Keuka Lake, NY - It is the rumor echoing around the Finger Lakes -- everyone wonders if actor John Travolta is shopping for a home on Keuka Lake. As with any rumor, speculation and skepticism are involved.
In tracking down the potential source of this rumor, one must suspect The Olney Place Market & Deli on Keuka Lake as playing some role in how it got started. Or is it just a coincidence that for years a popular menu item here has been the "Royale” with a cheeseburger made famous by John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.
"We've always liked the exchange in dialogue between him (Travolta) and Samuel L. (Jackson) in Pulp Fiction," The Olney Place owner Seth Olney said of the rumor which he insists he played no part in. "(We) threw it on the menu just as a spoof because we thought it would be funny to hear people order Royale with Cheese from us."
So the rumor begins, and pretty much ends, with the idea that the man known as Vinnie Barbarino in Welcome Back, Kotter and as Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction is sizing up a waterfront property on Keuka Lake--a $2.5 million home that sits in the Town of Wayne on the Steuben and Yates County border.
"I'd like to believe the rumor,” Olney said. “I would like to believe that this could be the deli to the stars!"
Just where the rumor appears to stop, it suddenly rolls on with word that Travolta’s plane landed at Penn Yan’s airport nearby.
Of course the airport has heard the rumors too, and a woman there said, "I've been told to say, 'No comment.'"
Skeptics say Travolta's jet couldn't possibly land on that runway.
"There are so many nice planes in and out of here, people say, oh well his 707 would never,” Olney said of that aspect of the rumor. “I mean come on, he's John Travolta. I'm sure he's got more than one plane I'm sure that he's got one that will fit in this airport just fine."
So the rumor mill churns on which nothing is new in these parts.
"We've heard everything from Whoopi Goldberg to Paul Newman,” Olney said of other A-List celebrities who have been part of similar rumors in past years. “For years these wives' tales have traveled the hills."
On the factual side of things, the home’s listing agent, Mark Malcolm II, said that he knows John Travolta himself hasn't personally toured that house. Malcolm would not say if a representative of Travolta's has toured the home--which only fuels more speculation.
A competing agent suggests it's all just a rumor aimed at better marketing the property.
