I moved in 2001 from a community of 12,000 that had a volunteer group that raised money to put on a spectacular Fourth of July parade replete with fez-adorned Shriners in their little cars nearly gunning down children chasing after the candy tossed to them from fire engines and the like.  It was an absolute hoot.

It reminded me of parades as a child where I would go to my grandparents, grab folding chairs to head down to the main intersection to watch my grandfather march with the WWI veterans.  Later in his life they had to make this former mayor the Grand Marshall in order to put him in a Model A car given his slow gait backed up the parade route.

As a selectman in that community of 12,000, I marched in Memorial Day Parades that were very somber, akin to a national funeral.  On the Fourth, I fired up my 1976 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible, and the two other selectman and I tossed hundreds of dollars of candy ourselves as we celebrated our national birthday.  Indeed, at times we ran out of candy, sending the junior selectman into a grocery store mid parade to reload on the candy.

In 2001 I came to the town of 3,500.  Their big event follows a small town tradition on the MA/NH border of celebrating on July 3rd.  Apparently in colonial times around here, the citizens rang church bells at midnight on July 3rd to usher in the holiday.

In this community the fire department erects about a 35 foot bonfire tower out of wooden pallets and telephone polls.  A lucky child gets picked from the crowd to light the bon fire, while the fire pumper sprays the woods to mitigate fire damage.

The firemen also spray the crowd, with young kids running around getting soaking wet and muddy in the process.

On the first occasion of seeing this, I was then informed by some beer fueled patrons that they were heading into a NH town a few miles away to watch the "Pot Bangers."

This was a sight to behold.

In the little town of Greenville, NH, lo those many years ago, there was a Fourth of July when the local church bell was out of commission.  In its stead, drunken citizens took to the streets banging pots to usher in the Fourth of July.  

The tradition has now morphed.  Fire engines from multiple communities come for a midnight parade.  And there, nestled between two police cruisers stumble along adults and children alike banging hell out of pots.

And those fire hose wielding volunteers and those half soused pot bangers are likely as close to the kind of America formed 230-odd years ago as we are going to find.  They are folks raising families in small, rural communities.  They rally around their own and view government with a wry eye.

The ice storm that devastated this area in December 2008 illustrated this. As Chairman of the Board of Selectman yet a relative newcomer, I simply got out of their way and marveled at their sense of community in a way that has not left me.  It touched me deeply and changed my opinion of the community.

Men showed up in their pick up trucks with chainsaws, asking where they should go to help clear streets.  Others went to the elderly with a generator in the back of their trucks to kick start furnaces and keep them warm.  Civic leaders slept round the clock in the fire station, directing the utility companies as to which house to connect next based on a pecking order that put the elderly and families with young children first.

That pecking order is only known in a small community with close connections.  And those small communities dot America from coast to coast.  Quiet, hard working people who look after their own.  Who throw a larger fistful of candy in the direction of the kid from the troubled home.  Who squirt the fire hose at the child of their high school sweetheart who lives in the same house in which they grew up right down the street from them.  Who bang a pot with a buddy they first met when they had a playground fist fight in grade school. 

For all our military might, for all our technological advancement, America at its core remains a collection of free people who settle into communities to raise families and bask in the freedom of movement this country provides.  People choosing to live in small communities embody that Jeffersonian agrarian view of America about which we often forget in a manner that hasn't changed since he ruminated about those ideals at Monticello. 

You want to connect to the spirit and intent and meaning of the freedom this country sought for itself lo those many years ago when the signers had to all hang together so they would not all hang separately, then settle into the humble festivities of a small town community and watch the interactions and the joys garnered from the simple pleasures of fire engines, candy throwing elders, and, yes, drunken pot bangers. 

It has been an honor to be part of these communities and to raise my family in them.