By Kerri Pepoy,Staff Writer
This week’s early fall ritual of a big-time fair in small-town Fryeburg will draw as many as 400,000 people to share in Maine’s agricultural heritage.

FRYEBURG – For the next eight days, a cherished and time-honored rural American tradition – the fair – will transform the small, sleepy town of Fryeburg into a bustling, noisy, chaotic and colorful mass of humanity. For one week, this border town will become a veritable city of hundreds of thousands of people.

And the people charged with controlling, entertaining and serving so many visitors are well-prepared. After all, they’ve been doing this for a while.

The Fryeburg Fair, Maine’s oldest and largest agricultural fair, opens today and runs through next Sunday at the fairgrounds on Main Street. This year marks the 155th year for the Blue Ribbon Classic. Harness racing, farm animal exhibits, a farm museum with trade and craft demos, pie contests, food vendors, musicians and entertainers, tractor pulls and an old-time favorite, the woodsmen’s competition, are a sampling of the attractions that draw visitors from around the world.

“I’ve always enjoyed the fair; I have a lifetime pass,” Terry Holden, who owns an insurance agency across the street from the fairgrounds, said last week. Holden’s clients know to show up extra-early during fair week if they have business with him. Otherwise, they’ll be in a jam.

The streets of Fryeburg will be choked with traffic as thousands of vehicles converge, making the normally quiet town look more like a bumper-to-bumper nightmare you might find in Boston or New York.

Parking areas will be jammed, and some homeowners near the fairgrounds allow visitors to park on their lawns for a fee.

There was no official confirmation from any residents, but fair organizers said some homeowners make enough money to pay their taxes or go on vacation.

The 3,000 campsites spread across the fair’s 180 acres brim with large recreational vehicles, many settling in several days in advance of opening day. For many RVers, this fair is a last-gasp summer ritual and final chance in Maine each year to ride a Ferris wheel, eat fried dough or watch a pig scramble.

Camping Superintendent Glenn Chute said about 5,000 camp reservations are booked each year and, despite high gas prices, the sites this year seemed to have filled up at about the same rate.

“If gas prices decrease the number of campers, it’s not going to be by much,” he said.

Chute said all campsites are ready well ahead of time for the swell of people. Power lines are checked, running water is in place, and trash cans are easily accessible and emptied frequently during the fair, which trustees say is one of the cleanest anywhere.

Officials are anticipating upward of 400,000 fairgoers this year in a town with a year-round population of about 3,500. Although that might sound like a security nightmare, the police are as prepared as the hundreds of farmers and vendors who make their annual journey to the fairgrounds.

“It’s a good family fair,” Capt. Ray LaFrance, public safety director for the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office, said. LaFrance joins 44 other police officers from around the state who take vacations from their regular beats for one week in October to work at the fair.

LaFrance said there were only six arrests last year and none were serious. “The officers know what their function is. We keep a tight rein” on the crowds, he said.

In addition to professional police officers, the fair employs more than 100 civilian security officers to help handle parking and security. Alcohol and weapons are forbidden on the fairgrounds.

The fair brings a mix each year of longtime patrons and newcomers. Alyce and Bill Clifford of Bridgton have been attending the fair for nearly 35 years. “We used to bring our kids,” Alyce Clifford said as the couple sipped coffee at The Lunch Box on Route 302 in Fryeburg, located about one mile from the fairgrounds. The couple now has grown children as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren who come to the fair from New York and Connecticut.

“It’s amazing, the amount of visitors the fair gets,” Bill Clifford said.

Tim Lyons, owner of the two-month-old restaurant, said he doesn’t expect much financial impact since there is a dizzying array of edibles to choose from at the fair.

Guilty pleasures are everywhere, making it a week to indulge and forget about saturated fat intake. French fries, pizza, funnel cakes and kettle corn are a few of the traditional favorites. There are a few healthy choices for the truly dedicated dieters, but why eat a plain baked potato when you can load a spud with chili, cheese, broccoli, sour cream, chives, butter and bacon?

“People really like them. There are about 70 to a box, and we go through four to five boxes per day,” said Pat White, who will be working at a stuffed baked potato booth run by the Bridgton and Fryeburg Rotary clubs.

For those who come to see animal exhibits, the fair will not disappoint.

The many competitions include a sheep dog trial; draft horse and pony judging; sheep shows; oxen, steer and swine judging; a rabbit and cavy show; and a market lamb contest. There also are many 4-H exhibits where aspiring young farmers, who dream of this one fair all year, show off months of hard work.

George Weston, livestock manager, said the enormous task of feeding and managing thousands of animals and their owners during the week is manageable, thanks to competent people who oversee the livestock departments.

“They make my job a lot easier,” he said.

However, Weston barely takes a breather when the fair is over. The tons of manure that will be stockpiled this week will need to be hauled away or reused as fertilizer on the fairgrounds. In only a few months, Weston will begin soliciting show judges for next year’s fair. Judges this year come from Canada and parts of the United States, including Missouri and Texas.

The Fryeburg Fair, among its many other distinctions, has been named one of the top 100 annual events in North America by the American Bus Association. And on its reputation alone, the Maine fair already has been listed on the ABA’s top list of destinations for 2006.

The Fryeburg Fair started in a hayfield in 1851, a decade before the Civil War, and it would be decades before organizers were confident enough to expand the one-day farm festival to three days. Trustees voted to expand the fair to four days in 1941, but World War II prevented that until 1945. The fair grew to five days in 1954 and to its present-day eight days in 1981.

Despite its enormous popularity, fair officials have no plans to go beyond that, according to Bill Haynes of Waterford, longtime publicity director for the fair.

And that’s just fine with at least some local residents and business owners, who enjoy the event but understandably grow a bit weary after eight days of non-stop activity and noise.

Holden, who has a front row seat to the fair from his insurance office, admits he breathes a sigh of relief when it’s all over. “It’s nice when we return to being small-town Fryeburg,” he said.