GOOD TIME CHARLEY

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a larger-than-life man named Charles R. Wood—better known to all as Charley—who dedicated his life to fun. He strode onto the North Country’s mid-century scene with little more than a smile and a hammer, but managed to build an entertainment empire from scratch.

Charley, who was born to a middle-class family near Buffalo in 1914, was a natural entrepreneur. Like any typical youngster, he started earning nickels and dimes with a paper route, but his schemes soon outgrew the typical. By the time he was in high school, he had the wherewithal to buy a home for his family and convert its carriage house to a rental apartment.

But it wasn’t all about dollars and cents. Charley was a dreamer who’d tinker around with extravagant ideas until they became reality. His daughter, Bobbie Wood Wages, says he built a Model T in the basement when he was 12 years old. He didn’t have a plan for getting the vehicle out after he’d