Tuesday night at the fair is one of three demolition derby nights. The derbies are a longstanding feature of the fair, and they tend to draw large crowds of people like me — people who enjoy watching battered old cars smash into each other. Hey, don’t judge us. It’s FUN!

The Tuesday and Wednesday night derbies are all about being the last car that can move. Or, as the longtime announcer whose tenure ended a couple years ago would have said, “TOTAL DESTRUCTION!” (Does anyone know his name? I grew up listening to his calls of the derbies, but I never knew his name.) As long as your car can move and you’re making contact with another action automobile, you’re in.

In preparation for the derby, everything that isn’t integral to the basic operation of the car is removed. You may note that you can see THROUGH this car:

The trunk lid is still there, but a whole lot of other stuff isn’t. Like the back seat, and the front passenger seat, and…

Sometimes the way cars get…uh…altered in the derby results in some fun collisions:

The back end of the car on the left was like that to some degree before the derby started, so chances are good it had run in a previous year’s derby. Cars of that era are getting hard to find, so more and more cars are being reused if possible. Others appear to be new to the derby:

Sometimes a car gets pushed up on the wall early:

That leaves the unfortunate driver to watch the rest of that heat in a car that (probably) runs fine but can’t move.

Some cars are dedicated to family or friends. This car was for grandma:

Here’s a better look:

Here’s another look at the 3277 car you saw in the second photo:

We took to calling it the ramp. The shape of its back end and and the earlier photo should make clear our reason for choosing that name.

As the cars get more and more battered, they can start losing parts. This car got its bumper hooked onto another car due to a collision:

Officials won’t stop the derby for a lot of loose parts, but when something potentially dangerous like a bumper is loose on the track, they’ll stop everyone so they can clear it. The announcer explained it by saying they’ll stop the derby if there’s a loose part that could potentially poke through a floorboard and injure a driver.

SCENERY BREAK: there was a beautiful moon Tuesday evening.

Okay, back to the vehicular violence.

Radiators seldom fare well in a derby:

For us spectators, some of the enjoyable derby moments happen when someone hits a radiator just right, or when a radiator decides it just can’t go on. There’s a loud POP and a huge cloud of steam (and usually some laughter and cheering from the crowd). Sadly, I don’t have any such photos like that in this set.

As I said, this was the first of three nights of derbies at the fair. I attended all three derbies, so be sure to come back! (Don’t worry: there will be photos of other events, too.)