People love the Brookhaven Exchange Club Fair, and they talkabout it.

They talk about the always-warm memories and the occasional coldrain. They talk about the clean fun and the messy food. They talkabout the long nights that constitute an all-too-short week ofannual fair fun.

But to see how much people love the fair, talk won’t cut it. It’swhat people do that matters. And every year in the week followingthe fair, club members tabulate the people’s actions for a tellinglook at how the historic fundraiser treats its community.

Club president Ted Ratcliff has the first batch of approximatefigures from the 58th annual fair, figures that show tens ofthousands of games played and rides ridden.

“We had a successful fair,” Ratcliff said. “We ran an extra nightand it brought us to past years’ levels. The endeavor is toentertain the community for a week, have a fundraiser and getthrough it safely. We were blessed to have a safe fair.”

This year, fairgoers threw 45,000 ping-pong balls in an effort towin a goldfish, and bingo players played 12,000 cards, trying towin more than 400 prizes donated by 150 local merchants andindividuals.

More than 7,000 softballs were chunked at the plunger on the dunktank, and 7,000 corks flew at various targets at the shootinggallery.

The back wall of the dart-throwing gallery sustained 5,000 darthits – the balloons attached there were not so lucky. Five thousandbasketballs were shot at the goal, and 4,000 softballs were let flyin search in milk bottles.

Another 3,500 baseballs were pitched at the speeding reading booth,and 2,500 footballs were sent in search of tires. The duck pondgave up more than 1,000 rubber ducks to the winners there.

As far as the park’s rides, more than 7,000 kids went ’round and’round on the swings, and 6,000 more twisted again, like they didlast summer, on the Tilt-a-Whirl. The Frolic hosted 3,500 riders,and just as many saw the fair from a bird’s eye view while crestingthe top of the loop on the Ferris wheel.

The roller coaster bounced another 3,500 people, and themerry-go-round “took 2,000 riders nowhere.” Two thousand peopletook the easiest way around the park by riding the train, and 5,000kiddies rode the kiddy rides.

Ratcliff said more than 50,000 tickets were sold at the fair. Heestimated the average person bought around 10 tickets. By thatmath, 5,000 people – mostly kids – bought tickets. If 5,000 kidswere there, there must’ve been 10,000 parents nearby, so the fairlikely attracted 15,000 visitors throughout the week, with around2,000 visiting each night.