Hi, my name is Terry Sue Potter. I was adopted when I was six months old and I was adopted by mom and dad and I grew up in Pittsfield. I only had the one home, went to New Berlin Central School, graduated in 1976, almost 50 years ago. And then I got married in ’84 and went down to South New Berlin. So I haven’t moved very far from my childhood home. The thing I remember mostly about my childhood, the thing I used to get excited about was back in 1962, I don’t remember that one, but that’s when Youth Days started. It was a one day event and they crowded so much into it like a parade. They had beauty contests, they had eating contests and rides. In 1964, it went to a three-day event, but the same thing, parades, rides, entertainment. They had talent shows, beauty contests, citizens of the year, student of the year, a lot of different things going on.
I can remember we would go down Friday night and that’s when mom and dad would let us ride all the rides because Saturday night was the parade and the parade was a big deal. People, schools came from all over and when the parade got done, the schools would obviously go ride rides and eat food and whatever, and it would be crowded. So we always got to ride rides Friday night. Saturday night we go to the parade, go get something to eat and go home. Sunday used to be the flea market up on Fishfield. They had eating contests. They even had a bed race, which was really funny. I remember that. The parade consisted of bands, floats. They had two different clowns. One was Hoagie the balloon man. He made the balloon animals. And then we had, his name was Rowan, Bog Ray. He was the main clown. Everybody, all us kids, used to look forward to him. He was so funny. And he always had a bag of candy or bubblegum and he’d ask what you wanted. And he was always funny.
They did do, I think I mentioned that, senior citizen of the year, and the first one was Herb Butts. I don’t remember much about Herb Butts. I do know he was a school teacher and that’s all I know. But he was the first citizen of the year. The last one was Beverly Butler and I have no clue who she was. Sorry. But that was always fun to see who got that. And they also did student of the week or student of the year, and I don’t have any names, unfortunately, of anybody that won, but that was always exciting. The beauty contest went from, they had three age groups, it was toddlers to four and then kindergarten through six and six through twelve. And they used to get pretty good turnout. At one point they had 25, and that’s pretty good for a local town to do, get that many people.
They raised a lot of money. The money went of course went to the next Youth Days, which I think that’s why it grew because they kept getting more money and they kept coming up with all these ideas. And the bed race was pretty fun. And the flea market and car show, that was pretty fun up on Fishfield. It used to be a huge flea market. They did have cook-offs too. They had a cookie cook-off one year and a donut cook-off one year. The fire departments would always put on a nice meal and you could get chicken. I remember that. That was the big thing. They did fireworks a couple of years, but that really didn’t last long.
They did have golf tournaments when the golf course was here in town. Can’t even think what the name of it was. It’s been gone so long. But yeah, they used to have golf tournaments and they had talent shows where people would show off their talent. The fire departments competed in the parade. Who was going to take first and second. The antique car show was always fun. Even back then they had antique car shows from like the 40s and 50s, so they were antique. And now we consider 1962 antiques. They had a train come and it looked like a regular train, locomotive. They had a dance-off, usually it was held at the Eagle Inn parking lot. And then when the Eagle Inn got torn down, it went to the fire department parking lot, the old one. And that was a lot of fun. It went to midnight, so it was a lot of fun to see how many of us kids could stay awake that late.
Bands used to consist of the baton twirlers and of course the musical part of it. Junior Miss Youth Days is what they ended up calling the beauty contest. They had a bike rodeo. You decorated your bike and it got entered in a contest. And one of my friends actually won that. I think that’s about it. It was a big event. I wish they could bring it back. They tried a couple of years after the pandemic, but just couldn’t get enough interest. I don’t know if they kept it up in the long run, people would’ve. But from 1962 to 2000, they had a pretty good Youth Days.
A friend of mine let me borrow this. I think I do have it, but I don’t know where. My girls are actually in this one. One was Jennifer, my youngest, won the ice cream eating contest, and Barbara, my oldest, won the toddler contest. They had a crawling and a toddler and advanced walker contest, and she won the toddler one. So that brought back memories. And it involved a lot of the businesses, local businesses that were around. You had the pizzeria I think was just starting up. I can’t remember, but of course the victory markets used to be IGA maybe, the grocery store next to the pizzeria that’s there now, Richards. So everybody was involved in it. The community, the streets were packed. You can hardly walk around the streets in New Berlin when the parade was there Saturday night.
