OC Fair project puts visitors’ memories on video
Visitors to the 2016 Orange County Fair have a chance to be part of fair history, and it requires just two things – an old camper trailer and a video camera.
A project in the OC Promenade building at the Costa Mesa fairgrounds continues an effort launched during last year’s 125th-anniversary fair.
The idea is to make a compilation video each year of guests talking about their memories or favorite things about the fair, said Joan Hamill, exhibits and education director at the OC Fair & Event Center.
Though the fair previously put together historical exhibits about the annual festival using old news articles and artifacts, the best way to learn about its past is to hear from the people who have visited, Hamill said.
“The goal is to have it be an ongoing project and to have people access it, whether it be on YouTube or our website,” she said.
The fairgrounds bought the red and white camper from a private party in March 2015 and placed it near Plaza Pacifica during the fair that year.
This year, the camper was moved to a place with a bit more shade and foot traffic.
At the OC Promenade, the camper sits with a welcome mat at its front door and lights wrapped around its roof.
Guests can step inside and be filmed sharing a favorite fair memory.
A sign outside the trailer reads, “Because your story is our story.”
“We always thought the guest memories were a great way to learn about the fair,” Hamill said. “Maybe you went here on your first date with your husband and now you’re here with your kids.
“We wouldn’t have this event if it wasn’t for the community.”
The 14 1/2-foot-long camper contains a twin bed, a stove/oven, a sink, cabinets, an icebox and a table with booth-like seats.
When Yorba Linda resident Peggy Lacroix, 62, took her mother, Betty Carpenter, 83, to the OC Promenade last week so she could drop off her cookies for a baking contest, the two saw the camper. It was just like the one their family used in 1962 to move to California from the children’s birthplace in Missouri.
“We drove in one of those with five children, ages 2 to 10,” Carpenter said.
“I saw it and thought, ‘I just walked back into history,’” Lacroix said.
Lacroix remembers how the trailer’s table could fold down so the booth’s cushions could shift and make a bed for her and her siblings.
She walked into the fair’s camper and found knobs on the cabinet doors that she had to squeeze to open the doors, just like in her family’s trailer.
The mother and daughter sat on the camper’s bed and filmed a short video about their family’s move in their trailer.
Fair employees filming for the video project also are walking around the fairgrounds to ask guests about their memories and favorite things, Hamill said.
