So today, Wellsville (the oldest community in Cache Valley and our hometown) is holding the annual Founder’s Day Fest – a celebration of Wellsville’s very beginnings. A sort of Genesis of the Wellsvillage People. It’s a day to celebrate everything Wellsville was and is – small town style.
Festivities commence at dawn with the long-standing Sham Battle complete with real cannons, fake indians, and a burning cabin.
(ok, so maybe she is a real indian)
The main attraction, however, is the parade!
We still chuck candy from floats. In fact, we chuck a lot of goodies from floats. Actual items I’ve caught include: well over 20 different flavors of salt water taffy, frisbees, otter pops, corn, roses (those hurt a little), mini loaves of banana bread, cheese (a kid favorite), ICE CREAM, and a mother barn cat with four kittens. I’m kidding about the cat, but I wouldn’t put it past any of our neighbors.
After hooting and whoohooing at the floats, we migrate to the ancient tabernacle and feast on Dutch oven dinners consisting of pulled pork sandwiches and peach cobbler. Rootbeer Reunion provides the soundtrack for the feast. Inside the tabernacle, there are quilts and other local art on display. Last year I set up a table exhibiting my photography right next to the very popular pinewood car and truck sales lot. They finance.
Everyone attends the Founder’s Day Celebration. It’s a reunion of sorts. The fact that we see each other every day at the post office, in Macey’s (our grocery store), at the dentist, walking dogs, walking goats doesn’t really matter. Wellsvillagers love an excuse to get together…
…and talk. Here in Wellsville (natively pronounced ‘Whalesville’) we share a common language. It didn’t take me long to learn and value it. One phrase I find very useful is “pre-she-ate-cha”. Outside of Wellsville, you might hear “I appreciate you doing such and such”. Not in Wellsville! Variations on “pre-she-ate-cha” include (but are not limited to) “sure-pre-she-ate-cha” and “pre-she-ate-it” or “she-sure-pre-she-ate-sit”. We are a grateful community. You may have noticed there is no “you” or “your” in Wellsvillese. No need for such formalities around here. Acceptable substitutions for “you” and “your” include “ya”, “cha”, and “yer’.
“Clear over there” is another term that I have found very useful in describing either long distances or completeness. “Clear over, clear up, clear down, clear through” all indicate either something one couldn’t imagine being any farther away or a completed task. For example “We were clear over at the school when we burnt th’ cabin clear to the ground.”
Things you gotta do when you visit Wellsville:
You have to get your car tuned and the cat removed from the engine at Tom’s Service. (Yes, they have experience with this. Yes, I have experience with this. For tough cases, Gerald calls in his 11 year old, Andrea the Cat Whisperer). While you’re there, say hi to Tom, buy a soda water for yourself and a candy bar for the kids. Candy bars taste better from Tom’s. I think it’s the axel grease.
Stop at the Wellcome Mart to purchase dry ice for rootbeer. (And yes, we spell Welcome with two l’s. It’s just the way we roll around here.)
Stock up on berries from the Weeks (natively pronounced ‘Weekses’). President Monson did just three weeks ago.
(The lady in the pink shirt is *not* Pres. Monson)
Learn the whereabouts of “The Purple Church”. It’s not really purple which makes it darn near impossible to find; unless of course, you’ve lived here for 17 generations like most of the residents. It used to be purple until they tore it down and built a new reddish/pinkish brick church on the same ground. The name is too seeped in tradition to change it from “The Purple Church” to “The Reddish/Pinkish Brick Church”.
Purchase a snow cone from the kid who runs the Sno Barn. We’re trying to put him through college one 50¢ snow cone at a time.
If it’s summer, you have to brave the Clarks’ Redneck Waterslide.
In the fall, Clarks’ Redneck Waterslide mysteriously becomes Little Bear Bottom Corn Maze. CornMAZING! (Remember “Choose The Right”. That piece of advice will work on either one of the elaborate corn mazes within two minutes of our house as well as in life in general.)
While you’re there, go for a tractor ride with Jed through the haunted corn maze. The rumor about the crusty husk of a cat hanging by its tail in the barn previously being a real live kitty is TRUE! Oh yeah, and say hi to Bob our rooster. He proudly roosts in that very barn.
Also, you gotta hang out around a fence. Just about any fence will do. They are perfect places for shooting the bull (literally and figuratively), accomplishing your visiting or home teaching, unloading excess produce from the garden, or just leanin’ when you need to lean.
Fast Sunday is the perfect church meeting to attend. It’s likely you will be moved to tears by a grandpa in his Sunday-best boots and Wranglers. (The black ones pass for formal attire in Wellsville). There’s nothing in the world like an old farmer’s testimony of the gospel.
(Reece and beloved Arol Maughn)
Wellsville Elementary hosts a Christmas sing-a-long every year where they sing Christmas songs! Gasp! Yes, each grade takes a day out of the week and invites their family to join a sing-a-long (during the school day, on school property). I cry every year. It’s really kinda painful (and technically impossible) to sing Silent Night with a lump in your throat. But I do anyway – proudly.
(check out the kid on the left picking his nose)
The guy in jeans, boots and gigantic belt buckle sings proudly, too. He’s the principal, Mr. Dobson (not Dr. I Don’t Have Time to Eat Lunch With the Second-Graders or Can’t be Bothered With an Office Full of Runaway Gingerbread Men). Judging by the size of the lump in his throat when he sings Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!, I would guess the Gingerbread Men are hiding in his pharynx! Just a hunch.
Cherise is our school bus driver. She has been since the beginning of time. She’s the best. Cherise picks up my kiddos right at the end of our drive, then coasts 50 yards down the highway to pick up Bishop’s kid at the end of his drive. And so on. Cherise knows all of the kids names, their parents’ names, the goings-on at school, who likes who and possibly our social security numbers.
(EmmaKaite's first day of Kindergarten. Cherise is hiding behind the door.
(Three years later, Sadie's first day of Kindergarten. Cherise has come out of her hiding place!)
Another Wellsville phenomenon is the common occurrence of livestock strolling down the highway. Or across one’s front yard. Or sometimes right through the front door. Just yesterday I met with a pygmy goat standing in my entrance. (It was very polite of him to take his shoes off, as is the custom.)
International Harvesters, John Deeres, and over-sized columbines creep down the highway, chug thru the fields and sleep on Sundays. Crop dusters also sleep on Sundays. They have to. It’s exhausting dive bombing kids picnicking in their back yard. It’s takes extra oomph to dip a wing to say hello.
Kids like vegetables here. Utopia! Little Wellsvillagers are involved in every aspect of growing food from tilling and weeding to full on irrigating. My theory is it gives them an enhanced appreciation for the end product: their very own bean! Kids devour home grown corn, squash, zucchini, beans, broccoli, and the quintessentially despised legume…the lima bean. It’s a favorite in our household. Disturbing, I know.
(For you city folk, these aren't beans...grin They're summer squash bottoms)
(Neither is this a bean. I just couldn't bring myself to photograph the disgusting bean.)
Just so there’s no misunderstanding, it is not all summer all the time. We get snow. We get an overabundance of the fluffy, white delight!
We don’t lock our doors. There’s no reason. Something we had to get used to is the fact that Wellsvillagers will walk right into your house. There is no formality of ringing bells or knocking on doors. Wellsvillagers are welcome in any house in Wellsville (as long as we take our shoes off.) I’ve learned not to walk around in underwear unless my aim is to earn a new nickname. Still, we do not lock our doors – except in harvesting season. If we do lock doors, it is for this very reason: if you do not, you will be the recipient of hoards of excess garden produce. Once word gets out that you have an unlocked door, you’re a goner. You might as well put a sign out on the highway asking for it.
(We know who did this and we *will* get you!)
However, locking your door in late summer/early fall does not totally protect you from veggie dumpage. In 153 years, there has never been a case of someone having to stamp out a bag of burning dog poo on their porch. However, many have fallen victim to the Doorbell Zucchini Ditch. If they cannot leave it in your house, and your doorbell is broken, they will ditch it in your milk box. The milk box! Anything can go in the milk box – harvested produce, packages, letters, root beer milk, lesson manuals, tithing envelopes…it’s where we “hide” stuff.
Wellsville is a grand place to live. In fact, I’ve found only one hiccup in this whole scheme. There are little old ladies who, under the guise of asking for help canning their bumper crop of tomatoes, conspire with their husbands to pack your car full of produce from their garden while you’re up to your elbows in their skinned tomatoes. Never again, Sister Hatch!! I’m on to you.
Well, sure pre-she-ate-cha readin’ clear to the end of my tribute to our Wellsville. Gotta run, I’m pretty sure I hear someone at the front door. I have to be vigilant (it being zucchini season and all).
