A Step Back in Time : Recreation: County fair is about 30 miles from Downtown, but its midway and pie-eating contests may as well be on another planet.

Jay Hitchcock stood poised, hands behind his back, head bent over a paper plate containing one jelly doughnut. Suddenly, he dove in, gnawing at the doughnut.

“Get it in your mouth!” screamed his wife, Jane, holding up a camera to catch her 34-year-old husband--an engineering software salesman--getting his face smeared with red jelly.

Alas, he lost this speed doughnut-eating contest to a petite woman contestant.

“She just scarfed it,” Hitchcock said in awe, enduring the laughter of his wife and friends and the baffled look of his 14-month-old daughter, Arleigh. So what’s a sophisticated Long Beach guy, who looks as if he normally doesn’t touch fried dough, doing slurping jelly doughnuts on a Saturday morning?

“It’s the county fair!” Hitchcock said. “It’s like leaving town for the weekend.”

On the freeway scale of life in L.A., the Los Angeles County Fair is a mere 30 miles or so from Downtown. But in mind-set, it may as well be another planet. Walk down the hill from the parking lot and you see the lazy spinning of a Ferris wheel in the distance, the brightly colored food stands, the carnival tents. A place apart from O.J. Simpson-obsessed L.A., the fair in Pomona beckons with pony rides, cotton candy and draft horse shows. The only debate here is whether to go to the livestock hall or the flower exhibit first. And the only judges are those deciding how good a cake tastes and which mother most resembles her daughter in the Mother-Daughter Look-Alike Contest.

Like it always has been, the treasured prize is still the classic blue ribbon--with some additional modern perks like a membership to a health club thrown in to the winners of the mother-daughter contest.

The fair is a place where you run into a 56-year-old man who cans preserves and an 11-year-old girl cuddling a day-old lamb. Some are fair mavens who bake and cook and grow their own gardens and enjoy seeing what others have done. Some are from families of fair-goers who’ve gone annually for years.

“I’ve come every year since, golly, ‘54?” mused Nova Robinson, 67, watching her 2-year-old grandson, Kyle Henderson, navigate his way past Nubian goats in the petting zoo. “I brought all my kids, now I’m bringing my grandkids.”

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There are some concessions to the modern--an in-line skating exhibition, a virtual reality booth, an eco-chic waterless carwash demonstration. You can eat glistening slabs of barbecued ribs and cotton candy, but you can also get bottled water and cafe latte.

But it’s still a reminder of more bucolic times. People are polite, even moderately happy.

“My main function is to run and play with people,” said 19-year-old Chris Van Etten, an event coordinator who arranged the doughnut-eating contest. “I love my job.”

They come for the crafts, the carnival rides and the food, but on Saturday, many said they come for the animals--and there is no shortage of animals here. There is a cavernous livestock hall, horse shows and even elephants.

“The petting zoo,” said Danny Aranda, 18, of Monrovia, as he entered the fair with his 16-year-old girlfriend, Brooke Blum. “Where is it?”

In the petting zoo, goats, miniature horses, pigs, and a wallaby that lopes more than hops mingle with fair visitors. Six-year-old Allysa Glover was stroking a contented potbellied piglet as her mother Denise Glover of Moreno Valley watched.

“We were raised and born in L.A.,” Glover said. “All these years, we’ve never been to the fair. We weren’t well off when we were growing up. So it was a big deal to go anywhere. So we’re making up for it with our kids.”

Fairs are also the bastion of contests--cake baking, pie eating, best natural redhead (that was the first week of the fair, which opened Sept. 9.) In the home arts building, rows and rows of cakes sat on shelves behind glass, like museum artifacts from a prehistoric culture. Every conceivable baked flavor is on display, each one with a neat wedge carved out, presumably savored by the cake judges.

At high noon Saturday, mothers and daughters lined up on stage for the Mother-Daughter Look-Alike Contest. The savviest of contestants came matched from shoes to shade of lipstick. Valerie Wells, 35, and her daughter, Vanessa, 12--entering their ninth such contest--came in matching navy dresses, boater hats, and white scallop-edged cotton gloves.

“To have someone so like you in looks and personality can’t be beat,” said Wells mere . “The Lord has blessed us.” Shortly before the contest, the two clasped hands and prayed.

For Wells, a systems engineer, the contest is the only reason to come to the fair. Years growing up near the Fairplex in Pomona lessened the appeal for her. “I used to work at the Hot Dog on a Stick stand,” she said.

They came in second, winning a red ribbon. No one could beat out Diana Crittendon, 41, and her daughter, Staci, 20, of Pomona. This is the first year they entered the contest but they always go to the fair.

“I love the roller coasters, I always have fun,” Staci said.

County Fair Highlights

The Los Angeles County Fair runs through Oct. 2 at the Fairplex in Pomona, two blocks north of the San Bernardino Freeway and accessible from the Fairplex Drive, White Avenue or Garey Avenue exits. Fireworks are nightly at 10 p.m.

Today’s events:

Goat herders costume contest--Livestock Ring No. 1, noon.

Country line dancing with Ed and Sally--Clock Tower, 8 p.m.

Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday; 9 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday; 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday.

Admission: Adults, $8; children 6-12, $4; over 60, $6. Two-day pass, adults, $12; children, $6. After 5 p.m. Monday-Friday, adults $5, children 6-12, $3.

Parking: General, $4; preferred, $6; premium preferred, $7; RVs, $8; valet, $10.

Information: (909) 623-3111.