Lyle Bolton Plays the Accordion - Liechtensteiner Polka

This is a cover of the Liechtensteiner Polka, which hit #16 on the U.S. Top 40 in 1957. It's named after Liechtenstein, one of the smallest countries in Europe, exceeded only the tiny city-states of Andorra and Monaco. It's less than 62 square miles in size, or just a little more than the distance from Rochester to the Dansville/Wayland area. This was a popular song to play at Oktoberfest celebrations. Dansville was famous for its large Oktoberfests, which began in the 1960s and 1970s along with the popular Dogwood Festival, according to dansvilleareah.... Although Lyle & family lived right nearby in Cohocton and Wayland in this period, then later in the rural hills outside Dansville from 1979 on, he never performed at one of them.
We don't have any footage or pictures of Oktoberfest either, but we do have plenty of pictures from 1957, a year when at least 4 other bands (including Laurence Welk) tried to chart with the single. See en.wikipedia.o... for details. None could supplant the popularity of the version by Will Glahé and His Orchestra though. That summer the Bolton family took a trip to the Adirondacks to visit Bonnie's parents, Harry Olaf Jensen and Ethel Edna (Duly) Jensen. Grampa Jensen built Whiteface Cabins, a tourist motel in Wilmington, NY, which was near the "Land of Makebelieve" theme park in Upper Jay, NY. It was also close to Santa's Workshop in Wilmington, another park designed by Arto Monaco, which the family also used to visit. Some claim Santa's Workshop to be the first true theme park in American history, although the same claim has been made for other parks. Eventually we'll use the family pictures from that park in other videos, but for the time being we'll focus on that summer's visit to The Land of Makebelieve, including its Frontier Town section. The park opened only a couple years before in 1954 and closed in '79 due to flood damage. Some of the attractions were rescued and are still in use at the Great Escape theme park in Queensbury, NY, according to en.wikipedia.o... The very last building left standing at the original site was destroyed by another flood in 2011.
This trip also featured the famous raccoon incident at the Whiteface Cabins. I'll let Richard relay the tale: "Lyle (Dad) built a plywood car top carrier for carrying cargo to the Jensen's Adirondack "Whiteface Cabins" for summer vacation, 1957. We were all camping at the far upper end of the cabin's driveway. We'd gone fishing and put the catch in a cooler for later filleting. I was 10, Bill 7 and Linda 5 so it was interesting. However overnight a couple of raccoons came and ate all the fish. We didn't want this to happen again so Lyle used the car top carrier as a trap. Bait was put in the carrier, the door propped open with a stick attached to a string. Dad waited at night for a raccoon to enter and pulled the string, slamming the door and capturing the creature. We quickly put the carrier upright! However in short order the raccoon started gnawing a hole in the wood in order to escape causing damage to the carrier. We had to let him go and abandon the fish zoological experiment. "