By Dawn’s Earliest Light : Fourth of July: Ventura’s celebration merges night with day. Traditional fireworks shows span the entire county.

Ventura County kicked off America’s birthday party before dawn Saturday with a truckload of fireworks and a taste of Friday night’s beer.

At the Ventura pier, late-night revelers mingled with sleepy-eyed children whose parents had gently shaken them out of bed to watch multicolored explosions flare in the sky in celebration of Independence Day.

Fourth of July brightened into a hot, sunny day that saw celebrations span the county, from an early morning pancake breakfast in Ojai to a midday street fair in Ventura and nighttime fireworks shows late Saturday in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and most other cities.

“Everybody’s got their flags up and the whole nine yards,” said Lott Steffey, the unofficial “mayor” of Barcelona Place, a Newbury Park neighborhood that held its 15th annual Fourth of July block party Saturday.

More than 200 friends and relatives of the neighborhood’s 22 families jammed the cul-de-sac to celebrate.

They wolfed down barbecued food, decorated bicycles for a red, white and blue parade and battled each other on Foosball tables dragged into the street from neighbors’ basements.

“It’s a holiday and it’s a good time for everybody to get together and stay home, celebrate the Fourth,” said Steffey, as patriotic music blared from a public address system. “It’s a very patriotic neighborhood. It’s very typical America.”

Earlier, at the Ventura beach, thousands of people watched pre-dawn fireworks while huddling on blankets in the sand, lining the beachfront promenade and bobbing in boats moored just offshore.

Among them were Vicky Garske and her 3-year-old son, Robert, who sat wrapped in a blanket in his mother’s arms.

Robert winced at the crack-booms of concussion shells but kept gobbling handfuls of Honeycomb cereal from a box, his eyes widening at the blue chrysanthemum bursts and sparkling orange rocket trails lighting the sky.

“He’s a little afraid of the noise,” said his mother. About the fireworks show, she confided: “I’m from Santa Barbara, and I think it’s better than the ones they used to have up there. This is more like a display.”

Her husband, Dan Garske, had packed the family van with breakfast and blankets the night before, then hustled everyone onto the road without an explanation. “Aren’t you going to tell them how I forced everybody out of bed at 3:30 and it was a surprise?” he said.

“I like it!” proclaimed 10-year-old Ryan Garske after the orange embers from the finale winked out. “There was a lot of them. It looked good.”

Atop the city parking garage, still awake after hosting an all-night party, Ventura College student Brook Dalton bellowed at the top of his lungs at the departing crowds: “Aaaaalooo-alowa-ya-alaaaaieee!”

“I thought it was great,” Dalton said of the show, his voice suddenly quiet and calm. “It was much better than the last couple of years.”

He resumed hollering, joined by some of his party guests, more than a dozen of whom had crammed themselves into a Volkswagen van for the trip to the show.

“Ooooghaaargh-gwaaaaarr!” shouted Mark Gerwe.

“Dude,” Dalton said soberly. “You sound like Chewbacca with an intestinal disorder.”

Many county residents held their own fireworks shows, risking fire and injury for the sake of a little patriotism by letting illegal bottle rockets and fountains of sparks fly loose in areas surrounded by tinder-dry brush.

Complaints about illegal home fireworks and firecrackers kept police and firefighters busy throughout the nation’s birthday. Fillmore is the only city in Ventura County that permits such do-it-yourself pyrotechnics.

Official fireworks displays brightened the skies Saturday evening over Camarillo, Fillmore, Oxnard, Santa Paula, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. Ojai, marching to its patriotic beat, augmented fireworks with a brilliant laser show.

Children got caught up in the Independence Day celebrations--some too young to even know why, but old enough to enjoy the colors and noise.

Hundreds of children and their parents marched, skated, bicycled and rode homemade floats in Ventura’s annual Push ‘Em, Pull ‘Em Parade.

“The kids get all excited, because they know what’s coming,” said Brooke Good, joining friends and relatives in the parade.

“We’ve been planning this for months,” Nancy Lysett of Ventura said.

She pushed a stroller bearing her 5-month-old son, James, and followed her 7-year-old son, Jesse, whose alien-blue face paint and sparkling antennae matched this year’s theme: “Outer Space Adventures.”

Down Main Street rolled hundreds of children in a rag-tag space fleet ranging from tinfoil-wrapped bicycles to elaborate, galvanized tin starships on wheels.

Among the marchers were the Jaco family, dressed as the Jetsons, with mother Donna Jaco dressed as the TV series’ robot maid, leading futuristically dressed children by the hand while her husband, Derek, pulled another child along on a bicycle with training wheels.

The parade dissolved into a street fair in downtown Ventura, where people tapped their toes to the Very Special Jazz Band as it bopped its way through a tight swing version of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Booths offered crafts, T-shirts, earrings and temporary tattoos for sale. Political volunteers for Democratic senatorial candidate Barbara Boxer and unannounced presidential candidate Ross Perot competed with Scientologists, antiabortion activists and AIDS-care workers for the hearts and minds of the fair-goers.

Music from half a dozen bands mingled with barbecue smoke from dozens of grills in the hot summer air over Main Street.

“It’s a great thing,” said Marty Miller of Oxnard, sipping a margarita beneath an orange canopy of parachute silk as he listened to a blues band. “The music’s great and the food’s delicious.”

He and his wife, Dorothy, took a break from the Independence Day crowd thronging Main Street. “It’s getting so crowded it’s hard to walk--this year more than ever,” she said. “But we look forward to it every year.”

Times staff writer John Battelle and correspondent Jerry Mennenga contributed to this story.