The 152nd Ventura County Fair opening next week on July 29…
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The John Mellencamp song “County Fair” comes to my mind every summer with one lyric especially making me smile: “Kids with eyes as big as dollars / Rode all the rides.”
That, in a single image, sums up the Ventura County Fair to me – kids getting their thrills on carousels and trains, sky swings and the Tilt-a-Whirl, small roller coasters and the giant Ferris wheel. The latter always makes me think of two little girls.
The first girl, then age 5, went to her first County Fair alone with her father and on the drive home she could be heard softly whispering to herself, “Ferris wheel, Ferris wheel, Ferris wheel,” so as not to forget the name of her favorite of all the rides she rode.
Arriving home, the little girl – now my wife – raced inside and exclaimed: “Mom! I rode the merry-go-round!”
Another cherished Ferris wheel memory is captured in a framed 8-by-10 black-and-white photograph. Snapped candidly by former Star photographer Gary Phelps three decades past, before newspapers became colorful, it still hangs on my daughter’s childhood bedroom wall. Frozen in time, she is 4 years old with excited eyes as big as dollars. She is seated snugly beside her father – me – with one arm around her. We are both smiling as we soar skyward. It was her first VC Fair and made a lasting impression as one of her earliest childhood memories.
It is a magical memory of mine as well for the Fair makes kids of us all.
This year’s Fair theme is “Find Your Fun” and never has a challenge been easier. If not the rides, then the win-a-stuffed-animal games or various exhibits or concerts or culinary delights will give you eyes as big as silver dollars.
Legend has it Babe Ruth played an exhibition game a century ago in the mid-1920s at Seaside Park which is, and has been since 1914, the site for the Ventura County Fair that originated in 1874 at the Pierpont Bluffs. This claim to fame makes the current fairgrounds all the more special. After all, while throwing baseballs at milk bottles on the midway you can imagine yourself trying to strike out “The Sultan of Swat.”
The Fair is also special because of its spinning, dipping, whirling rides with G-forces to make a NASA astronaut’s stomach woozy.
Speaking of woozy, the Fair is special because the food can also make your stomach spin with concoctions that include almost anything imaginable served on a stick, deep-fried, or dipped in chocolate – or all three – and which the Star’s intrepid reporter Tom Kisken bravely samples and shares glutinous gastronomic reviews of annually.
The Fair is special because it serves as an excuse for young parents to play hooky from work for an afternoon.
The Fair is special because of the amazing exhibits of paintings and photography, handmade quilts and home-baked cakes, et cetera and so forth and so on.
The Fair is special because of the midway games, even if the basketball rims are too high and so bent out of round that Stephen Curry would be lucky to sink 1 out of 10.
The Fair is special because the carnies are such colorful characters.
The Fair is special because of the 4-H junior livestock auction and blue-ribbon rabbits the size of English bulldogs.
And the Ventura County Fair is most special of all because of the vertical merry-go-round overlooking the ocean. The seagull’s view atop the seaside Ferris wheel is even more magical if you are sitting beside a kid with eyes as big as silver dollars.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.
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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.