Library of Congress Bicentennial Celebration Presentation - Page 7
Bill Baines, Reno, Nevada. Judges from left: Mike Nesbit, Quincy; Dan Silva, Yuba City; and,
Rob Capriola, Chico.
The following year, having had enough of the studied indifference of Bay Area sports, the club moved its 3rd annual up country to the community of Santa Rosa. Here at last, in affordable motel surroundings, the club enjoyed some comfortable successes, built up its membership and resources, and found the leadership that would turn the Santa Rosa show into a significant national contest, able to attract entries and visitors from other parts of the United States and Canada. At this point in the narrative, it is time to state that all of this was entirely owing to collector Jim Keegan, a prosperous banker of Santa Rosa, with connections to all quarters of the community, who patiently led the little band out of the darkness into the sunshine of Santa Rosa - but as we will shortly come to his name again, we will remain with this general outline.
After nine years off Broadway in idyllic Santa Rosa, it could be seen that only a limited success could ever be achieved by a show so inconveniently far from a major urban center. In 1982, the Pacific Flyway Decoy Association, now with a streamlined new name, and incorporated as a "nonprofit mutual benefit corporation" moved its 12th Annual Wildfowl Festival over to the Central Valley, and the City of Sacramento. This region had always been the heart of the waterfowling sport and industry in central California - which is to say that now it was the uncontested territory of the plastic decoy- but weighing that risk and remembering that humiliating rejection at the Richmond Rod & Gun, the association's leadership voted to make the move anyway.
At this point, the club roster now exceeded 400, of whom 300 listed themselves as carvers or collectors (often both), with the remainder signed up as artists, dealers, or patrons. The coastal states and intermountain states were all represented, with a sprinkling of memberships in Canada and the east. Nationwide, the art of the decoy was no longer in debate. Three journals covered activities in the United States and Canada: North American Decoys, from Heber City, Utah; The Ward Foundation News, of Salisbury, Maryland, and the tiny Decoy Hunter, of Clinton, Indiana. A calendar of events drawn from these reveals a dozen collectors meets and local art-and-carving shows, eight Festivals, an Exposition, and a highly advertised World Championship. Decoy enthusiasm now spread from the Atlantic to the gulf states of Louisiana and Alabama. The West now listed a scattering of annual exhibits, collectors meets and contests, from Seattle to San Diego.
San Diego was now the site of the annual California Open, first established in neighboring Santa Ana, in 1974, by a group containing some of those "original" Tule Rats, who had returned south convinced that decoys contests were destined to become a western tradition. They had organized as the Pacific Southwest Wildfowl Arts, Inc., with a show business budget of $600. Every show eventually gets known for a certain kind of personality, and this southern group was exceptional. Their show was always held in February; that time of the year when "snowbirds" seem most attracted to California, and championship carvers from the eastern states, whose names were familiar throughout contest circles, began coming out west. To their surprise, they found Californians not only welcoming hosts, but graceful losers. The cash prizes rolled eastward on waves of goodwill, made memorable by California wines and hospitality. This is not hyperbole. Eastern champions seemed glad for the opportunity to unburden themselves of all those regional conflicts and tensions of eastern contests - and to tell us how nice we were. As word spread back east the two shows in Sacramento and San Diego became a firmly established part of the national circuit.