Three local leaders were arrested Friday night, Aug. 10, and charged with the crime of being clean shaven within the limits of the Village of Ballston Spa.
State Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, R-Schenectady, Ballston Supervisor Ray Callanan, and Milton Supervisor Frank Thompson were hauled into Wiswall Park in the heart of the village and seated before Kangaroo Kourt Judge Paul Farnan to answer the charges.
The trial was all part of the village’s bicentennial festivities, which includes a resurgence of the Brothers of the Brush organization, which requires all adult men to adorn their faces with beards, moustaches, goatees or long sideburns.
Tedisco, Callanan and Thompson had the audacity to sip coffee in the village with freshly shaven faces and not even a trace of stubble.
You are legally arrested for having no facial hair, said Farnan. `He who has no hair on his face cannot be trusted. These officials thwarted the rules of the people. The lessons of history are important; if you let the little things go, soon all institutions will look as if they were hit by a steamroller.`
In front of a crowd of about 75 people eagerly watching from picnic blankets and folding chairs, defense attorneys argued that the arrest reeked of entrapment.
Village Mayor John Romano was called to the witness stand and confessed to luring the trio into the village limits.
`I invited the men to the Coffee Planet, knowing specifically they had not grown facial hair,` said Romano.
Farnan sentenced all four men to a few minutes behind bars in the wooden jail built for the occasion, and worse, in head stocks imprisoning them by their neck and wrists. Photos were taken for the village’s 2007 time capsule.
Others in the crowd showed their bicentennial spirit by dressing in 1950s garb. Sisters Ruth and Betty Coleman wore the same lilac and white gingham dresses and bonnets they wore as they rode in the sesquitennial parade in 1957.
`Our mother made five dresses for us and our sisters,` said Ruth Coleman. `I was supposed to ride on a bicycle built for two, but I ended up walking in that parade. I remember everyone was dressed up, even people watching from the curbs. It poured rain right after it ended.`
This year’s bicentennial parade takes place Saturday, Aug. 18, down Milton Avenue, and is expected to last three hours.
`We’re riding on a float this time around,` said Betty Coleman.
The court proceedings were followed by a men’s facial hair contest, awarding men first, second and third place ribbons for their fuzzy faces. Most of the men began sprouting their chin hair in January 2007 when the bicentennial year began. On Saturday after the parade, there will be a final Brothers of the Brush contest, with the winner determined by audience applause.
`We’re encouraging everyone to bring lots of family members and friends,` said bicentennial committee volunteer Frank Griffin. `What better way to go down in village history?“