‘Deaners’ bring annual revel without a pause : Fans stream to hamlet where late actor was born 62 years ago today.

Thirty-eight years after his death, James Dean is still very much alive in this small farming town.

The brooding young actor, who came to personify the restlessness of a generation, was raised here. And, after his speeding Porsche slammed into another car in Southern California, he was brought back to Fairmount to be buried.

In life and death, the boy who locals called Jimmy has defined the identity of this tight-knit town, which is surrounded by mile upon mile of rich farmland. Each year, thousands of tourists flock to Fairmount to see Dean’s grave, visit the house where he grew up and browse the museum and gallery erected in tribute to his brief but brilliant film career.

Raised in the Midwest, Dean went to California after high school and attended Santa Monica Junior College and UCLA. Acting work led to New York and then to film. “Rebel Without a Cause” attracted particular attention, and a virtual Dean cult developed after his death.

David Loehr came to Fairmount in the late 1970s to pay homage after seeing Dean’s “East of Eden” and a film series on rebels at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After several visits, he settled here.

“I was intrigued with this little town,” Loehr says. “It was really quiet . . . and the people are real genuine, friendly and easygoing.” And he figured it was the kind of place he could make a living while indulging his fascination with Dean, whose death at age 24 seemed only to enhance his stature as a cult figure. Dean would have been 62 today.

Loehr now owns the James Dean Gallery, a white clapboard home on Main Street that houses the largest James Dean collection in the world. There are the jeans Dean wore in the movie “Giant,” faded scripts bearing the actor’s handwritten notes and mementos from Dean’s high school days, among a myriad of other items.

The gallery is one of the first stops tourists make on their pilgrimage along Fairmount’s Main Street, on an itinerary that includes Dean’s grave and the farmhouse where he was raised by an aunt and uncle.

“There are all types of Dean fans,” says Loehr. “Doctors, lawyers, students, punk-rock-looking kids. . . . You can’t really pinpoint a James Dean fan.”

Last year, Loehr counted 20,000 visitors to the gallery. Some weeks, hundreds of tourists stream through town. But for the event they call both “Museum Days” and “James Dean Weekend,” held the last full weekend in September to commemorate Dean’s death, “Deaners,” as some locals call the visiting fans, virtually overrun the town.

“It’s standing room only,” says Skip Enyeart, the bartender at The Palace, the town watering hole. “We get people from all around the world visiting.”

To mark “Museum Days,” Fairmount holds a variety of events, including a James Dean look-alike contest, a memorial service at the local church and a street fair along Main Street.

“That’s the only time this town is hoppin’,” says Starla Fields of the festival. Fields commutes more than an hour into Indianapolis to her job as a house cleaner because she wouldn’t think of moving from Dean’s hometown.

Most residents appreciate the business that Dean’s legacy attracts--even if it only amounts to a tank of gas or lunch at the local diner. One of the few complaints is about the area’s worsening crime, which locals blame on the economy, not the fans.

“People who come halfway around the world to see Jimmy Dean ain’t broke. They are not going to steal,” said Buss Voorhis, owner of The Palace. “Hell, I don’t go to Vegas if I don’t have any money!”

Inside The Palace, the talk is mostly of famed Indiana college basketball coach Bobby Knight, a little local gossip and, if you ask, James Byron Dean. It seems everyone has a story. Take Lewis Curfman. A retired farmer, Curfman speaks fondly of his days as a teen-ager when he threshed grain with Jimmy.

There were the trips out for an occasional beer, the sleep-overs at the white farmhouse where Dean was raised--and the girls. “The big thing about Jimmy Dean is that he used to stand around in all his pictures with a cigarette. He didn’t even smoke!” says Curfman.

But a cigarette can almost always be found on Dean’s grave, along with flowers, candles, love notes, pictures, medallions and an occasional can of beer. Some come to pay silent tribute; others sing at the foot of Dean’s grave, recite poetry or play music.

“He’s a cool cat,” said one teen-ager who had stopped to place a Van Morrison tape on Dean’s grave. “You gotta respect a guy that made it to Hollywood from here.”