THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504210261
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
Thank you, Buddy Bagley. You could have blackmailed me all these years and you never have.
Actually, we are not talking National Enquirer scandal here. More like professional embarrassment. Bagley once took a picture of me cat-napping in the Chesapeake Jubilee press tent when I was supposed to be hot on the trail of Jubilee news. He has kept the picture more or less secret, except to needle me about it when Jubilee weekend nears.
Which it is.
The 13th annual Chesapeake Jubilee will be May 19, 20 and 21 at Chesapeake City Park. Another time around for our own blend of municipal block party, county fair, carnival, food fest and high-class hoedown. Very high-class this year. The entertainment capper will be a Sunday afternoon appearance by country music legend Willie Nelson.
Bagley is fireworks chairman of this year's Jubilee, Linwood Nelms is general chairman and Jack Gibson is entertainment chairman. Bagley is president of the Bank of Hampton Roads, and Bagley and Nelms are senior vice presidents. For that matter, the fireworks chairman's hat ought to fit Bagley pretty well by now. He's worn it since the first Jubilee in 1983.
And he's a good choice for the job. Bagley is about fireworks like kids are about Christmas. Some of the best fun I ever had at the Jubilee was watching Buddy watch a fireworks show. Every time a burst spread shimmering color across the sky, Buddy would wave his arms like an orchestra conductor and yell ``BOOM!'' At the end of the show, he potshotted Norfolk's annual festival by yelling ``Eat your heart out, Harborfest!''
Heart-eating-quality fireworks don't come cheap. This year's edition on Friday and Saturday night will cost $40,000. A $5 million insurance policy is in effect for the crash and flash just in case anything goes wrong. The only problem so far, knock wood, was one year when hot ash scorched a couple of parked cars.
Maybe the funniest Jubilee mishap was the time a bull escaped from the 4-H show and led an urban cowboy posse a chase down Greenbrier Parkway before it was corralled. Essentially, though, the kids and critters at the 4-H show are models of dedication, responsibility and successful animal husbandry. They must be. While the cows moo and the sheep baa, the cash register dings to the tune of about $100,000 in sales.
If you're cataloging Jubilee disasters, write down 1988. That's the year semi-monsoon rains fell on a Jubilee site not yet covered with sturdy grass. It was mostly Mud City. They labored mightily to combat the mud, to the extent of trucking in 375 tons of peanut shells, but it didn't help much. To capture the feeling of attending the '88 Jubilee, fill your tub with cold oatmeal and wade in it.
Which is one reason general chairman Nelms vows he is striving to create good Jubilee weather by sleeping with his toes crossed. But there are other efforts more dependable than toe-crossing. For instance, the site has been engineered and graded so that it drains much better than it did in 1988.
One aspect of the Jubilee that hasn't changed since the beginning is the emphasis on making it a family affair - not only the dad-mom-kids kind of family, but what you might call the municipal family.
Chesapeake is awfully close to still being a cluster of individual communities rather than a unified whole, Nelms thinks. ``I don't know any other event that brings us together as a city,'' he says.
He points to the way business people and volunteers from all over our sprawling 353 square miles pitch in at Jubilee time. A new Jubilee sponsor this year is the Chesapeake Farm Bureau, appropriate because Willie Nelson was right up front in the farm relief concerts of the 1980s.
Meanwhile, entertainment chairman Gibson is wondering how to make Willie happy in Chesapeake. Part of Gibson's job is scrounging the stuff that stars request when they come to town. Singer Bo Diddeley wanted T-shirts for his approximately 20 grandchildren. Done. Conway Twitty didn't want the nice hot meal provided; he wanted corn on the cob. Done.
``Expect the unexpected'' is Gibson's motto when he's doing Jubilee entertainment business. As a general rule, he says that the established stars are pretty good to deal with. It's mostly the newcomers a little drunk on first-time fame who are troublesome.
The oddest request Gibson told me about was from Crystal Gayle, the singer with the hair down to here. Lo-o-o-ong hair. Cover all the cracks in the stage with duct tape and roof flashing, she said. The reason was that she danced during her performance and her dangling hair might snag on cracks in the stage. by CNB