Port Hueneme Harbor Days Has Something for Everyone

Armed with $20 of her birthday money and an eye to buy, 14-year-old Kelly Tobin hit Port Hueneme Harbor Days on Saturday.

Harbor Days organizers had advertised such events as a boomerang demonstration and a square-dancing show, but to Kelly and her friend, Ambra Heede, also 14, the festival boiled down to one activity--shopping.

They had a large selection of booths from which to choose. Merchants and their cloth-canopied stands, selling everything from woven purses to dangling silver earrings to beef kebabs, filled the sidewalks beside Hueneme Beach.

This weekend marks Harbor Days’ 39th anniversary. It began in 1954, when a group of citizens organized a festival to raise money for construction of a city park, said Harbor Days spokeswoman Ann D. Snider. The event--which continues today at Hueneme Beach--has been run by citizens’ groups ever since and is still free to the public.

Though the hot, sunny afternoon still felt like summer, Ambra had the holidays in mind as she browsed. “I do my Christmas shopping here every year,” said Ambra, examining some necklaces. “I don’t like to do it later at the malls. Here, everything is handmade.”

Or, at least, it may have looked that way. Forty-five minutes into their shopping spree, Kelly had snapped up a striped shirt and matching hair ornament and a little pink bear for her newborn sister, all stuffed in a blue gift bag. Ambra, a speedy but deliberate buyer, clutched the jewelry that would be her mother’s Christmas present.

“Oh, look at the necklaces! Oh my gosh, look at that!” Kelly squealed, cradling star and heart pendants dangling from narrow pastel ribbons. As Kelly went back and forth--hearts or stars, stars or hearts--Ambra bought a heart pin and had it monogrammed for her grandmother.

Dropping a star necklace later into the rapidly filling bag, Kelly acknowledged that she was lucky she hadn’t brought more of her birthday money with her.

The festival held attractions for other fair-goers as well.

Carlos Alcala, 29, of Oxnard said he and his 18-month-old daughter, Natalie, came to the morning’s parade to see Barney, the purple dinosaur and preschoolers’ idol, who rolled by atop the convertible hood of a blue Volkswagen Bug. “We watch Barney on TV every morning and came especially to see him,” Alcala said.

“Baa-ney, Baa-ney,” Natalie called as her hero wheeled away.

“See? She’s almost got the pronunciation of his name down,” the proud father said. “She sings all the Barney songs, especially the--what’s it called?--bubble bath song.”

Chuck Levy, 48, of Westlake claimed to be more excited about his son’s appearance in the Westlake High School Marching Band than about a waving reptile.

“They’re a terrific band,” said Levy as he wrapped up his videotaping of the band’s march past the reviewing stand. His son Josh, 14, plays the baritone saxophone.

Like the other band members’ parents, Levy was easily identifiable in his Westlake High School booster club T-shirt. “We have jackets and sweat shirts, too,” he said. “As the weather gets colder, we don more layers.”

Levy hurried off to join the other booster parents. He would have liked to have stayed for the rest of the festival, he said, “but I’ve got another kid’s soccer game in Torrance this afternoon.”

Jeannette and Walter Moranda of Port Hueneme said the parades didn’t use to have so many bands and Brownie troops. They should know--the septuagenarians have been coming to the Harbor Days parade since its inception nearly 40 years ago.

“Oh, there used to be lots of fire trucks, (vehicles carrying) sacks of beans and other agricultural products,” said Jeannette Moranda, 75.

Walter Moranda, 78, remembered how organizers would bring the MGM lion west from Jungleland in Thousand Oaks.

Kelly and Ambra, both of whom live in Port Hueneme, also came by in the morning to watch their musician and cheerleading friends march in the parade. By 1:30 p.m., their day was winding down as their wallets rapidly emptied.

Kelly reached into her pocket and surveyed the scrunched green bills in her hand. “I spent all but $2,” she said with a grin, heading off for a food stand. “Just enough to buy a soda for me.”