A tour through Vermont's crazy July 4 history

100 Years Ago:  A giant flat iron glides along in the 1914 Independence Day Parade at the Springfield Fairgrounds (now Riverside Middle School Park.)

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2014/07/03/tour-vermonts-crazy-july-history/12072241/

A tour through Vermont's crazy July 4 history TIM JOHNSON, Free Press Staff Writer 12:06 a.m. EDT July 3, 2014 LEAD PHOTO.jpg (Photo: EMILY McMANAMY/FREE PRESS) Independence Day memories have a way of commingling. Most people would be hard-pressed to distinguish between the July 4th festivities of last year and of the year before or the year before that. As recollections, the fireworks and the buntings and the sunny parades tend to blend together, just like fun and tedium. How Vermonters go about celebrating the big day doesn't seem to be a topic for serious study. That's unfortunate, because a scattershot glimpse into July 4 annals, going back to the late 18th century, turns up a mind-boggling array of somber rituals and sheer goofiness from one town to the next. Whether that eclectic tradition of Independence Day festivals somehow reflects the evolving personality of a state that likes to think of itself as both quirky and patriotic — well, that's the stuff of term papers and master's theses. Before scholars start paying attention, we can offer this whirlwind summary: Back when 1776 was a living memory, just a generation or two past, the typical July 4 event was filled with lengthy orations and florid odes and classical music, sort of like a prolonged church service. Then, some time after the Civil War, Vermont found its sense of humor and zaniness took over — except in places like staid-old Burlington, which kept a lid on the craziness. These two strains — earnest, patriotic commemoration vs. gleeful, mocking abandon — are still with us today. Instead of ponderous orations, we have porch flags, military marchers, and turgid op-eds invoking the Founding Fathers. And instead of "horribles" parades, we have annual processions like those of the Williston lawn-chair drill team and the Bristol outhouse race. BUR 0630 bristol flags C2.jpg American flags decorate Main Street in Bristol on Monday June 30, 2014 in advance of the town's Independence Day celebration.(Photo: EMILY McMANAMY/FREE PRESS) Then of course there's that spectacle in Warren, now in its 66th year. No one knows for sure who's coming, even though the turnout typically exceeds the regional population. Warren always holds its parade on the July 4th, and if that happens to be a Sunday, church services are moved to Saturday. By contrast, Burlington and Montpelier both hold their festivities on July 3rd, although organizers can't say exactly how long this has been the case, or why, although they talk vaguely about not wanting to overshadow smaller, surrounding towns that stage their festivals on July 4th. In the 19th century, though, Burlington and Montpelier were doing it on the 4th. We know this by browsing holiday broadsides in the collection of the Vermont Historical Society. Broadsides were posters, or handbills, that let everybody know the program of events. The July 4, 1839, lineup in Burlington began at 9 a.m.: Sunday school children were to assemble at the Methodist chapel for an address and "appropriate exercises." This was followed by a procession to the courthouse, where refreshments were provided, followed by another procession up the hill to the University of Vermont, then back downtown to "the brick church" for a reading of the Declaration of Independence and another address. -BUR 0702 july 4th flags C3.jpg_20140702.jpg A U.S. flag shares porch space with summer flowers Tuesday on South Winooski Avenue in Burlington. Photographed Tuesday, July 1, 2014.(Photo: JOEL BANNER BAIRD/FREE PRESS) "The company will be dismissed after the exercises at the church," the broadside stated. No room for levity, but the evening offered other diversions: "steamboats, air balloon, fireworks." Burlington's centennary observance, on July 4, 1876, gave a nod to the emerging societal frivolity. A "Parade of the Antiques and Horribles" was scheduled for 7 a.m. After that, the city's establishment took over: Gen. William Wells led the real parade — "the grand procession" — at 10 a.m., and there were the "exercises" at Battery Park that comprised orations, prayers, "My Country Tis of Thee." oration.JPG The opening text of an oration delivered in Rutland by Nathan Osgood on July 4, 1799, by a mere 23 years after the birth of the nation. (Photo: Courtesy Vermont Historical Society ) Pretty staid. In those days, it seems, you had to be in a little town to really let your hair down. Horribles and callithumpians In the last quarter of the 19th century in Vermont, "horribles" parades were common on July 4th. They usually took place fairly early in the morning — and for good reason. These were parades in which commonfolk dressed up in outlandish costumes and made fun of the upper crust. The "horribles" phenomenon originated in Boston "as a reaction to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston's solemn Independence Day parades," wrote to Gail Wiese in the Vermont Historical Society's newsletter. "This company, a military organization limited to the social elite, provided a likely target for parody as a group of rich men playing soldier ..." "Ancient and Honorable" inspired the spoofy variant, "Antique and Horrible," which caught on across the countryside. Another urban tradition — that of the "callithumpians" — also made its way to Vermont. To understand callithumpians, we have to make a brief detour to New York City or Philadelphia, where Christmas and New Year's were once a time for noisy antics: "Mocking the genteel manner of the upper classes, revelers made social visits to the homes of the city elite, paraded to cacophy down the main streets and demanded attention in their outrageous costumes," wrote Penne L. Restad in "Christmas in America: A History" (1995). "During the 1820s, '30s and '40s, urban rowdies — young, male and usually poor — built on the general license of the season and began to cross the line from ritualized mayhem to anarchic melee. Mobs known as callithumpian bands roamed New York City, banging and blowing on homemade instruments, intent on creating mischief to match their noise." While this holiday rowdiness was on its way out in the big cities after the 1860s as the middle class finally cracked down, according to Restad, so-called callithumpians were still running around on July 4 in Vermont a decade later. As Wiese puts it, they provided accompaniment for the horribles. Woodstock's 1874 program began with a parade of the horribles at 10 a.m., featuring a "particularly pompous leader, Garrulous Goosequill" and an oration by "Hon. Demosthenes Cicero Blowpipe." That afternoon, the program promised, "A band without instruments will attend. The members of this band were captured in Siam and possess the art of making music peculiar to themselves by a process of their own." The official program of Springfield's 1888 July 4th observance begins with "salute of 38 guns at sunrise, followed, at 8:30 a.m., by "Parade of Calithumpians, ending with speeches in the square." Cavendish and Proctorsville's 1898 event offered "free red lemonade for all" and "music by the Cavendish Cornet Band, assisted by the Felchville Calthumpian Band and small boys with firecrackers." bside1898.JPG A broadside with the schedule of events for the 1898 July 4th observance by Cavendish and Proctorsville, featuring “free red lemonade for all” and musical accompaniment by the Felchville Calthumpian Band and “small boys with firecrackers.” (Photo: Courtesy Vermont Historical Society ) For zaniness, none of the broadsides can top Bradford's 1880 edition, headlined "Don't Read This!" That year, July 4 fell on on a Sunday, so the broadside began: "Desiring to attend church on the Sabbath and fearing the world may come to some untimely end, (we) have decided to hold our celebration on the 3rd." First up was a procession of "Ancient and Horables of Cassville, Antiques and Horribles of Pickleville, Citizens in Carriages, Invited Guests on Foot, governors, members of Congress, members of the State Legislature, town and city governments." Bringing up the rear would be The Hardware Chorus, "singing national airs such as 'There was a girl named Dinah.'" The remainder of the morning program was just as whimsical, promising such things as "a bear garden" and an "oration on the nimbility of alligators" and a police chief riding a mastodon, culminating with a torchlight parade at high noon. How Bradford's actual event played out is anybody's guess. By the early 20th century, the horribles and callithumpians had mostly disappeared. Who knows? Perhaps the social elite, or whoever was lining up the acts for July 4th celebrations, had had enough. In St. Albans, the Business and Men's Professional Association cast July 4, 1914, as a celebration of 100 years of peace between the United States and Great Britain. (The start of World War I was a few weeks away, so the organizers could be forgiven for congratulating everyone for a peaceful century.) The souvenir booklet for the "Peace Centennial Celebration," in the course of touting St. Albans' virtues, took note of major July 4th celebrations of the recent past. The programs of 1872, 1878 and 1888 all included "Antiques and Horribles," but not in 1901, and if they were present in 1914, they clearly were not among the sanctioned celebrants. A selective chronology Not until 1850 did the Vermont General Assembly get around to sanctioning public holidays. New Year's, Christmas and July 4th were among the first designated as bank holidays. Asked what signal events have occurred in Vermont on July 4th, the Office of the Secretary of State consulted the State Archives and produced a short list: 1837: Work purportedly began on Burlington's breakwater on July 4th. 1873: The Ethan Allen Mounument in Burlington's Greenmount Cemetery was dedicated on July 4th. 1927: The July 4th parade in Montpelier was the venue where the Vermont Ku Klux Klan made its last appearance of any significance. (The Vermont Historical Society has a photo of the 1927 KKK rally in Montpelier: dozens of hooded Klansmen, many of them holding flags.) Another year that deserves mention is 1872. Calvin Coolidge, who served as president from 1923 to 1929, was born in Plymouth Notch on July 4 of that year. "Of course, the Fourth of July meant a great deal to me, because it was my birthday," Coolidge wrote in his autobiography, published in 1929. "The first one I can remember was when I was four years old. My father took me fishing in the meadow brook in the morning. I recall that I fell in the water, after which we had a heavy thundershower, so that we both came home very wet. Usually there was a picnic celebration that day." If that excerpt whets your interest in the 30th president, you have an opportunity Friday to hear more — much more. The annual graveside ceremony in Plymouth Notch, arranged by the Calvin Cooledge Presidential Foundation, will be followed in Plymouth's Christian Union Church by a full-length group reading of the autobiography, which includes observations like this about his early life: "While in theory I was always urged to work and to save, in practice I was permitted to do my share of playing and wasting. My playthings often lay in the road to be run over, and my ball game often interfered with my filling the wood box. I have been taken out of bed to do penance for such derelictions." From start to finish, the reading expected to take about 4 hours. (The 1929 Cosmopolitan Book Corp. edition runs to 247 pages, in big type.) The performance brings to mind what used to be a staple of July 4 celebrations, the oration. If you wonder why Fourth of July orations have gone the way of the horribles and the callithumpians, consider these introductory remarks by Sellick Osborn, who delivered them on July 4, 1816 in Windsor. The point of gathering on July 4, Osborn said, was "to remind each other of the perils we have escaped, and how they were averted — to enjoy together the advantages we have obtained, where they were derived — to enhance our blessings by participation — to promote congeniality of sentiment by temperate convivial intercourse; are objects worthy of this hallowed festival. To exceed these would but tend to corruption, to come short would evince the degeneracy of our manners...." Then he went on like this for 24 dense, single-spaced pages. If you still are interested in hearing an oration, Montpelier — of all places — is offering an intriguing alternative. A reading of Frederick Douglass' 1852 essay, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," will take place on the steps of Montpelier City Hall, starting at noon Thursday, July 3, Montpelier's ersatz Independence Day. New old traditions -BUR 0702 july 4th flags C1.jpg_20140702.jpg Old Glory flies from the stern of a parked motorcycle Tuesday on Main Street in Burlington, across from City Hall. Photographed Tuesday, July 1, 2014.(Photo: JOEL BANNER BAIRD/FREE PRESS) For Burlington, the modern era of major fireworks displays began with the Bicentennial Celebration of July 4, 1976, which happened to be a Sunday. Pat Robins chaired the July 4th committee that made the arrangements. It was quite an evening, he recalls, with hundreds of boats on the lake taking in the show. The fireworks were set off from the breakwater. Members of the business community used the cigars they were smoking to light the fuses. Nowadays, computers run the big pyrotechnic shows. Some things about July 4th don't change, though. Warren's come-what-may attitude still prevails. "We don't register any floats," said Susan Klein, of the Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce. "We have no idea who's going to show up." But show up they do — recent estimates put the turnout at 6,000 people. "The Mad River Valley's population is 5,000," Klein said. "This is the biggest per capita parade in the world." Warren's "wild, wacky, and wickedly fun parade, street dance, and family festivities" have some novel elements, including buddy badges and a beer garden at the elementary school. But Williston's lawn chair routine, a fixture in the town's July 4th parade for the last quarter-century or so, never changes. "We do exactly the same thing year after year," said Ben Rose, commander of the Sue Pasco Memorial Williston Precision Lawnchair March and Drill Team. "When we talk of changing the routine, we hear howls of protest." Their settled routines are short, medium and long. For the long one, they present chairs, open them, sit in them, read something, stand up, fold the chairs, and continue marching in formation. The drill team was the brainchild of Sue Pasco, a late Williston resident known for her sense of humor. The team rehearses for about 20 minutes once a year, Rose said, right before the parade. "More than that," he said, "and we'd lose our edge." "We pre-screen recruits," he said. "Can you walk a mile? Can you count to 8?" As commander, Rose blows a whistle and counts to 8. The spectacle — up to 30 people marching in formation with lawnchairs — could be a parody of a drug and bugle brigade, but not necessarily. "We know we're making fun of something," Rose said, "but we're not sure what."