For years, a high point of the Lodi Agricultural Fair has been the Saturday evening Celebrity Pie Auction. But this year it also marked a conclusion of almost three decades of service for two of the fair’s board members.
Before the start of wheeling and dealing for pastries and gift packages with bids well into the thousands of dollars going toward future fairs, State Assembly Rep. Jon Plumer, of Lodi, took to the stage to present awards recognizing the work of outgoing Lodi Fair Board President Terry Quam and Vice President Don Ness.
Taking their places at the top of the board will be longtime board member Kory Ryan as board president, and one of the relatively younger members of the board, Brady Quam, a son of Terry Quam, who is taking on the role of vice president.
In an emotional speech, Quam told visitors how when he was out of the house doing work for the fair, his wife would reply to phone calls for him by saying, “He’s with his mistress.”
“And I think for all Fair Board members, that’s the way it is. This is a love,” said Quam. “To be here to promote so many youth organizations and to promote so many youth, to do the job to give everybody in this tent something to be proud of.”
Challenges and changes
The previous afternoon, following the Kids Bake Off in which Lodi Fairest of the Fair Samantha Rake was a judge, he gave the new fair representative and another event judge a brief tour of the grounds.
He explained that the fairgrounds had a storied past going back to being an internment camp for captured Germans during World War II.
‘”Why did we get picked for an internment camp? Because we had a canning company everywhere, and we had farms everywhere and we had no men,” said Quam.
Photos from the time show the field of the fairgrounds peppered with tents, because, as Quam explained, interned Germans had a fear of their building being bombed. So they slept in tents and then each morning would get up and get on a train or pack into a truck, go to work at a canning facility, and then come back to the fairgrounds that night.
Around the late 1960s and 1970s the fair was on the edge, but a turning point came, according to Quam, when an anonymous donor wrote a check for $25,000, which the fair board used to grow the fair with a philosophy of working toward not only expanding the fair, but doing so with attractions for all segments of the public--farmers and agricultural exhibitors, along with other community members, and for as wide as possible range of ages.
In its earlier days, the Lodi Agricultural Fair was a ticketed event, and over time the original ticket booth fell into disrepair, which became a point of contention among the Fair Board members as to whether it should be restored or torn down.
The resolution came when two board members decided to go out and start collecting money to get it fixed, and now it is one of the historical features of the fairgrounds, both inside and out.
“This is all the memorabilia that we’ve collected and people have donated to the fairs,” said Quam, showing off the space, with walls covered with framed pictures, old pennants, posters from previous fairs and artifacts and historical books taking up almost any flat surface available.
“And there’s the man that cost me 29 years,” he said, pointing to a framed portrait of Paul Dalton. He went on to explain that after only three or four years on the board, he had been driving through Lodi with a hay rake on an open station tractor, when on top of Main Street at Highway K, he saw Dalton driving towards him.
“He stops his car in the middle of traffic, gets out, flags me down on a tractor, and said, ‘You’re going to be the next Fair Board president.’”
The insistence of volunteerism
Dalton was of a particular type, according to Quam, of bachelors with no connection to the fair, but with a love of kids, and in the case of Dalton, a willingness to commit 50 years of work contributing to the Lodi Ag Fair.
On the opposite wall hung a cane, belonging to “Doc Goeres,” Dr. Theodore Otto Goeres, who was president of the Lodi Union Agricultural Fair Association from 1934 to 1965.
“I could remember him out on the street with that cane, tapping, trying to hawk people to come into the fairgrounds and pay…And this building is named after him,” said Quam. “But we have a lot of people like that who put a lot of time and effort into keeping this alive.”
Another turning point for the fair came when the Lodi School District was looking to build and everything pointed to the Lodi Fairgrounds, being so close to the elementary school, was a prime location and potentially with use of imminent domain. But through a tragic twist involving a nearby death, the school district ended up making an offer on a different property.
Going back to the ticket building itself, Quam said, “I will admit that I was one of those that voted to tear this building down, so you never know what’s going to happen.”
The next stop of the tour was the schoolhouse, which came from about 10 miles northwest of the city, between Lodi and Prairie du Sac, which Quam described as “just another unique thing that we can do that sets us apart.”
Since being uprooted and moved to the Lodi Fairgrounds, possible only through the fairgrounds being owned by Lodi Agricultural Fair Inc., the school house has become not only a historical feature for the fairgoers, but an attraction for local students. In the off-season, during the school year, teachers have brought 4th grade students from the elementary to the schoolhouse for certain lessons.
“We paid to have it moved, but 90 percent of the work in restoring this and keeping this up is volunteer work,” said Quam. “And that’s where I get back to that there is something for every kid from zero to 80 years old coming to the fair, and this is part of it.”
From there the tour led to the next building over, again, seemingly always in-season, the home to the Lodi Curling Club. During the Curling Club’s off-season, it becomes the open class and senior class exhibition building. Inside, among the exhibits is work from the “super senior division” of residents at area assisted living facilities, the most prominent being the quilts of varied sizes and patterns covering the walls.
When Quam began working with the Lodi Ag Fair Board, he says it was “more of a fest” with only about 20 animals, which has since grown to multiple many more animals, permanent buildings, educational programs, and some of the entertainment highlights of the season for the region. That difference, he told attendees as we accepted his award on Saturday, was not his to claim.
“That’s not a testament to me; that’s not a testament to Don; that’s a testament to the community, and I really do want to thank the Lodi community for all of their support,” said Quam. “I’ll always say that I’ve got the easiest job on the board, same with Don. Why? Because we have quality people doing the work.”
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