Winter Carnival

Strafford has a winter carnival. It's really quite a thing, put together by a bunch of people who love winter and love kids but mostly just love living in a town that has a winter carnival. Eva and Leslie did movie night at the gym on Friday. Siobhan, Therese, Kent, Blake, Sherm, Paul, Michael, Jessica, Sperry and Tim put on the sledding and skiing races and ran the rope tow on Saturday. Earl and I did the lunch and snacks; Tom helped us carry everything up, Eva helped us carry it down. Rebecca took pictures.

Tom and Jere did the ice for the skating party on Saturday night with Tom's tractor-driven Zambini. I'm not sure who put up the lights, but some of them were Scott's and the generator was in Tom's truck. Jessica brought the whipped cream. We brought the cocoa. Everyone helped everyone else's kids put on skates. Margaret and Michael brought the hockey goals and extra sticks. Someone made a fire. Everyone fed it sticks.

Sunday was snowshoe and cross country ski races and a biathlon with skis or snowshoes and paintball guns and an obstacle course with climbing and falling and sleds and tunnels. There was more skating and marshmallow roasting and hot dogs. Jere made the trails with his little ATV groomer. Ann and Kent and Siobhan did the timing. Scott was on course to help with the Sled-on-a-Rope. Jere did the biathlon. Hilary found skis and snowshoes for anyone who wanted to try them. I think it was Scott's grill, but Tom and Eric were the ones I saw cooking.

Sunday night was the Spaghetti Supper and awards ceremony. Siobhan, Therese, Bridget, Tom, Jessica and Sperry got the food together. I made the meat sauce with Kiko, the bull who recently moved into the freezer. Andy took the money. Ann poured the punch. Rebecca's pictures were in the first slideshow; Tracy's were in the second. Janet and Ann did the dishes. Sperry read off the awards. Everyone cheered like it was the Olympic medal ceremonies. Bob took the extra meat sauce home to make lasagna for town meeting lunch on Tuesday. Jessica took the meatless sauce for the same thing. Everyone cleared off their spaces, picked up the crumpled napkins, and pushed in their chairs.

Well, you get the idea. It was great. Sometimes people talk about the heyday of Strafford and they mean the years when the copper mine was open--the 1880s and 1940s--and in full swing. And our one-store, two-post-office town of 1000 today is nothing like the one that had two hotels, five general stores, a sawmill, movie theater, a lumberyard, a grist mill, a tannery, a bedstead factory, two dance halls, three doctors and a creamery. But this weekend, Strafford had as much going on as a small city and, for 100 kids and their parents, it was THE place to be.