They Like It Fair--and Square

It is purposely unslick and almost corny. It usually smells bad. It’s a lot of walking, a lot of mingling with sweaty strangers, and it’s loud.

In short, it’s an all-day, exhausting experience. And Orange County residents love it.

It’s the Orange County Fair--bigger, of course, and even more exhausting than ever.

Fair officials say the annual extravaganza, number 96 to be exact, should draw a record half a million visitors this time around. It runs for 11 days, from 10 a.m. to midnight, beginning Thursday.

No one knows just why Orange County suburbanites are so crazy about crunching hay beneath their shoes or inhaling air that is heavy with the stench of dung, but the livestock exhibits have always been the hands-down winners in the fair popularity contest.

“I think it’s because Orange County has its roots in agriculture,” said Sue O’Shea, the fair’s community relations coordinator. “And a lot of these kids have never seen a cow before, or a pig, or sheep.”

But doesn’t it stink? Isn’t it hot? Would it be out of line to call it unpleasant?

“Well, sure,” O’Shea said with the grin of an intrepid and experienced fair-goer. “But it’s livestock. It’s part of the game.”

For the record, though, even O’Shea doesn’t know the difference between a pig and a hog. (Webster’s says a pig is a hog and a hog is a pig, except that hogs weigh more than 100 pounds.)

“I think one of them you get bacon from,” O’Shea said meekly. “Just say that they’re swine. Swine means both of them.”

Of course, Jim Bailey, agriculture teacher at Fullerton’s Sunny Hills High School and the fair’s livestock supervisor for 29 years, has no trouble at all impressing visitors with his farm boy’s knowledge of just what comes from where.

“Kids today think that milk comes from a carton, that eggs come from the refrigerator and the hamburgers at McDonald’s. Well, they have no idea,” he said.

“That’s why people love to look at the animals. The more urbanized that we become, the more attractive that real live farm animals become.”

This year’s fair theme, as evidenced by the image of a grinning bull, cane in hand and ring through nose, is: “We’re Beefin’ It Up!” That means that the beef industry is being spotlighted this year--last time it was poultry--and also that the fair is new (kind of) and improved.

The nightly concert series will open with Paul Revere and the Raiders--Revere being described by fair officials as “the last madman of rock ‘n’ roll”--the Coors Skydiving Team will drop in, the 100-foot Global Wheel ride will spin its stuff, and all comers are welcome at the “precision cow chip tossing” contest.

All 160 acres of the Costa Mesa fairgrounds will be in use, including the nine exhibit buildings, four livestock barns, one show arena, the 5,000-seat Arlington Theater and the 8,500 seat Grandstand Arena. And in a fitting tribute to Orange County, the parking lots--6,112 paved spaces and 3,220 dirt ones--will be bigger than the fair itself.

No Serious Problems

Fair officials say that they don’t anticipate any serious problems with rowdiness, or worse, and that potential trouble spots, such as the beer stand, will be closely monitored. With each glass of beer comes a stamp on the hand.

“It’s their way of keeping track of who drinks what,” O’Shea said.

The wine garden apparently attracts a different crowd. No stamps there.

“Let’s just say that the wine stand is not as popular as the beer stand,” O’Shea said.

And as with any event of its size, the excitement of the Orange County Fair always manages to separate kids from their parents. Last year, according to Jill Ann Lloyd, the fair’s media supervisor, there were about 500 temporarily lost children.

“But I’ve never had any left over,” she said.

The Orange County sheriff’s booth is offering identification tags for child fair-goers, and The Times is sponsoring a lost-children booth.

Children Have Exhibits

Children, understandably a large percentage of the fair-goers, are also well represented as fair exhibitors.

Wrote Satah Medeiros, of Anaheim in a hand-lettered sign above her stuffed-animal collection: “I started collecting these stuffed animals in Jan. 1986. My friends and family gave them to me. The oldest one must be Mickey Mouse. I called Disneyland and they said he was 60 years old. There are 29 here in my collection. And more at home that my mom said I couldn’t bring.”

Other collections include an assortment of erasers owned by Maya Boukai of Irvine, 6-year-old Jessica Fairbarn’s Barbie doll collection --”collected simce (sic) age 3”-- and a blue-ribbon-winning squirt-gun collection belonging to Douglas McNeill of Santa Ana.

In the home-arts division, Kay Corbell, 75, of Leisure World in Seal Beach, won a division first-place for her meticulously crafted miniature bordello, circa 1890s, complete with customers in the parlor, a uniformed cook in the kitchen and a cat on the bed. Ladies of the night are scattered throughout.

“I do have grandchildren, so I tried to keep it in good taste,” Corbell said. “I call it my Cheyenne social club.”

Fascinated by Miniatures

Corbell, mother of two and grandmother of four, said her fascination with miniatures began in 1918, when she got her first look at a dollhouse at a Red Cross bazaar.

“I just thought it was the most wonderful thing that I had ever seen in my life,” she said. “Of course, we never could have afforded anything like that back then.”

Joyce Huestis of Santa Ana won first in her class, first in her division and the grand award in home arts for her handmade queen-size quilt with a design of water lilies and turtles.

How does that feel?

“It’s one of those things that you can hardly take it in,” Huestis said. “To get one of the prizes would have been wonderful. And even if you didn’t, you feel good for having done your best.”

OK, quilts and dolls (not to mention the pies and carnival rides and rodeo and Cow-a-Bunga beach and the Yuppie Man’s Maze) are pretty much de rigueur at county fairs, Orange County’s among them, but for those people looking for something really special, how about rats?

“It’s funny how people have been taught that rats are terrible, mean, vicious, dirty, disease-ridden, and really they are not,” said Kathy Hauser, president of the 189-member American Fancy Rat and Mouse Assn. and for the time being at least, owner of about 200 rats and another 200 mice.

Rats Are OK

Hauser and other members of the association will show off their favorite rats and mice at the fair.

“People need to be educated,” Hauser said. “We are trying to show them that rats are OK. It’s the rats that people really get upset at. Because of Mickey Mouse and other things, they think mice are cute.”

But even Hauser, 28, who began raising rats and mice about 15 years ago, doesn’t get too attached to her rodents. When her sister’s pet king snake needs to eat, Hauser said, she supplies the baby mice.