Nomads Pitch Their Tents at One Fair After Another : Fairgrounds Din Only Lasts Until Midnight

Teri Blakney was soaking up as much sun as she could. Her 9-year-old daughter was with the sitter, and Blakney was alone at the campsite.

Sitting in a beach chair, with a glass of wine and an issue of Cosmopolitan, she leaned back and gazed into the warm sky. Her reverie was only interrupted by the sounds borne by the occasional breeze: music from the fun house, shouts of clowns, clanging of the kiddie rides and the raspy voice of a strolling robot mingling with the crowds.

The din only lasts until midnight, however.

“The noise gets pretty bad at night,” said Arless Nixon, another camper. But, he added, that’s what you should expect when you camp at the Orange County Fair.

There are perhaps 250 people such as Blakney and Nixon living in tents, trailers and RVs at the very back of the fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. They are some of the fair’s exhibitors, concessionaires and performers, who have paid $160 to camp for 10 days within a short walk of their jobs.

They Will All Be Gone

By Monday, they all will be gone, most going on to the next county fair, the Santa Barbara County Fair in Santa Maria.

“Actually, it’s been pleasant,” said Nixon, a retired library director who lives in Phoenix and travels along with his exhibit of rocks that look like food. “This beats Phoenix,” he said. “Oh, yes it does. “ (In Phoenix, it was partly cloudy and in the low 100s.)

Considering the number of people packed into the makeshift RV park, you don’t see many milling around during the day, he said. But there is some campground social life. “The circus people had a reception last night--coffee, cake, the whole works,” Nixon said.

It was held at the trailer parked just behind the amphitheater, where the sound system has been pounding out nightly performances by groups such as Sha Na Na and Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Chester Cable and Wini McKay live there. They have a hardback copy of the “Guinness Book of World Records” that automatically opens to the pages with their pictures on them--her performing before the largest audience to see a flying ring trapeze act (85,000), him for foot juggling the heaviest weight (a 130-pound table). They were relaxing (he’s a juggler, she’s still on the trapeze) between their 1:30 and 3:30 performances in a dog and pony sideshow.

The couple are on the road like this about half the year. “That means we’re home (in Los Angeles) 50% of the time,” McKay said.

She is a little tired of people who think traveling performers lead, well, odd lives. “We have a home. We have a shower. We have a telephone. We have a hot tub at home. We’re normal,” she said.

Prefer to Camp on Grounds

Cable said that even though they live close to the Orange County Fair, they prefer to camp on the grounds rather than fight traffic.

“We’re used to this (trailer) being our home,” McKay said. “You become more organized. It’s like having this giant purse. Your life becomes more organized.”

McKay said that as fairground campsites go, this is a good one.

“You don’t usually have trees,” remarked Judy Twomey, who, with her husband Dave, owns the Happytime Dog and Pony Circus where Cable and McKay are working. “Usually we have to bring our own trees,” she cracked.

Twomey said she was speaking from long experience. She and her husband, plus their son and daughter-in-law, have traveled widely with their tiny circus and have camped most of the way. Their 8-week-old grandson, Jerrod Twomey, has been to nine fairs since his birth. He has been on the road since he was 3 days old, she said.

Teri Blakney didn’t start until she was 8, but she’s been at it ever since. She worked for her parents’ food concessions that traveled the California fair circuit, then married Andy Blakney, a man in the same business. They towed their fried chicken stand to Costa Mesa a week ago and will tow it to Santa Maria Monday.

Work, Work, Work

“Work, that’s basically all we do,” she said as she sat in the beach chair working on her tan. “I’m on my hour break,” she added, by way of explanation.

“You wake up at 8, you go to the fair, you prepare to open, you open, you work, you go home. That’s all you do. In summer, it’s solid work, and this is pretty much the beginning of the summer season,” Blakney said.

At age 26, she’s an 18-year veteran. She knows others in the business, and invariably some people in the campgrounds are old acquaintances, she said. “We do have get-togethers.”

“It’s a hard living--let’s just put it that way,” Blakney said. “The work is hard. Putting up with people is even harder.”

And camping is hard, even in a large travel trailer, she said.

“They give you electricity here, but it doesn’t run a hair dryer--let that be known. And it would be nice if they had proper sewer drainage. A holding tank isn’t enough for a shower. “If I didn’t have pets, I’d rent a room.”