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| Jim Kevlin/The Freeman’s Journal Nancy Fisher reenacts her discovery of the Winter Carnival hula girl in Council Rock Park. |
COOPERSTOWN
The third clue was out. The start of the Cooperstown Winter Carnival 2011 was only a week away. Would the hula girl be found at all?
And then it was, at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 4, by CCS senior Nancy Fisher.
Divining the latest clue, published the day before in the Feb. 3 Freeman’s Journal, Nancy slid down the ice covered steps at Lake and River streets, then skirted back along the Susquehanna.
She brushed back the snow covering a clump of rocks. She dug between two small boulders. She felt something. Could this be it? She pulled it out and discovered she was holding a tiny hula doll.
And so it was.
She headed to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Steve Light, the member of the carnival committee who was running the contest, and he affirmed her find.
The means Nancy wins the $500 prize offered by The Journal for the fourth year. It will be awarded Sunday, Feb. 13, during the carnival’s closing activity at Brewery Ommegang.
By the time she found the prize, Nancy estimates she’d spent about 8 hours on the hunt, sometimes assisted by her sister Becky, a Colgate senior home for winter break.
“It’s frustrating thinking how close we were,” she said.
One important clue was provided by her dad, Steve, who was aware that once there was a brewery on the spot.
Also, Nancy had become familiar with an arrow at the bottom of the park steps. The third clue had read, “the arrow points north; reverse your direction to stay on course.”
And she did.
Year One, the carnival medallion was discovered at Three Mile Point after the first clue. Year Two, it was hidden under steps at Fairy Spring. Last year, the Toulson family found it in a hollow tree at Lake Front Park.
The idea for a medallion hunt was originated by David and Donna Borgstrom, who had experienced a similar one in St. Paul, Minn., when he was undergoing his residency there.
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