofficial” ones like Perry’s, which is state-sponsored even though “state” isn’t in its name.

“Georgia is not the only state that has two, quote, state fairs. Illinois has two. Oklahoma has two,” Kopel said. “So they sometimes have to get around that official title that is assigned to a particular city. More often than not, the one that is officially the fair is not the good fair.”

Kopel attended the Georgia State Fair, which has since moved to Hampton, prior to its 2013 departure after more than a century and a half in downtown Macon. He bought a set of cookware from a vendor. “I kind of felt sorry for the poor girl that was selling it. There was nobody around … and nobody wanted to buy her merchandise.”

Largely because the similarly timed Perry fair had drained it. “The Perry fair is an outstanding fair,” Kopel said and noted that if it were the official “state fair” it would be among his top 10 — “the facilities, the livestock shows, the entertainment, the layout.” (Minnesota is his No. 1.)

Kopel said that, as he understood it, the Georgia National Fair tried to buy the name “Georgia State Fair” from the civic club in Macon that ran it. “They just simply refused to sell the name. And in a way that’s too bad because eventually it collapses and you have nothing.”

Beneath Perry’s AgriLift, a chairlift ride that spans the fair overhead, fairgoer James Lamb, 69, sporting a KC and the Sunshine Band baseball cap, who is from up the road in Jones County: “See, the Macon fair used to be called the Georgia State Fair. So they couldn’t call this the Georgia State Fair.”

And that is why. Fair officials have said in the past that they “just chose” Georgia National Fair to distinguish the Perry fair from the state fair in Macon around the time the national fair opened 36 years ago, and to “lessen the confusion.”

At the fair information booth beneath the landmark clock tower, volunteer Catherine Collver confirmed that first part. On the naming. The confusion part, though, not so much.

Collver works at a crossroads of sorts at the fair, an intersection where fairgoers pass from the livestock and exhibit areas and the midway and food avenues. Besides being asked where the restrooms are, the other main questions she gets are “where do you buy armbands” for unlimited rides and “where’s the petting zoo.”