The Corny (but Irresistible) County Fair

Weeks before the Orange County Fair opened on Friday, fair organizers sent out posters depicting this year’s theme: sheep.

At the top is printed “It’s Wild n’ Woolly,” and below is a color photograph of a ram and a ewe, who had been backed against a fence and ordered to stand still.

The ram is wearing a Hoss Cartwright cowboy hat and bandanna. Around the ewe’s head is a green hair ribbon tied in a bow, which has slipped down over her eyes.

They stand in identical poses--their hoofs identically placed, their heads turned at identical angles toward something to our right.

If you think it sounds corny, you should see it. It is breathtakingly corny--so hokey, in fact, that it may be a public relations coup. I’m not the only one in the newsroom to hang that poster in a prominent place. It is an instant collector’s item. It’s so . . . well, so county fair.

Which is good. I like county fairs, I just never have been able to figure out why.

You know what they’re like, you’ve been to at least one. They don’t differ, except in scale.

Orange County’s is a small one. Still, when you leave it, you will be sweaty and sunburned and footsore. Your stomach will feel confused and betrayed. Your arms will be full and your pockets empty. You will have spent four times the money you thought you had with you on things that tomorrow you won’t particularly want.

You will have done terribly irrational things. You will have made four stops at the International Food Bazaar, then gone directly to the midway and ridden the Atomic Churn-a-Barf. You will have asked a houseboat salesman to call at your home. You will have bought a witty license plate rim that, on second thought, you’d better not put on your car.

And you will consider, just for a minute, perhaps, going back again before the fair is over (at midnight Sunday, July 21). Why, why, why?

I was there Friday when the gates first opened. I told myself I was there to work--to gather information for this column--but I probably would have been there anyway. When I got inside, I didn’t see one new thing, not one thing I didn’t expect to see. It was wonderful.

Right at the gate was Rebop, a tiny, remotely controlled robot that moved around, played music and talked to the kids swarming around it. At Disneyland or Knott’s, the operator would have been elaborately concealed in a concrete tree. At the Orange County Fair, he was standing 10 feet away in plain sight, talking into his microphone. It didn’t matter. The kids loved it. I loved it.

But the real stuff is ahead--the things you can buy! Swap meets, like the one on this very fairground in Costa Mesa, have blunted the uniqueness of this marketing orgy. Still, what can compare, even now?

You want electronic organs, Tupperware, stained glass, potted cacti, ceiling fans, milk cans with oil paintings on them, photo buttons, pearls, fire extinguishers, adjustable orthopedic beds, “magnetic” window cleaners, the “Little Giant” folding aluminum ladder, Bible tapes, a free spinal and nerve exam, encyclopedias, rabbit pelts, shower doors, rain gutters and/or the all-new “Multi-Grater” that can save you hundreds of hours in the kitchen?

Can you use a raccoon hand puppet? They sell them here. They’re even selling the Republican and Libertarian parties, in booths right among the crocheted tank tops and the light, unbreakable hand tools that turn your work bench into a work shop . “Listen (ping), that’s real magnesium alloy!” the man says.

A dollar gets you four instant pictures in the photo booths. A quarter gets your feet massaged on the omnipresent “Footsie Wootsie” machines. Fifty cents gets you a peek at “White Mountain, the Steer That Stands Six Feet Tall.” (Last year I think the big deal was a frozen great white shark.)

It doesn’t cost anything to watch the karate demonstration and the kids from the local dance schools. What really costs are those food booths. They cost you more than money.

Greek souvlaki, Hawaiian teriyaki beef, German bratwurst, Mexican burritos, Chinese egg rolls, Polish sausage and Italian pizza.

Popcorn, corn dogs, corn on the cob and beer. Ice cream, lemonade, candied apples, toffee peanuts, taffy, cinnamon rolls, cotton candy, beef jerky and beer. Cokes and beer and pretzels and beer and baked potatoes, barbecued corn, ribs, burgers and beer, beer, beer. There are cops all over the grounds, but they never step in and stop you.

I suppose it’s not so odd that people go for fairs. They were created when most people lived in the country and wanted to see not only what was the latest in farming but some of those big-city things, too--Ferris wheels and entertainers and whatever. My father-in-law, a genuine old-time cowboy, once told me that in his youth, going to St. Louis was like going to China nowadays. Old Orange County was that way, too.

Now we are the big city. Everything is well planned and slick and convenient and state-of-the-art. Who cares about sheep as long as there’s enough sheepskin to cover the driver’s seat? Polypropylene’s warmer, anyway.

Enjoying the antiquity of a county fair reminds us, perhaps, that our high-tech gloss may be only skin deep.