Amid the Jam Jars, Another L.A.

Faye Jensen of Sylmar won blue ribbons at the L.A. County Fair for her canned asparagus and green beans, her boysenberry preserves and blackberry jam, and several other home-canning entries. While this hardly qualifies as big city news--especially in this big city, especially in this bad year--it does make a point about this place where we all live.

The popular wisdom is that Los Angeles doesn’t have room anymore for people like Faye Jensen. As defined by press accounts and politics, L.A. has become a city of only victims and villains, of people who either are filthy rich or Third World refugees--a city without a middle.

The County Fair evokes a different Los Angeles, a city rarely visited by the newscams. To wander the cavernous exhibit halls at the Pomona fairgrounds is to marvel at how many people made time, in a year dominated by riots and unrest, to can peaches, sew quilts, carve wood or raise rabbits. As much as anything, the fair is a monument to these people and their invisible city, and a reminder that for all the burning and bleeding and moving on, they are still here.

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The fairs I knew as a Fresno kid were built around displays of shiny new farm implements and well-groomed cows. Driving to Pomona last week, I wondered what the urban equivalent might be. The latest in police squad cars? Cages of Dobermans? What I found was a fair much like any other: barns filled with livestock, roving clowns, home arts contests, corn dogs, flower shows, Footsie Wootsie foot massagers and hokey stage acts.

Now, there were some indications that this was Southern California and not Iowa redux. The L.A. fair boasts an uncommon abundance of hot tub displays and bottled water booths. Also, the midway carnival seems a lesser draw than at rural fairs. “We don’t really try to be an amusement park,” said Ralph Hinds, the L.A. fair director. “We can’t compete with Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Magic Mountain--they are the best. What we are good at, and what they don’t have, is the fair.”

For parents, the L.A. fair provides an isolated opportunity to show their children that milk isn’t concocted in plastic containers and that sweaters don’t grow on hangers. Hinds said 90% of L.A. fair-goers visit the livestock exhibits, compared to as little as 10% at rural fairs.

The weekday crowd consisted mainly of retirees and schoolchildren on field trips. While the fair-goers came in all the colors of Los Angeles, they seemed to share an attitude that was at once lazy and curious, and friendly. It felt safe and fun--no small feat these days.

What I enjoyed most were the halls of commercial displays. In booth after booth, demonstrators were busy slicing, dicing, mopping or mixing with some new miracle invention. The wares would be familiar to anyone who’s flipped through television’s back channels. There were Thighmasters, Bowmasters, Saladmasters, Gripmasters, Salsamasters, massage loungers, laser knives, Vita-Mixers, NordicTracks, super chamois mops (“from Europe”), Original Pressure Cooker/Broasters (“Can’t Explode!”), and Mr. Stickies (“the amazing lint and hair remover with 101 uses”).

Another product of back channel television, Ross Perot, was on display in the form of a life-size cardboard cutout. The woman at the Perot booth was thrilled to set a reporter straight. “Ross never got out of the race,” she said. “That was what was written in the media, but it’s not true. He just rested for a while.”

She was the original Spinmaster and, judging by the thick stack of forms filled out by new recruits to the cause, this was her kind of crowd.

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The fair, of course, cannot offer a perfect escape from L.A.’s hard times. Attendance has been soft, Hinds said, and he suspects that people are waiting to see whether the security will hold. Vendors grump about slow sales. Visitors to the photo displays linger over blue-ribbon shots from the riots. A winner in the homemade clothing competition was a camouflaged survivalist vest, complete with ammo packs.

Still, the rule can be found in people like Jensen, who came to the home arts exhibit last Wednesday with her husband, Henry, to tally her ribbons. The couple grew up together in North Hollywood and have lived in the same house in Sylmar for most of their 39 years of marriage.

“We have been coming to the fair since we were kids,” said Henry Jensen, a retired tree trimmer. “We love this fair. It has changed some, but it’s still pretty much the same.”

That sameness is the big news from Pomona.