This week 18 years ago: Cherry festival called ‘huge success,’ Lake report in good shape

The Lake County Leader, July 24, 2008

Cherry festival come up roses

Record-breaking crowds made Polson's Main Street Flathead Cherry Festival a huge success, the event's organizer Jackie Cripe said.

"There were a lot of people in town," said Cripe. "Every year just gets bigger and better thanks to the support of the community."

Seven Flathead Valley orchards participated in the event. Some sold cherries or a variety of cherry products from barbecue sauce to jellies and jams, T-shirts, aprons, cookbooks and homemade cherry pies.

More than 40 cherry pies were devoured at Sunday's pie-eating contest, which made its festival debut. The stem-tying and cherry pit spitting contests were also popular with festival-goers, and a number of gift certificates to local businesses were handed out to the winners of those events.

One-hundred twenty vendors from as far as Florida, Arizona and California participated.

"They loved Polson and are already signing up for next year," Cripe said.

According to Cripe, the festival's goal is to promote agritourism and raise awareness of Flathead cherries and what the community has to offer.

Plans are already underway for next year's event, which is slated for July 18 and 19. Vendors can sign up as early as December for next year.

"We are working with our agricultural community and coming up with new ideas to make it another exciting event in Polson," she said.

Report: Lake in good shape

The annual State of the Lake report presented last Wednesday near Lakeside indicated that Flathead Lake is a well-managed resource, but also highlighted potential harbingers of future issues.

Jack Stanford, head of the University of Montana Biological Station at Yellow Bay, delivered this year's address to a crowd of well over 100 at the Glacier Conference Center south of Lakeside as part of the Flathead Lakers' annual meeting and 50th anniversary celebration.

As Stanford went through an overview of changes to the lake — namely, the construction of Kerr Dam and the introduction of mysis shrimp — he explained how the food web has been massively altered over the years.

"It's changed now, and it's different," he said. "But it's still a great lake."

Some of the most noticeable effects of the change have been the near-complete decimation of the Kokanee Salmon population (Stanford said he heard reports one was caught this year and the Cutthroat and Bull trout populations crashing)

"People used to catch cutthroats by the bucketful," he said. "Today the lake food web is very different."

What is also constantly changing are the pressures on Flathead Lake, largely from increased nutrient loading. Stanford spoke about the increased amount of algae growing in the lake and quipped, "If you go down in scuba gear, you'll see a lot of furry rocks

The lake has been host to quite a few large algae blooms over the last few decades, the last large one occurring in 1997 … 

This week’s Hot Rodding assignment: required reading

First off, let me apologize for lying to you. I'm sorry, I was not able to work on the car in the past week, so there will be nothing about working on the car.

I have, however, borrowed an excellent book from Virgil that talks about the history of Hot Rodding. The book is called "The Hot Rod: Resurrection of a Legend" by Brock Yates.

If you are interested in Hot Rods, I would recommend this book. Also, a few good Rat Rod magazines are "Ol' Skool Hot Rods." "Car Kulture DeLuxe" and "Rebel Rodz."

Right, so back to the history of Hot Rodding. Since the creation of the car, mankind (I mean both men and women has wanted to go fast. Faster than what the cars they had would allow.) The solution: modify it, remove the excess, create your own parts from lighter metals, or rebuild it using parts from different cars. With that, the Hot Rod culture began.

The term Hot Rod became common just after World War II among young veterans. Though this was the beginning, it didn't pick up until the 50's and 60's. The greasers were an example of a Hot Rod culture. Friends, fast cars, and fun were what they liked. It was groups of people getting together to work on cars and to hang out. That was the root of Hot Rodding. 

It wasn't until the late 70s and early 80s that the culture of Hot Rodding shifted. It became more about making the cars look exceedingly expensive than having fun.

These cars are lavish works of art, but that's just it. You can't drive a $100,000 work of art. So what is the point of having it? Just that you have it, that's all. You can't drive it, you can't enjoy it, so make something you can enjoy …