New Salem Old Home Day

New Salem MA is a *very* small town – fewer than 1,000 residents. The center of the town consists of a few public buildings and maybe 20 houses. There just isn’t much there. But if you ever lived there you are invited to return for the annual “Old Home Day”. Presumably it is intended to be a day for reunions of current and former residents, but mostly it is an excuse to party.

This civic party was on July 20th this year. It is a very small party, consisting of some homemade food sales, a luncheon served in the basement of the Congregational Church, a 5-minute parade and, most notably, a really fine book sale at the library and two really fine bands giving free concerts: the Bad News Jazz and Blues Orchestra (18 pieces!) and the Original Blues Brothers Band (a Blues Brothers tribute band). Both bands were excellent. Fortunately we had a shady seat near the entertainment tent – important since the temperature was pushing 95 degrees.

We met Jett’s siblings Sybil, Christine and Ray there, along with our sister-in-law Kim. A fine time was had by all and ended with a brief (for us anyway) visit to Ray and Kim’s New Salem cabin. The book haul from the library sale – 16 books – pretty much guarantees that we won’t run out of reading material while we are in Massachusetts.