When the barrel rolled
You drove up the hill and stopped at the top, where someone pointed you in the direction of where to park. Sometimes, it was just a quick left or right, but more often it was a series of turns and then driving to an end of a seemingly endless row and parking. Shade was hard to come by, but if you could find a spot near a tree, that was golden.
Then you walked right back in the direction from whence you just came to one of the festival entry gates. Once inside, you were met by the two main merchandise tents. It was usually the same vendors every year (the glass blower, the T-shirt maker, the gummy bear seller), but it was somehow still exciting to see them. And there'd sometimes be new vendors, which was a true momentous occasion. We all remember the Summer of Shiatsu, where massagers with creepy, rotating balls that rested on chair backs (or, I suppose wherever you felt was the best place for rotating balls to be on your body part of choice) attempted to soothe the pain that hindered your existence.
Well, maybe you don't remember the Summer of Shiatsu. But I do, because my mom got one (I think my dad bought it for her), and when she passed, it felt important to keep the massager. Come on over! We'll have a party!
But back to the festival grounds.
After making your way through the two merch tents, your next stop was probably the ski lodge, where the beer steins and Hummels were sold. In addition to being a Shiatsu devotee, my mom also collected Hummels, eventually joining the Hummel Club and getting a new Hummel in the mail every year. But it didn't match the buzz of a ski lodge hall full of Hummels and a guy named Tony Noichl playing “Edelweiss” on everyone's favorite instrument, the zither.
We also inherited a lot of Hummels when my mom passed. Neither my sister nor I were interested in pursuing a career in Hummel collecting, so we foisted as many of them upon others as we could. But we kept some, because we're not monsters. Well, I might be a monster, but I'm a monster with several Hummels, a Shiatsu massager, and an album of Tony Noichl on which he plays “Edelweiss” that I did not inherit but purchased of sound mind and body. We'll play it at the Shiatsu Party!
But enough about that.
What I really wanted to get to was the main event of the festivals, the main tent. It was the size of a football field, and, depending on the festival and/or the weather, it was often packed. It was where the headlining acts performed, the Dinkel Acker was drunk, and the appelflappen was consumed. People would get to the tent right when gates opened, claim their spots (tilting the chair in so the chair back touched the table was the universal sign that that spot was reserved), and then come back later in the afternoon, when it was showtime.
I never have a firm answer about my first concert, but I am fairly certain the first time I saw a musician on stage and an audience enraptured by the performance (or drunk on Dinkel Acker, or both) was in that main tent at the Hunter Mountain festivals. I think about them every summer. And now I'm going to try to take you there for a bit. Fire up the Shiatsu and get comfortable!
Festival season at Hunter Mountain meant a different festival almost every weekend in the summer (except for the period where July was reserved exclusively for the German Alps Festival, before it was downsized). There was the German Alps Festival, the Italian Festival, the Polish Festival, the Celtic Festival, the American Indian Festival, and the Country Music Festival, which was the big event and was split over two weekends. It regularly featured huge country stars like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Alan Jackson, Loretta Lynn, and Emmylou Harris, and, as such, was the festival with the heftiest price tag. The other festivals, though they did occasionally feature pretty big headliners, were more reasonably priced (and I'm sure there was a discount for kids), so we hit those hard every summer.
If I had to guess (even though it seems unlikely I'd be in a situation where I'd be compelled to guess this), the first musician I ever saw perform was Tony Marshall, because he played the German Alps Festival almost every year, and my mom thought he was handsome. I'm not sure about the handsome part, but “Schone Maid” is still a banger. This is a pretty good representation of what my first concert was like. I think it explains a lot.
The first concert where I intentionally went to see the performer and wasn't just there to eat pizza and funnel cake was likely at the Country Music Festival, where I guess my sister and I convinced my mom to take us to see 1984 Star Search award winners Sawyer Brown. We were big Star Search people. Sam Harris. James and Kathy Taylor. Brad Garrett. You know, the legends. And, yes, in that group of Season 1 legends was Sawyer Brown and their smash “Smokin’ in the Rockies.” It doesn't have the lasting power of “Schone Maid,” but in 1984, it was one of my jams.
I don't remember a thing about the show, though I'm sure they played “SitR” (as all the cool kids called it; I mean, I never called it that, but it seems like something cool people would do) and I'm sure I loved it. We got them to sign tbe newspaper program after, and 37 years later, I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to a Sawyer Brown song, but I do know one of the guys in the band was (is?) named Hobie because I remember thst signature. I'm not sure what good that knowledge is doing me, but if you need a partner for Star Search trivia night at your local watering hole, let me know.
The Country Music Festival was also the only place where I saw a full Johnny Cash concert. Two of them, I think. Well, I didn't really see much of them, because I decided to position myself behind the stage so I could get him to sign things. I regret this. I should have been out front watching the show and not getting autographs. I remember seeing some of it, but I definitely spent most of tbe show only being able to hear the show. I did get him to sign stuff, though, so I have those, which I guess is nice, and ultimately, cooler to show people rather than just telling them I saw Johnny Cash in concert. But, still, dumb move, kid.
I did make Johnny Cash laugh, though, so I've got that going for me.
I think it was in between shows (the performers often did one set in the afternoon and one in the evening), and I was waiting in the back when Johnny came out of his bus and made his way to the stage. The Highwaymen's album “The Road Goes On Forever” album had just come out. On that album was a song called “Death and Hell,” written by John Carter Cash and his dad, and the song, particularly its chorus, struck me as weird:
Death and hell are never full
And neither are the eyes of men
Cats can fly from nine stories high
And pigs can see the wind.
Weird, right? I don't mind sharing that assessment with you. Should I have shared it with Johnny Cash in the one moment in my lifetime I had to share something with Johnny Cash?
Perhaps not.
But I did, and when I shared my assessment with him (I believe my exact words were “That ‘Death and Hell’ song you wrote with John Carter on the new Highwaymen album…that's a weird one"), he laughed, as one laughs when you're an icon and a teenager has just told you one of your songs is weird.
Anyway, I made Johnny Cash laugh is the point. And I thank Hunter Mountain for the opportunity.
Towards the end of the Hunter festival run in the 1990s, they added a festival called Rockstalgia, which was a weekend full of oldies acts and, as such, was a dream festival for teenagers who listened to CBS FM all the time. And, OK, I guess Baby Boomers who actually grew up with the music when it was being released too. Perhaps that was the larger target demographic. No matter. As long as I got to meet Lou Christie and Wolfman Jack, everything was cool.
And speaking of cool, who was that teenager walking around in the mid 1990s rocking a Blood, Sweat, and Tears hat purchased ar Rockstalgia all over town? This guy. Will we ever understand how this did not send a rush of women to my side? Our best minds are working on it, but it seems unlikely.
I got cool autographs and saw music legends at the Country Music and Rockstalgia festivals, but, truth be told, the German Alps Festival was the star festival of my childhood. It was partly because, as I mentioned earlier, it initially ran longer than the others, so we went there more often. I also think the aforementioned Hummelfest (and zither playing) only took place during the German Alps Festival. And the German Alps Festival brought three special words into my life when it came to music: direct from Germany.
“Direct from Germany” applied to the big orchestras, like the gloriously named Stadtkapelle Gundelfingen, and the poppier acts like the aforementioned Tony Marshall and the visually memorable Heino, who was brought in one summer. If you are not familiar with Heino, let me just say that once you set eyes upon him, your life will never be the same. Get ready.
Upon seeing him for the first time, our family took to calling him “Heino the Albino,” which is both a little cruel and, I don't think, accurate. But surely, you cannot fault us for this.
Heino's performance at Hunter does not stand out in my mind like his physical appearance does, but he is indicative of the types of bizarre “direct from Germany” acts that frequently took the stage at the main tent. Through these acts, I discovered the heretofore unknown German appreciation of country music and even a little southern rock. I suspect you haven't heard “Sweet Home Alabama” sung in a Germsn accent. I have, and it is something.
But it pales in comparison to the accordion stylings of Ingo, who technically was direct from Germany but had long since settled in the United States. He frequently played accordion and sang in one of the side tents at the German Alps Festival (sometimes solo, sometimes with a dirndled Helga, who memorably played glasses…perhaps you had to be there) but also was a fixture in the Catskills. On my deathbed, the one song I expect to be rattling around as I move on is Ingo's thickly accented version of Chris DeBurgh's “The Lady in Red.” I don't know of any recording of it existing, but the memory of “The lady een red eez dahnzing weet me” burns eternally. Ingo is probably why I like accordion music so much. So, thanks,
Because the Germsn Alps Festival was such a foundational thing in my life, I have dedicated the last several years of my adulthood to becoming the world's foremost collector of German Alps Festival memorabilia. Well, really all I'm doing is searching “German Alps Festival” at least once a month on eBay late at night when I'm sad, and then making questionable purchases, but I think this at least puts me in the top tier of German Alps Festival collectors. Come at me if you feel that's a lie.
There's the beer cups at the top of this essay, purchased after letting others slip through my fingers once, and chosen over the stein with the same characters on them because the plastic cups give me the full nostalgia jolt. There's the photo of the main tent above that I recently purchased in a lot of 35mm slides that I have no way of easily converting. There's that hot yellow shirt, button, and hat right up top obtained in three separate purchases.
And, of course, there is the official album
The oompah sounds of the German Alps Festival and the happy sounds of the National Polka Festival (which I feel we didn't go to a lot, but we got plenty of polkas with Jimmy Sturr at the German Alps Festival; he's a man for all nationalities) are part of what formed me as a kid. Sure, there was oldies music and country and rock and pop and all that. But there was also this frequently weird music that I would only hear a few weekends in the summer and then have to wait until next year came around. It was, as I've said of other things, magical in this way.
And, sometimes, especially in the summer, I get sad that that magic is gone. Sure, I can still put on those albums (or any of the other 200+ polka records I have). But it is not the magic of the festival. That magic is gone, and the two most important people who shared that magic with me are gone too. There is, alas, no bringing them back. It points to a theme I am conscious of when I write these things, and one I suspect is easily detected by you, dear reader: How do you honor the past without being a slave to it? What should we do with our memories?
I don't know the answer. Buying German Alps Festival memorabilia on eBay might not be the answer. But as I struggle with the present and the future, sometimes buying things on eBay is the best I can do.
That said, if you see me putting up a giant tent in a parking lot in upstate NY and it looks like a real Ray Kinsella situation is going on, it's not. Please stop me.
Ein Prosit and happy Shiatsuing to you and yours.
