"It was the highlight of my summer, as a kid. So exciting and so thrilling and so much fun," she said, remembering photos of herself at 4 having a good time there, the preserved foods and hand-sewn backpack she entered and the blue ribbons she regularly took home.
Now that saga has come full circle: Her 14-year-old daughter, Megan Larratt, is entering animals in the fair through 4-H, and Johnson is the fair's new Home Arts Department supervisor.
 Marilyn Johnson has plenty of entries to catalog and display at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds in San Mateo. The Coastsider is a longtime fan of the fair and its new Home Arts Department supervisor. |
Prior to taking her new title in March, she had worked at the fair for about a year, maintaining records, planning revisions of the entry catalogs and selecting and securing expert judges.
Her lifelong love affair with the fair is coming to fruition. "I want to re-create that for youth and adults now," she said.
Among the displays and demonstrations (some with hands-on participatory activities) she is coordinating is "Behind the Scenes Adventures," a display of the textiles of the world, including photographs and examples of hand-knitted caps from Mali and Peru, where men customarily knit, she said. There will also be quilting demonstrations and a display of some 270 quilts from the Peninsula Quiltmakers Guild, which includes many Coastsiders.
Visitors will also see Japanese paper crafts like dollmaking. And they'll see lots of jewelry, a new department in Home Arts covering semiprecious stones, beadwork, bracelets, wire wrapping and necklaces.
Competitive Exhibits has enlarged, Johnson said, with all kinds of entries in livestock, youth exhibits, fine arts, culinary arts, and even garden landscapes. "You get a little plot, and you landscape your little plot," she explained.
It's a long way from the girl who made her name by entering jams, jellies, pickles and a backpack. "That was a great experience for me, to see my little sewn backpack with a blue ribbon," she said.
But she wants visiting the fair to bring more than just ribbons to those involved: Her goal, she said, is for everyone who leaves the Home Arts building to have learned one new thing. "If they learn where the country of Mali is, if they learn that silk comes from cocoons, if they learn how quilts are made, how to make lace, how to spin wool, I'm happy," she said.
She says the fair brings visitors and participants back to forgotten crafts and skills of yesteryear, and meets needs in them today.
"I think the time from the 1950s and 1960s, when most people had gardens and most put up their own fruits and vegetables, is almost a lost art," she said. Now, "People are more interested in knowing where food comes from. People are starting to want to have their own gardens and learn how to do things like quilting, crocheting, knitting.
"I see a lot of youth doing this and it's heartwarming to see they're interested in preserving this knowledge."
Johnson is due to be on hand all 10 days of the fair. What will she look at first?
That's easy: the livestock, where daughter Megan will have entered a steer, turkeys and a rabbit, and home arts, where she entered jams and jellies, like her mom before her.
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