Corn Dogs, Pig Races and More

Autumn is nigh in the old megalopolis. All the signs are there. The smog has turned colors, decorating the sunset sky with lovely streaks of red and orange. Children are back in school, flush with the vigor that comes from three months of moping about the mall. The air is filled with blimps covering Saturday football. Leaf blowers sing.

And so, another harvest of tans and sitcom reruns complete, the yeoman-urbanites of the Los Angeles Basin have converged again on what once was a beet field for that most ritualistic harbinger of fall: the county fair.

Cotton candy, Ferris wheels, hot dogs on a stick, Footsie Wootsie foot massagers (“Relax. Rejuvenate. Revive. And Still Only 25 Cents.”), pig races, giant pickles and cow-milking demonstrations--the L.A. County Fair concedes little in the way of frothy Americana to its more countrified cousins.

At the same time, it does offer a few signature touches. At the fairs around Fresno, where I grew up, farmers would come to ogle the breeding stock and kick the tires of new tractors. Here fair-goers wander amid displays of hot tubs and home saunas and built-in pools. At one booth last Thursday, the fair’s opening day, a giggling woman let a product demonstrator paint her ankle brown: “Tan Now,” the stuff was called. They don’t sell a lot of Tan Now down on the farm.

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This is being written by an unabashed fan of county fairs in general, and the Los Angeles County Fair in particular. Los Angeles would seem, by general reputation, a place more adept at staging a riot than a county fair. Fairs are neighborly events, and Los Angeles is a city notorious for creating a sense of isolation among its inhabitants.

Strangely enough, though, the fair works. To wander the exhibit halls, animal pens and midway alleys is to witness what might be perceived as an L.A. miracle: People from all corners of the basin mixing together, striking up conversations, laughing, getting along. The feel is different, friendlier, than that on display at other communal meeting grounds, the shopping malls, sports arenas and so forth. Who knows why? Perhaps it’s something they put in the corn dogs.

In the last few years, several exhibit halls have been given over to commercial vendors hawking pans that don’t stick, knives that stay sharp and clever devices for cleaning carpets and kitty litters. Jousting with the smart-aleck promoters is part of the fun, but some purists sneeringly call this part of the fair “the swap meet.” They prefer the stock pens.

And, in fact, there’s just enough of an agricultural presence left to perfume the Fairplex with an authentic whiff of the region’s long-gone agricultural past. Many parents will bring their children to show them that, as one father put it, “chickens have heads and feathers before they become a package at Vons.”

Each fair tends to develop its own story line, a centerpiece attraction that commands attention, and so far this year the honor goes to a small booth in main hall, right by the electronic palm reader. At this booth, fair-goers can tap a few numbers into a computer and see what registered sex offenders, if any, live in the neighborhood.

“Honey,” a man at one keyboard called to his wife Thursday, “what’s Bob’s last name?”

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Some snoopers bring the determined demeanor of FBI agents to the task: “I’m doing my duty,” said a T-ball coach from Chino Hills. “Anybody not doing this is sticking their heads in the sand.” Others regard the booth as one more amusement, munching on candied apples as they flip through the virtual mug shots.

“What better place to put this than the fair?” is how Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren defended his decision to set up the so-called Megan’s Law booth. No doubt the attorney general considered his question rhetorical, but in fact a number of more suitable places come to mind. However noble the cause, however abhorrent the crimes it targets, the sex offender computer hunt--in this one fair-goer’s view, anyway--clashes mightily with the character of the fair.

Move to the opposite end of same exhibit hall where Lungren has set up shop. Here, several glass cases stand in rows, each filled with homemade preserves, cookies, woodworks, quilts and similar contest entries. It is an almost inexplicable comfort to stroll among these handiworks, to imagine the blue ribbon winners engaged in their labors:

Here is Linda J. Amendt of Whittier, cranking out blue ribbon apple jelly . . . and Jack A. Boggio of La Mirada, carving a Wild West chess set . . . and Charles Pomeroy III of Burbank, making his kumquat marmalade. . . . Here is hard evidence of a parallel universe, of a city of normalcy that exists beyond the reach of the nightly news and all its carnage and perversities. Here is a moment of escape from all that--which, of course, is a fair at its most charming.