![]() ![]() Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz promises to drop by one night, and there'll be another night reserved to taste Portuguese delicacies, with fireworks, craft displays, concerts and dances to fill out the schedule. There'll be a night to salute the farmers, and a night to eat lobster and a night to salute the fishermen. Just what the celebration will offer will be good wholesome small town fun, like watching the town firemen squirt water at each other, or seeing folks dressed in Colonial costume act out scenes from town history. “Philosophically,” he said, “it is important for us to look at our roots, to see where we came from, to get some strength from our own heritage.”Īn insurance man in town said later, “It would be just like Reverend Lawrence to think there'd be a message in it. He vows it will be more than simply a party. Robert Lawrence, who left the pulpit of the United Congregational Church after 13 years to become chaplain at an out‐of‐town hospital, is chairman of the celebration. Little Compton, with farms that slope down to the Sakonnet River and Rhode Island Sound, is a wooded stronghold of Republican Yankee obstinacy with a healthy dose of Portuguese seasoning, the result of decades of immigration of fishermen and farmers from the Azores. It took the two colonies until 1746 to work out the boundary. You might think it ought to be part of Massachusetts, and you won't be alone in that. Grab your map of Rhode Island and look to the farthest point southeast. That's the type of talk you're liable to hear should you decide to attend the Tercentennial celebration and educate yourself in the finer points of fishing, farming, music, crafts and food in Little Compton this summer. Maybe they'll stop their foolishness and start looking at how we were able to stay around so long.” “Everyone else is only getting around to 200 years. “I figure we're ahead of the rest of the country,” said a lobsterman down at the Sakonnet Point docks. 10, most townspeople took the Tercentennial to heart. How would that contribute? It might discourage a few people, he said-get them to turn back and leave the town alone.Įventually, of course, a compromise was struck, and after the program was scaled down to the two weeks beginning July 26 and closing on Aug. One man rose to suggest that a toll gate go up across one of the two roads leading into town. A town meeting was called to discuss the celebration -that's the way things are done here. But it didn't take long for the grumbling to start. The original Tercentennial plan, for example, was to open the town of 2,000 to the world, to let people in to soak up the spirit of Yankee independence. Sure, the horses gave way to cars, but you can tell in the talk around the stove at the general store that things have not changed much since the days of Col. Little Compton is not really all that different today from what it was three centuries ago. They've got themselves a Tercentennial in Little Cumpton this year, and there's a decided inclination to let the rest of the country know that 200 years is nothing to get overly excited about. THERE won't be any Bicentennial fuss in Little Compton, R.I. ![]()
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