On a bookshelf in my den where I write, there sits a small
ceramic bowl filled with spare change. Look on the base, and you’ll
find a cryptic message someone long ago inscribed into the wet
clay: 74 MARTIN CHEEK SAN BENITO.
On a bookshelf in my den where I write, there sits a small ceramic bowl filled with spare change. Look on the base, and you’ll find a cryptic message someone long ago inscribed into the wet clay: 74 MARTIN CHEEK SAN BENITO.
Thirty years ago at the San Benito County Fair, I made this little dust collector . My mind’s eye now vividly sees my 7-year-old self sitting timidly at the pottery wheel as a nice lady guides my hands over sopping clay. Right before my astonished eyes, a formless lump magically transforms into a ceramic container.
I’ve kept the bowl through the years as a souvenir from the fair. It reminds me of all the many good times I had as a kid visiting San Benito County’s annual fall festival.
I’ve attended several Bay Area county fairs and, from my experience, I’ll honestly tell you – the San Benito County Fair is, bar none, the best. Most county fairs in this region are lost in the sprawl of big cities. And they’re more about hawkers trying to sell you trinkets and trash that’ll wind up in your next garage sale.
But visit San Benito’s fair and you’ll discover it hasn’t lost its rural roots. You’ll find you hook up quick to the old-fashioned values of a community that hasn’t – yet – forgotten its farming heritage.
The San Benito County Fair is located not in an urban jungle, but along Highway 25, a leisurely country road in cattle ranching territory. It’s an easy drive winding south of Hollister, through the village of Tres Pinos and into a scenic canyon where the fairground is located at Bolado Park.
The San Benito County Fair has an ambiance I can only describe as a down-home happy-to-see-you style. It’s a kaleidoscope for all five senses. It also a special outing for youngsters. Take your family to the fair this Friday, Saturday or Sunday, and you’re virtually guaranteed to find some good old-fashioned fun in the sun. (Unless, of course, it rains this weekend.)
As a kid, I always got a thrill going through the gauntlet of carnival rides parked on the great expanse of lawn. The air pounded with the roar of the diesel generators powering the marvelous contraptions. Dad never let me go on the “dangerous rides” – like the miniature rollercoaster – for fear I’d be killed or maimed. But I still had fun vaulting around and doing somersaults in the huge bouncy castle.
I’m the proud owner of plenty of happy memories of livestock pen tours I made with my parents. The goats and sheep and horses and cows provided me with plenty of entertaining sights and sounds – not to mention interesting smells.
But the pigs! I went hog wild over the pigs. I was enchanted by the strappin’ swine. They were enormous critters! I watched in fascination as they dug their snouts into their feed, snorting a laugh-riot as they savored every morsel.
Several years in a row, I met Smokey the Bear at the fair’s Pavilion. He always gave me a sticker after I promised him I’d never to play with matches. (Okay, I did break my promise a couple of times – but to my credit, I never burned down anything.)
Clowns strolling the fair supplied me with an abundance of air-filled balloons. I recall accidentally releasing one of these into the livestock corral, scaring the wits out of a poor lamb.
More than a couple of years I got impatient with my mom when she wasted too much time browsing through the flower-arrangement displays. But I always enjoyed googling over the baked goods – cookies, brownies, pies, cakes, gingerbread houses and such. To this day, I still find myself drooling over these heavenly goodies the years I get down to the fair.
My visits to the San Benito County Fair have, for the most part been happy ones. But there were the emotionally-scaring moments. I remember a few scary times as a little kid getting lost and dashing around frantically in search of my folks.
And then there was the time dad entered his photograph of me – probably I was about six years old at the time – having my first “shave.” It shows me with a Bic disposal razor in my fist, my little boy’s face lathered thick as I stare uncertainly at my bathroom mirror reflection. It’s a cute picture. But it wasn’t cute enough to win a single ribbon – and that made me infuriated with the photography judges. Dad explained something to me about life from that fair experience: “Sometimes you win the ribbon. Sometimes somebody else wins.”
There’s something I didn’t realize back as a kid, but I see it clearly now. The best part of going to the fair is getting to meet all the folks you’ve lost touch with or haven’t seen for a long while. Roaming around the fair, my parents would stop and chat with some friend or acquaintance. I’d get bored, wander off and get lost.
But now that I’m grown up (theoretically speaking), whenever I go to the county fair I always chance to meet people from my past – friends and neighbors I feel a thrill to meet again after so many years. More often than not, they don’t recognize me at first. They still remember me as a little kid. I’ll always be “little Martin” to them, I suppose.
A couple of years ago, I took a Morgan Hill friend of mine and her 7-year-old daughter to the San Benito County Fair. Little Ashley seemed genuinely charmed by the down-home, happy-to-see-you style. I watched her fall into a magic spell, bewitched by the kaleidoscope of county fair sights and sounds and smells. Clowns carrying balloon bouquets. The pounding throb of carnival rides. The frantic ambiance of a livestock auction. And the pigs! Ashley instantly fell in love with the pigs. She was enchanted spying on the strappin’ swine porking-out in their livestock pens. She went hog wild over them – just like another 7-year-old I once knew 30 years ago.
Too bad the nice lady with the pottery wheel wasn’t around that afternoon. It would’ve been nice for Ashley to take home a little ceramic bowl she made herself. She might have treasured her souvenir from the San Benito County Fair for many, many years to come.
