History Feast
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Friday, May 28, 2010 7:28 PM
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved Memorial Day weekend.
Because it’s the beginning of summer, of course, that wonderful time of sunburned shoulders and skinned knees and playing outside until the mosquitoes chase you in. But also because our hometown has a colonial reenactment feast every year on this weekend. When you’re a kid, can many things be more magical than a reenactment feast?
I certainly didn’t think so.
The anticipation started on Friday evening, when the smell of woodsmoke would drift out of the park downtown where they held the feast. Across the temporary fences you could see the reenactors pitching their canvas tents, cooking food in tin pots over their small fires. They wore what I thought of as “old-fashioned” clothes, garments that looked to me like they came right from the pages of the Little House stories or my favorite book about a young girl living through the American Revolution.
I wanted to wear clothes like that, long skirts and ruffled blouses and bonnets. I knew my shorts and t-shirts must be much more comfortable, but the colonial costumes looked so romantic. I loved to see the ladies walking around in them.
On Saturday morning my family would be at the gate soon after the feast opened, to get our hands stamped so we could return as many times as we wanted over the weekend. We’d split up, often – the girls to look at fabric and jewelry and the boys to find weapons – but we’d meet up again to browse the toys and watch the blacksmith.
The blacksmith was my favorite part. He did his work the old-fashioned way, sticking pieces of hot iron in the fire until they were orange, then hammering them quickly around an anvil. He’d heat and hammer, heat and hammer, until he had the shape he wanted.
My parents bought a huge iron triangle from him. It came with a stick we used to ring it, and it served as our dinner gong for years. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the sound of the Thomas’s triangle, ringing the children home at supper time.
My sisters and I would sit on the grass and watch the blacksmith for a long time, quiet and fascinated by his work. I think he liked our wide-eyed appreciation, because once he took a piece of iron and shaped it deftly into a little heart-shaped hook, then gave it to us. We loved it.
Because we’ve been traveling the past couple years, this year is the first time we get to take Camilla to the feast. I can’t wait to see her excitement, to watch her enjoy it, to see which parts she finds most interesting. Many of the reenactors sell handmade wooden toys; I’m guessing those will be a big hit.
Maybe I’ll also buy her a little heart-shaped iron hook from the blacksmith’s table. I think she would like that.
I hope your Memorial Day weekend is as fun as ours is going to be!
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