BAKER — Hundreds of people attended the 12th annual Baker Heritage Day at the Baker Block Museum.
Local bands performed music while visitors enjoyed booths and exhibits displaying arts and crafts, home-baked goods, handmade furniture, and demonstrations of past trades, along with local businesses, antiques and vintage automobiles.
Carl Commander and his son, William, demonstrated shingle roofing, a late-1800s — and time consuming — trade. The tools used to create shingles for roofs were a mallet and froe along with a draw knife and shave horse.
“It was a very slow process,” Carl Commander said.
Betty Courtney, who has had a booth at Baker Heritage Day for 12 years, made and sold homemade jellies and jams along with cakes like red velvet, pound cake and cornbread cake.
“I really enjoy the people here and like sharing my homemade goods,” Courtney said. Her grandson, Hunter, and friend, Connie Barber, helped.
Andy and Carol Armstrong had a booth for the first time at Baker Heritage Day. Their craft of making horseshoe and metal art was called Andyworks.
“Andy was a commercial water well driller for 47 years. After retirement he started making items with horseshoes and other metals,” Carol Armstrong said. Their work included candy dishes and Christmas trees made of horseshoes.
Brothers Wyatt and Waylon Perry, of the Baldwin County Blacksmiths, demonstrated the colonial era skill of blacksmithing.
“Blacksmiths made horseshoes, nails and brackets,” Wyatt Perry said.
April and Garrett Constantine came to the event in full Native American attire. April Constantine is a descendant of the Muskogee Creek Indians and belongs to the Wind Clan. She and her husband were there to promote the 26th Annual Pow Wow Celebration set Nov. 19 and 20 in Milton.
A highlight of the event was none other than Barney Fife (also known as J.T. Garrett of Crestview) and his sheriff deputy’s car.
“For years people told me I looked like ‘Barney Fife’ from ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’” Garrett said. “My daughter entered me in a Barney look-alike contest in Florence, Ala., and I won. I’ve been to Mount Airy, N.C., nine times where Griffith was from and have been a parade marshal at least 18 times. I have really enjoyed it.”
Baker resident Sonja Brunson was there with her daughter, Vanessa Menhennett; sister, Mary McFadden; and mother, Lonnie Bell Messick. Lonnie Bell will turn 93 on Nov. 8.
“We come to Heritage Day every year. I like to come to see what people made in the past,” Brunson said.
“People are curious to see what life was like before all of the technology came around,” Menhennett said.
Baker Block Museum board member Tracy Curenton answered questions and sold the books, “The Heritage of Okaloosa County, Florida” and a Public Pictorial on Crestview.
Phillip Hill and Junior Dukes made homemade ice cream in an Amish ice cream machine from the Baker Block Museum.
“It does make 5 gallons of ice cream at a time,” Hill said.
Long-time Baker resident Robert Allen promoted his company, Hometown Contractors Inc. He explained how Henderson Park, where the event was held, was named after his wife’s cousins, Jeanette and Charles Henderson.
As he did some people watching, Allen said, “I really love listening to the music they have out here for this event. I just really enjoy this day.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: 'I just really enjoy this day'