Fans to descend on Pa. hamlet that was Monkee's hideaway

BEAVERTOWN, Pa. - In death, you could say, Monkees singer Davy Jones is on tour again.

His funeral was Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Fla. Memorials are planned in Los Angeles, New York City, and his native England. But amid the global fanfare, legions of social-media-savvy fans are flocking to this rural Pennsylvania borough for a modest commemoration.

Tiny Beavertown, 160 miles northwest of Philadelphia, is honoring Jones on Saturday with a four-hour event to celebrate his music and pay tribute to a fondly remembered resident.

Jones, 66, who died Feb. 29 in Florida, bought a clapboard home in Beavertown two decades ago. Here, the 1960s teen idol could ride his horses, feed his cats, and live in anonymity.

Relative anonymity, that is. Neighbor Carol Wickard recalls how a decade or so ago, Jones would don a long-haired wig to trim his hedges even though fans only sporadically came by.

"I'd tell him, 'Davy, I know it's you.' He'd say something and I'd say, 'Just don't open your mouth. You're the only person around with an English accent.' "

Jones, immortalized by chart-topping hits such as "Daydream Believer," spent recent winters in Florida but called Beavertown home. He hosted neighbors at his modest Colonial with peeling yellow paint. He was restoring a tumbledown church, hoping to create a Monkees museum and a theater. He rode his horses around town and paid his water bill, like the other 976 residents, at the borough hall.

Beavertown is in the Middle Creek Valley, sandwiched between Jack's Mountain and Shade Mountain, their slopes dotted with sprawling chicken farms that serve Empire Kosher Poultry and organic chicken processor Bell & Evans. The area counts among its population many Amish and Mennonites who work in the building trades and on family farms.

For years, the borough's most famous resident was a car - the LuLu, a short-lived model made by the Kearns Motor Car Co. in 1914. Then Jones arrived.

He planted roots in this remote spot ("20 miles from anywhere," as one resident puts it), buying 13 acres on the borough's edge. The house was large but hardly fancy, with stables out back.

What drew the onetime international heartthrob here? Mayor Cloyd Wagner says Jones first visited with a former Monkees musical director who hailed from the borough, and he fell in love with the rolling landscape.

"He said, 'This is just like England,' " recalled Wagner, who described Jones as someone you'd run into at the post office - a contrast from the years when, as former bandmate Michael Nesmith told Rolling Stone magazine this week, the Monkees regularly fled adoring fans "like rabbits."

The Beavertown event is the brainchild of Altoona resident Mike Shoenfelt, who said he thought he was Jones' No. 1 fan until he looked online.

Shoenfelt and the mayor decided on a two-part tribute: a "jam fest" on the Firemen's Carnival Grounds at noon, followed by a 3 p.m. service at the church Jones was rehabbing.

A site on Facebook spread the word. Shoenfelt said in an e-mail that after he plugged in a date, things took off. Suddenly, more than 800 people from as far away as Texas and Ontario were vowing to trek to Beavertown.

One fan wrote that she'd named her daughter for the girl called "Sleepy Jean" in "Daydream Believer" and made her son's middle name "David" for Jones.

Neither Jones' old bandmates nor his widow and his four daughters from previous marriages plans to attend, but Wagner said they are sending remarks to be read aloud.

For his part, the mayor is concerned with crowd control. "This is a tidal wave," said Wagner. "Our population is going to double." Fans are urged to bring their own lawn chairs but leave behind their liquor.

To suggestions that a typical boomer-age Monkees fan may be more likely to nod off than run amok, he harked back, sort of, to a familiar concern of 1960s mayors: outside agitators. "I'm not concerned about his fans," said Wagner, 81. "But such a large occasion might create trouble - you know, people who want souvenirs."

"He loved his animals as much as life itself," said his neighbor, Wickard. Trained as a jockey, Jones owned thoroughbreds and raced as recently as 1994, when he won a race in Britain.

Wickard, who took care of Jones' house when he was away, said the most important residents were his cats: Big Red, Fluffy, Momma and Liekey. Two live under heat lamps in the barn; two in the house that Jones spent $4,000 to heat in winter - for the cats - when he was in Florida.

He kept his horses in Beavertown much of the year. Residents say it was not unusual to hear a clip-clop of hooves at dusk and see Jones after a mountain ride.

Wagner said the old church was an eyesore until Jones bought it, installed a steeple, and painted it. Jones wanted to open a Monkees museum inside with his memorabilia, and to add a theater to bring performing arts back to a town that once boasted an opera house. "It probably won't happen without his leadership," the mayor said.

Wickard hopes Jones' family will help. "When it was down, he helped this town," she said, looking across the road at Jones' house, where fans and neighbors have pinned roses and notes to the rickety wooden gate. "He gave a donation to keep the library open. Dave would do anything for us."