By:Susan Lin
Leave the Palm Pilot at home if you're visiting the 16th Annual Country Fair this weekend at Rock Hall Museum in Lawrence. You won't feel so out of place at the festival, which purports to give people a glimpse of what everyday life was like during the colonial era, that is, the time before the Revolutionary War.
On the three-acre backyard of the museum, people dressed in period costumes will demonstrate how the colonists cooked and what they ate, how farmers made their scarecrows, what kind of music they listened to, and other activities representative of the time.
Obviously, the demonstrators in the fair aren't really colonists. Rather they're modern people like Alice Roth, Ph.D, a food historian from Smithtown. She is taking a break from 2001 to appear at Rock Hall wearing a cooking apron over a blanket-like frock, and a lace cap with strings tied in a knot under her chin.
With two assistants, Roth will cook clam chowder and an apple betty, foods that we are familiar with today but has been popular since the colonial period. Roth will prepare these historic recipes in iron pots that are held over an open fire by a crane.
"I see the same people each year and they have certain requests: Don't dare leave out clam chowder. It's really a favorite on Long Island," said Roth.
Another demonstrator in the fair is Richard Slingerland, 60, who is coming from Broadalbin, N.Y., a small town by the Adirondack Mountains. Slingerland is a member of the HTML Writers Guild, and earns his livelihood designing Web sites. His clients have included the Holiday Inn in Schoharie, N.Y.
But at Rock Hall, Slingerland will be an old-time lumberjack, someone who cuts down trees for a living during the frontier days.
"They're modern lumberjacks today, but they go into the woods with chainsaws and trucks. That's not what we're about," said Slingerland.
Along with his fellow lumberjacks, Slingerland will instead cross-cut saw the logs, the original way of doing it.
He will also demonstrate some competitions colonial loggers participated in, such as log rolling, speed-chopping and ax throwing. Loggers at the time would throw three-pound axes at targets 20 feet away, similar to the game of darts.
"The old-time lumberjacks on the weekend they had nothing to do so they would go out and the guys from the lumber camps would compete against each other in the different skills that each of them had, and it just evolved into a competition that's still in existence today," said Slingerland.
Although the old-time lumberjacks are long gone, Slingerland said the sports of those loggers have been kept alive by competitions such as the ESPN Stihl Timbersports series. The overall winner of the games receives $30,000 cash and a pick-up truck, a large prize indicating the seriousness of lumberjack sports, said Slingerland.
Slingerland learned and honed his lumberjack skills as a former competitor. When he left the athletic arena, Slingerland stayed connected to the sport by partnering with a fellow Timbersport athlete, Robert Bosco Sr., to put together what they call "The Indian River Olde Time Lumberjack Show," the production appearing at Rock Hall.
"I reached my peak in competing and the young guys were kind of beating me, so me and my partner [Robert Bosco Sr.] we decided we'd start a show and do it at fairs as a demonstration type thing," said Slingerland.
Although the demonstration and activities at Rock Hall's country fair are myriad, they all serve the same purpose. "It's a friendly, non-intimidating way to welcome people to the museum to see how special it is," said Linda Barreira, the 16-year director of Rock Hall.
Rock Hall, which is the only museum in the town of Hempstead, has been carefully restored over the last five years under the guidance of Richard Guardino, Jr., supervisor of Hempstead.
The museum is "pristine, and probably looks the way it did when it was first built," said Barreira.
Built prior to the War of Independence, Rock Hall is a surviving example of Gregorian domestic architecture, the prevailing style at the time. Its numerous fireplaces and high ceilings in the generous parlors and chambers are typical features of the homes of wealthy English who settled throughout the American colonies.
Barreira hopes that visitors might take some time to explore Rock Hall while at the country fair. "I enjoy seeing Rock Hall filled with people," said Barreira.
At a Glance
16th Annual Country Fair
11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Saturday & Sunday, Oct. 20 & 21
Rock Hall Museum
199 Broadway, Lawrence
(516) 239-1157
Free admission and parking
