PEEKS We’re Going to Have a Fair Laurie has attended the fair since childhood. Now she recalls the path that brought her from a little girl with a lamb to the woman in charge of the fairgrounds and its program. June 2007

Laurie Marshall

I was only 10 years of age when I attended my first fair at the Contra Costa Fairgrounds. I was in the 4–H club and showed a lamb.

The fair and my 4-H Club were two parts of a transition that I had been going through since moving to Knightsen from Dublin two years earlier. Mom had come to East County when she was little to go fishing with her dad so she was in favor of the move. They had bought three acres and Dad built a barn.

For an entire year we lived on the barn’s concrete floor and slept in the wooden haymow while Dad finished building our house.

When you are eight years old that kind of living is fun. However, it was tough for Mom cooking on a Coleman stove and keeping us warm with a wood-burning stove.

Our move into the house failed to make much of an impression on me, except that I can remember that Mom not only would not let us roller skate in the house, like we used to do in the barn, but she even made me take my shoes off to go into the house and walk on her new carpets.

On the other hand, it was nice having my own room and being able to close the door against my younger brother.

The Story of Farmer Laurie

I was nine when I got my first horse, named Cloudy. One day I was waiting for my friend and lying supine across the horse’s back in the sunshine when a cat jumped out and spooked the horse who promptly shook me off, breaking my arm. In those days the nearest medical facility was in Walnut Creek and it was a long ride with that arm getting all puffy and sticking out at strange angles.

The next year I joined 4-H and got my lamb. The year after that I got a little feeder pig and found out that I really enjoyed raising pigs, so I got a few sows and a boar and began breeding them. In fact, I raised pigs all the way through my first year of college. I was also raising rabbits and goats.

Our folks got us involved in animals and working on a number of chores in the barn so we wouldn’t get involved with boys. Daily chores included milking, taking care of animals, and riding my horse. I had good memories of hanging out at the barn with my friends and engaging in positive activities.

I continued riding horses until I was 16 and got my first automobile. That old Fiat marked the end of my horseback riding days. I attended Knightsen School through the eighth grade and then moved up to Brentwood’s Liberty Union High School. I got an AA degree in Agriculture from Modesto Junior College and then graduated from Cal Poly in San Luis Obisbo in 1989 with a bachelor degree in Animal Science.

After high school I was too old to show at the fair so I started working there during the summer, plus during Christmas and Easter breaks. I started out working in the Livestock Department, helping them get ready for fair time. I was handling entry forms, signing up judges, and placing orders for ribbons.

After graduating from college I began working fulltime. I was handling all the competitive exhibits — livestock, cooking, sewing, woodworking, etcetera. Plus I performed office clerk duties as well as doing miscellaneous jobs on the side.

In an attempt to earn more money I worked for a few months as a veterinarian technician at Antioch’s East Hills Veterinarian Hospital but missed the excitement of the fair, so went back to the fairgrounds for five more months until the USDA offered me a position in Omaha, Nebraska that I couldn’t pass up.

But I should have passed it up because I hated the job and hated Nebraska. During the first cold season I also discovered that I hated winter. I was only 24 and missed my family and friends, so I tried to transfer to California but there were no openings.

Back to the Fair

“You can’t go home,” people say, but sometimes you can, because in 1992 I moved back to Knightsen, returned to the fairgrounds, and started doing the same jobs I had been doing when I left. In 1998 I was promoted to Deputy Manager and five years later became the CEO.

During my first months at the helm of the organization I decided to do some things differently. I took some chances and reallocated money into different kinds of advertising channels than we had done in the past.

The historical purpose of the fair lies in bringing in people from the community to exhibit the products, animals, prize possessions, handcraft, etcetera that represented their lives, hobbies, and work.

The soul of the fair is not the Midway, but the big Competitive Exhibit Department, which resonates both with the history of the area and with the daily lives of the attendees. We’re focused on revitalizing community participation, making our event more of a community fair.

Due to the growth and urbanization of our county, fewer kids are involved in 4-H and FFA than there were in the past, so we’ve been trying to encourage public school students to enter exhibits. We’re trying to attract a new generation.

We’ve upgraded our Education Department to try to integrate the fair into the curriculum of the schools. We work with fourth graders, for example, on their Mission Project writing reports and building models of missions. Students in other years learn about masks and butterflies. We work with young authors encouraging them to write books. Then we encourage the students to show at the fair whatever they are doing.

Getting the Message Across

Our Mangini Agricultural Museum features historical agricultural farming equipment. A lot of education goes on in the museum’s classroom where our instructor, Marissa, teaches K-5 classes that come on field trips. She covers topics having to do with food and nutrition. The children can learn about a number of topics from a giant teaching mural in the back of the room. Students can also plan, plant, and harvest their own products in a hands-on garden in back of the facility.

Representatives from the Farm Bureau come to host Farm Days during which kids can visit the classroom and museum, plus stop by the 10 or 12 learning stations that have been set up on the site. They learn about planting, harvesting, composting, livestock exhibition, and the role that insects and spiders play in maintaining a healthy agricultural environment.

We provide all these services free as part of our community-based Agricultural Education Program.

We’re also trying to work with businesses — encouraging them to partner with the fair as another way of increasing community involvement.

We’ve started advertising the fair year round rather than limiting it to the three months promotional push we used to have. We’re also visiting with groups throughout the year in order to promote the use of the facilities.

Our efforts have paid off! It has been a struggle to keep attendance levels growing. But this will be my third fair as CEO and I’m proud of the fact that during my first two years I increased attendance from about 50,000 to 64,000. The first year rose 15 percent, and the second another 10 percent.

We’re maintaining the fair’s high standards and even improving on them. This year the Budweiser Clydesdale team will march down the fair’s main street every day and will be on exhibit in their barn. We’re bringing the reptile exhibit back by popular demand. For the first time we’re going to have a sea lion exhibit.

We’ve also been working with the Contra Costa Winegrowers and Olive Growers Association and plan to have a Wine Pavilion in our newly renovated Poppy Hall.

The Fair as a Year-round Activity

The fairgrounds are busy year-round. A lot of maintenance is required for our 80 acres, which is made even more difficult by the fact that some of the buildings are really old. We moved to the site in 1949 and some of our structures that were there then are there yet. We did a makeover on one of our buildings converting it into a new banquet room that will seat 160 people.

The most exciting thing is our new administration office. Our old one had been located in the lowest spot on the grounds, which meant that almost every year the creek would overflow flooding our office to the depth of a couple feet. When that happened again in 2006, I decided that my office would never be flooded again.

I spent a year obtaining funding and permissions for our new building. We broke ground on March 8. A local contractor, Malony Construction, won the bid, which reinforced our community-based values.

During the days of the fair I’m busy from sun-up to sun-down. The best thing about my job is watching people having fun. I feel like I’m putting on a party for 60,000 guests. There are lots of ways to have fun! Many ways to develop memories! The fair becomes a real destination for people who want to have a good time. It’s a family affair and part of a family-focused event.

I know from my own experience that for the rest of their lives some of the kids and even adults will remember the experience they had of exhibiting or even simply attending the Contra Costa County Fair.

I love what I do! I left twice and came back both times. I’ve learned my lesson and intend never to leave again. The fair is my passion! I love the people I work with, love the industry I’m working in, and love the work that I do.

Work seems like play, though I have to admit that my responsibilities involve a lot of difficult and sometimes grueling tasks. Nobody could imagine all the things that go on behind the scenes to make a fair happen.

The event lasts less than a week but getting vendors and entertainment lined up, for example, plus all the awards judges, security, clean-up, and other personnel requires months of preparation. Afterwards it requires at least six weeks to get the grounds and our schedules back to normalcy.

I want to get to a point where more people are aware of our county fairgrounds. I want to ensure that every year each fairgoer has a really good experience.

My 13-year-old son, Brock, is volunteering in the Livestock Barn and Reptile Exhibit. He is impatiently waiting until next year when he’s old enough to get hired on.

My 11-year-old daughter, Morgan, is attending Knightsen School. She just joined 4-H and bought her first pig, which she named Sox because of four white feet.

She looks like me and is following in my footsteps. It’s all good!