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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, August 4, 2003

Family marks 100 years of entertaining

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

Carnivals, said Scott Fernandez, third generation of the E.K. Fernandez entertainment family, are about sights, sounds, smells and tastes.

Annie Ka'a'a, 90, who happened to be a hula dancer in 1938 for the E.K. Fernandez Show, gives the dice a toss for a chance to win $100,000 in celebration of the shows' 100th anniversary. She was among 100 people selected for the chance of winning the big money. Nobody won.

Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

They are about new experiences: a child's first sticky handful of cotton candy, stomach-turning amusement rides and oversized stuffed animals won in games of skill or chance.

"There is always something new," Fernandez said yesterday afternoon, the 100th anniversary of his family business. "We've got deep-fried Twinkies now: suicide by cholesterol."

On the midway, Tina Perreira won a near life-sized teddy bear in the coin toss and gave it to her 12-year-old daughter, Brandie. She spent $2 in dimes, she said, and met up with a little blind luck.

At the children's rides, Lana Murashige videotaped her 16-month-old's first merry-go-round ride, waving each time tiny Ashley's wide-eyed face turned toward her. Ashley's father, Mark, stood between the pink and yellow horses, trying to project courage.

Fernandez and his mother, Linda Fernandez, were standing off to the side of a barn-sized tent yesterday on the final day of the Hawai'i State Farm Fair. They were trying to decide how to lift a 50-pound cake off a table and onto a cart without ruining the decorations: tiers of merry-go-round horses, tribute to a century of the Fernandez family's relationship with Hawai'i.

On a stage behind them, young contestants vied for first place in an 'ukulele contest, working toward that first big break. Some do find their fates under carnival tents, Linda Fernandez said.

The Fernandez family became synonymous with outdoor entertainment a century ago, when E.K. Fernandez, Scott's grandfather, bought a moving-picture projector and traveled from plantation camp to plantation camp, showing early films on a bed sheet. The business grew to encompass fairs, carnivals, circuses and a national chain of Fun Factory amusement houses.

Beyond the deep shade of the tent, Guyson Amina, 11, stood in line for the Zipper, a stunningly fast ride in baskets that twisted and turned along a vertical axis. He couldn't wait to get inside and swing his basket upside down, he said, as a blond woman and her daughter exited ahead of him.

"That was great, Mom," the girl said. "Lets do it again."

"No!"

Linda Fernandez and her late husband, Kane, raised Scott and his two sisters, Shelley and Sydney, at carnivals and fairs. Scott said that at times, it was even more fun than it sounds. With parents who were as busy as his were, it was easy to slip away.

Once, he said, when he was 4, his parents searched for him at a farm fair until 4 a.m. They found him curled among a litter of piglets, sleeping against a prize sow.

Stacked crates of oversized stuffed animals could be shaped into magical forts and winding tunnels, Scott said.

He learned to work young, too, Linda said, selling balloons at age 6, paying rent on a concession a few year later and learning to supervise the same carnival workers who, in his younger years, occasionally quelled his high spirits by making harnesses of rope and hanging him from a hook until he calmed down.

Emergency showers, Scott said, were delivered by those who weren't as forgiving of dirt and odor as the sow, from the business end of a water hose.

Yesterday prize pumpkins were lined up in the agricultural tent, none weighing less than 100 pounds. The top winner, grown by Duane Miyasoto of Kaua'i, weighed in at more than 185. Two concessions down, a cookware salesman hawked pots and pans that, he said, would cook without water.

The animals that once added layers of noise and textures of smell to grassy venues are absent now, Scott Fernandez said, unable to stand on the concrete parking lots allotted for the farm fair. He said he hopes they'll be back some day soon.

People watching, he said, will always be part of a carnival.

He described a tiff he had seen between a tired 5-year-old and his 3-year-old brother, who was crying for part of the older boy's cotton candy.

"Give your brother some of that," the frustrated mother snapped.

The 3-year-old got it — full in the face, Fernandez said. The boy looked like a cotton candy snowman, pink candy eyes blinking, cotton candy lips parting to wail. When the mother turned back to her children again her temper evaporated into laughter.

"That's what we do," Fernandez said. "We're in the business of making people smile.

"We're also in the business of delivering tooth decay," he said, "but do the dentists offer us a percentage?

"No, not even a thank-you card," he said.

Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.