In response to the post by Dave V. under Willowdale........
We have a photo of Carmen Basilio placing a golden block on the foundation of the Cross Lake Boat Club around early 1950's. They were a new club building their clubhouse. The club is still active today offering members an affordable and convenient location to launch their boats into the NYS Canal System (Seneca River section).
There is now a Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, NY. Below is a link to their website.
http://www.ibhof.com/ibhfhome.htm
What other attractions did the Jordan Fall Festival have in those years? Today we
have the Greased Pole Climb, an Alpine Run, the kids greased pole cross, live bands, an antique & classic car, bike n' truck show, huge craft tent, merchants tent, pre-read book sale, of course the great food and much more. The event schedule is beginning to grow and can be viewed at www.JordanNY.com scroll down to the festival link.
New comments have been posted under Willowdale.....
2 comments:
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, attractions at the Festival used to be the auction. Volunteers would spend a couple nights a week for weeks before the festival picking up donated merchandise. To say the leaast, we got a lot of junk. I think we were saving someone a trip to the dump on many occasions. Jack MacNabb was a "moving force" behind the whole collection effort. We used his truck and he was there to help every single collection night. The night we all dreaded was "piano night". We even took a baby grand out a second story window one night.
Another interesting attraction was boxing matches between students from JCS refereed by none other than Coach Wakeman. Some of the high school guys used to pound on each other pretty well sometimes.
Can anyone remember Maude Roate and the outrageous costumes she used to sport and some of the antics she performed?
The most amazing thing about the festival is that even after almost 60 years it's still a volunteer effort. It's no longer 100% volunteer as it used to be but it's still one heck of a community effort.
The auctions were definitely the biggest, if not the most popular events. I remember some of the furniture that was sold. Pieces you see on Antique's Roadshow worth a lot of money were sold for practically nothing or added to the bonfire. Nobody wanted that old "junk".
"Mac" McCormack and others would bring their steam tractors and I think that they had pulling contests with them. Also, I remember that they would hitch wagons to them and give people rides around the grounds. All of the farm machinery companies, such as John Deere would have their latest machines for viewing and for sale as well.
Bingo was a big money maker until someone in Albany decided that it was gambling and therefore it was illegal and had to be discontinued. The Festival, being put on a very enterprising group of Jordanites(?) found a solution. They had a game called RIGHT that was essentially BINGO without using the word BINGO but instead used RIGHT across the top of the card and instead selecting numbered balls there was a big chart with the numbers 1 to 75 on it. Someone would throw a dart, I believe, at the chart and that is how the numbers were selected. I don't think it was long before BINGO was found to be OK and RIGHT was a thing of the past. Am I RIGHT about this?
One year there was a big steer that was raffled off with the proceeds going to the fire department. As I recall Maude Roate was one of the people that sold raffle tickets for the steer and would do a little performance to attract customers. I don't remember if this was an annual event or a one time thing.
There was place for people to show off their produce and small livestock for judging along with baked and canned goods.
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