It’s Down to Final Details at the Fair

VENTURA — The fair was still a day away, but 17-year-old Joe Essary had already been there a week.

Perched on the bumper of a pickup truck outside the floriculture building at Seaside Park, the buzz-cut Ventura High School student was covered in dirt Tuesday while taking a well-deserved break from laying out mulch and arranging moss on the Future Farmers of America’s garden exhibit.

“We’re down to washing every leaf, one by one,” said Joe’s dad, Mark.

And in the final hours before today’s 11 a.m. opening, with lines stretching for last-minute $1 ride tickets, it was all in the details: leaf by leaf, nail by nail.

It took some fast footwork.

“It’s amazing to walk down Main Street and see what appears to be mass chaos and that it appears to be working,” said Devlin Raley, fair publicist. “It’s almost like a dance on a crowded dance floor. There seems to be no way you can move, but somehow you do.”

The stretch could have been the main drag of bustling, small-town America--if small-town America appeared like Brigadoon two weeks of every year. Motorized carts puttered up the road, and food concessionaires put the finishing touches on their storefronts.

The rides--including the stomach-wrenching Inverter and agitating Spin Out--were still as carnies took up rags to polish them.

Shirtless crews worked under the sun on the midway, carting ratchets, wrenches and screwdrivers on ride-adjustment detail. Stuffed animals--dozens of Tweety Birds and Scooby Doos jammed into plastic bags--peered out, waiting to be hung from the game booths as temptations to play.

Vendors pulled up in their trucks, hefted off wheels and latched up windows in a regular ritual for most.

The Payton brothers of Arizona--on the road for nine months of the year--brought their photo shop trailer down from a fair in Merced. By now, they’re blase about the heavy lifting and strain of setting up.

“It’s a quick job,” said Mike Payton, whose grandfather started the photo business in the 1940s. “This’ll only take us a half-hour or two.”

Smoke already was wafting from a barbecue stand, and Lupe Ramirez, owner of Lupita’s, grabbed a head start, serving burritos to the fair’s hungry workers before the onslaught of 250,000 visitors expected over the next 12 days.

The Buena High School band’s funnel cake stand, a last-minute substitute, was admittedly a little further behind. The 13-year-old Curci twins--Paul and Nick--have been helping their father pound together its facade, an old-fashioned Western storefront, for eight-hour shifts the last couple of days.

That’ll stop when the fair begins and funnel cake-making shifts can be complemented by more frivolous attractions.

“We’re going to be doing a little of both working and playing,” said Paul, flushed in the midday heat.

Temperatures are expected to be warm again today, with highs around 80, lows in the upper 50s and light breezes.

Inside, the sheep were stirring in their pens. Fifteen-year-old Allen Tourtillott’s lamb, in a harness for the first time, was so nervous that she bucked, kicked and dragged her heels, offering quite a challenge for the slight teenager as he attempted to move her to another pen.

“She’s not used to this,” the Grass Valley teenager said. “I’m just trying to calm her down.”

Della Frazier of Apple Valley gave her squirmy sheep a last-minute shave, although the fuzzy ewe clearly would rather have been grazing.

“I’ve got 10 [sheep] to do, and her number was up,” she said. “I tell them they like it, but they’d just as soon be at home walking around.”

Outside the park, Donna Mendoza was one of those waiting in a long line for their final shot at $1 ride tickets. The Oxnard resident couldn’t help hovering at the park’s gate, sneaking a peek inside, after picking up a batch for her family.

“Oh, man. I’m no better than my kids,” she said. “I just can’t wait for tomorrow.”