As summer came to a close and the dreaded SCHOOL started, it occurred to us, we had really done NOTHING over the summer. With farmwork, and guests, and surgery, and weather, we really didn’t get a chance to do much of anything outside of the house.
And that needed to be fixed.
Each August, my little town hosts what they call “Old Homes Days”. I never did quite catch why they called it “Old Homes Days” There were no old homes involved. In fact, there really wasn’t much of a theme at all. Just a reason to get together and have fun. But apparently it’s a thing in New England and we were all set to party it up Old Home style.
Wanting to do our part for the community, we took part in just about everything we could. I even donated some of my wooden toys to the auction. We weren’t going to let anything pass us by.
The day started off with a little parade. Which was about as charming as a small town parade could possibly be. Old fashioned cars, handmade floats out of cardboard, and candy. Lots of candy. That’s one good thing about a town being so small that parades only travel about 2 blocks. They don’t have to limit themselves to cheap tootsie rolls and taffy. They can go all out and you are going to get a ton of candy. They even threw beachballs to everyone in the audience. About 20 cars (and 2 fake tractors) total drove slowly past us while an elderly man described the vehicles as slowly as they were driving. One. Sentence. At. A. Time.
Best parade ever. We laughed, we cheered, got tons of candy, got front row seats, and we weren’t sitting there for 2 hours.
We followed the parade off by wandering through the chalk art gallery. There was an impressive dragon done by a local chalk artist on display for people to color in and tons of chalk supplied for budding dust creatives to graffiti the streets with. Calvin and I put in our own masterpieces while Tyler and Donovan watched the corn hole tournament. We opted to not sign up for the tournament this year. I told Tyler he should. After all, he made a corn hole video game which pretty much makes him a corn hole professional. But they wanted teams of 2 and he made some excuse about me being terrible. He’s not wrong.
By then it was lunchtime. And the big “old Homes Days” reveal. The traditional bean bake. A practice held at every old homes days since the very first celebration.
We gathered around the local firemen as they began digging a hole in the ground. As they dug, steam began rising all around them like a heavy metal rock concert. And just when I thought they were going to go into their guitar solo, one of the firemen, reached down into the grave they had dug. What emerged I still can’t quite wrap my head around. But he reached down and pulled out a steaming cauldron. They brought the cauldron to a table as people gathered in line. The lid to the cauldron was lifted to reveal BAKED BEANS! They had magicked baked beans from the ground. I’m pretty sure that sort of witchcraft is frowned upon in the New England area and Cotton Mather was probably screaming WITCH from his grave. But apparently they created an underground oven a week before and buried the beans to slowly bake to perfection. I have to admit, they were pretty good beans. And the fact that they were witchcraft made ground beans made them even better.
After our bellies were full of beans, the next event was the rubber ducky race. In the rubber ducky race, people can purchase rubber ducks. At race time, the ducks are released into the white river and it’s every duck for himself as they travel down the rapids. Actually, they found a smooth side channel for them to swim but white water duck racing would have been pretty fun. Hundred’s of ducks made their escape and raced to the finish line.
I’m pretty sure mine was in front.
It’s the yellow one in the picture.
You see it, right?
Yeah, I think they must have forgotten to call me or something.
Then we got to watch the EMS guys retrieve all the wandering ducks which was actually even more entertaining than the race itself.
After the race I set myself out to win millions in BINGO. The BINGO table was set up in “the grange” and since my last name literally means “the grange” in French, clearly this was a sign that I was going to hit the jackpot. And the price was right. $1 for 3 BINGO boards.
I sat myself down and stared down the old man across from me. He was on board like 53 and thought he was the BINGO king but I was about to show him and the other 10 players who the real BINGO champ was.
$10 later I walked away in loser shame.
Sure was nice of me to let those old people win though. I mean, they did keep asking me if I was from the local law school. And of course I said yes.
Finally there was one last event of the night. The Chicken bake. The firemen roasted hundreds of Half rotisserie chickens on a giant roasting contraption. I’ve never seen so much chicken. They were served along with a roll, some pasta salad, and corn on the cob. And it made for a tasty meal.
The following weekend we were informed that a nearby town was having a hot air balloon festival. Which sounded amazing. So we were off again. I got myself set to watch the balloon launch first thing in the morning, look around some booths and eat lunch at one of the many food trucks.
One problem though.
3/4 of my family wouldn’t wake up.
By the time we made it to the festival, there wasn’t a balloon in sight.
Truly bummed, we walked around to see what else we could do since we were there.
We got to watch a dog and frisbee show which was pretty fun. And as it finished up, a plane started flying overhead. It circled us a couple times and then slowed as 4 people jumped out above us. Parachutes went up and they twirled and tricked and preformed as they slowly fell to the ground. After that, we went home hoping to catch the evening balloon show later.
The evening show was to start at 6, so we set out to get there at 5:30 so we were sure not to miss it.
However, we did not plan for the entire state of Vermont to try to get there at the same time. Now the thing about Vermont is there is really only 1-2 ways to get to a place. Down a one lane road. So you can imagine, when 200 cars are backed up the only 2 roads, trying to get into a parking lot that holds 50 cars, you have a bit of a problem. And when 6 o’clock rolled around, we were still sitting on the road.
But I was not about the miss those balloons again. So me and the boys got out of the car in the middle of the road and started running. And as we ran, balloons were taking off above us. We got to the river to see a balloon literally emerging from a crash landing in the river. It floated back up, water pouring out of the basket. The passengers waving like “we’re good!”
We finally made it to the launching as the last couple of balloons started their ascent. It was still pretty cool to watch.
By that time it was time for dinner. We were finally ready to try one of the food trucks. Thing was, there were so many people that showed up to this event, none of the trucks were prepared for the demand. We got in line for a crepe truck. However 100 people had the same idea (which was better than the 200 hundred people in the pizza line) and we ended up in line for 40 minutes. By the time we got to the front, the girls in the truck were stressed and yelling at each other and in a panic because they were running low on food. But because it’s a food truck, and food trucks cook things slow, they were 45 minutes behind even after you ordered. Luckily, we got there just in time and were able to get some food even if we had to wait an hour and a half to get it. But at that point all the trucks were about at the same point. Either running very low or already closed their doors for the night.
The final event began as we finished eating. 5 balloons lined themselves up and slowly inflated. Squished together like a bunch of bloated sardines, they began to light up. Giant fireflies blinking in the night sky. And then the music started and the balloons blinked to the music. Unfortunately, it’s apparently a bit difficult to light up hot air balloons to a beat, so it was more like they were spastically lighting up whenever they felt the desire, but it was still a pretty sight.
And then we ran out of there as quickly as we could before anyone else decided to leave and we ended up in the parking lot all night.
This weekend we are chilling at home.