By Mark Bialczak

LPL Communications Specialist

Imagine what it was like around these parts when hardy folk cut down the willow and fashioned it into baskets.

Or floated in the sky above the myriad resorts that dotted the shores of Onondaga Lake.

Or gathered to hear what First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had to say when she met Mayor Michael Heid.

With the new DVD or Blu-Ray installment of the LPL’s Liverpool Legends series, “The Ghosts of Liverpool Village’s Past,” a quartet of local actors go back in time to take you there.

The work from producer Dan Moore will premiere at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30, in the Carman Communty Room. It’s a 39-minute, 50-second recreation of a trio of telling episodes that told much about Liverpool the way it was, with intriguing characters of industry, politics and entertainment brought back to life.

Jon Anderson, a historian in the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, provides the thread to pull it all together by pulling on an old officer’s uniform and walking between the scenes.

Viewers can take in a meeting between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Mayor Heid, an extended chat as they learn about each other’s place and position.

They’ll be schooled by basket maker John Fischer in a voice filled with passion and humor as he takes them through the virtues of willow and the industry it begat.

And balloonist James Buckingham, a.k.a. Professor De Ives, will fill them in about the resorts that lined the shores of Onondaga Lake as he tells of a dive from his basket and the tragic tangle that ensued

Betsy York and Lanny Freshman as Roosevelt and Heid, John LaCasse as Fischer and David Baker as De Ives educate and entertain from the script by Scott Peal and direction of Andy Robinson. (I had a hand in writing the narration portion, thanks to my LPL ties.)

I’ve enjoyed two sneak previews of the Blu-Ray already. Copies will be available for purchase at the preview, and thereafter for checkout from the LPL, too.