In part two of the Palisade town grouch series, hear all about the history of Palisade’s town grouch contest and its tragic, funny, and silly stories, get the dirt from previous grouches, and find out who our sister-city grouches are…
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Welcome to the Postcards From Palisade Podcast. I’m Lisa McNamara.
This is part two of the town grouch series: the history of Palisade’s town grouch. In the last episode, I spoke with the current town grouch, Jamie Somerville, and a town grouch hopeful, Lisa Moose Kral. The Lions Club is currently determining how they will carry this beloved tradition forward, and I look forward to seeing what they make of it in years to come.
But I also wanted to know how the Palisade town grouch came to be! So I spent some time digging into past issues of the Palisade Tribune, to find out how the contest started. I talked with a couple previous town grouches to hear why they wanted to have their names documented for all time as a town grouch. And I found a couple other cities that also have grouches, and reached out to their representatives to learn about their contests.
Join me for this delightfully grouchy story, on today’s Postcard From Palisade.
A quick note before we jump in. This episode owes a big debt of gratitude to the Palisade Historical Society. Their efforts to both save the past issues of The Palisade Tribune (which we learned about in episode 50, with Priscilla Walker) and to digitize the issues made my research through 1999 possible. I’ve included links to all of the articles mentioned in this episode in the transcript on the website, postcardsfrompalisade.com, if you’re interested in reading more.
OK, now, let’s get started.
In the summer of 1985, Palisade got a new sign on the corner of Elberta and 1st, beautifully handmade by Linda Rocco, to welcome visitors to town. This sign gave the editor of the Palisade Tribune at the time, James Keener, an idea. In a June 20th, 1985 editorial, Keener wrote:
“We congratulate the Palisade Chamber of Commerce on the erection of the new sign located at the intersection of Elberta and 1st Streets. The sign does an outstanding job of welcoming visitors to our town. We have long been in support of the chamber’s efforts to brighten the image of Palisade and extend a hand of welcome to visitors. The sign erected last week by chamber President Larry Walton and Bill Hamann goes a long way to those ends. It is carved in wood and proudly announces that Palisade is the peach capital of Colorado. We were particularly enthralled with the proclamation: “Pop. 1,700 friendly people (and 1 grouch).” That one grouch addition has a tremendous appeal, and it recognizes that the townsfolk have a healthy sense of humor.
“We feel the Palisade Chamber of Commerce should go further, however. We make a motion that the chamber actually elect a designated grouch each year. The title should be one of affection, not derogation—sort of in the spirit of an ugly man contest. The person designated as the grouch for the year should be someone who the chamber feels deserves recognition, either a chamber member or non-member, who has contributed to the town in some way. Besides, such an election is something the chamber can build a party around—an annual celebration of the grouch. The grouch can ride in parades, and generally serve as a good-natured representative of the chamber. Who will second our motion?”
Now, it’s possible that the idea for a Palisade town grouch started earlier than 1985. According to Bill Floryancic, Bill Lorenzen had been writing about a town grouch in the Tribune starting in the 1970s. And Priscilla Walker remembers a more normal-sized street sign on the south side of West First Street that listed 789 people and one grouch.
But the grouch contest as we know it started in August of 1985, when the Palisade Chamber of Commerce took up James Keener’s challenge.
Bob Delavan was the first registered contestant for 1985’s town grouch. Over the next month, five people ended up in the running to be the first town grouch, with Bill Floryancic winning the honor and being named the first ever Palisade town grouch.
The grouch contest was intended to be a fundraiser for the Chamber of Commerce and a way to publicize the Palisade Peach Fest. At the start, each 25 cents collected by the candidates counted as one vote. The person who raised the most money won the town grouch title. The winner was named right before the start of the Peach Fest Parade, with the grouch then going on to be the grand marshal of the parade. So all contestants needed to show up to the parade ready to party!
The contest continued each year, with the names of winners from 1985 through 2014 captured on a sign in the downtown plaza. It has always been a tongue-in-cheek kind of contest. In the old Palisade Tribune articles you can feel the fun the writers had with the topic.
For example, in August 1987, an unnamed author wrote about that year’s contest, on the front page of the Tribune: “Opponents are choosing their corners and are ready to come out slugging in the Palisade Peach Festival’s “Grouch” contest. In one corner wehave Gardner Clymer, known to be a subversive “grouch,” hiding behind a mask of smiles and friendship. In the other corneris battling Mike McEvoy, whose “grouch” tendencieshave been carefully nurtured in private, and who is expected to give Clymer a run for his money. The arena is not closed, however, and anyone can be nominated for thisposition. (Are there no female grouches out there? Or are they all even tempered soft voiced specimens of the gentler sex?) The gauntlet was thrown down this week when McEvoy was heard to say, “Gardner will have to comeup with at least $100 in points to better me!””
And in July 1988, in another front page article, the author cheekily claimed that “there are no rules against stuffing the ballot boxes (cans). In previous years, winning Grouches have even been accused of buying the election.”
In 1989, one of the contestants, Bill “Grand-Ma” Goddard of Grand-Ma’s Restaurant even took out an ad in the Palisade Tribune, saying, “”We’ll do this the Old Political Way, We’ll Buy Our Way” Support “Grand Ma Bill” for “GROUCH””
And if you want to see a truly delightful image, pull up the August 24th, 1989 issue of the Tribune and check out the photo of former grouches riding the grouch train, driven by Bill Floryancic. It resembles the kiddie train ride at Olde Fashioned Christmas, only full of grown men wearing sunglasses and their very grumpiest pouts.
Some years, the grouch contest got off to a slow start. For 1991, the sign in the plaza doesn’t list a name – it only says, “Even a Grouch can smile.” Larry Severson was technically the grouch that year, but he was the only candidate in the running and one assumes he didn’t feel justified in claiming he’d won a contest unopposed.
There are a few darker twists in the history of the Palisade town grouch. In 1992, someone tried to steal Tom Underwood’s grouch collection jar from the C&F gas station. Doug Mercer saw what happened, chased after the man, and wrestled the jar from him, which was found to contain about $100.
But most tragically, 1988’s grouch, Ron Vanlandingham, the owner and operator of the Palisade Livery Saloon, was murdered at the Liv in 1993, along with patron Garry Moss. Their murders have never been solved; the case is a CBI cold case to this day. According to an article in the Grand Junction Sentinel from 2014, Ron was a former Army paratrooper and a father and grandfather. He and his wife, Rita, had purchased the Liv in 1987 “as a way to unwind and save some money for retirement.” He cheerfully joined in the grouch contest for a few years and was proud of his former grouch title. Garry was a regular at the Liv, often helping Ron close up at the end of the night.
Of course, this had nothing to do with Ron’s being a town grouch, it was just very bad luck. So a moment of silence to remember Ron and Garry.
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And so time went by and Palisade grew. In 2022, the Chamber decided to stop running the grouch contest and in 2025, the Lions Club decided that they would continue the tradition. I talked about that more in the last episode, so go back and listen to that one next, if you haven’t already and want to know more.
But I also really wanted to hear from past grouches. Now, it’s true that people have to be nominated for grouch by someone else. But they also need to accept the nomination, so there is an opportunity for them to decide whether or not to be in the grouch running. I wanted to know why previous grouches decided to be part of the contest and what winning the honor meant to them.
So I tracked down two past grouches.
First up is Mary Lincoln. Mary was town grouch in 2022, the last year the Chamber ran the contest. She owns and operates the Slice O’ Life bakery in downtown Palisade, which is located right below my office, regularly sending delicious aromas wafting up between the old floorboards, especially now that they’re back open for the season.
Lisa: It’s nice to meet you in person. I can’t believe I haven’t met you yet.
Mary Lincoln: Well, now you have.
Lisa: I really appreciate you coming in today and talking to me.
Mary: Sure.
Lisa: I’m curious about the Town Grouch program. So I’ve been talking to different people who have been past grouches and Jamie, obviously, the current grouch.
Mary: Yeah. I think I was grouch in 22. I don’t think they did it in 21.
Lisa: And they didn’t do it in 23 or 24, so, you technically were the longest reigning grouch of history.
Mary: Oh, Hot Dog.
Lisa: And I also saw when researching it, that I think you ran in 1990, which was the year that it was only women who were vying to be the grouch.
Mary: Yeah. And Lois Gaspar won.
Lisa: So 1990, did you ever try any other year until 2022?
Mary: No. Well, you know what it is? It’s usually, somebody nominates you, you know. Well, not always, but yeah, I. That was the deal.
Lisa: Well, that’s true. But I do think some people might say, hey, nominate me.
Mary: Yeah, I wanna do that. So I looked at it as just an honor and you know a nod from the town of Palisade. Recognition.
Lisa: So what did it mean to you?
Mary: Pat on the back. Oh, it’s, it’s real meaningful, you know, when your community acknowledges you outside of just patronizing your business.
Lisa: And it’s not about being grouchy, right? Or is it?
Mary: No, but for me, I know at least when it started. I think it started in the early 80s. I think Bill Hamann was on chamber board or something. I think it was his idea. Anyway, for a long time I just voted for a person I thought was grouchiest. I mean, if you can get the recognition. And yeah, it was an honor. Then I got to ride in a freezing cold parade in an open top fire engine. But my oldest granddaughter was just so. Her mom had said, oh, you should ask Haven to ride with you. She would love it. So she really was. She really had the time of her life.
Lisa: Aw, that’s awesome. Was that the Christmas parade? Olde fashioned Christmas parade. Okay.
Mary: Because they did it. You know, they used to do it in conjunction with Peach Fest. And then some of that money just offset the cost of putting on the Peach Fest. Which, I mean, it’s a lot of money to do that. I know that.
Lisa: Yeah.
Mary: I was kind of like shocked when they said, okay, what charity do you want to give it to? Well, if I, you know, I did it for young life because my son’s real involved with that. But I had. If I thought I’d have said the Chamber of Commerce. Because I’m sure they’re a nonprofit.
Lisa: I didn’t realize that they let you donate to whatever you wanted. I did. I thought it was just for Chamber.
Mary: They did that for me. I kind of was like, don’t you understand? You don’t get the money back unless you’re non profit. Donate to yourself.
Lisa: Oh yeah.
Mary: What else? What else do you want to know? It was just fun. It was. The recognition was real meaningful.
Lisa: Do you know who nominated you?
Mary: Yeah. Becky Davis.
Lisa: Okay.
Mary: Maybe I should nominate her.
Lisa: There you go. Yeah, I always wonder that. But like you said, it is, it’s recognition. And I think it’s about.
Mary: Yeah.
Lisa: Fondness and more so than anything else.
Mary: Even though, you know, for a while I was like, hm.
Lisa: So maybe. Yeah, okay, so maybe you’ll nominate Becky this year.
Mary: But I did notice that, I don’t think my name went up on the plaque over there. The plaza. I don’t know. I don’t know what happened with. I think the chamber was, Juliann Adams ran it for a long time and I felt she. Well, she is a member of the community and she really. And it was her background doing something like that. So she really did a really, really good job. And then, you know, pandemic kind of gave everybody excuse to forget everything.
Lisa: So.
Mary: So I didn’t realize they didn’t do it for the next two years after me. I didn’t. Well, no, I guess I did. I. Yeah, take that back. I noticed. But it used to be you headed the Peach Festival parade and they ran it then. And I guess there’s, you know, you get older and it’s like, yeah, things should just be the way they always were. Mainly because it’s easier to keep track of it mentally. But I know that the past few years where they’ve spread the parade and then the festival out for two weeks, like I was like no, don’t do that. But it’s actually better for business. And business is like a funnel, but down here is what you can really handle. You know, it was better for business. It spread out the celebration and I suppose maybe doing the grouch for the Christmas thing, for Olde fashioned Christmas, it just spreads out more fun.
Lisa: Yeah.
Mary: You know, it seems like our Olde fashioned Christmas is more of local. And if it’s not local, it’s, you know, it’s Clifton or Junction, you know, which is essentially extremely local.
Lisa: Yeah. I like having the Peach Fest split out now. At first I felt the same way. I’m like, why are we doing this? But, but what is fun or has been fun is it feels like the start of it is truly locals and it’s, it’s like our celebration and then it turns into the bigger, everybody coming from everywhere. And I do like that a lot.
Mary: Yeah. It took me, the first year, I was like, no. Oh no. You know, and then I was like, wow, this is better because I have two really big weekends rather than so much that your eyes are spinning like pinwheels.
Lisa: You’ve owned the bakery for how long?
Mary: I opened in 1980. I bought the lease in 79.
Lisa: Wow.
Mary: And it seems well, as you get older, that it doesn’t seem like it’s long, you know.
Lisa: Yeah. Time compresses. Well, I love your pastries. Like I really like how they are savory and you know, they’re not just like a sugar bomb. It’s like a such a good, savory flavor.
Mary: I started. Well, I’m still there. You know, as like sort of the natural foods. I might agree with RFK Jr. on something like, yeah, eat real food. Do you know, ultra process and totally packaged stuff and you know, like those, paper towels, pastry that color.
Lisa: Not good.
Mary: So yeah, you know, I use like real ingredients and the best I can get, you know where I could still like sell it so ordinary people could afford it.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, you can taste it and I’m excited for you to open back up.
Mary: Thanks. And I love using local products, local fruit. Oh yeah.
Lisa: Anything else you want to add about the grouch or Palisade or?
Mary: Well, I should remember to try get a hold of Lois Gaspar, because she’s got a funny story. She didn’t. She won. You know, I mean she won. And then she moved a year later and I think there was a trophy or something that went with the Grouch and she moved with it because she didn’t realize that you passed it on. Then she eventually moved back and people were like, where’s her Grouch trophy? She was like, oh, no, I didn’t know.
Lisa: Oh, no. So did they get it back eventually?
Mary: I don’t know.
Lisa: Oh no. That’s funny.
Mary: I know that when they first came up with it, I just. So corny. But, you know, then it was like, no, it’s a deal. It’s kind of a, get your community involved. You know, they get to, you know, they get some input. It’s just.
Lisa: Yeah, it’s silly, but it’s also fun. Like, it’s definitely silly.
Mary: Yeah.
Lisa: But it’s a fun thing. It’s like a unique thing that makes Palisade, Palisade.
Mary: It was a great idea of Bill’s in the end, you know.
Lisa: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate meeting you.
Mary: Nice meeting you.
JJ and Sawyer Fletcher were town grouches in 2012. JJ and I spoke by phone, so the sound is a little muffled.
J.J. Fletcher: Yeah. I’m J.J. Fletcher. I’m currently Mesa county commissioner, past town grouch of Palisade.
Lisa: Yeah. So it. The sign says 2012.
J.J.: Is that, okay. So it’s been 13 years ago. 13. 14.
Lisa: And so it also says JJ and Sawyer Fletcher. So I was curious about that too. So what’s. What’s the story there?
J.J.: Yeah. Sawyer is my grandson. So now he’s 15 because he just had a birthday and we just kind of took it on to be co-grouches because, well he probably didn’t know what he was getting into. He’s, you know, one and a half years old.
Lisa: Yeah, that’s really cute.
J.J.: We had a lot of fun with it.
Lisa: Well, tell me, why did you, why did you want to be the Grouch at that time?
J.J.: You know, it’s just kind of the notoriety, but it was also a way to, to do fundraising. And I, I, if I remember right, the money went back to the Chamber of Commerce, but I, I can’t remember for sure, but I’m pretty certain that the money went back to the Palisade Chamber of Commerce just to, you know, bring out, bring up the marketing part of Palisade. Just marketing to the community for the events, all the events that we have in, in Palisade.
Lisa: Yeah. So when in, in your year of, of reign, do you remember, do you remember any activities that you participated in or anything kind of memorable from that time?
J.J.: Yeah, they, they they had kind of the inauguration, so Bennett Price was the town grouch previous to our reign. And they had a hat at that time that Bennett passed over to me. So he was the previous town grouch and he gave me a hat. And of course my grandson got a little hat too and he didn’t like the hat and he kind of threw it down on the ground. He didn’t really think it was too funny to wear a hat that day. And Bennett said something like, he’s just not. Sawyer’s just not a hat kind of guy, you know. And I don’t remember if it was at the Peach Festival or, you know, it was a festival of some sort because they had a train or a bus that came downtown. I think it was a little bus. And Bennett rode in. No, it was a fire truck. He came in in a fire truck. And then he got off the fire truck and then we got up on the fire truck from what I remember, and went around the block as the new town Grouches. And then you were also in. I’m pretty sure it was the Peach Festival parade. It was the Grouches.
Lisa: Nice. Yeah. have you talked to Sawyer about it all now that he’s a teenager? What does he think about being part of that as a newborn or a toddler? I guess.
J.J.: I don’t know. I’ll have to call him and maybe call you back or have him call you, and he’s not going to remember anything about it, but just that his name’s up on the wall, you know.
Lisa: Yeah, no, it’s like a legacy now. Now when he gets older, he’s gonna have to run for it himself someday.
J.J.: Yes, I think. Yeah. I came down to the Palisade Peach Festival this year and gave the opening remarks as a county commissioner for the proclamation for the county, and I actually introduced Jamie Somerville as the new town Grouch at the Peach Festival down at the Riverbend Park.
Lisa: I don’t think I asked you this yet, but why did you decide, back in 2012, why did you decide that you wanted to run for Town Grouch?
J.J.: Just because it was fun.
Lisa: Good answer.
J.J.: Yeah. It was just fun.
Lisa: Okay, great. anything else you want to share about the program.
J.J.: I think it’s really, really cool that, you know, when people think about Palisade and maybe we’re the maybe the only community around that has a Town Grouch, but it’s more of a notoriety, and it’s not really that, oh, you have to be the grouchiest guy around, because that’s far from who I am and who Sawyer, our personalities are 180 from that. But I think it’s just good notoriety to say. Yeah. You know, you see the population sign when you enter Palisade, by the Colorado River? I think it says 2546 people and one town grouch, you know?
Lisa: Yeah. It’s an awesome tradition.
J.J.: It adds flavor.
All this researching, talking, and thinking about the grouch made me wonder: is Palisade the only town that does this? So I did some digging and I found two other towns in North America with long, proud grouch traditions: Kettle Falls, WA and Evansburg, in Alberta, Canada, both having town grouch contests run by the respective towns’ Chambers of Commerce.
Kettle Falls’ grouch contest also started in 1985 and has the same vibe as Palisade’s contest, where the grouch position is intended to honor local leaders, instead of being about actual grouchiness.
According to the Kettle Falls Chamber of Commerce, “The rank of Kettle Falls Town Grouch is traditionally bestowed on a person who shows exceptional leadership qualities and deserves a place of honor. The Grouch is named to take the lead in the parade processionals and in hosting festivities. The ceremonial titleholder is often renowned as a community leader or cultural hero.”
Kettle Falls’ now-shuttered local brewery, Northern Ales, even put a photo of the grouch on the can for their Grouch Lager – which is an idea for Palisade Brewing Company…
I reached out to their Chamber to learn more about their grouch’s history, and they connected me with the person currently running the contest, Carrie Paetsch. According to Carrie, “the story I heard was that there was a little old man who was extremely grumpy/grouchy and everyone would avoid him at all costs. He was frail and carried a cane, which you see in one of the grouch pics representing Kettle Falls. Someone came up with the idea of nominating this gentleman for a town grouch, and then they decided that would not be kosher, and nominated Dean MacIntosh, who was our 1stGrouch. This tradition has gone on every year, except during COVID.”
Evansburg’s town grouch contest started even earlier, in 1979. They take the grouching part much more literally, though. Evansburg’s town grouch gets a license to grouch, a grouch bench downtown where they can sit and “pester, criticize and grumble for an entire year,” and a sign with their grouch address, “#10 Frowning Street.” There is even an official Grouch caricature: a disgruntled-looking coal miner with unruly red hair, outfitted with a helmet with lamp, overalls, boots, and a miner’s pick.
Like Palisade, Evansburg also has a mining heritage, with coal mining being the town’s primary economic activity from 1912 to 1936. Their town grouch dresses up as the coal mining caricature for official events.
Evansburg resident John Lauer came up with the town grouch idea in 1974, coincidentally while making a new welcome sign for the town that was commissioned by the local Chamber of Commerce.
According to a very entertaining history on the Evansburg and Entwistle Chamber of Commerce website, John remembered the invention process going something like this: “I have a wild imagination and wanted to put words on the sign that would arouse one’s interest.”
After inventorying the town’s population of people, dogs, and cats, he continued: “Ah, the population line was looking much better, but still something was missing. I had claimed earlier that we had Friendly People, but feeling the need to be somewhat more truthful, I thought we should admit to having 1 Grouch. Hopefully any visitor to our village, upon encountering any local who was being less than congenial, would be more easily able to forgive such behaviour … assuming this person to be our one admitted Grouch.”
I am so curious to know if there was a link between our three towns, but haven’t found anything as of yet. Since the three programs started about the same time and originated with the town’s respective Chambers of Commerce, I can only assume that there must have been something in the late seventies Chamber materials, maybe at a meeting, maybe in a newsletter, that posited a town grouch contest as a good way to market a town, and these three Chamber presidents picked up the idea and ran with it, and they became local beloved traditions, carried on to this day. That said, it could have been a completely organic coincidence! If I find out anything more definitive, you’ll all be the first to know.
I have a lot of people to thank for assisting with this episode in one way or another. Most importantly, thanks to the Palisade Historical Society for making this kind of research possible via the newspaper digitization project. If you want to donate to that project, visit historicpalisade.org. The Historical Society is estimating they should be able to wrap this project up in the next year, with all copies in their possession then being digitized. The Postcards From Palisade Podcast is a proud member of the Palisade Historical Society.
I also want to thank JoAnn Rasmussen, Priscilla Walker, Jessica Burford, Lisa Moose Kral, and Rick Fox for sharing parts of Palisade’s town grouch story, Mary Lincoln and JJ Fletcher for taking the time to chat with me, Trinity Richards at the Tipple Park Museum and Carrie Paetsch in Kettle Falls for sharing more information about their town grouches, and Kristin Rocco for mentioning that her mother-in-law made the original welcome sign (which is now hanging in the Palisade Brewing Company, by the way).
Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve included links to all of the articles referenced in this episode in the transcript on the website, postcardsfrompalisade.com, in case you want to dive into these stories further.
In the next episode, I’m planning on sharing the recording of the first Palisade Radio Hour, recorded at my studio in February, when a group of friends gathered to share their stories about how they ended up in Palisade and the moment when they felt at home here. As soon as I finish editing it! Stay tuned…
The podcast’s theme music is Riverbend, by Geoff Roper.
Thanks for listening. With love, from Palisade.