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With only one week to go until the State Fair of Texas opens, it was about time for Big Tex to get up and ready for his 72nd appearance at the fair.
Work crews and a crane lifted the 55-foot icon and installed him in Big Tex Circle on Friday morning as a crowd of about 100 people, a mix of local media, police officers, state fair employees, excited fairgoers and children dressed like Big Tex, looked on.
The crowd smiled and cheered as the crane lifted Tex from his supine position on the ground and positioned him over his pedestal, with his back to the crowd. Then he spun slightly so onlookers could see his face. Applause rang out as Tex settled in and workers began securing him to his stand.
On the unusually hot September morning, crews worked to get everything ready for the fair, which opens next Friday. Fair Park was mostly empty, save for the group crowding Big Tex Circle. Some brought chairs, and umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun, while others took turns taking pictures with Little Big Tex, who wandered through the crowd. Kids dressed in cowboy hats, jeans and navy and red button-down shirts, identical to Big Tex, stood watching as the figure rose in the air.
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Lynn Reagan and her friends Lucan Watkins and Elizabeth Bingham said they were longtime Dallasites and had been attending the state fair since they were children in the 1960s, but they had never seen Big Tex raised to his platform.
Reagan said Tex is the icon of the state fair, the number one, most important thing about it. Well, apart from the food.
“Everybody knows who Big Tex is,” Reagan said. “Everybody meets at Big Tex at a particular time of day.”
Big Tex will look mostly the same this year compared to last year. In 2023 he got new boots, based on a design by contest winner Jessica Bonilla. Tex gets new boots every three years, and the ones he will wear again this year feature a Texas desert landscape with a deep blue river and orange and yellow sunset, complete with longhorns, blue bonnets, cacti, horses and armadillos.
Tex’s belt features a Shiner Beer buckle with “2024″ stamped on it and his name stamped across the rear of the belt. This year, he’ll be wearing a shirt and jeans from Dickies and a white ascot with cowhide accents at the tips.
Taylor Travis brought his four kids and brother Antonio to see Tex get settled in. Longtime fair attendees, the brothers said they have seen the raising on YouTube and TV but wanted to see it firsthand.
A transplant from Arkansas, Taylor Travis said he first visited the fair when he was in sixth grade and still adjusting to life in a big city. All these years later, the smell of food and the mass of fairgoers still stick with him.
Travis said he has been bringing his kids to the fair every year to instill the love he has for it in them. For his youngest, it will be his first fair.
“I can’t wait to bring him so he can get the smell of it all,” Travis said.
The crowd began trickling out as crews worked to attach the electrical wiring that allows Tex to speak and wave. By the time his boots were on at 1:30 p.m., Big Tex Circle was empty, possibly the last time it will be until after the fair ends Oct. 20.