The day the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile was turning heads as it toured through town, another impressive vehicle made a quick stop in Walton.

Dick Doig said his son, Chief Warrant Office David Doig, dropped in at Bob MacGibbon’s air field in a Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter.

Doig said his son is an instructor who recently was reassigned to Fort Drum. He said he was taking three men on a training mission to Binghamton and decided to stop in Walton for lunch.

"He called the night before and said he was coming," Doig said. "I picked up sandwiches at the new Walton Deli and took lunch down to them."

Doig said about 20 people gathered at the airfield to see the helicopter that is large enough to carry 50 men.

"It’s the biggest one in the Army," Doig said. "And it really is big. I have had a few people mention that it rattled windows as it went over."

Doig said David graduated from Walton Central School in 1988 and has been in the Army for 19 years. He has completed tours in Honduras, Iraq, Korea and Jamaica.

"David has been in the Middle East three times," Doig said. "He has only been in Watertown for a few weeks; in fact, this is the first time he has been back in New York for more than five or 10 days since he joined the Army."

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Delaware County Historian Patrick Grimes has been on a scavenger hunt, seeking out lost bits of Delaware County history.

Grimes said he had been unable to find any written records of the earliest county board meeting until someone recently clued him in that the minutes of the first meeting, held in the Gideon Frisbie house on May 30, 1797, were included in a book titled "Centennial History of Delaware County, N.Y." by David Murray.

Grimes said the book was published in 1897, so the minutes had to have been available to Murray, but they seem to have vanished since then.

"I can’t find any record from 1798 to 1812," Grimes said. "But I am sure they are out there somewhere."

Grimes said he gets constant requests from people for obscure information relating to county history and often has people call him to tell him about artifacts or records they have discovered, so he hopes that someone will unearth the early meeting minutes.

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A special presentation in memory of former Bovina Supervisor Charles LaFever was made at the Delaware County Board of Supervisors meeting Wednesday.

Jeffrey H. Heath, vice-president/program manager of Conporec/S&W Services Inc., the company that designed the county’s state-of-the-art Municipal Solid Waste Co-Composting Facility, presented the board with a plaque dedicating the facility in memory of LaFever.

When the co-composting facility opened Sept. 19, 2005, the building was dedicated to LaFever, but Heath said that the company wanted to make sure there was a plaque to remind people of LaFever’s dedication to the concept of recycling, rather than burying garbage.

LaFever was the chairman of the county’s Public Works Committee when the co-composting project was launched in 1991. The retired supervisor died in 2004 at age 72.

LaFever’s son and daughter, Ray LaFever and Susan Hughes, were at the meeting to witness the unveiling of the plaque that will adorn the building.

Ray LaFever said his father’s "common sense led to an obvious state-of-the art solution to dealing with garbage."

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Staff Writer Patricia Breakey covers Delaware County.