Published: September 01, 2008 11:19 pm            

Food, fun draw crowd to Forest Hills Festival

ST. MICHAEL — Cody Moss, 14, knows how to command the attention of his buddies.

Under their watchful eyes, he slowly plucked one crumpled dollar bill after another from his pocket, straightened them out, and added them to the growing wad in his left hand.

“Twenty-nine. Thirty. ...”

After an hour playing the gambling wheel “Little Chuck” at the Forest Hills Festival, Cody knew he was up. It was just a question of how much. He started with $25.

Including the handful of quarters, he’d won more than $5 – and was quite pleased.

“I’m going to buy a crapload of pizza,” the Beautyline student said, and smiled.

One of his pals chimed in, “Say he started with 25 cents. Make the story juicy.”

The story of the hundreds of residents who attended the festival on Labor Day, though, needed no embellishment.

With the music, food, crafts, small games of chance and beautiful weather, what’s not to like.

Social worker Valeria Southard of San Jose, Calif., a local native, comes all the way back to attend the three-day festival every year.

“It’s always great to see family and friends,” she said, marking B-4 on her bingo board.

“And I always find something in the crafts booths,” she said.

This year she found two whatnots: A wooden star emblazoned with “Steelers” and a Santa Claus decoration for the door.

Other crafts included a $35 wax-dipped, scented Winnie the Pooh and a T-shirt sporting a barking dog that proclaimed, “You wish I would treat you like my dog.” Presumably, that was meant to convey the pride that comes with spoiling a dog.

Southard also said she enjoys “all the ethnic food you can’t get in California,” including nutrolls and halushki. She was settling in at the bingo tent, promising she wouldn’t leave until she heard the polka band Button Box play.

Farther down the dusty trail, Altoona artist Robert Hunt was manning a booth of his oil-on-canvas paintings and lithographs.

“The Johnstown area really appreciates their history,” he said. His old-fashioned, photo-realistic works include landscapes and scenes of railroads and ships.

Hunt said he’d sold perhaps a dozen paintings at the three-day festival. The works range in price from $50 to $1,000.

The former engineer for the Gemini space program noted matter-of-factly that he and his wife had been the guests of Laura Bush at the White House in November. That’s because two of his works were displayed on the White House Christmas tree.

He now makes his living as a full-time artist. Hunt missed the first year of the festival but displayed every other year of the bash, which just concluded its 20th year.

The big winner of the day was Linda Beard of Johnstown. She won $1,000 in That Dam Duck Race when her rubber ducky was the first to cross the finish line.

Melanie Smay of South Fork said the festival generates profit of more than $9,000 for the Forest Hills hockey team – including profits from the race and from bingo. She’s the team’s assistant business manager.

The festival is sponsored by the Friends of the Johnstown Flood National Memorial.

        

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