We had a half a day off [from school] every time the [N.C. State] fair came to Raleigh. Your family would take you. [The school] gave each child a ticket to the fair.

The only [buildings] that were there in my day were the ones that are facing Hillsborough Street between the Dorton Arena.

They had the racetrack, and they used to have automobile races on Saturday afternoon always. And they had horse harness races.

Halloween we always had carnivals in the gym [at school.] We would have booths and a haunted house.

We'd have cakes and apples, and different things. The grade mothers decorated the gym.

We [wore costumes] to the carnival, but not to school. We didn't know what trick-or-treating was. Our activities for Halloween was going to the carnival at school.

Warren Williams

[When my father, John Williams, owned the Page-Walker Hotel,] we put a shed out there on the backside where Daddy kept his circus wagons.

Being a railroad man, Daddy got interested in circuses because the Southern Railway Company would handle circuses as they come to Durham.

Daddy became a circus man, it was a hobby with him. His fifteen or twenty cage wagons was put on exhibit at the State Fair.

We had pony rides at the fair for ten years while Dr. Dorton was in charge. Daddy built so many of them he had them in the Duke Homecoming parade in Durham. Automobile [dealers] would hook a new car to each wagon. They would put some of the pretty Duke girls on the wagons. On Hillsborough Road my father owned Williams Park.

We had circus wagons there and ponies that we had trained to go around in the rings, and had dogs to ride, and monkeys. It was a dog and pony show.

We got to know all the circus people. The big circuses, including Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus, Cole Brothers Circus, The Daily Brothers Circus, the John Robertson Circus, would come to Durham.

A lot of people in Cary would come over to visit my father [at the Page-Walker Hotel] just to see these cage wagons that he had built.

Rachel Dunham

I used to make exhibits of plants and flowers to take to the fair. And I used to make cakes, fudge and candy, and I'd get a blue ribbon. I had twelve.

Sometimes the home economics and [agriculture] teachers had exhibits to bring about one fact, maybe about gardening or some activity. They'd work all night to get that up.