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.
My favorite Ferris wheel memory is captured in a framed 8-by-10 black-and-white photograph. Snapped candidly by a Star photographer three decades ago, before newspapers became colorful, it still hangs on my daughter’s childhood bedroom wall. In it she is 4 years old with excited eyes as big as dollars, me seated tight by her side with one arm around her, as we soar high skyward. It was her first VC Fair and she says it remains one of her earliest vivid memories.
Alas, for the past two years, kids – and teens and adults – making new Fair memories was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing the event’s first cancellation since World War II. Happily, that changes this Wednesday (Aug. 3) when the “VC Fair Rides Again.”
The Fair makes kids of us all. If not the rides, then the win-a-stuffed-animal games or various exhibits or concerts or chocolate-covered bacon will give you eyes as big as silver dollars. The Fair is more timeless than baseball and for a week and a half each summer becomes our favorite pastime.
Speaking of baseball, legend has it Babe Ruth played an exhibition game nearly 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 you are trying to strike out The Sultan of Swat.
The Fair is also special because of spinning, dipping, whirling rides with enough G-forces to make a NASA astronaut’s stomach woozy.
The Fair is special because the food can also make your stomach spin with offerings that include almost anything you can imagine served on a stick, deep-fried or dipped in chocolate – or all three.
The Fair is special because it serves as an excuse for 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, and on and on.
The Fair is special because of the midway games, no matter if the basketball rims are too high and so bent out of round that LeBron James would be lucky to sink 1 out of 4.
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, not least of all, the Fair is special because of the ocean-side Ferris wheel that affords a soaring seagull’s-eye panoramic view that is beyond spectacular. This magic is magnified if you are 4 years old, or thereabouts, or sitting beside such a kid with eyes as big as silver dollars.
Mellencamp’s song concludes: “Well the County Fair left quite a mess / In the county yard”
Indeed, come August 14, after the tents are folded, the rides taken down, and the trucks loaded up, there will be quite a mess left behind. But that’s how the best parties always end – with a happy mess and lasting memories.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
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. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com