Well, on behalf of all the people I know — and I know everyone — thank you for working in this extremely cold weather, doing sophisticated manual labor, following exacting specifications, moving carefully and gracefully with heavy blocks of ice while dressed like an Eskimo living in an igloo.

So, come to our house out in the country anytime, any day, for a big bowl of hot soup … no, just kidding.

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McLaughlin writes a Carnival history

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The following are edited excerpts from a long story about the history of the Winter Carnival by Bill McLaughlin. I will attempt to do justice to this Enterprise wordsmith, the best ever, in my opinion, while reducing his great tale to fit this space.

“How did all this hoopla and fantasmagoria begin? Easy! The Saranac Lake Winter Carnival was inaugurated by the Pontiac Club in 1898. It set the fashion with sports combined with gaiety in the community. But ONLY within the community!

“The club promoted tobogganing along with fancy figure and speed skating. But the club’s growing pains outstripped the facilities, so to speak, and the Saranac Lake Country Club [not familiar with this Club] entered the entertainment picture.

“In a burst of ambition, the Saranac Lake Country Club completely reorganized the concept of diversified and competitive activities which assured the community early and lasting fame.

The Country Club boasted one of the few bobsled runs in the United States. Curling also became a prominent addition to the winter sports programs. Curling teams from Saranac Lake were recognized across Canada and New England as exceptional challengers and often champions.

“The carnivals at first were extremely local … hardly more than a welcome ‘winter break’ where fun and parties, hayrides and moonlight skating parties, held sway.

“Eventually, a cosmopolitan atmosphere evolved. Incoming wealthy and world-traveled society leaders, many here because of tuberculosis in their families, began to help plan and produce the carnivals.

“Taking a page here and a page there from the Munich Carnival and the Swiss winter fiestas, they incorporated a dimension that was missing until about 1910.

“That year descriptions portrayed the carnival as a ‘monster snow festival’ which, gathering speed and merriment and yet more snow, rolls through the invigorating atmosphere of the winter days of the North Woods, nature’s snowflakes sprinkling natural confetti until no flower fete can excel in beauty the decorative fantasies wrought in ice and snow.

“It was described in the New York newspapers as ‘The Mardi Gras ICED!’ … Carnival within carnival, feature within feature, fete upon fete, the midwinter festival is revelry from the first musical notes of the Grand Marshall starting the parade.

“‘Streets adorned with banners, bunting and evergreens; happy human voices, rosy cheeks, sleigh bells, confetti, merriment, skating carnivals, fandango, terpsichorean [a dancer] ‘en costume, Chinese lanterns with fantastic illumination, smooth ice, moonlight, Paolo and Francesca; the fleetest men on skates to thrill the red blood, championships clean, sharp and manly sports, victory won amid the roar of voices.

“‘Three thousand wildly-cheering, excited beings, sports on skis, breathless dips of the toboggan, the smash of clay pigeons with the banging of the target range; teas, entertaining and house parties. [The last three paragraphs edited by Bill from the New York newspapers.]

“Some is memory and will always remain memory. Some is being slowly re-introduced and much is already here and historically healthy. The storming of the Ice Palace, always the grand finale — a spectacular, explosive, pyrotechnical salute to the gods of nature and aurora borealis — is a trademark of one of the oldest, if not the oldest winter carnival in the United States.

“Minneapolis, Minn., has sporadically launched a similar claim to its own carnival’s longevity, with its sister city, St. Paul, not far behind.”

[Continued Next Week]