The Fresno Fair: As Seen Through The Lens Of Claude C. Pop Laval (Windows on the Past)

Rating:
Summary: The great train wreck!
Review: If you thought that intentionally-staged train wrecks only took place in old Addams Family re-runs, check out this little slice of Fresnocana - a pictorial history of the annual Big Fresno Fair.

In 1919, some promoter actually did stage as the fair's feature attraction - not a crash between two cars on a model railroad - but the REAL THING: a collision between two locomotives purchased from the Santa Fe Railroad.

The two locomotives were named the Fair Special and the Raisin Express. Well, this is Fresno, after all. No doubt, in Hawaii, it would have been called the "Pineapple Express".

What exactly took place on that fateful day still seems to be a matter of dispute, and this collection includes a 50-year retrospective by then-Fresno schoolboy, Pulitzer Prize winner William Saroyan - an excerpt from his 1969 Fresno Bee article on the Great Train Wreck.

Claude "Pop" Laval was the early 20th century Ansel Adams of the San Joaquin Valley (though his photographic collection is by no means confined to rustic settings), and his pictures can be found in a large number of libraries, courthouses, offices, and other public settings in the area.

This portion of his collection, edited by his great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Laval, exclusively covers period shots of the yearly county fair that takes place in the city of Fresno on the fairgrounds located at Ventura and Chance.

Predominant are ag exhibits and other domestic displays, livestock exhibits, air shows, auto racing, horse racing - memories of which are lovingly preserved in Laval's old black-and-whites. One photo of the fairground's parking lot from 1941 shows it studded from top to bottom with old Model T's.

Also included is some interesting history on the fair's closure during the Second World War ("War Fair") and the facility's temporary use for military purposes, including a brief stint as a relocation center for Japanese internees.

Baby shows were once annual events from another era, and their importance was underscored at a time when the fair was continuing to operate during the First World War.

There is a 1916 Fresno Bee editorial written by an Agricultural Department employee explaining the utility of the Fair during wartime, in which he humanely observes (with an eye to the long view), "Though soldiers are in tremendous demand, the most important people in the world today are babies. The flower of our youth may come back mangled, nerve-wracked and devitalized, unfit to be the sire of coming generations. How important then, that every baby be born well and raised well."

Proceeds from the sale of the book benefit a restoration project aimed at preserving negatives of other images of the Great Valley captured by Pop Laval. In the end, I find myself wondering whatever happened to the old Raisin Day Parades - and what sort of exhilarating act of destruction might be performed (considering the sensitive times we live in now) at the 2019 County Fair to commemorate the centennial of the great train wreck!