State fair, p.5
State Fair, page 5
I felt sick for Maggie, Katsy, Jazz and the rest of the Ebony Sisters who met at the folk art museum every other Tuesday night. I’d watched this quilt’s birth from the initial bantering over fabric choices to practically the last binding stitch. Before the fair, it had been displayed at the folk art museum. The Sisters had seriously debated whether they should take a chance on showing it at the fair whose security didn’t match ours at the museum. It was Jazz who had been the driving force for it to be shown at the fair. It wasn’t surprising that she’d taken its theft so personally.
“Hardly anyone will see it at the museum,” she’d said at the quilt guild meeting eight months ago when we first discussed the fair exhibit. She glanced at me, blushing slightly. “No offense, Benni.”
I held up my palm. “None taken. I’ll be the first to admit our museum’s viewership is limited.” I was attending this particular Ebony Sisters guild meeting because I was Oneeda Cleary’s ride. After the meeting, she and I were meeting Gabe and Jim, her husband, for chicken pot pie night at Liddie’s Café.
“It could be damaged,” Katsy had argued. “People can be so careless. I hate the thought of any food or drink being near it.”
“But isn’t it more important that people see it and learn about Harriet Powers?” Jazz insisted.
“She’s right,” said Flory Jackson, her white hair a striking contrast against skin the color of burnished copper. “It’s just fabric and thread, ladies. Both are replaceable. It’s more important for us to tell Harriet’s story to as many people as we can. The fair does that in a way this lovely museum cannot despite how hard Benni works to entice folks in here.” She smiled at me.
“Agree,” said Oneeda Cleary, sitting next to me in her wheelchair.
Because of her advanced MS, her words were garbled, but we’d all been around her long enough to understand her. She took a deep, labored breath and slapped one hand down on the armrest of her wheelchair. “Folks . . . need . . . to know.”
So, the African American quilt exhibit at the fair, cosponsored by the museum and the quilt guild, was centered on the replica of the Harriet Powers quilt. The exhibit at the museum was running concurrently and had been a huge success. It had been Katsy’s idea to ask her friend in Oakland to loan the museum some of her collection of black cloth dolls, African American dolls made from 1870 to 1930. She and I had worked together on the brochure using information we gleaned from a similar exhibit curated by Roben Campbell of the Harvard Historical Society. We mailed out our brochure to both local and out-of-area newspapers and magazines.
Black cloth (as well as white cloth) dolls are a folk art tradition that came about because of newly available low-priced factory-made fabric. In 1822, Lowell, Massachusetts, factories started producing inexpensive cotton cloth which, along with the newfangled sewing machine patented in 1847, made it possible for women to stitch quilts, dolls and clothing with relative ease. Black cloth dolls followed the natural progression of many folk arts—an early period of original work, a second period of prolific output and great popularity and a declining third period that eventually ended the craft altogether. With black cloth dolls the three periods follow the African American struggle for equal rights and freedom. The early dolls (1870-1890) are finely stitched and hopeful; the middle dolls (1890-1910) are more neutral, not as optimistic and the later dolls (1910-1930) show a decline in the craft and seem to wear expressions of patient fatigue. Most dolls proudly show the loving care of the creator as well as the adoration physically bestowed by the child who played with them.
The museum had received more media attention for these exhibits than any other except for the time we showed some original, previously unseen photographs by my famous stepgrandpa Isaac Lyons. When the media got wind of the theft, it would bring publicity of a different kind.
Before facing the anxious faces of my friends and informing them that it was doubtful the sheriff’s department would be doing much to recover the quilt, I decided to fulfill the request of the San Celina Historical Society secretary and head nagmeister, Sissy Brownmiller. She wanted photographs of the Family Farm exhibits.
According to the fair program, there were fifteen Family Farm exhibits this year. That was down from a high of thirty-seven in 1968, because, sadly, a lot of our county’s family farms no longer existed. San Celina County was definitely changing and every year it was never more apparent than at the Mid-State Fair.
Inside the agriculture building the swamp cooler unit chugged hard keeping the room fairly pleasant. The damp, cool air felt luxurious on my skin after the blistering temperatures outside. I pulled out my camera. Snapping photos of the Family Farm exhibits would relax me.
This fair competition had always been one of my favorites. When I was a little girl, Dove, Daddy, my uncle Arnie and I planned and worked all year on our exhibit. In 1972 we actually won Grand Prize. We’d made a detailed diorama of the Ramsey ranch and I personally painted thirty-five heifers myself—their markings exactly matching some of our actual cattle. Arnie, who’d just gotten his own camera, made us dress up like ranchers circa 1880 and took surprisingly realistic photos that he enlarged in his high school photography class. I surrounded them with frames made from corn cobs cut in half.
These exhibits revealed our county and its incredible variety of agriculture to a section of our population who didn’t always remember what county fairs were originally about—a way for the everyday farmer and rancher to show off their produce, animals, or expertise in quilting, woodcarving, jam making or leatherwork. County fairs were as much a part of the American lifestyle as apple pan dowdy and the right to vote. And nothing shouted county fair more than these homemade exhibits. This year’s theme was “Cow Town Boogie.”
I laughed at the Vieira Family Farm exhibit where the kids showed Mom and Dad (in Wranglers and old checkered shirts stuffed with hay—their faces painted on pale pink fabric) dancing in front of a thirties-era radio while the kids did all the work of gathering eggs from hens made of calico fabric and chicken wire, feeding papier-mâché calves and pulling weeds in a garden showcasing the Vieira ranch’s carrots, corn and giant pumpkins. “Ranch kids boogie hard for their money” was their motto. The exhibit’s homespun look hit just the right note. The crooked printing and offset eyes painted on the mannequins revealed immediately that the ranch family’s children had participated in the exhibit’s creation and construction.
I took photos of the exhibits, attempting to capture the uniqueness of each one, recording something that I suspected might not be prevalent in ten or fifteen years—the family farm. Change was inevitable, and sometimes even good, but a part of me was saddened as every year I observed hundreds of acres of San Celina ranch land sold for wineries or developed for tract homes. The best I could do was record what San Celina County once was.
When I reached the Piebald Family Farm exhibit, like everyone else around me, I momentarily gawked. It had won the huge Grand Prize blue ribbon and it was obvious why. On one side of the large coveted corner booth, there was the rusted shell of an old 1940s pickup truck. Crowded into the truck’s bed were boxes of huge Golden Delicious apples, giant-sized avocados, perfect bales of alfalfa and two smiling, one slightly panicked-looking cow made of cow-print fabric with a leather face. Inside the cab, a grinning stuffed sheep sat at the wheel wearing a red gimme cap that said Eat More Beef. The banner across the front of the truck proclaimed Templeton Cattle Auction or Bust.
On the other side of the booth sat a realistic-looking fabric rancher sitting on a hay bale staring at a splayed deck of cards while a bunch of intricate topiary calves watched him over a wooden fence. Professional caricatures of the Piebald family members—Milt; his young second wife, Juliette; his sons, Justin and Billy—looked out of frames shaped like playing cards: heart, diamond, spade and club. They were colored with red, black and white flower petals and looked as professional as a Rose Parade float. A king-sized quilt—Hole in the Barn Door pattern—made of fabric printed with fruits, vegetables, cattle and horses bore the bold, black machine-embroidered phrase “Ranching is a gamble—but what a way to live!”
It was certainly the cleverest and most eye-catching exhibit. I also noticed they didn’t actually incorporate this year’s theme. But to be fair, a lot of the other exhibits didn’t either. The Piebald exhibit technically deserved the blue ribbon attached to the front of the pickup, but I and probably a lot of ag people had mixed feelings about it winning top prize.
The Piebalds lived on a fifty-acre ranch just barely inside Paso Robles city limits complete with a half-dozen horses and a sprinkling of cattle, chickens, goats and sheep. Milt Piebald actually made his money not from ranching but from the five used-car dealerships he owned in Salinas, King City, Paso Robles, Nipomo and Oxnard. But I suspected that wouldn’t be what bothered most of the ag community.
The Piebalds had probably hired professionals to design their booth. They took a competition that was supposed to be a fun activity for kids and turned it into an adult contest. Still, it was a committee of ag people who judged this competition, which made me wonder what Milt might have on some of them.
Everyone knew that Milt Piebald liked winning. His story was well known in our community. Though he was fifteen years older than me, I remembered Daddy and the other ranchers talking about Milt when he played football for Cal Poly back in the sixties. A big-chested, beefy guy, he’d also been a champion steer wrestler on the college rodeo team. He dropped out in his junior year and after a year in pro-rodeo, he came back to San Celina and, with a small inheritance from his grandpa, bought his first used-car lot. Milt Piebald found his niche.
“Piebald’s Awesome Autos—gallop on over for the best deals in pre-owned cars” was notorious for selling flashy cars and trucks to people whose iffy credit precluded them from buying from more reputable dealers. He’d made, as Daddy liked to say with a sardonic half smile, a “shipload of money” selling used cars and trucks to suckers. The problem was that some of those suckers had been his friends and neighbors. But he was also an enthusiastic and generous booster for 4-H, Little League teams, both the high school and college rodeo teams and many other community activities. Feelings around town about Milt were mixed.
Milt’s first wife, Marlene, had been the daughter of a respected old family who’d once owned the largest grocery store in the county. When she died of renal failure, Milt mourned for two months, and then married another local girl, Juliette Baxter, gifting the snippy society ladies of San Celina County (and, admittedly, the rest of us) with no end of gossip and speculation.
Juliette was also a local celebrity of sorts. She was seventeen years younger than Milt’s fifty-three years and gorgeous, a former Miss San Celina Rodeo Queen. She’d been nominated a record eight times for princess on both San Celina High School and Cal Poly San Celina homecoming courts. She was infamous for the quote “It’s a real, true honor to just be nominated.” She, Elvia, Jack and I had all gone through high school and college together. By the time she’d repeated those same words in her senior year in college when Sarah Rodriguez won homecoming queen, they were coming out a little pinched and she’d become a popular person for local comedians to parody.
With a marketing degree and beauty queen looks, she’d gone on to become a KSCC weather girl, then after marrying Milt, landed her own local television show called The Juliette Piebald Show (Piebald Awesome Autos was the show’s first sponsor). It featured local artists, businesses and events, whatever caught Juliette’s interest. She’d given our museum some much-needed publicity early in our inception, so I had a bit of a soft spot for her. I’d even felt bad when her show got the ax only year after it debuted. The story was she couldn’t attract any sponsors other than Milt.
I studied the professional photos of the Piebald family. They all gave wide smiles except Justin, who appeared to be staring at something over the photographer’s shoulder.
Justin, Milt’s son by Marlene, was a quiet young man, with neatly trimmed dark hair and wary gray eyes. He surprised everyone a year ago when, a week after he graduated Cal Poly, he applied at the San Celina Police Department and was accepted at the academy. Gabe had confided to me that he’d had some reservations about employing him because of Milt Piebald’s shifty reputation, but the young man’s dedication and hard work had impressed him.
Billy Piebald was Milt and Juliette’s son. It was Billy’s first year in 4-H. I’d watched him show his first hog earlier today where he’d won second place in showmanship. He had a cotton-top, freckled, Huck Finn cuteness that invariably made people smile.
I snapped a few more pictures, thinking the whole time how the fair rules should state that the exhibits be made exclusively by the families, not a professional designer, when a silky voice behind me said, “You have to admit, it’s the best one.”
I turned to face Juliette Piebald and was mesmerized, as always, by her perfection. She stood five foot ten, with glossy, shoulder-length chestnut hair, not a strand out of place. Her complexion was as smooth as a hen’s egg. Some of it had to be makeup, but she’d also been blessed with silky skin. Emerald eyes straight out of a romance novel gazed down at me. She wore thigh-hugging maroon Wranglers, a pristine white Western shirt, a galloping horse rhinestone belt buckle and an expensive straw Stetson. She was so perfect that you wanted to hate her but couldn’t because her perfection was so incredibly fascinating, like a Vogue magazine photo come to life.
“It’s real nice, Juliette,” I said. My voice went high and chipper, making me a little sick by my duplicity. Though I hadn’t entered the competition this year, the fact that she and Milt used professional designers kind of bugged me. I rubbed my sunburned nose, feeling like the country mouse. “I’m taking pictures for the historical society.”
“Good,” she said, touching a painted nail to lips that were the exact shade of Pepto-Bismol. On her, the color actually looked good. “Will it be in a book or something?”
“No, we don’t have that much money. These photos will probably just go into the permanent records. For future historians.”
“Darn.” Her glossy mouth turned down into a pout that was so attractive that it had to be rehearsed. “I’m so proud of Billy and Justin’s exhibit. They worked awfully hard on it.”
Was she serious? The only thing Billy and Justin likely contributed to this exhibit was posing for the professional pictures displayed in the playing card frames.
She sighed, looking vulnerable for a moment. “I’m donating the gift certificate to the battered women’s shelter. Billy and Milt are mad at me, but I told them that we need to share our good fortune.”
This was the kind of thing that always made me feel a little ashamed by how I immediately judged Juliette whenever we met at some society function. Yes, she was a bit of a plastic beauty queen, but she also seemed to have a good heart.
“That’s really nice of you, Juliette,” I said.
She flashed her sparkling rodeo-queen/talk-show-host smile. “What’s two hundred bucks anyway? Wouldn’t even pay for a set of earrings. Tell Gabe I said hi.” She loved flirting with my husband, who took her silly flattery with a good-natured laugh and much ribbing from Emory. But I’d known Juliette since high school when she moved here with her newly divorced mother. Flirting had always been her favorite sport. Shoot, I remember her flirting with Jack when we were all teenagers, which made me feel more than a little old.
It was almost 5 p.m. by the time I left the agriculture building and since all I’d eaten was that deep-fried avocado—an appetizer, really—I decided to grab something to eat on my way home. I wanted to shower and change clothes before coming back for Kathy Mattea’s concert in the Sierra Vista arena at 8 p.m.
I checked the schedule I’d typed up a week ago. Tomorrow was the cattle drive, an event that ranchers both complained about and looked forward to every year. The antics of both the cattle and the locals who watched or participated in the drive gave Daddy and his coffee-drinking cronies at the Farm Supply something to moan and groan about all year. Reliving last year’s mini stampede was a favorite past time around the never-empty coffeepot at the Farm Supply. Some newcomer’s yappy little mixed-breed terrier had discovered some long buried herding dog roots, leaped out of his owner’s arms and charged the placid cattle herd. The startled bovines, alarmed by the fuzzy, barking rat, veered off course, in the process trampling the fancy lawns of a couple of Paso’s new million-dollar homes. We still heard occasional grumbling about that, despite the fact that the county repaired the damages and gave all the homeowners and their guests free fair passes. On the other hand, people would gripe if we didn’t do the traditional cattle drive, so there really was no winning.
I faced a dizzying array of choices for my snack. Garlic fries and a hot dog on a stick or a tri-tip steak sandwich with salsa? A deep-fried burrito or a giant barbecued turkey leg? Australian battered potatoes or pan-fried chicken? I could eat tri-tip steak or fried chicken any time so I sprang for the hot dog on a stick. Besides, it was the easiest thing to eat while walking back to my truck. On the way to the parking lot, I noticed the cinnamon-scented funnel cake stand. Tomorrow would definitely be a funnel cake day.
One of the best things about being a Mid-State Fair Booster Bud-die was our access to the preferred parking lot right across the street from the entrance. That meant I didn’t have to search for a space in the crowded public lot a block away and made my truck easy to find. Not that my truck was ever really difficult to spot. The Barneymobile is what everyone at the folk art museum called my little Ford pickup, which was painted Ford’s idea of sapphire blue. Sapphire blue might be its official moniker, but in the bright Central Coast sunlight, purple it was.
