Costumes
One
neat thing about the Olde Town Festival in Covington, besides the large
number of history exhibits around town, were the people who wore
old-fashioned costumes in line with the exhibits. Here are some folks at
the old museum at the H.J.Smiths Sons General Merchandise Store on
Columbia Street.
I
took part in the ceremonies that kicked off the special festival week
in 1984 by dressing in an old Farmer Brown costume and unveiling my
pretend "time machine" made out of an old TV cabinet with a big clock
dial on the front. The gag was to pretend that the time machine would
take the entire town back to 1904, and then it would "malfunction" and
the community would be stuck in the olden days for the next week. The
malfunction was created by a bunch of fire and smoke that would hit the
Time Machine just as it reached 1904. Mayor Ernest Cooper was a great
sport in pretending that the whole thing was real, as shown below.
One
of the more popular aspects of the Olde Town Festival was the Scarecrow
Contest. When the Olde Town Festival stopped being held a few years
later, it was replaced by the annual Scarecrow Festival. More
information on that event can be found AT THIS LINK.
