Clark County Fair hardly running on fumes for final weekend

Just because it’s the final weekend of the Clark County Fair, that doesn’t mean nothing’s left but leftovers. There’s still plenty of fresh, fun stuff to see, hear and do before the whole thing wraps up on the final night, Aug. 12.

The sound of big rock and country acts on the grandstand has faded by now — concerts by Pat Benatar and Grand Funk Railroad were the main attractions last weekend — but that grandstand is now the site of different sorts of sounds: the rev, rumble and roar of immense engines and the crash and crunch of colliding hunks of steel. That’s the sound of larger-than-life trucks, of course: the truly Tuff and the massively Monster.

What’s the difference? The Tuff Truck Race, set for 2 and 7 p.m. Aug. 10 and 11, is a one-by-one zoom around a sea of mud, complete with pits and jumps that send these muscular heaps arcing through the air — and splattering back to earth. If they’re lucky, no major organs get knocked loose during these acrobatics — neither from the vehicle nor from the driver. (“All vehicles must have seat belts and a hard top or roll bar,” the entry rules note. Mandatory helmets for drivers, and mandatory attendance at pre-event safety meeting? Better believe it.) Drivers are competing for cash prizes, and the fastest finishers also invited to return Aug. 12 for some victory laps during the Monster Truck show.

Monster Trucks, set for 2 and 7 p.m. Aug. 12, are similar but different — and surely more satisfyingly violent. Instead of a speedy suspenseful competition between amateurs, you’re treated to the amazing antics of professional driver as they pilot overblown, customized vehicles with construction-heavy tires and mile-high, apparently indestructible suspensions. Some of the excitement comes from watching the Monsters spin doughnut holes and fly even higher into the air via those mud launch pads; even more comes as those monstrous tires make mincemeat of leftover sedans, whole rows at a time. Sure brings new meaning to the term “trash compactor.”

The Monster Trucks themselves are celebrities, and dedicated fans will be stoked to know which ones are running rampant Aug. 12: Wild Flower, Playing 4 Keeps, Time Flys, Enforcer, T-Maxx, Maniac and Alpha, Omega and Beta, aka The Wolf Pack Trucks.

Delicious

In older-fashioned county fair fare, pies of all sorts are on the menu at 1 p.m. Aug. 12 during the pie-eating contest. The object is to eat a whole Shari’s pie (various flavors are available) as quickly as possible without using your hands. The rules are pretty strict and legalistic, champion crammers: anybody who “suffers urges contrary to swallowing” is immediately disqualified. That is, if your downed pie rises again, you’re done. (In the event of a tie, contestants must endure a “sudden-death round of eating.” We don’t want to think about what that might mean.) Contestants must be 13 or older.

Leftovers

But then again, after a whole week of hardcore partying, carnival rides and corn dog overconsumption, you may be exactly in the mood for leftovers. Good thing the fair remains chock full of truly old-fashioned entertainment, from stilt walkers and juggling clowns to an acrobat who rides around on one of those primeval bicycles with an immense front wheel and a teeny back wheel. Did you know these things, the first inventions to be called bicycles, were also nicknamed “penny-farthings” because those two wheels reminded 1870s Britons of the coins in their pockets — a large penny leading a small farthing?

The Harbor Patrol Jazz Band is back for the latest in its 24 consecutive years of supplying the fair with the earliest version of what later went big-band, bebop and bluesy. Dixieland jazz emphasizes boisterous improvisation and a marching backbeat, and hails from the era when the bass part wasn’t plucked on strings but blown through a tuba. The band is led by 94-year-old trumpeter John Reitz, a longtime Vancouver resident who moved to Arizona, but keeps coming back for Harbor Patrol and the fair.

Finally, there’s the Friends of Ken Band Northwest, scheduled to crank out some heated-up leftovers — the hard rock of the 1970s, like AC/DC, Aerosmith, Bad Company and KISS — at 1 p.m. Aug. 10. Leading man Damon Gray said the band has endured some major hard knocks in recent years, including the death of band founder Michael Coggins and, just months before that, Gray’s own near-fatal motorcycle accident.

It took him months to learn to walk again, Gray said. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to play again, but the band said, `We’re just going to wait on you, man.’ All the guys stuck by me.”

But when Coggins died not long afterwards, Gray assumed that was really that. “I talked to his wife and she said, ‘Mike would want you to keep going.’ So, out of gratitude to my friend, I’m going to keep going,” he said. “A normal band would have quit after all that but we’re not a normal band. It’s all about having fun and making people happy. That’s what we do and we’re going to keep doing it.”