Imagine opening a newspaper and finding a much younger version of yourself (see “Harvard’s Fourth of July: How one man’s vision led to a cherished town celebration“) in that red shirt with the yellow piping that you must have worn everywhere when it was warm out and you were eight, hanging on to a little flag, with the short haircut no one today knows you to have had, and your little-bit-older sister behind you with only the top of her head showing. (What a coup to actually have been in front of her!) A little nugget from a pleasurable day that leaps out at you from your hometown newspaper!
Fourth of Julys since “the ’70s” are much the same (tho this photo could be ’68 or ’70), I can attest; only names change. Dick Cronin is standing slim and tall here on the right in the photo; most people today know his name because the high school auditorium was named for him, but it was named for him because he was a great guy. And that’s likely his daughter at the table (I’m guessing), who taught me how to swim and whom I adored so much that I got up early and picked strawberries from my strawberry patch on Slough Road to bring to her at the beach. And that Snoopy! It was such a ’70s Snoopy, not Snoopy at all but a “I’m supposed to be Snoopy”-Snoopy, and you as a kid adored Peanuts and wished that awful fake Snoopy would leave and the real Snoopy could show up.
The girl with the long hair on the bike to my left (to my right in the photo) I don’t remember (yet), and it’s hard to make out a lot of definition due to the effect of all these decades of decrepitude (!) on my visual acuity, but this was such a pleasant surprise that I even mentioned it singing at the General Store last Friday night. It caused a ripple of reminiscence in my family, which we all enjoyed. Thank you so much.
Helen J. Batchelder
Old Mill Road
