Helen Thomas Allison, 90, won this Shirley Temple doll at a shooting gallery at the Mid-South Fair in the late 1930s. Over the years she has won 63 ribbons at the fair. Her grandfather started the family tradition of fair wins.

The medal held by Allison was won by her father at the first fair, then called the Shelby County Fair, in 1856. Story Tools E-mail this story Print RELATED STORIES Fair days Helen Thomas Allison's fondest memory of the Mid-South Fair is more of a memento than a recollection.

Among her most prized possessions is a silver shield, a first-place prize won by her grandfather, G.M. Douglass at age 9 for a calf entered in the first Shelby County Fair in 1856.

"He was really proud of it," said Allison, 90, of Memphis. "I'd sit by his chair and, you know how older people like to talk about the past, he'd tell me about it."

Started in 1856 as the Shelby County Fair by the Shelby County Agricultural Society, the original purpose was to exhibit and promote the area's finest products.

With a century-and-a-half behind it, for Mid-Southerners the fair has generated memories of romances, prizes won and unforgettable good times. This year's Mid-South Fair runs Sept. 21-Oct. 1.

Sharp shooting was a sideline, and in her home in East Memphis she keeps in a wicker baby carriage that "Santa Claus brought" when she was 4 the Shirley Temple doll she won at the fair in the late 1930s with her shooting skills.

As Allison recalls, customers got two shots for a quarter. The game was rigged, she said, so the first shot was to measure how much the rifle was off.

"I allowed for this and always won a prize with the second shot," Allison said. "I would shoot and win prizes for others who paid the 25 cents -- until the owner made me stop."

"I met my husband at the Mid-South Fair on Oct. 19, 1941, and I still have the dress I was wearing that day and the corsage he bought me," said Pugh, 81, of Clarksville, Tenn.

After spending the day together, he drove her home in his Ford Model A and asked if he could come back the next weekend. He could, she said, only if he'd come in to meet her mother.

"Later his sister told me he was dating a girl and had a date with her on that Saturday night. He went and told her, 'I'm not coming back.' He said, 'I've met the girl I'm going to marry.' We got married on Feb. 28, 1942. We were married 32 years. He died in 1974."

Back when you could still raise chickens in the city limits, the Cantrell family entered a "big, white militant" rooster named Rooster Dick in the 1952 fair, wrote Laura Y. Cantrell, 91, of Memphis.

"A family friend who grew up on a farm told us to clean his big red comb with rubbing alcohol, which immediately turned part of his comb black," said Cantrell.

"The fact that the third chicken was so sick that he could not hold up his head did not diminish the children's pride in Rooster Dick taking second place," Cantrell said. "I still have his ribbon."

As a girl, Ruth Youngblood Williams lived with her family in North Mississippi. Her father, Calvin Youngblood, loves the fair and it was a regular outing for the family of six, she said.

"My daddy is an information nut, so we always went through every booth, all the family stuff, plants, everything," said Williams, 48, of Hernando.

He'd give each child $5 to spend, which they'd immediately "blow." When it was time to leave, her father would buy the children one last cotton candy.

"Finally, this older man tapped my daddy on the shoulder and handed him a dollar and said, please buy these children the candy on me," she said. "My dad was so embarrassed. He tried and tried to explain he was just kidding and that he had the money and was going to buy the candy. The man would not hear of it. He insisted that my dad take the money. My mom just died laughing. It was so funny. I must have been about 8 or 10, but we never forgot it and never let my dad live it down."

During the late 1930s, paying admission to the fair was money wasted for sisters Dorothy and Mary Ditto -- now Dorothy Ditto Moseley, 82, and Mary Ditto Brooks, 78, both of Hernando.

They lived near the fairgrounds, worked all summer selling scrap metal and rags to earn 25 cents to spend at the fair, specifically on a candy apple.

"Us boys always managed somehow to linger in front of Noah's Ark because that was where unsuspecting girls and women would, at the exit, step on an activator switch and an upsurge of air would blow their skirts sky high," Kernell wrote. "Some alert women would, upon exiting, reach down and clutch their skirts tightly about their legs to avoid embarrassment.

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