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How much about the festival do you know?

By News-Sentinel Staff

So you’re the type of person who always won the Trivial Pursuit games and your friends call you “Cliff” after the character on “Cheers” just because you openly boast that you know all there is to know about the annual Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Fair.

If that’s the case — or even if it isn’t — here are 32 mind-twisting questions about the fair specifically designed elves in the Black Forest to test the depth and breadth of your knowledge.

The answers and a rating chart appear at the end of the questions section.

The questions

1. When was the first grape harvest festival held in Lodi?

2. What was this predecessor to the current Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Fair named?

3. Why was the event canceled after only one year?

4. When was the modern Grape Festival and Harvest Fair celebration re-established?

5. What group sponsored the reborn festival that first year?

6. In what year was the Grape Pavilion built?

7. Who painted the 120-foot-long, 16-foot-high mural that graces the west interior wall of the Grape Pavilion Building?

8. And who painted the mural which equally graces the east interior wall of the Grape Pavilion Building?

9. What was the most “explosive” moment in Grape Festival history?

10. What role did Hollywood play in the most illuminating of all Grape Festival events?

11. Who was the first “official” manager of the Lodi Grape Festival?

12. Who was the queen of the 1907 Tokay Carnival and what was her official title?

13. In 1934, who was crowned the Grape Festival’s first queen? And who crowned her?

14. How many votes did she receive?

15. Who were the other members of that first royal court?

16. In 1980, who was the last person to be crowned Lodi Grape Festival queen?

17. Who were the other members of the last Grape Festival Royal Court?

18. Why have there been no royal courts since 1980?

19. Is there a chance that the Grape Festival’s royalty may make a comeback?

20. Who was grand marshal of the first Grape Festival Grand Parade?

21. What makes the Lodi Grape Festival different from the other 82 fairs held yearly throughout California?

22. OK, then just where is the San Joaquin County Fair located.

23. Who carried the title of “queen mother” of the Lodi Grape Festival?

24. What is the name of the company that yearly provides the carnival rides for the Grape Festival?

25. How long do the adult stompers get to stomp in the “Grape Stomp” contest?

26. Do the stompers stomp red or white grapes?

27. In what year did Lawrence Welk headline the entertainment at the Grape Festival?

28. How many people were estimated to have turned out for the first Grape Festival in 1934?

29. What was the reason for so many people turning out at the first Grape Festival?

30. And how many people were estimated to have attended the Grape Festival in 1935?

31. How many people visited the Grape Festival in 2002?

32. So, the Grape Festival started out as a three-day celebration — when was it extended to four days?

The answers

1. 1907.

2. The Tokay Carnival.

3. Despite good and enthusiastic crowds, the carnival ran up a considerable debt.

4. 1934.

5. The Mustachio club which was formed by Police Chief Clarence S. Jackson in the spring of 1934 in response to a grape pickers strike in 1933 that saw considerable violence in the vineyards with at least one person being killed. In contrast, 1934 was a year of labor peace with an abundant harvest which called for a celebration,. Thus was born the Grape Festival.

6. 1949.

7. John Garth, a muralist from San Francisco, was hired to do the painting and was paid $5,000 for his work.

8. In January 2002, Lodi artist Tony Segale painted the mural "America the Beautiful" inside the building as a patriotic tribute following the terrorist attacks four months earlier on Sept. 11, 2001. In April 2001, Segale had done the colorful mural above the east side entrance to the building.

9. No doubt about it — the most “explosive” event in Grape Festival history took place in 1937 when Police Chief Clarence S. Jackson, head of the Mustachio Club which staged the festival, recreated the eruption of Mount. Vesuvius and the destruction of the Roman city of Pompeii at Lodi Lake.

10. Chief Jackson got Hollywood set designers Leon DeVolo and L.D. Durman to come to Lodi to create replicas of both the Roman city of Pompeii and the cause of its destruction, the volcano Mount Vesuvius. A total of 10 floats were also constructed to depict different scenes of the ancient calamity. When all the floats had been launched onto the lake, the fireworks erupted just like — just like a volcano.

11. No one else but Police Chief Clarence S. Jackson.

12. Bertha DeAlmado was crowned Queen Zinfandel of the Tokay Carnival. She later moved to San Francisco where she was a successful author.

13. Marie Graffigna Bettencourt and she received her crown from no less a personage than Gov. Frank Merriman before a crowd of more than 8,000 people at the Lodi athletic field.

14. Queen Marie Graffigna Bettencourt won with the still unconfirmed, but nevertheless astounding, total of 19,450,500 votes based upon vote coupons passed out by the Lodi Business Men’s Association to customers who brought at least 50 cents worth of merchandise.

15. Besides Queen Marie Graffigna Bettencourt, the other members of the 1934 Royal Court, selected as top runner ups in the “voting” were: Kathryn Graham, Betty Brinson, Peggi Cellini, Laura Ortiz and Rose Scaletta.

16. Angela Parises Brusa.

17. Joining Queen Angela Parises Brusa in wearing the crowns as members of the Lodi Grape Festival’s last royal court were: Lisa Lieder, Tracy Reiswig, Carmen Rice and DeLaura Wakai.

18. Grape Festival officials at the time felt the interest in the queen contest was falling off as possible contestants became more interested in school activities, working, etc. and became more and more reluctant to commit the necessary to meet the needs of the crowded calendar of events which the queen had to handle on behalf of the Grape Festival during the year.

19. There are no official plans on the part of the Grape Festival to bring back the queen contest, however, there still exists a hardy and determined band of monarchists who keep bringing the matter back up for consideration.

20. Famed comedian and screen actor Joe E. Brown.

21. The festival has no livestock. While the history is a bit blurred, it may have come about through a deal struck with officials of the San Joaquin Fair to let that event include livestock.

22. It’s right here in Lodi. In San Joaquin County, the Grape Festival and Harvest Fair is the county fair due to a declaration by the Board of Supervisors in 1941. The San Joaquin Fair is an agricultural district fair.

23. Nadine Aberle.

24. Butler Amusements.

25. 90 seconds.

26. Contestants in the annual event stomp red grapes.

27. 1958.

28. According to accounts in the Lodi News-Sentinel archives, some 100,000 folks were on hand and that number, in turn, caused the sponsoring Mustachio Club to call for the festival to become a yearly event.

29. An estimated 125,000 people attended the three-day Grape Festival in 1935.

30. A good reason for such a huge crowd — five times the city’s population — arriving in livable, lovable Lodi — was that festival officials worked with the public relations office of the Southern Pacific Railroad and got the line to feature an article and photographs about the upcoming festival in the menus in the dining cars of the system’s trains that ran through six western states.

31. 89,000, according to Grape Festival officials.

32. The Grape Festival was expanded to its present four-day format in 1976.

Rating your score

1-5: You’ve never been to Lodi before.

6-10: Better toss out that CD of the Creedence Clearwater Revival’s greatest hits.

11-15: OK, you’re really from Stockton, aren’t you?

16-20: You know Lodi and can tell visitors the whole history of the Lodi Arch to boot.

21-25: You can probably even recite the exact times when the Amtrak trains stop in Lodi each day.

26-30: Bet you even know that Lodi is where A&W Root Beer and the California Wine Cooler were invented.

31-32: Move over Ralph Lea and Christi Kennedy, your replacement is in the wings.