Excerpt 4 from STATE FAIR by Phil Stong

There was one man in the car, a young man, who wearily waved a small card at the loader. Margy caught a glimpse of the card and recognized a miniature reproduction of a logotype she saw every day, the masthead of the Des Moines Evening Tribune. With awe she realized that she was about to occupy a car with the Press.

The Press was a young man of twenty-seven or eight, with sleepy eyes, a  pleasant, not unattractive face, and a faint smile. His suit, of light gray tweed, set off a well-browned face and picked up hair of platinum blond for which any chorus-girl would have given her soul a dozen times over. He had evidently been around the world hundreds of times, had tired of wine, women, and song, and had taken up roller-coastering as an End in Life.

Margy took a seat demurely in the place to which the attendance beckoned her, at the young man's side. The bar was dropped over their laps and the car started, slowly.

Before they had gone twenty feet, Margy realized that she was not riding on the roller-coaster of the previous year. The first climb was tremendous, was mountainous. She felt a faint alarm. The young man lay back, relaxed, inspecting the Fair Grounds from the increasingly advantageous heights. He took out a cigarette, looked at it critically, and put it back in his pocket. Margy smiled and nodded at the cigarette. He thanked her with a glance, but shook his head.

The next moment they fell ninety feet.


State Fair, by Phil Stong

Come see us at the Iowa State Fair!

Come visit the University of Iowa Press booth this afternoon at 3:00 - 9:00, we'll be with all of the other University of Iowa folks. Hope to see you there!

Excerpt 3 from STATE FAIR by Phil Stong

Only Abel felt the dews which came toward morning and saw the trees faintly begin to silhouette themselves against a dawning gray light. A little later he could see the sunrise from the side door of the truck, and then he began to hear a rising chorus of farm animals from the farms which drifted by the car. Only Abel saw the freshly gilded dome of the Capitol suddenly shine out over Des Moines, and the newly whitewashed Fair Buildings which promised them carnival from the near side of the town. At the gates he halted and showed a sleepy watchman his entry slip for Blue Boy. Mrs. Frake started up.

"Wake up, children," she cried, "wake up! We're here! We're at the Fair!"


State Fair, by Phil Stong

Come see the University of Iowa Press at the State Fair this year on opening day, tomorrow, from 3:00pm - 9:00pm!

Excerpt 2 from STATE FAIR by Phil Stong

Along the wall of Melissa Frake's kitchen at home was a long row of yellow and red ribbons which she had won for angel's food, devil's food and layer cake; cherry preserves made by the old Stidger recipe which had come down in the family for generations uncounted; for chicken dressing; for raised bread; for doughnuts. There were two blue ribbons--one for candied cherries and one for a mincemeat to which Mrs. Frake had surreptitiously added some sherry wine the doctor had once prescribed as a tonic for Margy.

The little bit that was left over, it seemed a shame to waste. The judges awarded Mrs. Frake's mincemeat a blue ribbon with a promptness and unanimity which had shocked her. Although she felt a very small twinge of conscience when she saw this blue ribbon, she felt a slight moral indignation against judges whose souls would not warn them of irreligious matters in mincemeat.


State Fair, by Phil Stong

Come see the University of Iowa Press at the State Fair this year on opening day, August 8, from 3:00pm - 9:00pm!

Excerpt 1 from STATE FAIR by Phil Stong

The whole farm was crackling with preparation. The Hired Man had not marcelled Blue Boy, but only because the curl of the hair was not a judging point. He had manicured him; he had viewed more critically than a Corot the misty sunrise tint of his snout; no Park Avenue specialist knew one half about any dowager's bowels what the Hired Man knew about Blue Boy's--in addition, the Hired Man was pleased with what he knew; Blue Boy's coat was curried and rubbed to enameled perfection; Blue Boy's tail was curled so tightly that its tension would have alarmed uninformed persons; Blue Boy, as he lay and rocked upon his four legs, was the finest creature of his species that had ever existed in time and space.

State Fair, by Phil Stong

Come see the University of Iowa Press at the State Fair this year on opening day, next week, from 3:00pm - 9:00pm!

Iowa's Horn of Plenty Exhibit

Iowa as a cornucopia spewing corn--also used as the state's exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. 

Was This Heaven, by Lyell D. Henry, Jr. 

Raptor of the Week: Mississippi Kite

Mississippi Kite
Ictinia mississippiensis

This graceful bird now regularly occurs in Iowa, being reported each year. It
returned in 1978 after an absence of some seventy years. There are historic
records of nesting in Iowa; in modern times, it has nested in Polk County in
1995 and succeeding years, and there is recent evidence of probable nesting in
Ottumwa.

The Raptors of Iowa, paintings by James F. Landenberger