{"id":137,"date":"2012-10-19T16:38:03","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T20:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/?p=137"},"modified":"2012-10-19T18:05:11","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T22:05:11","slug":"iconic-statue-big-tex-burns-up-at-texas-state-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/2012\/10\/19\/iconic-statue-big-tex-burns-up-at-texas-state-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"Iconic statue ‘Big Tex’ burns up at Texas state fair"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/object><\/center>Visitors of the state fair on Friday witnessed the end of Bi\"\"g Tex. The iconic sixty foot tall statue had greeted fair visitors\u00a0 since 1952 went up in flames just days before the fair was set to close for the year.<\/p>\n

This year the fair had been celebrating Big Tex’s 60th birthday.<\/p>\n

“It’s a great loss for us because of its icon stature,” fair spokeswoman Sue Gooding said.<\/p>\n

“He’ll be back, bigger and better than ever,” she said.<\/p>\n

The cause of the fire which destroyed Big Tex is not known. The statue does have a few electrical controls that move his mouth and head. Fair organizers are currently dismantling the framework that was not damaged with a crane.<\/p>\n

The following statement was released by Dickies who had sponsored Big Tex.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cDickies\u00ae has proudly been the official clothier of Big Tex for 15 years. Although we\u2019re saddened by today\u2019s news, we\u2019re confident that together with the State Fair of Texas, Big Tex will return better than ever in new Dickies apparel,\u201d said Matthew McCartin, VP of Marketing, Williamson-Dickie Mfg. Com<\/em><\/p>\n

Big Tex made an appearance in an episode of King of the Hill. Hank Hill tells his son, Bobby,\u00a0 “Look, son, there\u2019s Big Tex. He\u2019s like the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty rolled into one.”<\/p>\n

Dallas Mavericks<\/a> | Texas Rangers<\/a> |Dallas Stars<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visitors of the state fair on Friday witnessed the end of Big Tex. The iconic sixty foot tall statue had greeted fair visitors\u00a0 since 1952 went up in flames just days before the fair was set to close for the year. This year the fair had been celebrating Big Tex’s 60th birthday. “It’s a great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25],"coauthors":[3],"class_list":{"0":"post-137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-back-page-featured","8":"tag-big-tex"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/backpage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}