At County Fairgrounds, It’s All Work --Then Play

It’s an annual rite of summer.

Volunteers and employees are fast at work at Seaside Park in Ventura, jamming together thousands of exhibits for this year’s Ventura County Fair, which kicks off Wednesday for 12 days of churning rides, sturdy livestock and any food you could ever want on a stick.

Workers didn’t begin building display space until the winners were chosen last weekend. Last year, about 6,000 of 22,000 entries were on display, everything from handmade quilts to pinned and mounted beetles.

That means workers have been hammering, sifting and buzzing in a race against the clock.

“Come entry weekend, they get to enter and we get to put it up,” fair publicist Teri Raley said. “It’s pretty much like a madhouse this week.”

Befitting a fair with the theme “Reflections of Yesterday,” the annual celebration, while looking forward to the millennium, will cast an eye back at the past.

First-time events and exhibits include the Little Tikes toddler games, a mini-maze from the creators of the cornstalk labyrinth in Camarillo, a three-day visit from the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, and a museum devoted to Ventura County history and the history of the fair itself.

The grandstand area will play host to a dozen events, including three days of rodeo competition, stock-car racing and performances by such acts as Peter Frampton, the Beach Boys, and Harry Connick Sr. and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra.

Workers are putting the finishing touches on a new fence outside the fair’s parking lot, which should be much more inviting than the chain-link one that has been there for years, Raley said.

But at a fair so steeped in tradition, even such minor changes can be disconcerting to some visitors.

“People say, ‘My sticky buns are supposed to be there,’ ‘Where’s the corn this year?’ Some have been here every year for a thousand years,” Raley said. “A population wants it changed every year. Another wants it the same every year.”

Such Ventura County folk take their fair seriously--Raley counts a handful of volunteers who have worked for at least 50 years.

Jewel Pendergast of Casitas Springs is a county fair spring chicken, with only 26 years to her credit. With her daughter, Jayne--a 20-year fair veteran who dashes in to help between school bus-driving shifts--Pendergast worked in the Youth Building over the week, helping post art by the under-5 set.

“This isn’t a job,” she said. “I love the fair.”

The fair started as a small community festival in 1874, at the long-gone Trotting Park, an equestrian and racing complex near Seaward Avenue and Harbor Boulevard in Ventura. After a move to a spot in Port Hueneme, the event settled at Seaside Park in 1914, on land donated by the Foster family.

Only during the Depression and the onset of World War II has the fair been silenced. There have since been no gaps, as thousands of county residents stream through the gates every year for such traditional favorites as the chili cook-off, Alaskan pig races and cow chip tossing.

Some old favorites will have new twists: Fish, turtles and snakes will share space in the floriculture hall, and an 8-by-20-foot ant farm will take up a corner of the agricultural hall.

It’s almost too much fun for some.

“It’s our 19th fair,” Raley said of herself and her husband, Devlin. “We should be pretty blase by now, but we go down at this point and we still get the fever.”

FYI

The fair, which continues through the 15th, will offer special appreciation days with free admission for military (Thursday), children 12 and under (Friday), and seniors (Aug. 10). To deal with the throngs, Metrolink will offer scheduled trains from Chatsworth, Simi Valley, Moorpark, Camarillo and Oxnard on the weekends. Parking and free shuttles are available at San Buenaventura State Beach, the County Government Center off Telephone Road, Buenaventura Mall, Ventura High School and a new spot at Harbor Boulevard and Schooner Drive, across from the Four Points Sheraton. The fair opens every day at 11 a.m. with exhibits closing at 10 p.m. and the midway closing at 11 p.m. Admission is $6 for adults and $3 for children 6 to 12 and seniors 55 and older. Those under 5 or more than 100 get in free. The Times will print schedules of events daily.