Old Home Days
"I wish that in the ear of every son and daughter of New Hampshire, in the summer days, might be heard whispered the persuasive words: Come back, come back.
When you read this, our small town should be in the thick of its Old Home Days celebration. For us, it is a tradition that pre-dates the idea put forward by New Hampshire's Governor Frank Rollins in 1899, when he proposed an Old Home Week to encourage people to return to the rural countryside of their youth. Our festival started in 1879 as an annual family picnic. It grew to over 500 attendees before the town decided to fold it into Governor Rollins' grand initiative that was taking root in New Hampshire, New England, and elsewhere.
The industrial revolution of the late 19th century was in full swing in 1899, adding to the ravages caused by The Civil War on the nation's rural farming populations. People were leaving for the big cities and the factory farms of the west. Governor Rollins had been lamenting New Hampshire's population decline for years. So at a Sons of New Hampshire dinner in Boston, he proposed throwing a party, inviting the state's native sons and daughters home.
Every time I hear that story, I imagine myself listening to the Governor's remarks over brandy at the end of dinner and questioning the efficacy of his proposal. Governor, how? There is no Paperless Post. How will we reach the people that have moved away? There are no airplanes or paved roads. How will our native sons and daughters get here in a timely fashion? It is 1899, the fat cat middle of the subsistence wage era of Robber Barons! What chance will our former neighbors and friends have of keeping their factory jobs if they cut out for a New Hampshire holiday? "With your permission, Mr. Baron, I'd like to use my accrued vacation time for a trip to New Hampshire for Old Home Week. I'll need an additional week to get there, plus a week to get back."
. . .
But Old Home Days flourished and survived in response to the Governor's appeal. He wrote:
"I wish that in the ear of every son and daughter of New Hampshire, in the summer days, might be heard whispered the persuasive words: Come back, come back. Do you not hear the call? What has become of the old home where you were born? Do you not remember it - the old farm back among the hills, with its rambling buildings, its well sweep casting its long shadows, the row of stiff poplar trees, the lilacs and the willows?" (https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/old-home-daysbriefhistory/)
Can such poetry ever cause the cement and steel of the city to resonate as much as the lilac and willow of the old farm? You decide. But home they all came.
The weather for the weekend is supposed to be grand—sunshine and still dry as a bone. The festival is well scripted: ice cream social to start Friday evening; the annual 5K Betty Pels Run for the Honey road race in the cooler temperatures of Saturday morning, followed by the parade down Main Street with prizes for best floats (some very serious floats). There will be face painting, art shows, the library book sale, rock climbing, a pie-eating contest, the Temple, New Hampshire band (the nation's first town band), Kid's Fun Run, and the Volunteer Fire Department's chicken barbeque.
The place to be over all others will be the banks of the pond for the Synchro Sisters water ballet. It is the sort of inspired performance that maps to the days of putting on plays and puppet shows in the backyard, recognizable to everyone at the time as both fun and valiant, a neighborhood game of inclusiveness, not execution, for which the crowds always go crazy.
What has become of the old home where you were born?
Shake it out. Shake it out. Come back. Come back.