Oddities Are Fair Game in Del Mar

With the Del Mar Fair ending its 20-day run soon--it closes Wednesday--let’s take one last tour of the fairgrounds.

This time, though, we’ll avoid the mainstream attractions and instead follow the undercurrent that originates from the unusual talents and hobbies of North County residents.

The first two stops are in the Hobby Show tent.

Just off the center aisle is a collection of avocado pits, carved and painted as miniature busts of familiar historical, show-business and cartoon personalities. Among them: Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and Carmen Miranda, Betty Boop and the California Raisins.

The artist is 64-year-old Robert Santiago of San Marcos, who said he began his hobby more than a decade ago, when he was living in New York and supervising F-14 Navy fighter-jet production for Grumman Aerospace.

“We’ve always eaten avocados--my wife makes all sorts of salads--and one day I just looked at the pits and thought I could do something with them, since I’ve always been artistic,” Santiago recalled. “I carved one or two, and they didn’t come out all right, but I kept at it.

“And, when I retired in 1982 and moved out here, to the land of avocados, I began carving more and more--my friends kept supplying me with pits--and then I started painting them up.”

Today, Santiago has more than 200 busts in his collection--with more to come, he promises.

One aisle down are two balls created from scraps of string. The string, used to hold bundles of linen at the San Luis Rey Psychiatric Hospital in Encinitas, was salvaged over the past six years by longtime housekeeper Lupe Ferguson, 63, of Leucadia.

One ball weighs 18 pounds and took five years to make; the other weighs 2 1/2 pounds and is less than a year old.

“Every day I would unwrap a bundle of linen for the adult unit, and I hated to see the string go to waste,” said Ferguson, who won the fair’s Most Unusual Adult Hobby Award. “So one day I took a matchbook cover from Thrifty’s and started saving the string scraps, which are each about 40 inches long.

“Five years later, by the time the hospital moved to its present location, I had this huge ball weighing 18 pounds and measuring 45 inches around the middle. After we moved, I started another ball, and already I’ve got more than 2 pounds.

“If you figure a 3-ounce package of string sells for just under $2 in the stores, that’s a total of more than $200 worth of string I’ve managed to save. And I’m still collecting it. Each day I unwrap the linen, my ball gets bigger.”

Next stop on the tour: the Community Stage, where Friday night, from 6 to 8, the Belair Boys will perform rock ‘n’ roll oldies from the 1950s and early ‘60s.

Now, there are plenty of oldies bands in the county, but none quite like the Belair Boys.

The group is fronted by a pint- size Elvis Presley impersonator, 37-year-old Kanickie Ferritto of Oceanside, who abruptly launches into his routine--a 12-song tribute--midway through the group’s set.

Ferritto doesn’t really look the part (he’s not much over 5 feet) but he sure does sound like The King: He’s got the voice and the range, and he’s mastered the phrasings and intonations. The origins of his clone act date to 1969, when he did an impromptu performance of Presley’s “Spring Fever” (from the movie “Girl Happy”) at his high school graduation ceremony.

Ferritto has been singing with the Belair Boys since the mid-1970s. They’ve been regulars at the Del Mar Fair since 1978.

The final stop on our tour: the Flower and Garden Show tent.

This stop is designed to soothe the spirit rather than bedevil it. A scene from Alice in Wonderland has been erected by Evergreen Nurseries of Del Mar. The exhibit is called “Paint the Roses Red,” and that’s precisely what a trio of playing card “guards” appear to be doing. The roses closest to them are red; those farther are white.

The exhibit also includes a life-size Alice (fashioned from a department store mannequin) and a papier-mache Queen of Hearts and White Rabbit.

“The idea came from the part in the book where the Queen of Hearts comes out and is all upset that the roses are white, and so she has her card soldiers paint them red,” said Roland Martinez, Evergreen’s general operations manager. “The display probably has 500 rose bushes in various colors, and, say, 5,000 assorted other flowers.

“It’s the kind of unique thing people are used to seeing from us. Every year at the fair, we try to do something different.”