3,000,000 SERVED: THE SHOW ME CENTER'S MILESTONE PATRON RECEIVED PRIZES SUNDAY

Nine-and-one-half years after its opening, the turnstiles at the Show Me Center clicked for the 3 millionth time on Sunday at the Longhorn Championship Rodeo. The center honored its 3 millionth visitor --Kerry Lasters, who farms between Bell City and Oran -- with a ceremony.

This wasn't Lasters' first trip to the Show Me Center. He attends basketball games, as well as a few rodeos and monster truck shows.

Lasters remembers the days before the Show Me Center was built, when SEMO basketball fans couldn't get into sell-out games at Houck Arena. There were no rodeos in Cape Girardeau before the Show Me Center opened.

Now Lasters gets in whenever he wants. Not only are there fewer sellouts, but he won free admission for two to the Show Me Center with popcorn and soda for the next year.

But not every show appeals to Lasters. "I'm not much on the ballet," he said.

That's fine with David Ross, who has been director of the Show Me Center since it opened. He hopes that the variety of shows there will appeal to a variety of people. He's proud of the way his crew can convert the center from the site of a rodeo with a foot of dirt on the arena surface to a basketball arena or a concert site in less than a day.

Ross said the center's capacity is 7,189, but that varies with the kind of show. He said the biggest crowd -- more than 7,700 -- came in 1988 when President Ronald Reagan spoke there.

With about 250,000 people in the area to draw from, having 3 million visitors means that, on average, everyone in the area has come to the Show Me Center 12 times.

The most popular events are the family shows like circuses, Sesame Street and Disney on Ice, Ross said. This weekend's rodeo drew about 10,000 admissions over three days.

The arena has seen some wild times since Bob Hope drove golf balls off its roof in the August 1987, opening ceremony. At the first rodeo, a mistake led to a bull getting out on the streets. The cowboys had to lasso it near the university president's house. At a later rodeo, a bull jumped into the stands.

At the first monster truck show, the steam from a truck's exhaust blew one of the arena's speakers out of its mounting, Ross said. At a wrestling match, Ross picked up a burlap bag belonging to Jake the Snake and dropped it when he saw the boa constrictor inside.

Ross hopes that with 10 years and 3 million visitors experience, he won't have those kinds of surprises again.