Do you have days or weeks when you find out new connections with people you’d thought you’d known? Perhaps it happens in all small communities: I would like to think so.
This happens almost all the time at the Chamber. Virtually everyone who comes in finds out new connections with other people, with us or with our families, friends, and business neighbors. Between the Class of 1960 having their 50th Class Reunion, and Potato Blossom last week, our office was a veritable clearinghouse for everyone looking for something.
At the end of the week we went to Potato Blossom ourselves with the Xtreme Potato Racing. We were pleased there were so many young people (tweens?), who were so invested in the whole process. They cut and painted, and decorated, and poked wheels on their potato cars, and then hung out to race them against each other. They were polite and well behaved, and it was so hot we would have definitely cut them some slack for general heat irritation!
I believe agriculture is one of our binding connections to our communities, and to each other. We have great traditions which generate a unique interest in The County including Potato Blossom and the Potato Pickers’ Special. This year is the 50th anniversary year for the Pickers’ Special, and I am pleased the Chamber is going to be a sponsor.
I met a travel writer at Potato Blossom last week. She and her daughter were here from Pennsylvania, and she was disappointed to be leaving before the Mashed Potato Wrestling — she had wanted to do a feature story on that particular event. We spoke at some length about potatoes, the landscape in The County, potato gloves, the barrels we’d borrowed from Irving Farms, and what they’d done and who they’d met this last week. I promised her Potato Racing photos, and we’re anxious to see where they may pop up on the World Wide Web!
Before we were finished speaking we found out one of her mother’s relatives was someone I had for as a teacher in school. And since it’s reunion time, and everyone seems to come home to visit in July, we’ve had a great time talking with so many people who want to tell us where they grew up, who they had in school, what isn’t here in town anymore, and who they know from where they live now, related to someone else “back home.”
Amongst most of those conversations, people inevitably speak about harvest, who they worked for, how much they were paid per barrel, those kinds of things. They talk about the smells of home in the fall, and the look of home with the potato fields in full bloom in the summer.
Our common ground spanning so many generations in The County is agriculture. I imagine it’s other things as well: winters, logging, hunting and our many lakes and streams. The binding component in our offices seems to revert back to connections of who is related to who, and agriculture tying us all together with commonalities to share.
The young ladies we hire in the beginning who’ve never worked at a chamber before, are endlessly surprised by all the people who come in and call us. They are also inevitably surprised and impressed with all the people coming thru who want so many different things, and who are pleased to be here, for so many different reasons. I was too once, I just couldn’t imagine all the people coming in asking questions, and getting maps.
We looked high and low last summer on the Internet for potato gloves to give to the children this year. We handed them out at Potato Blossom, and we have more for Caribou Cares About Kids. Some of the small children we gave them to last week immediately put them on in the 90-plus degree heat. They proudly held their potato cars for pictures with their gloves on, and smiled up great storms. A couple parents told their children they were gardening gloves, and we assumed they didn’t grow up in The County. Most parents immediately knew them as Potato Gloves, and wanted to know where we’d gotten them. We had a great time, despite the sunburns and humidity.
We have all met people the last month who have shared various stories with us about their childhoods, their families, their first jobs, and how they may even be directly related to some of us! We have one new young lady in the office who didn’t work with us last summer, and it’s always a great deal of fun to watch the new people have fun with the children, and the people passing thru our offices. Several of our folks who no longer work with us every day come back to help with the events, and we inevitably all laugh and reminisce about the first time this or that happened to one of us (as it happens to the newer ones). The common connections are reinforced by generations, and we all enjoy the children.
As the new people with us experience the same good things some of the older folks already have, it reinforces the validity of those connections and appreciation for each other as community members. I am again grateful for all our connections in the community, and those communities around us. Every day is a new surprise (some days more than one even) and every day we appreciate our business neighbors, our citizens and our shared connections.
Finally, remember, it’s not long until Caribou Cares About Kids, and we have bigger plans for this year than last, so you’ll want to make sure you’re in Caribou Aug. 12-15th.
Wendy Landes, MPA, is the executive director of the Caribou Chamber of Commerce & Industry. She can be reached in person at 24 Sweden Street, Suite 101; by telephone at 498-6156 or via e-mail at wlandes@cariboumaine.net.
