After the Home Tour Party rocks Tioga Trails

The official after the Arts Council Home Tour party, called Tioga Tales, replaced the traditional auction at the Elks. The show was designed in a “radio” format in the style of the popular “Prairie Home Companion” with local skits and news loosely and seldom connected to truth and fact. It was a hit with the patrons filling the Tioga Trails Café at 5 p.m. last Saturday. 

The Old Coot, Merlin Lessler, read a classic selection; Historian Emma Sedore wrote and read a charming poem and story about the local legend, “Old Joe” DeWitt; and Tom McEnteer left the audience smiling with his rendition of OFA graduate, Washington Gladden’s story, “Santa Claus on a Lark.”

Greg Neff’s music was a special hit including classic songs by Cat Stevens and James Taylor. Stories included; the retelling of the Clinton-Sullivan Expedition as a caravan of undocumented migrants, the story of how the Owego Village cannon was blown up firing a salute to celebrate Franklin Roosevelt’s nomination, and a complaint about “all that winning” by the OFA Women’s Volleyball team.

This zaniness was sponsored by Southern Tier businesses from the past such as Kilmer’s Swamp Root Herbal Remedy, the Owego Cruciform Casket and Cabinet Company, and by Newark Valley Ladders, “One Step Closer to Heaven.” 

The Tioga Tales players included Phoebe Morris, Marie Ward, Fran VanHousen, Tamara Gates and Pat Loewe.

Some local events, like the Mafia Summit in Apalachin, were celebrated in hideous song when Peter Gordon corrupted Beach Boys classics as Tioga Girls, Help Me Belva (Lockwood) and The Little Old Mobster from Apalachin:

The little old mobster from Apalachin(Go Joey, go Joey, go Joey, go)Has a pretty little mansion in Apalachin(Go Joey, go Joey, go Joey, go)But parked in the mud cover’in up their wheels
There’s a brand new fleet’a black automobiles.

This performance was a first draft of the Arts Council’s effort to support local storytellers, poets, musicians and historians. Let’s call this an effort to support non-permanent art, the oral tradition. Beware, just like the Terminator – “we’ll be back.”