Boughton Park

Yesterday (Sunday, 1/22) we attacked the so-called “elitist country-club” from a different direction.
Boughton Park (BOW-ton) has two parking-lots. One is beside Boughton Road, and is the one we usually use, since it accesses the long dirt-road in, which we usually walk (or run or ski).
The other parking-lot is off Stirnie Road, and is more frequently used, since it overlooks a pond. It also is adjacent to the Bloomfield Lions Memorial Picnic-Pavilion, which is open but roofed. (The Boughton Road lot is about a mile from the ponds.)
Boughton Park is the old Fairport Water Supply. Years ago, like back in the ‘20s, the village of Fairport, an eastern suburb of Rochester, purchased land in East Bloomfield creased by two deep defiles.
Fairport dammed the two defiles with two earthen dams, causing two ponds to form. These ponds became the Fairport Water Supply.
About 20-25 years ago the demand for water by Fairport outstripped the ponds, so Fairport switched to Monroe County Water Authority. As such, the water-supply became moribund.
The water-supply is a pretty place, so three adjacent towns took interest in buying it: Victor, East Bloomfield and West Bloomfield.
They bought it, and made it into a town park, installing those parking-lots and trails.
A board was formed to administer the park. It was comprised of unpaid reps from each town: 3-4 from Victor, 3 from E. Bloomfield, and 2 from W. Bloomfield. They mainly administer park upkeep.
Boughton Park is only open to taxpayers of the three towns that bought it; since they also keep it up. It’s not open to all.
Years ago the park board considered a grand proposal from New York State. It would have involved construction of a beach, beach-houses, and a swimming facility.
Much to their surprise, they were sent packing. Swimming is still illegal. No powerboats either. About all you can do with the ponds is fish or canoe.
No playgrounds or ballfields either, and camping is only by permit in designated areas.
The road is also blocked off by a gate.
So the place is pretty much as it was when it was a water-supply. About all you can do is hike, fish, canoe or picnic.
Going in a different way is hyper-exciting to our dogs. It means Hoovering a whole new set of trails with their noses. It also meant our seeing the Preston Fisher Memorial bench the first time.
Preston Fisher was the Board Chairman/president/whatever when I joined the Board in 1996.
One of the West Bloomfield members had quit, so I thought I’d try it, primarily to counteract the stroke.
Over eight years I didn’t do much other than vote. My primary legacy was the brochure, which they assigned to me because I worked at the mighty Mezz.
They wanted to print a Xerox of a rudimentary map, but nothing doing. If I was responsible for that brochure, it was going to be a class act. I had the MAC-Evangelist trace the map into Freehand (the app). I also scanned the famed Boughton Park hamburger-sign, and a photo of canoeing someone had supplied.
Bottom-line: I was able to do a fine one-color brochure in Quark that the mighty Mezz printed at a discount. They’re still passing out my brochure, and they blew up my map for the park bulletin-boards.
Preston Fisher was head of the Board up until 1999 or 2000. He wanted to let someone else do it; but more-or-less ran things from the sidelines.
Various tempests occurred while I was on the Board. One pertained to park development. The park-maintainer, a crusty old curmudgeon who was a friend of Preston, was putting stone on some of the trails. It involved widening — enough to make it look like the Thruway. The issue was whether this was natural. Me and another guy felt it wasn’t.
Another was handicap-access. A guy in a wheelchair felt shut out, even though he had a private key to the gate. He enlisted various disability-advocates, and was threatening to sue.
That’s when I announced I was a stroke-survivor, and that I didn’t feel I was entitled to special treatment. They were floored — before that I think no one knew at all.
The biggest tempest was when a non-resident of the three towns noisily insisted we were denying his constitutional rights by not allowing his access.
Sure, set up a podium next to the ponds and harangue the geese!
The guy threatened to sue, but never did, and gave up after we gave him a special permit.
Apparently non-residents can access the park as guests of residents. But we made an exception in his case. “Let’s hope it all blows over after that.”
Preston got cancer, and the last I saw of him, he was a mere shadow of himself, apparently waylaid by radiation, or chemo.
He died shortly thereafter, and by then the Board had been taken over by the head of Victor Hiking Trails, which meant a new, more suburban, direction.
Curmudgeon also quit, in a hoary tempest over his grandson being park-ranger. Every Spring we had to hire a Park-Ranger to police the park during the summer; usually a local college-student majoring in forestry-management. The Ranger’s chief responsibility was to try to enforce the no-swimming rule, which local teenagers violated with abandon.
Curmudgeon felt very highly of his grandson, who had helped him build various huge projects in the park, including what I labeled the “Don Mead Memorial Skyway” in my brochure: a giant 250-foot boardwalk with no handrails over a swamp. (Don Mead was curmudgeon’s name.)
Grandson had helped him build other bridges — but they had handrails.
When we needed to hire a Ranger, curmudgeon proposed his grandson. And when we politely refused, he quit, taking his handmade protective shielding off the park tractor.
We had to hire another maintainer — and Mead, surveying his work, bellowed “the Park looks like Hell!”
But Preston was gone too; so curmudgeon’s view of the park was alterated.
The Board met monthly on Thursday-nights, but Thursday was also the day I cranked five sites for the Post. Thursdays were becoming impossible. I’d be at the Mezz until 5:30 or so, and then the Board was meeting at 7:30.
So regrettably I quit. Thursdays had become rush-rush-rush. And I always liked the curmudgeon anyway — I remember riding in the cab of his tired Chevy pickup, with a wheezing Small-Block. Curmudgeon was like me; all the others on the Board seemed to be elitist, who felt themselves unworthy of travel in a dusty pickup.
But our time seemed to be over. The Park Board had moved on. It seemed the developers were at the door — or at least the nattering suburban namby-pambies.
And so the Board decided to memorialize Fisher. A local artist was commissioned to make a park-bench in his honor. The artist decided to use the famous hamburger-sign for inspiration. That memorial-bench was commissioned just before I left.
We never saw it installed, which I’m sure was done with great pomp and ceremony.
“W. Preston Fisher — 1915-2002;” “He loved and cared for nature’s gifts.......” I don’t know about that. Them dams were manmade.