Ventura and Oxnard are Southern California beach communities that are distinctly more working-class than others. Unlike their counterparts, Santa Barbara, Venice, or Hermosa Beach, there are postwar tract homes and apartment buildings within walking distance of the beach.

And many of their residents work in trades and the agricultural industry, not at Snapchat, Hulu, or Headspace. They are known for their dive bars, fish tacos, racetrack, and card room. These are broad strokes, of course, but if you spend time in either of these cities, you'll know what I mean. Many locals refer to Ventura as "Ventucky" (Ventura + Kentucky).

This region, and the beautiful drive on the 126 that takes you there through the fertile valley, are also the backdrop of some of the great labor struggles that defined the agricultural landscape of California.

On an idyllic mid-August day, two of my companions and I are taking the drive to the heart of the entire thing, to one of my favorite places to go in all of my life, the Ventura County Fair, which always hosts championship-level rodeo on its final weekend.

I have carefully documented this journey as a guide for posterity, so that future generations can engage with this important tradition that exists at the crossroads of American excess and humility.

I hope your journey to Ventura will take place on the 126, where you will pass through Fillmore. At the very edge of town you will find a restaurant called Ay! Chihuahua. This should be used as a grounding exercise to absorb the environment you are within. Inside, you will be greeted with an unassuming taqueria, with poblano peppers being blistered on a flat iron, walls adorned with remarkable photographs of Mexican revolutionaries who fought and died for the rights of farmers to own their land, and the best breakfast burrito you've ever had.

When I eat here I am always reminded of the incredible story of solidarity between Japanese and Mexican farmhands who struck, fought, and died to join union ranks.

A deal was struck for the Mexicans to join the union that excluded the Japanese. The Mexican workers stood steadfast in their mission and essentially said, "all of us or none of us."

Wages were raised for a while, but the movement was deeply fractured, and meager victories slowly eroded away.

This set the stage for decades of some of the biggest strikes in the history of the West Coast—the citrus strikes, Filipino strikes—and more rights and sanctions were settled through more direct action and bloodshed. My ability to engage with this complex history has limits, I am a tourist here. But this is enough to understand when you're taking this beautiful drive: you can appreciate that the soil is soaked in blood by men and women who fought and worked and died so good food can be grown and harvested for a fair wage, for a brief period.

And it's all the more appropriate that this corridor is what you would take to the harvest festival. This fair reminds us that Mexicans are more than the tired roles we assign them; service workers or noble laborers. Their mastery of land and livestock is integral to the American traditions we hold closest to our hearts.

After the restaurant, you should buy several screw-top light beers from Tipsy Fox Liquor next door, to enjoy on the loosely patrolled roads past Fillmore.

By the time you arrive at the shuttle to the fair, you should be enjoying the glow that two or three light road beers can provide.

So that when you walk past the gates, and you're greeted with the crowds, the haze from the food stands, the dust being kicked, you really feel it. Unless you don't need alcohol to feel things. In which case, good for you.

When the casual fairgoers think "fairs," they think rides. The rides are a sideshow. They're nothing. The rides are rites of passage for children. And they're important, and you should go on one at night that speaks to you. But that's not the main attraction here.

For the novice, know this: fairs aren't about rides. Grab a beer and go to the collections hall. There's a reason that there is a beer stall and a collections hall right next to the entrance.

Fairs are about collections. They're about submitting those collections to win awards from judges. They're about seeing those collectors walk around with their ribbons and asking them about their collections and receiving treasure troves of knowledge so specific that you might not find them on the internet or in any book that's widely available to the mainstream.

In this hall I spent about 30 minutes sorting stamps with two elderly gentlemen and three young children, discussing and arguing about the patterns. About who gets what, what they mean, where they came from. Tweety Bird. Fireworks. These American symbols. Who gets what. And why.

The fair is about the strange sideshows. On this particular day we saw four performers of a medium I was not familiar with called percussive dance.

It's like tap dance mixed with clogging mixed with something else. It's outside and it's loud and you could hardly hear the taps hitting the hardwood. Their leader said if they got 10 more followers on Instagram, he would buy his crew dinner. They were not in time. Their jokes were not funny. But they were smiling.

You will see acrobats. They might fail the tricks that are particularly difficult. These are not the best in the world. These are not their big shows. This is a stop on the road to a bigger dream. And you have the unique opportunity to support them.

I met two women at a booth who have dedicated a huge portion of their lives to the study, documentation, and appreciation for a breed of horse called the Camarillo White Horse.

For no less than 45 minutes, we pored over family trees and the distinctive proof that they are indeed their own breed. That the riders wear red and the saddles are adorned with silver, that Ronald Reagan once rode one in their parade, and that they are calm, kind, expressive, beautiful, small, compact horses.

I told her that I deeply appreciated the work she was doing to help preserve this small amount of history, and that she had dedicated so much of her time to volunteer to share this information with others so freely.

She touched me gently and her eyes welled up, and so did mine. She asked me to repeat what I told her to her colleague. And I thought maybe this is what I am here to do.

All of this culminates in the secret nucleus of the entire thing: the PRCA Rodeo. Tickets are cheap but must be bought well in advance. You will always find the unprepared at the gates trying to buy extra tickets from people trying to get in. In a beautiful act of community organizing, security guards are happy to help facilitate this process in exchange for cigarettes and friendliness.

Here you'll see it all, from mutton busting, to bucking horses, to bull riding. On this day, the white and Latino riders both ate shit during the roping and bucking exercises. Most leaving with 0 scores and no times. But a brave cowgirl hit a 15.1 in barrel racing, in the most cunning feat of agility I've ever seen in person.

And the sun will be setting, and they'll send out a bucking-horse matriarch and her prized daughter, one too old to buck, one too young. And they will prance in the dirt as the sun starts to kiss the ocean behind you. And the announcer will regale us about future generations, and that despite everything that's happening, no matter how we fight, no matter how bad things seem right now, the American project will continue. And, for better or worse, we're all in it together. The filly will nuzzle against her mother's neck, and the announcement will be repeated in Spanish.

Because, after all, it was the Mexicans who taught us the techniques and the words that were used to win the west, and their perfection is displayed here.

And when you visit the fair, with the right eyes, you will learn something about this country that you didn't know before. I know I always do, every year.

Good luck and God Bless,

Free Country USA