Fine Fair Fare

   What do Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, The Beach Boys and Trick Pony have in common?

   They're all going to be appearing this week in the beautiful Irish Hills of Michigan.

   Dale, Jr., Johnson and Gordon will be at Michigan International Speedway for the track's GFS Marketplace 400 next Sunday.

   The Beach Boys and Trick Pony will be appearing at the Lenawee County Fair in nearby Adrian.  Trick Pony's show, to be opened by Danielle Peck, is scheduled Thursday.  The Beach Boys perform Saturday.

   The fair annually serves as something of a "sideshow" when NASCAR's Nextel Cup tour takes the teams, their entourages and the fans back each August to Brooklyn, Mich.   

   Some motorsports media pals and I learned just how much fun the fair can be back in the late 1980s and early '90s, and we once saw a superstar in the making.

   The Lenawee County Fair is centered around a rustic old harness-racing track on the east side of clean, picturesque Adrian.

   After a day of duties at the speedway in 1989, my friends and I hustled back to our motel, freshened up and headed to the fairgrounds to see the Statler Brothers, who that night delivered one of the best concerts I've ever attended.

   We avidly anticipated finding out who was going to provide the Saturday night entertainment in 1990.

   A poster in the lobby of our motel answered the question as we checked in.  Tanya Tucker was the star attraction.  Some fellow we'd never heard of was going to open for her.

   Once again we rushed back from the track and got duded up.  Ten of us jammed into a van and drove to the fairgrounds, joking about what kind of racy outfit Miss Tucker would be wearing.

   Turns out she was wearing a hospital gown.  Or so suggested a hand-lettered sign taped to the ticket booth at the fairgrounds entrance:

   "Miss Tucker is ill in Nashville.  The opening act will do a double show."

   We debated whether to go in, especially with dark clouds gathering and the scent of oncoming rain mixing with that of cotton candy and popcorn.

   "I hear this guy is pretty good," someone in our party said.  "Since we're already here..."

   We bought tickets for $8 and went in, finding seats six rows back from the temporary stage, situated on sand where trotters had raced the day before.

   Right on time, the entertainer came out and introduced himself.

   "My name is Garth Brooks," he said.  "I hope you like the show my band and I are going to do for you."

   Like it?!

   It took Brooks, wearing an outsized cowboy hat, only two or three songs to make a crowd of 750 to 1,000 forget that he wasn't supposed to be the star.

   He came out into the crowd and touchingly told of visiting a children's hospital and having a little girld entice him into singing "The Dance" a-cappella.  With that introduction, Brooks and the band went into the hauntingly beautiful future hit.

   The audience seemed mesmerized until after the last note, then rose for a standing ovation.

   A soft rain began to fall.  Brooks ignored it and sang on.  The crowd ignored it, too, and listened on.  To the songs Cowboy Bill...Two Of A Kind...New Way To Fly...and If Tomorrow Never Comes.

   Finally, Brooks related an anecdote about giving his mother back home in Oklahoma a tape of a new song that held promise of becoming a No. 1 hit.  A radio station there somehow obtained a copy and played the number prematurely.  Since it already was out, Brooks said, he'd go ahead and let the Adrian audience hear the feature from a forthcoming album.

   "Friends In Low Places" brought the crowd to its feet again, this time clapping, shouting, laughing and dancing in delight.

   That song, along with "The Dance" took the former Oklahoma State javelin thrower--virutally unknown nationally just a few months earlier--to higher places than he ever dreamed, selling out shows faster than any country music entertainer before him.

   Who would have imagined it in August of 1990 at the Lenawee County Fair?

   Only in America.