Great 'community' weekend (10/6/04)

Professional hand-wringers love to decry the loss of community in America.

They should have been around this weekend.

Anyone willing to get off the sofa could have enjoyed an abundant amount of Americana, from the Main Street U.S.A. Festival in Dunkirk to a "Krooze-In" in Portland, to an engine show at the Limberlost Cabin in Geneva.

For our part, it was hard to keep up with the opportunities available.

And it's hard to imagine anyone believing that small town spirit is in danger after the past few days.

I'd worked Friday night, backing up Ray Cooney on sports while the Patriots played in Lafayette, so I was a little slow to get going on Saturday.

Still, we had time to make it to the Jay County Historical Society's Heritage Festival at the museum at the end of East Main Street in Portland.

It was a delightfully low-key affair. We wandered through museum exhibits, extremely impressed by the progress made in terms of professionalism and comprehensiveness in the past few years.

When I was about 14, my family was camping in Michigan when I first encountered a local history museum. I was impressed and wondered why Jay County didn't have something comparable. These days, I'm not wondering any more. The historical society's collection tops what I saw years ago and would be the envy of peers across the U.S.

I was particularly pleased to see that the historical society is playing an archival role, gathering up collections of documents so they won't be lost to future generations. Twenty years ago you would have had to scramble to research local high school yearbooks, for example.

Today, the museum is building the definitive collection.

Outside at the festival, we kidded with old friends Ron Cole and Charlie Tague, took a county history quiz, heard Fred Myers brag about how good the ham and beans were, and listened while Jim Waechter, playing the role of a pioneer trapper, told some kids about the area's history.

All in all, a great time.

That night we had a tough choice: A "krooze-in" or Gilbert and Sullivan.

Since we'd "kroozed" a couple of times already this year, we opted to take in "The Pirates of Penzance" at Arts Place.

No offense to my "kroozer" friends, but I think we made a good choice. The vintage cars will gather again on Main Street (I hope), but it's hard to imagine getting such a great local cast together for "Pirates."

The "Pirates" production could have been done in hundreds of communities across America. But I'm willing to bet that it couldn't have been done so well.

The works of Gilbert and Sullivan — fast-paced and often silly — require a tremendous amount of rehearsal and professionalism. It's one thing to attempt a performance.

It's quite another to pull it off with aplomb, grace, and genuine wit.

Sitting in the audience on Saturday night, I was struck not only by the ambition of the production but by how completely that ambition was fulfilled.

No tapes. No piano-only accompaniment. But a seven-person pit orchestra with everything from strings to brass.

Not just a few accomplished performers, but an entire cast that knew what they were up to and knew how to deliver.

It was, in short, a great weekend.

If you failed to take advantage of it, if you failed to take in the Heritage Festival or the engine show gathering at Geneva or the "krooze-in" or the Main Street Festival in Dunkirk or Gilbert and Sullivan at Arts Place, that's your loss.

You're the folks the hand-wringers wring their hands about.[[In-content Ad]]