NOTE: This page uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to present the content in the best possible manner. If you are reading this message, then you do not have a standards-compliant browser or CSS (or JavaScript) is not enabled in your browser, and the page will not appear as the designer intended. Please visit The Web Standards Project for details and for information about how to upgrade your browser.

 

Mark Armstrong: The man behind the fair

By Jennifer Pearson Bonnett
News-Sentinel staff writer

Mark Armstrong is the man behind the Grape Festival. It’s a position he’s proudly held now for 11 years.

But his road to Lodi was a unique one.

Armstrong, who said the fair business runs in his blood, is originally from Maine. He attended the University of Maine on a baseball scholarship and was even drafted by the Oakland A’s.

In his adolescence, he worked for his best friend’s father who ran the Maine state fair. Through college, Armstrong cleaned the animal stalls and served alcohol in the beer garden, among other things. When he wasn’t drafted during his senior year, he and several friends ran the fair the following season.

Though he was drafted the next season, baseball went on strike and he returned to Maine. By then, he was smitten by his best friend’s sister and decided to follow the family to Arizona to run that state’s fair which attracts 1 million visitors annually.

Armstrong stayed there for 10 years before leaving to start his own traveling fair food booth. “We called it ‘character building’.”

After 1 1/2 years and a new baby, he and his wife called it quits. The couple began looking for somewhere to put down roots.

Somewhere between running a swimming pool company in Arizona and working for a carnival production company in Los Angeles, Armstrong called a friend with the Western Fair Association who told him about the job in Lodi. The couple didn’t even know where the city was located, but decided to drive north and check it out.

“Although it’s 60,000 people, it still seems small to us,” he said, adding that Lodi reminds him and his wife of Maine.

Each year, the fair is like a reunion as the couple reunites with local people they’ve met through the years.

“This business gets in your blood,” Armstrong said, adding that it’s not your typical 9-to-5 job.

“Baseball is always changing and different. I think I found that in my career. I love what I’m doing.”

He enjoys it so much, during his two weeks off each year, Armstrong goes to other cities to help with their fairs.

“I told you, I can’t get enough!”

For him, August is the best time of the year with people getting ready for Lodi’s fair. It’s the culmination of months of planning which typically starts two weeks after the fair shuts down.

He and his staff — with input from fairgoers and vendors — review what worked and didn’t work. (They even solicit input from Armstrong’s children who are “the best critics,” he said.)

By January each year, Armstrong has lined up the fair’s major entertainment.

“In the beginning, it’s like broad strokes and then we fill in the spots,” he said, speaking from behind a large desk where a grounds map with two colors sat.

“I love music. I love to come to the fair and see people dance.”

It is the people that he loves most.

“Unlike a lot of managers, I love the carnival and the people that travel with it. Maybe it’s because I did that.”

He also works to keep coming to the fair affordable, offering reduce advance-price sales.

While he actually enjoys the long hours during fair time, Armstrong said the worst week is the one after the festival has ended.

“You come back on Monday and there’s broken balloons and broken shoes. For me it’s a huge letdown, but I know we’ll start planning for next year’s.”

Armstrong, who has a Bachelor’s degree in finance, lives in Woodbridge with his wife, Teresa, and four children: Sarah, 15; Elizabeth, 13; Patrick, 12; and Joseph, 10.