Faces at the Fair / Part Two

The fairgrounds is the only patch of real estate in Ventura County where Elvis can love you tender and a mime called Too Too Tomato can squeeze you silly.

They are just two in the legion of folks who come not so much for the fat-saturated onion rings as for the opportunity to serve.

Each year they troop in with the same zest, the same eagerness to please. Phil Shane says his dairy-farmer dad in Tupelo, Miss., used to give milk to a down-on-their-luck family by the name of Presley. Now Shane delivers Elvis--plus Neil Diamond and Roy Orbison--to hound-dog-hungry fairgoers from here to Lonely Street.

Liebe Wetzel--a.k.a. Too Too Tomato--also hearkens to the classics. As she wanders the fairgrounds, she spins dinner plates on the tip of a broom handle. She hugs children, she juggles, she jests--all in the manner perfected centuries ago by European clowns.

But service at the fair means more than a tickled funny bone.

For seven years, Tammy Dewitt has done the honors at the burger stand run by the Ventura chapter of Job’s Daughters.

Without a heap of greasy fries for energy, the line dancers instructed by Elaine McGovern could well be practicing the West Coast Slump. McGovern is a member of the Golden Stompers, a Moorpark group that performs and then offers fairgoers free lessons.

Those in the mood for a calmer good time can confer about the secret life of plants with Jamie Wilson. At the Big Island Plants stand, she sells exotic species from the tropics.