The Big Sweep : Fair: Crews labor to tidy up after thousands of visitors. Their boss thinks that neat surroundings will discourage people from littering.

Richard Tucker wants to lay a massive guilt trip on the thousands of people who come to the Ventura County Fair.

As manager of the maintenance department, Tucker is in charge of making sure the fairgrounds are spotless. Although he has a cleanup crew of about 60 people who do nothing but pick up and wash up after thousands of less-than-tidy fair-goers, Tucker says his biggest weapon is guilt.

“The cleaner it is, the more guilty it makes a person feel for dropping something on the ground,” Tucker said.

Anywhere from 12,000 to 32,000 people tromp through the fairgrounds daily, leaving about 50 tons of rubbish in their wake, Tucker said. More than 400 garbage cans dot the 62-acre fairgrounds; the cans’ contents are fed into one trash compactor and eight dumpsters, Tucker said.

Tucker deploys about a dozen members of his staff each day to prowl the fairgrounds and scoop up litter that doesn’t make it into a trash can. “We try to load up around eating times,” he said.

Armed with a small broom and a trash bag, James Morrow is on the front lines of the refuse patrol. Morrow’s beat includes a long stretch of food stands, and he roams around searching for stray cigarette butts, plastic forks and spoons, used paper napkins, empty Styrofoam cups and just about anything that’s on the ground and doesn’t belong there.

“Ice cream can be a mess,” said Morrow, 56, of Ventura. “Kids will take one bite and the rest will fall on the ground.”

Morrow lugs around a bottle of water for such emergencies. “I just pour water on it and . . . then I sweep it in,” he said.

He says he prefers working the day shift because he doesn’t have to deal with as much slop then. “During the day, it’s mostly housewives, and they don’t throw away as many things,” Morrow said.

Tucker’s crew also is responsible for cleaning the 24 restrooms at the fair.

Julie Fishburn, 38, of Oxnard, polices the women’s restroom in the Gems and Minerals Building. She figures her station is among the busiest, because of its proximity to the main gate.

“I was a maid in a motel before, but I didn’t have to clean up after as many people in such a short time,” said Fishburn, adding that she replaced 25 rolls of toilet paper Saturday and 32 on Sunday.

But the messiest job isn’t cleaning up after people, said Duane Stanford, 33, of Ventura.

Stanford, who says he’s more city slicker than country boy, groaned as he recalled his first experience scooping up manure.

“It smells like ammonia,” Stanford said. “You can see the fumes, it’s so strong.”

When he first received his assignment, Stanford said, he looked at his boss “like he was crazy.” But he did the work. “It’s part of the job,” he said.

In addition to trailing the horses in the parade last weekend, Stanford was assigned to clean the livestock area. “Sheep are pretty clean,” he said. “The goats were terrible, and the rabbits are the worst.”

As far as Michael Robert is concerned, however, people are even worse offenders than animals. Robert’s job is to go around and dump out the trash cans. Pushing a huge gray dumpster filled with debris, he scowled at the fair-goers enjoying themselves.

“Man, there’ll be a trash can right there in front of them,” Robert said, as he dumped a 15-pound bag of trash into his dumpster. “And they’ll throw it on the ground.”

FAIR SCHEDULE: B2