Carousel

When a farmer built something 100 years ago, he built it to last. And I mean to last. One of the things that got heavy use in the barnyard was the trough used for watering cows and horses. Many farmers out in Lancaster County created their water troughs out of solid hewn red sandstone. Ray Burkholder has spent more than 40 years collecting red sandstone water troughs, rain spouts, porch post rests, pillars, steps, walks, land markers and more. At 11 o'clock Saturday morning, Witman Auctioneers will put the Burkholder collection up for bid. The highlight of the sale will be a rare pair of red sandstone pillars with wrought iron gates, designed by famed architect Sanford White.

Despite the presence of three billed stars, the production of Carousel at the Valley Forge Music Fair doesn't turn very smoothly. What keeps this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical popular is not the story line, which is ultimately unsatisfying, but its fine score, peppered with such favorite songs as "If I Loved You," "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone. " The very ordinary voices of the three stars make none of these songs memorable, and the vocal efforts of the entire company are thwarted by an annoying sound system that somehow manages to muffle and echo voices at the same time.

Bill Kromer remembers visiting the carousel of his youth as if it were yesterday. It sat on an amusement pier in Ocean City, N.J., surrounded by the attractions of a bygone era - the "scary house" and the "pretzel ride" - with the surf roaring under sun-bleached wooden planks and seagulls crying overhead. More than anything, though, Kromer remembers the music from the carousel organ that resonated for blocks. "It was like a magnet. The music seemed to call out to you, 'Come ride the merry-go-round,' " said Kromer, 64, of Wayne.

The Haddon Heights Summer Theater will raise the curtain on its second season this week with a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. The show will be presented Thursday through Saturday and July 27 through 29 at Haddon Heights High School, Second and Garden Streets. The summer theater was started last year by Scott Glading, a teacher at Haddon Heights High School, and is under the auspices and funding of the borough's Board of Education, said Lynda Glading, Scott's wife and an associate producer of the summer theater.

Carved wooden animals will be the focus of two auctions next week: carousel horses and related mounts next Saturday at Chadds Ford and decoys tomorrow in the Shore community of Belmar. The carousel critters are being offered by Gordon Riewe Auction Associates of Lapeer, Mich., and Ken and Barb Weaver of Spring City at "an Auction Under the Big Top" starting at 11 a.m. at the William Bunch Auction Gallery. The two companies decided to move the sale from Michigan to the Chadds Ford site "because this is where the market is," Ken Weaver said yesterday.

Onkyo has grabbed the brass ring with three new carousel CD changers (two in the upscale Integra line) that sound great and run performance rings around rival models. Carousel changers are the most favored form of CD players today, for good reasons. They're more flexible than single CD spinners, and lots easier to use than magazine-style CD changers. A music lover can sprinkle a set of discs around the carousel's motorized tray, hit one button and walk away. The tray slides back into the player and automatically commences play, with enough material stockpiled for a full evening's worth of music.

Norma Bergstrom Menghetti, 87, of Newtown Square, a veterinarian who helped restore a historic carousel, died of complications from cancer Friday, Aug. 19, at Wellington Terrace in West Chester. Dr. Menghetti grew up in Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., and in Spinnerstown, Bucks County. She earned a bachelor's degree from the Teachers' College of Columbia University. Since she had experience caring for horses and working on farms in Bucks County, her professors at Columbia encouraged her to become a veterinarian, her daughter, Linda Dempsey, said.

The Devon Horse Show may be winding down this weekend, but more mounts will be on display (with money riding on them) next Saturday at Chadds Ford. Sixty carousel horses will go on the block at Ken Weaver and Gordon Riewe's "Auction Under the Big Top. " The auction will begin at 11 a.m. at Bill Bunch's gallery, 1 Hillman Dr. just south of Routes 1 and 202. The carousel steed to watch is a Charles Carmel stander (it does not bob up and down) out of Fun Forest in Seattle. Consigned by a local collector, it set a world's record in 1988 after Fun Forest closed and it sold at auction for $87,900.

Decked with jeweled armor and painted saddles, manes permanently flowing in oceanlike waves, about 50 carousel horses, chariots, and other circus collectibles filled the William Bunch Auction Gallery in Chadds Ford yesterday, waiting for new owners to buy them and take them home. About 120 potential buyers milled about the hall, snapping photos, scribbling notes, and murmuring about how much the horses might bring. "This is a monster crowd," said Steve Crescenze, a dealer from Welcome, Md., who restores the horses for a living and collects them on the side.

Near the turn of the century, a German immigrant named Julius Reithoffer came to Philadelphia and sank about $3,000 into a steam-powered merry-go-round. For the rest of his life, he dragged it up and down the Eastern Seaboard, scraping by on a handful of coins he had collected from children and their parents by the end of each day. Three years ago, his great-grandson, Rick, scratched out a check for half a million dollars for a carousel with 60 elaborate wooden horses, each frozen in a galloping motion on what he says is the largest portable carousel in the country.

IN ONLY the third game of Villanova's 2011 football season, true freshman Chris Polony got the call to start at quarterback. Right from the first series, it was clear he wasn't ready. Playing against Monmouth, he fumbled his first snap, threw an interception and completed only two of eight passes for 12 yards. Polony was pulled in the second quarter; the Wildcats lost, 20-9. That was Villanova's third straight loss to start what would be a nightmarish 2-9 season. The Wildcats were an extremely young and inconsistent team, largely because they played three different quarterbacks throughout the year.

This originally appeared yesterday by Les Bowen on Eagletarian, the Daily News' Eagles blog, at www.eagletarian.com . INTERESTING developments yesterday that could affect the Eagles, none of them originating from One NovaCare Way. The Falcons hired former 49ers head coach Mike Nolan as their defensive coordinator, eliminating them from the Steve Spagnuolo sweepstakes. So the Spagnuolo picture is clearer? Ahh - not so fast! Turns out Spagnuolo interviewed Monday in Indianapolis for the d-coordinator spot there, with new general manager Ryan Grigson, who left the Eagles for that job last week.

The coaching shakeups continued around the NFL on Tuesday, as Hue Jackson walked the plank in Oakland, the sixth NFL coach to be dismissed since the season began, and Mike Mularky was named head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Jacksonville's Jack Del Rio, Kansas City's Todd Haley, and Miami's Tony Sparano were fired during the season. St. Louis' Steve Spagnuolo and Tampa Bay's Raheem Morris were let go the day after the season ended. Only two jobs have been filled - Romeo Crennel was given the job in Kansas City after going 2-1 as the interim coach after Haley.

In his 13th season with the Eagles, Andy Reid is the longest-tenured coach in the NFL. During that time, the Dallas Cowboys have had five head coaches. Here is a look at how Reid has fared against each of his Cowboys counterparts: CHAN GAILEY (1999) Reid's record: 1-1 Game scores: Eagles won, 13-10, at home, and lost, 20-10, in Dallas. Summary: Reid's first win as a head coach came on Oct. 10 after four losses to start the season, when the Eagles defeated Dallas, 13-10, at the Vet. The Eagles scored all 13 points in the fourth quarter on a pair of Norm Johnson field goals and a game-winning, 28-yard touchdown pass from Doug Pederson to Charles Johnson.

Norma Bergstrom Menghetti, 87, of Newtown Square, a veterinarian who helped restore a historic carousel, died of complications from cancer Friday, Aug. 19, at Wellington Terrace in West Chester. Dr. Menghetti grew up in Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., and in Spinnerstown, Bucks County. She earned a bachelor's degree from the Teachers' College of Columbia University. Since she had experience caring for horses and working on farms in Bucks County, her professors at Columbia encouraged her to become a veterinarian, her daughter, Linda Dempsey, said.

By Rachel Hadas Paul Dry Books. 204 pp. $16.95 Reviewed by Frank Wilson The average life expectancy for persons born in 1900 was 47 years. Today, in the United States, it is 77 years. Today also, more than five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's or a related form of dementia. They are not always elderly. In 2005, poet Rachel Hadas' husband, George Edwards, a composer and professor of music at Columbia University, was diagnosed with dementia. He was 61. Statistics, of course, are utterly impersonal, but it is people who fall victim to disease.

FOR BRIAN BOUCHER, yesterday was a day just like any other. He left the Flyers' practice facility in Voorhees, N.J., after a brief team meeting and headed home to Haddonfield. He probably picked up his two kids at school - a routine occurrence when he is home during the season. He then ferried his son, Tyler, to baseball practice - where his 8-year-old plays in a machine-pitch league. Never mind that tonight is Game 7 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinal against the Sabres.

CHICAGO - It could be that Michael Leighton was just about to settle down in goal and stop some shots Saturday night. The fifth score he allowed the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals wasn't really that awful. It wasn't all his fault, which you could say about some of the others as well. Taken by itself, that goal wasn't indicative of anything. Unfortunately, it already had four friends. Leighton has been very good for a while now, getting six wins in seven starts after taking over for Brian Boucher, and perhaps he was going to get it back together and shut down Chicago the rest of the way. Coach Peter Laviolette wasn't in the mood to find out, however.

As expected, former Hartford men's basketball coach Dan Leibovitz, a Penn graduate and former Episcopal Academy teammate of Penn coach Jerome Allen, was named an assistant coach at Penn on Friday. When he resigned Tuesday as Hartford's coach, Leibovitz said he expected to reunite with Allen at his alma mater. "Jerome has been a great friend since high school," Leibovitz said Friday in a statement. "And I know he is destined to succeed as the head coach at Penn. "The opportunity to help him realize his dreams while helping him restore such a storied tradition was something I just could not pass up. And make no mistake about it. We will work tirelessly to make that happen.

It's all coming back to Janet Fernandez now, even if she's never been here before. Those replica horses she's admiring, hand-carved from wood and adorned with roses, cherubs, and jewels? She remembers them, bounding up and down the carousel platform in Woodside Park, her childhood wonderland in West Philadelphia. That little carousel jingle? It's still humming in her ears - part carnival ditty, part ice-cream-truck siren song. Sure, at age 67, Fernandez now gazes up at life from a wheelchair, not from the tweenage frame of her memories at Woodside.