Hail to the Queen
One of Maine's biggest industries hatched a popular summer festival back in the 1940s.
By Joshua F. Moore
You know it's summer in Maine when young men like the ones at far left begin braving a dip in the bay and young ladies like Miss Betty Perry, shown here, bring out their pearls, sequined tiaras -- and livestock. At least that was the case back on the afternoon of July 14, 1949, when Miss Perry posed on a picnic table in Belfast's City Park shortly after her inauguration as Maine's first broiler queen. Hastily conceived just the previous year as a trade show for the poultry industry, the first Broiler Festival had attracted some 2,000 people who gorged on 3,000 pounds of chicken cooked in an eighty-foot concrete barbecue pit, according to the History of Belfast in the 20th Century.
