A Yankee Doodle Dandy

A Yankee Doodle Dandy

Can you ever recapture the past and relive an experience from childhood? Vaughn Tower thought he could, so he did—and in the process he made a whole town happier.

When Tower, now 39, was growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, the local fair—known as Yankee Doodle Days—had been held every year since 1870. It was his town’s biggest event, a shindig of an old-fashioned agricultural fair where neighbors came together to compete, display their bounty, play, and gossip—and be a little patriotic as well. Organizers required fairgoers to wear feathers in their caps—just like Yankee Doodle from the Revolutionary War tune—and Tower remembers fondly the feather-bedecked citizens and camaraderie that filled the fairgrounds for a weekend every summer.

Time and change took a toll, however, and by 1982, volunteers stopped coming forward, the fair faded away for lack of interest, and the fairgrounds on the hill—once the site of horse shows and ox pulls—languished.

Fifteen years later, Tower and his friend, Todd Gerry—along with their wives, Robin and Kim—began talking one night about reviving the old fair in their hometown of Charlemont, Mass. (pop. 1,358). Their plans were modest that evening.

“We were just going to have a day of kids’ games,” Tower says. But somehow, as they talked it up in the town, new ideas kept surfacing, and they ended up re-creating a Yankee Doodle Days celebration that now runs for three full days every July (this year, July 26-28).

Tower and Gerry enlisted volunteers, including Marguerite Morris Willis, who brought a barrage of organizational skills.

“Todd and Vaughn asked me to be in charge of the pie contest at Yankee Doodle Days,” she recalls. “My organized mind just started asking questions. Next thing I knew, all three of us were doing it.”

Today, the fair—the sixth since its revival—offers booths with foods and crafts, midway rides, a square dance, a fireworks display, music, a demolition derby, and a Sunday church service and pancake breakfast. It culminates in a parade featuring, among other attractions, scores of patriotic floats, several bands, fire engines and ambulances, and a mounted town crier in Colonial clothes. Children are a major focus of the fair; Tower says he views his participation as a loving gift to his own three children, Amanda, Danaige, and Norah.

The renewal of the fair has had a secondary effect—boosting efforts to save the decaying fairgrounds. Chuck Bellows, who had helped found the Friends of the Fairgrounds even before the revival of Yankee Doodle Days, says the restoration has proved “fun, interesting, and work.” Brush was cleared, power lines upgraded, a new racetrack laid, and the exhibition hall restored. Next will come repairs to the 1892 grandstands and the installation of permanent restrooms. The grounds now host two new events, an annual reggae festival and a Jeep Jamboree.

The revival in Charlemont brought about by the fair goes beyond the physical. Tower notes that the community has had its conflicts in the past, but response to the fair has been, “Positive, positive, positive.” Bellows concurs, saying, “It’s enjoyable to see everyone pulling together in the same direction to build community spirit.”

Town librarian Bambi Miller likes the way the fair brings people together with no agenda but fun. “There’s a real sense of pride,” she says.

More than just pride has expanded of late in Charlemont. Recent additions to the town include whitewater-rafting businesses on the Deerfield River, two new bed and breakfasts, and a recently organized women’s club to maintain flower beds in the downtown area. Like Yankee Doodle Days—or perhaps in part, because of it—the town is revving up again.

Willis thinks the revival has been exciting for the town. “It worked because people wanted it. It strikes a deep chord within this town, and it makes Charlemont feel good about itself.”

Writer Tinky Dakota Weisblat lives in Hawley, a town adjacent to Charlemont.

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