Flying High Over the Aggies and Mountaineers

© Tim Peeler, 2019

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The first time NC State and West Virginia met on the football field, on Oct. 22, 1914, it was hardly the biggest game in town.

Even in the half-built stands of Riddick Field, there were a large number of empty seats, despite the fact the entire corps of student cadets – about 650 gray-uniformed officers in training – were in attendance, riled up by chief rooter J.R. Leguenec Jr. on the sidelines.

That’s because across the street was the grandest annual spectacle of the year, the Great North Carolina State Fair.

How did the North Carolina School for Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (A&M) end up scheduling the Agricultural College of West Virginia, in an intersectional meeting of two land-grant institutions at Raleigh’s Riddick Stadium? West Virginia had never traveled so far away to play a football game, but it was lured by a guarantee of $1,000 or half the gate receipts from the game, whichever was more.

It was also a showcase contest for former Georgetown star Jack Hegarty, in his first of two seasons as head coach of A&M. His team opened with a 51-0 pasting of Wake Forest, the fifth consecutive meeting in what is now the third longest continuous rivalry in college football history. The blow-out was considered a tune-up for the game against the Mountaineers.

West Virginia, coached by Gus Ziegler, left on a Tuesday afternoon train, rode all night long in order to practice at Riddick Field the day before the game. The Mountaineers' 18-player traveling squad left immediately after the game in order to make it back to Morgantown the next afternoon.

In order to get ready for the game, Hegarty hired Jack Martin, the head trainer for Clark Griffith’s baseball Washington Senators, to whip his A&M team into shape.

In the end, the game was just one of many sideshows for the fair.

At the time, the NC State Fairgrounds were located across Hillsboro Street from A&M College. (“Hillsboro Street” is correct; NC State’s northern boundary didn’t get its “ugh” until 1965, not too long before My Apartment Lounge opened.)

Through the years, before on-campus Riddick Field was plowed open in 1907, NC State football always hosted a football game, usually on a Thursday, in the infield of the fairgrounds’ horse racing track. (One of the few remnants of the old fairgrounds, which shut down in 1925, is a small road off Clark Avenue called Horse Track Alley.)

Fair games were a bothersome tradition through the years. Football and the fair were apart from 1928, when the new fairgrounds opened in its current location, until nearly four decades later. When Riddick Stadium shut down for good in 1965 with a 3-0 win over Florida State, Wolfpack football moved to off-campus Carter Stadium in 1966. Fair games were common and often bothersome until they were finally halted about 10 years ago because of the throngs of people who attended the fair, a football game and sometimes even an NHL hockey game all on the same piece of property, at least once all on the same day.

In the fall of 1914, however, a record-breaking crowd of some 40,000 people attended the fair, an amazing aggregation considering Cary United Methodist Church didn’t serve its first ham biscuit until 1916 and the fair didn’t get its first rides until 1938. It didn’t hurt that A&M, Peace, Meredith, St. Mary’s, Wake Forest, UNC and the Wake County Public Schools all let their students out of classes that day to attend the fair. The capital building and all other state buildings were closed, as were most of the city’s stores and businesses. Thursdays at the fair were also most popular for folks from the far-flung rural parts of the county, like Apex, Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina.

The day began with a parade of award-winning livestock, decorated with their red, white or blue ribbons, and ended with a $1,000 fireworks display called “Panama in Peace and War.” In between, the A&M beat the Mountaineers, 26-13, thanks to the heroics of sophomore quarterback C.E. “Red” Van Brocklin and the scoring of four different running backs: junior halfback Wallace Riddick, fullback P.G. Tenney, and freshmen halfback N.S. Sharp and fullback W.F. Townsend.

Only about 2,000 spectators (“among which ladies were very much in evidence”) gathered to see the game. It kicked off promptly at the civilized time of 3 p.m. There were no postgame reports of heat exhaustion on the overcast afternoon.

For the folks at the fair, it was an amazing, fun-filled day. More than 300 county commissioners were on hand to see that day’s showing of good roads construction. “A demonstration that was particularly impressive was that of a [60-horse power] tractor which pulls two road scrapers and makes a road with one journey over the route, provided the ground is free of stumps.” State mineralogist Joseph Hyde Pratt showed off his numerous geological discoveries from North Carolina, as well as classic works of mountain pottery.

Perhaps the biggest debut at the 1914 state fair was the Boys Corn Clubs, the two-year-old statewide organization that eventually became the national 4-H Club. There were other exhibits that showed the efficacy of spraying apple trees, cotton production and the always popular and gruesome cholera exhibit.

Twice, in a pregame flyover precursor, aviation daredevil DeLloyd Thompson buzzed the midway with two dangerous loop-de-loops. Aviation tricks became an N.C. State Fair staple in 1910, less than a decade after the Wright Brothers began manned flight on the North Carolina Outer Banks.

That DeLloyd was a little crazy in Orville and Wilbur’s invention is well documented. He was the second pilot to ever attempt – and successfully complete – what became his signature move. He set the world speed record over Long Island by traveling 108.4 miles per hour, showing the world the best way to visit New York – quickly. He used to perform the famous “undertaker’s drop,” the details of which I don’t know, but the sound of which is dangerous.

Earlier that summer, Thompson set the world altitude record 15,256 feet in the skies over Kansas. It was so cold on that flight, Thompson was forced to wear a sheepskin suit to prevent hypothermia. So when he sailed over the football field en route to performing for the fair, he became the first wolf in sheep’s clothing to attend an NC State football game.

Other performers at the fair included the Flying Herberts traveling circus, which featured high-wire acrobatics, as did the Delmore Troupe. Among the tricks performed by the six-member Herberts was jumping into and out of a barrel suspended high on a wire over the midway.

Music performances included the band from the North Carolina Institute for the Blind, where Doc Watson later went to school.

The crowd, which descended on the fairgrounds from streetcars, automobiles and horse-drawn carriages, was commended for their behavior, which apparently was unusual based on the following News & Observer report.

“There is one outstanding fact to distinguish this fair from many others who have preceded it. There is no disorder. There is a capable corps of special officers on duty within the walls of the fair grounds. There are mounted and unmounted policemen, but they have very little to do except in the way of looking out for traffic. Thus far there has been an unusually small number of cases of public drunkenness.

“On the Fairgrounds the shows are of higher class than usual. The midway attractions are noticeably lacking in gambling games, and chance contests. There are no candy wheels, no poodle dog games, for attorney general Bickett ruled these things out in a general opinion made upon the request of the State Fair officials.

“Ladies yesterday were not harassed by that great assortment of annoyers which at one time were the curse of the Great State Fair. Whips were not on sale and their use is prohibited. And at the same time there was just as much jollity, just as much of the holiday spirit, just as much witchery among the girls and just as much of the spirit to dare among the boys as there ever has been. Nobody is sorry that the torture sticks have been ruled out.”

How everyone enjoyed their visit to the fair and the football game without candy wheels, whips and torture sticks is an unreported mystery the N&O chose not to cover.