Berries Plain and Fancy Star at Tasty Event

By JEFF McDONALD

May 17, 1993 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Once a year, Kenneth and Dee Stone of South Pasadena make a trek to Oxnard in search of strawberries.

This year’s foray brought the couple to the California Strawberry Festival, which drew about 70,000 people over the weekend and ended Sunday amid a flurry of arts and crafts, contests, music and berry-flavored culinary delights.

“We asked a lot of people when we first got here where we could get just regular strawberries,” said Kenneth. “Nobody could tell us.”

The couple did not go home empty-handed, however. Somewhere between the strawberry-stuffed burritos, strawberry nachos and strawberry-topped pizza, the Stones discovered fresh-picked flats of the sweet fruit for sale.

“It took a while, but we found ‘em,” Kenneth said triumphantly.

They were not alone. Don De Armond of the Strawberry Festival executive committee estimates more than 12,000 flats of the juicy red fruit were consumed over the two-day weekend festival sponsored by the city of Oxnard.

“Everybody loves strawberries, it’s just one of those things,” he said Sunday outside the amphitheater, where blues legend Koko Taylor was warming up the crowd. “Children light up when they see a tray of strawberries.”

Judging from the numbers of people at College Park on Sunday, De Armond was right.

“I was telling my aunt how much I like strawberries, so she told me about the festival,” said 15-year-old Michelle Bamrick, who traveled from Hawthorne to taste for herself the best of what Oxnard has to offer.

“I’ve eaten a lot of strawberry things today--chocolate-covered strawberries, strawberry tarts,” she said, scraping the last remnants from a dish of shortcake. “I’m not sick of them yet, but I’m getting there.”

But the strawberry pizza and strawberry nachos were too much for Michelle.

“They look weird to me,” she said. “I don’t trust them.”

Others, however, were more adventuresome.

“It’s neat to see all the different things you can do with a strawberry,” said Roger Hager of Moorpark, who was enjoying the festival with his wife, Debbie, and their two daughters, Amber, 10, and Amanda, 8.

“It tastes great,” he said as he and his family scooped samples of the strawberry pizza from a communal plate.

Sweet-tasting delicacies were not the only attraction at the 10th annual festival. Children got their faces painted, rode a small train, competed in coloring contests and molded shapes from strawberry-scented clay.

“Some of the animals looked lonely; other people weren’t paying any attention to them,” said 9-year-old Jeff Carson of Oxnard, who had just emerged from the petting zoo. “So I went over there and petted them all.”

Organizers of the California Strawberry Festival say the event is becoming more popular every year.

“We’re getting people from all over California coming to this festival,” said chairman Tsujio Kato, who has supervised the celebration during each of its 10 years. “We do a lot of publicity in the tri-counties, but I’m just amazed how they hear about it.”

The festival also provides dozens of nonprofit agencies the opportunity to raise money for their organizations.

“This is probably one of the biggest fund raisers of the year for us,” said engineer Dennis Leaf of the Oxnard Fire Department, which raised between $3,000 and $4,000, he said. The firefighters’ association will donate the money to area youth clubs and the Muscular Dystrophy Assn.

The Winners

Contest winners at the 10th Annual California Strawberry Festival:

Shortcake eating contest

* Saturday--Art Cole of Newbury Park; 12 and under: Randy Miller, 11, of Point Mugu

* Sunday--Tarek Rizkalla of Simi Valley; 12 and under: Andre Green, 9, of Oxnard

Strawberry tart toss

* Saturday--Jan Sasabe of Los Angeles; 12 and under: not available

* Sunday--Jim Glasco of Lomita; 12 and under: Keith Powell, 8, of Thousand Oaks

10-K race

* Male overall--Jeff Jacobs of Santa Barbara

* Female overall--Josefina Sanchez of Oxnard

* Wheelchair winner--Paul Manocchio of Van Nuys