Nathan Benn. Woodfin Camp 
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come,” says Lucille, “it’s more of a 
civic, or town, event than a family 
thing. People come back you haven’t 
seen for a while; the town’s always 
chock-full of people.” 
Actually, the planning for the 
Fourth of July celebration begins in 
January or February. A committee of 
local people orders fireworks, toys and 
games for grab bags, and several hun- 
dred chickens, and arranges for the 
auctioneer, the booths, and the horse 
show. As the day approaches, Walter 
Smith rubs down his ruddy Devon 
oxen team and the children from Ma- 
ple Hill Community School make cos- 
tumes. For the Bicentennial they por- 
trayed characters from the Wizard of 
Oz. (That year the parade made the 
cover of Life magazine. Bread and 
Puppet Theater figures of fantastic, 
white-winged birds, twelve feet wide, 
floated under the telephone wires, and 
Uncle Sam danced down the hill on 
ten-foot-high stilts.) The parade also 
features Norman Dix and his rubbish- 
removal truck, the college’s 1942 fire 
engine, a two-fronted car, and all the 
horses and bicycles in town. Even 
though Lucille and her daughter Judy 
spend most of the day in the kitchen 
of the village firehouse stirring vats 
of mostaccioli sauce, they never miss 
the parade, the Shriner calliope, the 
clowns. After dusk the ballfield fills 
with kids and cars and mating fireflies, 
and fireworks exploding at the edge 
of the bordering woods end the day. 
There are never enough hours in 
the days of summer. Vegetables con- 
tinually need picking. Lucille still puts 
up green and yellow beans in Mason 
and Ball jars. In the days before every 
family had a big freezer in the cellar, 
not only were all the different veg- 
etables canned but chicken and beef 
as well. At the end of the summer 
it was not unusual to have 400 jars 
on the shelves that lined the cellar, 
each food in its special place. “You 
canned in a great big copper boiler,” 
explains Lucille, showing its size with 
her arms. “You could fit fifteen quarts 
in the boiler if you mixed square and 
round jars, but only fourteen if they 
were all round.” 
The canning was not such a tedious 
job — many hands really did make 
lighter work. They still do, of course, 
but freezing is a lot easier than can- 
ning. The Rural Electrification Ad- 
ministration brought electricity into 
most of Vermont’s rural areas in the 
1930s, and freezers arrived about 
Draft horses display their strength 
during summer festivities. 
twenty years ago through the Wash- 
ington County Electric Co-op. 
Beginning with the first new moon 
in July, if the weather’s been right, 
if there was enough snow cover all 
winter and June was not too dry, the 
boletus mushrooms grow. Sometimes 
these mushrooms are as big around 
as dinner plates, all shades of leathery 
brown on a firm stem. Their growing 
places are guarded secrets. Mush- 
rooming is a passion, particularly of 
the Italians, as well as some of the 
French Canadians. For the thirty-odd 
years Lucille and Sil have been mar- 
ried, they have gone mushrooming. 
The whole family goes, carrying large 
burlap bags up the side hills. 
“You lift up a spruce bough,” Lu- 
cille chuckles, 
and the ground is covered with mush- 
rooms. You fall to your knees, spruce 
needles scratching down your neck, and 
pick as fast as you can. You get so excited, 
no matter how many times you’ve done 
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