THE CROWD:Finding furry friends and food at the fair

There are people who mark the passing of the years by the holidays.

Christmas, Easter, Yom Kippur, are a few of the big ones that come to mind. Of course there are also New Year’s Day, Groundhog Day, the Fourth of July and Martin Luther King’s birthday.

And then there are people, including myself, who have come to mark the passing of the years by the return of the Orange County Fair in July in Costa Mesa.

I used to count Christmases, but now it’s the petting zoo, deep-fried Oreo cookies and an assortment of oversized produce growing in lovingly tended boxes on the fairgrounds.

Funny, but I had never been to a fair as a child. My family did not do fairs. Moving to the O.C. some 15 years ago, the first week we were here, which was in July, we were taken to the O.C. Fair. It has become an annual ritual.

This past Sunday night was our first visit to the 2007 extravaganza which opened July 13 and will run through Aug. 5 at the Orange County fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. The theme is “Cowabunga — The Year of Herefords, Surfers and Sand.” Organizers have really gotten creative in mixing their metaphors. This year they are saluting the cattle industry and combining the tribute by bringing in the California beach lifestyle.

No matter what the theme of the fair, there is a sameness that is of considerable comfort to a fair lover. It doesn’t matter if there is a war in Iraq, gang violence on the streets of Los Angeles or any other event of great concern, somehow it all just goes away when you walk through the gates.

Why? I personally think it is the aroma of all the food frying. Acres and acres of frying food: fried vegetables (now there’s a healthy treat), fried chicken, fried potatoes, and an assortment of fried desserts that include Oreos, Twinkies, Snickers, and probably a lot more. I was looking for fried Snowballs, but couldn’t find them.

Snowballs, you know, are the Hostess cupcakes covered in marshmallow icing with coconut, and they come in either pink or white. They would be perfect fried. Instead I discovered something else which is now my favorite dessert item at the Orange County Fair — it’s called the Texas doughnut. Maybe it’s been there for years, but I had never seen it before. It is simply a giant plain sugar donut appropriately named because it is so big you cannot believe it. It was really good, actually better than the normal-sized doughnut of the same variety.

A few years ago my favorite discovery at the fair was the colossal burger (double patties, double cheese, pastrami, fried egg, bacon, etc.). I’m happy to report it is still a prominent feature at a stand not too far from the elephant rides at the Arlington gate.

This year our first visit to the fair included close friend Jennifer Graber and her two young daughters, Nicole and Elizabeth. Husband Brian Graber couldn’t make it but promises to come back with the girls on another occasion.

For me, it’s essential to attend the fair with young children. The experience of watching them discover all of the excitement from the food to the animals to the rides to the sites, the sounds, and the smells, is really very much the same as watching the joy of a child opening a present on Christmas morning.

Elizabeth and Nicole were right at home in the petting zoo, getting down in the sawdust with Polly the pig, Louis the llama, Gilda the goat, and perhaps the most interesting of all — Wynona the wallaby with her baby in the pouch, which delighted one and all. As the mother licked her paws, the baby licked its paws; it was an animal concert.

From the petting zoo, the girls jumped on top of the elephants and rode around, one time only. In the distance the sound of Chinese acrobats huffing and puffing, mixed with music coming from a variety of venues.

We decided to buy every dessert we could find and spread them out on one of those red picnic tables at the Chuckwagon Barbecue, surprising the girls when they returned from the bumper car rides. You should have seen their expressions when they arrived to find every fried dessert known to man spread out in front of them.

We pretended to do a taste test, voting for our favorite items. The funnel cakes (we ordered several with different toppings) were probably the first choice. I of course voted for the Texas doughnut, hands down.

And so it was Sunday night at the Orange County Fair in Costa Mesa.

I think I gained five pounds, but I’m planning to return again tonight just to see what I might have missed.

And yes, I have my $3.50 ready to go because my name is on another one of those Texas doughnuts.