Montauk Pioneer - May 16, 2008 - I Know It! I Know It!

Last Friday night at Montauk Downs, the Ladies Auxiliary Friends of Erin held its Spring Pub Quiz with over 200 patrons in attendance. Both President of the Ladies Auxiliary Maureen Keller and Vice President Lexa Tispirido were on hand collecting money for admission, supervising the whole event, and of course directing the flow of the night's activities. DJ Russell once again was the host and question asker. Secretary of the Ladies Auxiliary Jane Libell was all smiles as the Pub Quiz went without a hitch. Also supervising things was Treasurer Deryn Trott, who was active at the front greeting table, where an admission fee of $25 per person was collected. At the scoreboard adding up all the scores from the 31 teams were Claudia Trott and Tricia Cusimano. All night long they were reading hundreds of score sheets, correcting the answers, scoring the sheets, posting them on the huge scoreboard then tallying up the scores, not an easy task at all. Jennine McCann was on her feet delivering spot prizes and awards, always with her smile that reminds so many of her parents.

Kudos and accolades also went to Dan Murray, whose "Tee to Green," food service provided the tasty sandwiches and other edibles. The quiz consisted of 10 theme rounds with eight questions. The theme rounds had questions from film and TV, history and legend, occupational questions, art and literature, sports questions, food and drink, geography, entertainers and performers, opposites of the names given, and last was the picture round.

The team that finished in first place walked away with a $400 cash prize. Runners-up got a $200 cash prize. The winning team was team number 5 with 68 correct answers, consisting of Sima Freierman, Patti Leber, Pat Slane, and Teri Bertha. In second place was team number 4, with a score of 66 correct. This team, consisting of David Rivkind, Veronica Monte, Lianne DePasquale, and Chris Behan actually donated their $200 winnings backs to the Ladies Auxiliary, a gesture so much appreciated. All the raffle prizes and door prizes were donated by so many Montauk businesses that it is impossible to name them all, but a huge display listed all their names in the center of the room. The tables with all the prizes wrapped in ribbons and so forth were things of beauty.

Once again local personality DJ Lonestar was his witty self, asking and repeating the eighty questions so that everyone heard and understood them. He made everyone chuckle with his side jokes and puns. He also asked the pop quiz questions that made so many others instant winners. Samples of the questions were things like, Athena the Greek goddess is the goddess of what? The answer "Wisdom" was needed.

Another tough one was, "What is the tallest mountain in Western Europe?"

I knew the answer to this one instantly, since I climbed Mt Blanc of France in July of 1994. Another tough one was, "What was referred to as 'old sparky?'" The answer to that one was the electric chair.

There were many raffle winners but it must be noted that it appeared the table of the Kinney family, who run the printing business in Montauk and throughout East Hampton, seemed to be sending brother and son in law Ben Dollinger up every fifth raffle to collect a prize. Also in the same category of good luck with the raffle tickets was the table of Vinnie Carillo, who purchased a very healthy number of the multi colored raffle tickets. Mellissa Mahoney and her mom CeCe also seemed to passing Ben Dollinger to collect the many prizes and heading back to Mr. Carillo's table. Vinnie then generously passed the prizes around to others who had not won anything. The President of the Friends of Erin, Joe Bloeker, who was also in attendance and participating, heaped praise on Maureen and all the ladies for another stellar night of community bonding and fundraising.