The rainy weather mostly took a break during the 152nd annual Platte County Fair’s run last week, leading to a successful but sticky hot four days at the fairgrounds in Tracy, Mo. Big crowds turned out for each of the four motorsports events at the grandstand and a new queen from Platte City was crowned and even a small controversy couldn’t distract from the overall good time.
Themed as “Motorsports Mayhem,” this year’s fair didn’t disappoint, even with record high heat indexes during Friday’s Mud Marathon.
The demolition derby on Thursday, July 23 drew a standing room only crowd which witnessed the debut of the kids’ Power Wheels division. This featured kids aged four to nine in their small battery-powered cars with parents helping to encourage the action.
The first ever grudge match between a team of four local drivers vs. a team from Kansas ended with a decisive victory. Randy Vosmer’s quartet from the Sunflower State ended up with three drivers still going to claim the title over Josh Jolly’s Show-Me Staters.
The queen competition, held Wednesday, July 22, featured four Lintner sisters from Weston, Mo. among the nine candidates.
Sarah Regan, a Platte County High School graduate, took the crown and takes over for Karlye Horn as the reigning queen. The Lintners didn’t go home empty-handed with Brittany Lintner, 22 and the eldest sister, finishing as second runner-up and Jessica Lintner, 17 and the youngest sister, was named Miss Congeniality.
Shyanne Warren, a senior-to-be at Platte County, was the first runner-up.
The fair also encountered a bit of notoriety due to a Kansas City Star report from the opening night. A reporter questioned officials about the display of a Confederate flag inside the Dirty Shame Saloon. The once-again controversial symbol hung on the walls for years but came down the first night after the inquiries.
Later in the evening, a few individuals tried to hold up Confederate flags near the stage as a form of protest but were quickly asked to stop.
Not out of the norm, patrons and trucks in the Mud Marathon could also be seen with the Confederate flags, but there were no other incidents reported. The “Stars and Bars” has been under fire as a symbol of racism, spurred from an allegedly racism motivated mass shooting at a historically black South Carolina church earlier this summer.