Belles stand ‘Tall,’ have a ball in Beals

BEALS – Two days before the first-ever Ms. Tall Barney Pageant, the organizer had only nine contestants lined up. After they rehearsed, by showtime last Friday evening there were 14.

Once word spread around town just how much fun the group of older women was going to have, others wanted to be part of it, too.

But they never stood a chance against 83-year-old Lillian Huntley.

“I knew from the rehearsal that she was going to be our queen,” said Donna Alley, the Beals woman who dreamed up the contest earlier this spring.

Beauty pageants and variety shows are a way of life on Beals Island. The younger belles of Beals live for the week leading to the Fourth of July in particular. First they compete in Jonesport in the Miss Fourth of July contest. Then they compete three days later in the Miss Beals pageant.

This one was for the older women of the Jonesport-Beals community. It was pure spoof, a measure of just how much the area’s residents can look at themselves in jest.

Ms. Tall Barney would be crowned in honor of the legendary “Tall Barney” Beal and receive a $50 gift certificate from the Jonesport restaurant named for the strong, looming lobsterman who lived from 1835 to 1899.

Even better, Friday night’s winner and the first princess – some traditions just keep going on and on – would get to ride on the Tall Barney Restaurant float in Saturday’s parade through Jonesport.

Alley and others are hopeful of establishing Tall Barney Days next year on Beals as a complement to the Fourth of July celebrations in Jonesport.

If Huntley had an edge, it wasn’t all her age and swagger. Tall Barney was her great-grandfather. Then again, that’s a claim that many can make on Beals Island. When William “Bimbo” Look, the master of ceremonies, asked those in the audience to stand if they were descendants of Tall Barney, about one-third of them did.

With sashes and tiaras and a gym packed to the brim at Beals Elementary School, the contest was enhanced for laughs with funny walks, poses, dresses and hats. A pianist provided accompaniment. Judges from out of town – lobstermen there for Saturday’s lobster-boat races, actually – guaranteed voting wouldn’t be rigged.

But Huntley would have won by anyone’s calculations. She took the stage – and the contest – with both a wave and a walker.

First she whooped it up with the rest in the “baitwear” competition, during which contestants showed what they would wear on a boat for the day. For the women of Beals and Jonesport, that means looking as much like a lobsterman as possible. Oversized orange was the look of the evening. There was no shame and tons of laughs.

Part of that was due to Look’s skill as a commentator. Ladies walked and he talked.

“This is the first pageant she’s ever been in,” Look said of 68-year-old Narda Davis, “and it will be her last.”

Of the marital status of Lisa Woodward, Look noted, “It depends on who’s asking.”

Later, Look admitted that his ribs had never been so sore from laughing so much.

Huntley, a widow, provided many of the lines that the audience lapped up. Asked to name places special to her on the island, she waxed wonderfully at length about the mud flats near Alley’s Bay, because that’s where she and her husband courted.

For the dress segment of the competition, the ladies could wear any dress they wanted. Some paraded serious gowns. Narda Davis tripped the boards in a housedress and tasseled slippers. Huntley wore the turquoise pleated dress she wore 26 years ago at her son’s wedding and 15 years ago at her 50th wedding anniversary.

To everyone’s enjoyment and no one’s surprise, Huntley was the evening’s winner.

Narda Davis took second, having hammed it up in her own way all evening long. Asked what she might change about life in Beals and Jonesport, she quipped, “I want them to build another nursing home because I’m almost ready for it.”