At park entrance, all questions answered

The booth sits at the entry to Congress Park.

It is fronted by a pair of neatly-chalked blackboards that list a series of ongoing events in the region and frame the panels of the building outside.

Inside of the booth, which stands approximately 15 feet long by 10 feet wide, is a microwave oven, a small refrigerator and more than 100 different brochures, maps and flyers that showcase the region.

It is here, inside the county chamber's visitor information booth, that Marti LaDue has spent the better part of the past 20 summers.

"People want to know what they can do in two hours. I tell them to go for a stroll on Broadway. Tour Congress Park. Ride the trolley," she says, a symphony of bells that ring every hour on the hour emanating from the black mesh tower of the Congress Park Centre across the street. The sound briefly interrupts the endless rattle of machinery that lumbers up and down Broadway.

In the past 20 years, LaDue has watched the landscape of the city change before her eyes. She can remember when the old Grand Union supermarket used to sit across the street.

That was followed by the notorious Sneaky Pete's nightclub, which in turn gave way to the condominiums and high-end retail stores of the block-long Congress Park Centre.

LaDue fields a lot of questions inside of the booth and responds with rapid-fire accuracy.

"This weekend, hopefully, the Peerless Pool will be open," she tells one woman, who stopped at the booth with two children in tow.

"Take two rights and a left. And watch your speed," she tells another woman, who returns to her car that is parked curbside, then shifts into drive and disappears over the horizon.

"People ask all kinds of things. One woman asked me to her watch her baby so she could go relax in the park," she says, incredulously.

"A lot of people ask: 'Where's the nearest bathroom?' Then there was one man from England who wanted to know where the closet was. I wasn't sure what he meant. And I didn't want him to come back here (her booth)," she says, her sunflower-shaped earrings dancing in accompaniment to her laughter.

Personally, she says she enjoys walking through the state park to see the spouting geyser.

A former kindergarten teacher at the school on Division Street, LaDue spends her time outside of the booth traveling across the country and instructing other teachers on the current trends in classroom curriculums.

To keep current, LaDue says she starts her day by reading a number of newspapers and doing a lot of walking around the city and talking to people.

Talking to people inside of the booth has its own special moments, however.

She'll give her directions then watch the person walk away and into the heart of the city.

"I will tell them to turn right. But they go left," she says, shrugging her shoulders.

"Eventually they make their way back and they say, 'Now, where was I supposed to go?' "

By Saratoga Bureau writer Thomas Dimopoulos

Published in The Post-Star, July 11, 2008