Viewpoint : While the lessons taught in the Big Parks are all sugarcoated, promising happy endings, the fair accepts failure and gives it dignity. : Of Clowns, Wool Tuxedos and Real Life

Attending the Ventura County Fair on Sunday, I was reminded how much I like these odiferous and noisy exhibitions, gaudy as they are with the “Chicken from Hell” and other oddities. And how poorly the stately amusement parks, with their Astrodome crowds and buck-toothed cartoon characters, measure up in comparison.

Spending an afternoon at the fair gives one a far better understanding of American traditions than a diorama with talking bears. In the hobby and crafts building, one can peer at cakes in the shape of mice faces. Or watch tiny freight trains haul coal out of papier-mache mountains, past a 19th-Century stagecoach lost in time, and into a modern railroad yard.

“The heck with scale, let’s have some speed,” shouted one youth who would have been better off at Magic Mountain.

And when it comes to food, the Big Park Burgers have nothing on the noble Corn Dog, as American as George Bush’s pork rinds, and fairly dripping with history. Like the Tucker automobile and vinyl flooring, it was another ingenious product of the boom years after World War II, originally called the “Brown Bomber.” Preston Tucker might have sold more cars had he tried some blended, alliterative advertising: “Have a Brown Bomber in your Tucker Torpedo.”

Shoved onto a wooden stake and dipped in batter, the exact constituents of which you’re probably better off not knowing, the corn dog is, indeed, a mobile meal. One hand is free to ward off the escaped pig from the agriculture building, or to remove the cotton candy affixed to your child’s face like those web-like creatures that attacked the arterial adventurers in “Fantastic Voyage.”

How could a submarine riding on tracks in a big swimming pool possibly compete for entertainment value with a combination animal exhibit and fashion show that might have been dreamed up by a 4-H club possessed by the spirit of Perry Ellis? The “Lad and Lasses Lead Contest” featured a half-dozen teen-aged girls and boys guiding sheep dressed in outfits matching their own around a ring. At least, that was the idea. A girl in a green wool suit and wide-brimmed hat was having enough trouble plowing through the straw in heels when her sheep balked and refused to move. It nearly caused a pileup on the ruminant runway.

The purpose of the event, said livestock superintendent Vic Briggs, is to show that farmers are not wool-gatherers when it comes to style. “We’re not just out in the barn. We do dress up,” he said.

One might wonder, to what formal event would it be appropriate to squire a sheep?

The two teen-aged boys in the competition, one in a letter jacket leading a sheep with a matching green-and-yellow pompon on its head, were hopelessly outclassed by the girls in patent leather shoes and gloves. But Briggs said that a boy won in Lancaster last year with a handmade wool tuxedo. For all that trouble, he was awarded a prize of $20.

But that’s another thing to love about fairs. They’re as unpretentious as corn-on-the-cob. Take the table-setting contest. Using paper plates and napkins, and some glitter here and there, contestants create small tableaux of manners that could engage one for many minutes. Some stories were mysterious. One setting affixed pictures of Clark Gable and Joan Crawford to each plate. Was one to eat off the stars’ faces? As neat as she was, wouldn’t Miss Crawford be insulted to have mashed potatoes all over her dress?

Down at the Morgan Arena, with the Pacific Ocean forming a backdrop of almost painful, glycerine beauty, a drama was unfolding. Horsemen and horsewomen of varying ability were alternately tying and untying the same four or five calves, who must have been bewildered by it all.

One pair of riders was particularly ill-starred. They missed throw after throw. The crowd was still pulling for them, but nervously now, just as an audience laughs tensely when a comedian is failing. A fine throw was at last made, the rope arched elegantly in the air, only to encircle not one, but both, calves. Having learned how it feels to pray for rain and be wiped out by a flood, the crowd fell silent.

While the lessons taught in the Big Parks are all sugarcoated, promising happy endings, the fair accepts failure and gives it dignity. The watery pies, the flaccid cookies, the cakes that have lost the will to stand all have their places on the shelves alongside the winners.

Then there is the clown, much more a symbol of modern life and all its ambiguities than Mickey Mouse. A grinning, painted face hid what underneath? You were never sure. So when Happy, whose trained dogs in silly bows seemed blissfully ignorant that they dressed worse than the sheep next door, asked for volunteers, many children ducked.

The boy who didn’t duck walked to the stage. Ignoring his real name, Happy introduced him gleefully as “Tony Baloney.” It got some laughs, though not from the boy.

A short distance away, several Oriental dancers, all children, took the stage. To the hypnotic strains of classical music of the Far East, they bowed, rushing forward and collapsing back again, their pink robes blowing in the wind like Chinese kites. They were as elegant as birds and their parents, snapping pictures from the lawn in front, looked like wildlife photographers.

As antiseptic and rehearsed as they are, the big amusement parks allow no chance for the transcendent, accidental moment of joy. Every performance and thrill is so well-planned and choreographed that they lose their flavor.

There is a reason for this, of course. The large parks must move legions of people through their gates each day. They’ve been forced to allocate fun in tightly packaged portions. One shriek per person at turn one, a laugh at turn three, a splash of water in the face, and you’re out on the pavement looking for another line to stand in.

There is no corollary at Disneyland, either, to the Midway. Everyone remembers as a child how an atmosphere of mystery and even danger enshrouded the fun house and freak show.

Today, the human freaks are gone, even the Bearded Lady, and there is no place to get a tattoo. Only the gravel-voiced carnies remain, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, still operating the rides with distant looks on their faces. As ever, when you climb on, you can’t help wondering if they might be thinking: “This time let’s see what this baby’ll really do.”

Sure, the Big Parks have roller coasters and costumed cartoon characters that can take a groin punch from a pint-sized assassin in mouse ears without even groaning. But at the fair, one can enjoy a stunt fiddler, wander over to the dairy cow maternity ward, take a peek at the Monster Truck Car Crush and Jet Car Meltdown, and thrill to the All-Alaskan Racing Pigs, all without fighting crowds the size of Long Island.

Even in starry-eyed innovation, where the Big Parks have a clear edge with their computerized rides, the humble fair remains competitive. This year, for example, the Ventura County Fair has gone the Pepsi people one better by creating a taste challenge guaranteed to put a mustache on your face. Cow milk vs. goat milk, for the Calcium Championship of the World. It brings a whole new meaning to La Leche League.

“I’m not as comfortable with it,” fair spokeswoman Teri Raley said of goat milk. “But I’m told in other areas people often prefer goats’ milk.”

Sure. But then some people also prefer amusement parks to fairs.

The fair ends Sunday.