Somewhere between snorting my own sweat and trying to extricate myself from the wolf’s head without removing my nose, I began to seriously consider my career arc.

It was the early 1980s and I was a teenager at my first summer job: the Big Bad Wolf at a children’s theme park, the kind of tourism business that could very well come to Fulton County as it tries to create a tourism-based economy to fill a 50-year gap left by the glove and leather industry.

And my head was stuck in the suit. I wished I could spend the day at my other tasks: as the Gingerbread Man, an ancient Wild West miner, a puppet show host, ice cream scoop and the guy who fed the Three Billy Goats Gruff, the Three Little Pigs, the petting zoo and Mary’s little lambs.

I’ve heard a lot about tourism in the two months I’ve been here. I’ve discussed it with Mayfield Supervisor Brandon Lehr, read about it in Caroga’s comprehensive plan and with the Caroga Arts Collective, heard how businesses and officials in Johnstown and Gloversville hope to tap into it.

I grew up in a community like that. The Lakes Region of New Hampshire has a number of parallels to Fulton County: an old mill town that turned to tourism when the mills closed. It has Lake Winnipesaukee, a couple of nearby mountain ranges for skiing and three-season attractions that draws vacationers from Boston and beyond.

So I’m intrigued at how Fulton sees tourism. The industry does something essential for any community; it brings in outside money. Manufacturing and agriculture do that. Colleges are really good at it, and any number of high-tech, information-based services do it, too.

But what’s different about tourism is the jobs it creates. The owners of the businesses — the campgrounds, entertainment facilities, restaurants and hotels — can make a very good living. An excellent one, in fact.

However, line workers are often low-skill or no-skill, minimum-wage jobs. I was a Big Bad Wolf; my algebra teacher’s summer job was picking up golf balls at a driving range. My great job skill was making a pretty good frappe in the ice cream parlor and breathing when the temperature pushed 90 in a poorly ventilated fiberglass head covered in orange faux fur.

Red Riding Hood was cute, and I had a crush on Mary, despite the damn lambs. But you see the career potential I was working with.

Years later, I spoke with a high school classmate (she’d been a restaurant server — good tips.) I was a journalist who specialized in economic development; she was an anthropologist researching ways to help Pacific Northwest communities re-develop as forestry declined. She liked tourism.

Why? I asked. Logging companies were often small with flat management structures: a company owner, a truck or two and five or 10 people with chainsaws and a crane to pull wood from the forest. Tourism businesses are frequently small like that.

To create that kind of economy, a community must foster entrepreneurship. Manufacturing communities might lack that because the companies have a vertical management structure and one can spend an entire career doing useful, well-paid work without worrying about keeping the company afloat.

Hey, I can’t sell water to a parched guy in the desert, so I’m clearly not the entrepreneurial type. Not everybody is.

Does Fulton County have what it needs? Certainly, 44 lakes give it a natural asset it can build on. Its proximity to Saratoga and the Adirondacks give a destination for fun while still being a bit out of the hustle and bustle of a busy tourism season.

Tourism economies like that take a while to develop — the Baseball Hall of Fame didn’t make Cooperstown a tourist destination; it went there because Cooperstown already was a tourist destination. My hometown became a tourism destination in the latter part of the 19th century as Boston Brahmins headed north to escape the city’s summer heat (and maybe whatever grows in untreated urban water.)

Can Fulton do that? Probably. But keep in mind the industry would be just one part of the economy. Relying on tourism as the primary economic driver would mean shunning workers who want a career that goes beyond getting a head stuck in a wolf suit.

Dave Gilbo pauses every few minutes to watch the TV across from his desk. He’s not watching football.

Each of the two big-screen televisions is divided into 36 sections. Each of those 72 sections shows a live feed from a security camera in downtown Johnstown, where Gilbo is the police chief.

The technology has come a long way.

“It used to be you couldn’t tell whether they were white, Black, male, female. You couldn’t tell anything they were so grainy,” he said, but now can identify individuals pretty easily.

“There used to be 40 to 50 kids on Main Street and North Perry harassing people,” Gilbo said.

Not anymore. And high-quality cameras have persuaded defense attorneys to advise their clients to accept a plea.

Crime in Fulton County has dropped 58% since 2010, data show from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, which bases its data on the FBI’s Uniform Crime........

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