EAST MONTPELIER – There’s a reason politicians so often show up at barbecues, ice cream socials and block parties. It’s where the people are at their most relaxed and most sociable. It’s a lot easier to chat with voters at a pig roast than at a so-called town hall meeting, to which they usually come loaded for bear.
It’s also a perfect chance to experience America at its essential roots. Whether it’s a small-town Montana rodeo with goat-riding events for the kids, or a seaside clambake, lobster roast and Frisbee game on the coast of Maine, the ambiance is authentically American. Put it into your memory.
My first experience in this sort of event was not a happy one. My family and I were visiting my mother’s family in her home town of Berlin, Pa., miles of rolling green fields covering miles of coal mines below. It was the week of the annual Berlin block party, a rather staid event (in keeping with the heavy influence of the Church of the Brethren) with harmless games of chance around the perimeter of the town square. I was twelve years old and had fifteen cents in my pocket.
I became captivated by watching a game in which a rubber ball rolled down a trough onto a tabletop covered by muffin tins whose individual molds were painted different colors. It seemed to me, as I watched, that the ball was favoring the gray-painted cups. So I timidly placed a nickel bet on gray.
In what seemed like no time at all, I had $1.65 in my pocket and dreams of wealth in my head. Half an hour later I shuffled the two blocks homeward with a nickel in my pocket and a lifelong aversion to gambling in my heart.
About five miles from my home in East Montpelier, the tiny unincorporated village of Adamant surrounds a lovely pond with a stone dam and a rapid little brook running down through the village. In the center, at a crossroads, sits the tiny Adamant Coop (according to its website the oldest continuously operating coop in the nation). Every year it hosts the Adamant Black Fly Festival.
This is hardly the only town to celebrate an obnoxious insect. Consider Churchill, Manitoba, sitting at the edge of Hudson Bay with probably the world’s largest freshwater wetland right behind it. You cannot imagine, unless you’ve been there, the hordes of mosquitoes. Naturally, the town has an annual Mosquito Festival, featuring among other things, a mosquito-calling contest, in which contestants strip to the waist and, you don’t want to know.
Adamant is ideally located for the production of black flies, with its cold running water over a stony brook bed. It’s also culturally perfectly located. Vermonters have in their bones the same ironic sense of humor as northern Canadians. So, besides the great buffet (foot-long, all-beef hotdogs!), there are black fly-themed costumes, a black fly pie contest and a parade.
Last year Bea happened to be here on the day of the festival, and was captivated by the funkiness and friendliness of the whole thing. So this year, when I mentioned the date of this year’s event, she actually moved at least one date to another weekend and arrived ready to go.
The plan was to take the roadster and join the parade (there was a Model A last year, and I was told we’d be welcome). She pinned fake flowers onto a broad-brimmed white hat, perfect for a parade-pace ride in a convertible. I couldn’t find a Donald Trump rubber mask, so I was going to go in just a big tuque, dark sunglasses, and a Covid mask. But alas! the weather gods decreed otherwise. Helga (the roadster) stayed in the barn, and we were dining when the parade and kazoo band went by. But we’ll be back next year, if the Lord spares us, and next time I’ll have Wade Hemsworth’s “Black Fly Ballad” cued up, and loud! on Helga’s radio.
More than anything else at the festival, there was a feeling of unanimity, even of sameness. Very little fleece and a lot of flannel. I was seeing people I hadn’t seen for perhaps a year, but there was little doubt about what we shared: the winter just past, power outages, mud season, and daffodils in the front yard. I felt as though, after all my attempts to find home, I’d finally succeeded.
Willem Lange is a contractor, writer and storyteller who lives in East Montpelier, Vermont.
