HATFIELD — Ten years ago, on a little plot of grass behind the Hatfield Library, generations-old vehicles gathered for the first annual Jim Labbee Memorial Antique Classic Car, Truck and Tractor Show.
They would have been surrounded by car enthusiasts, the library and the Cutter Farm Museum building, but little else. Each year since then, the mechanical antiques have returned. Around them, however, has grown the Hatfield Fall Festival.
The event, held Sunday from 11 to 3 and hosted by the Hatfield Historical Society, has come to feature so much more than just an antique car show. Hundreds of people now come to the Fall Festival for the vendors and their goods, artisans and their craft-making demonstrations and the exhibits of long-lost historical artifacts.
“When my brother Jim started the car show, that was all we had. Now it’s morphed into us all being out here,” Hatfield Historical Society Chairwoman Pat Cady said.
Some of the areas and vendors at the festival had a historical theme. In the Cutter Farm Museum was the Weavers Guild of Springfield. Member Carole Adams gave a demonstration on spinning yarn the old fashioned way.
In front of Adams was the spinner: a wooden machine with a spinning wheel that was about eye-level with Adams, who was sitting down. She pumped her foot up and down on the treadle, which keeps the wheel spinning, and worked with the yarn in her hands.
“When I tell people, ‘your ancestors had to do this,’ it makes sense to them why their ancestors only had one set of clothes, just seeing how much work it is,” Adams said.
Adams has been spinning since 1983, and said it has completely changed her life. Adams owns sheep that she shears to make the wool yarn, and enjoys dying the wool in whatever color she feels like. She also enjoys teaching about spinning yarn every year at the festival.
“It’s such a great event. I don’t know how many years I’ve done it, but it’s nice because a lot of people either don’t know how spinning works at all, or maybe they do know how and want to try it,” Adams said.
Joel Carr’s corn meal machine was another demonstration of old technology. Carr makes corn meal with a 1926 engine that he’s set up for the process. He grinds the corn kernels into meal and accepts donations for bags of it. He also stressed that the old engines he has can be used for a whole slew of things, including pumping water — his second use for the engines.
“I got into it a couple years ago and people are quite fascinated by it. This is what they had years ago,” Carr said.
Cady, who organized the Fall Festival, said the event is about “helping everybody.”
One of the stations this year was the nonprofit ServiceNet, an organization that teaches vocational skills to those with developmental disorders, traumatic brain injuries, autism and other conditions. ServiceNet, which provides hands-on training on projects like building a barn, featured a few children’s games to raise awareness about the charitable organization.
Site manager of ServiceNet Maxine Alicea said festivals like Hatfield’s Fall Festival are a common and helpful thing the company does.
“It’s getting what we do out, getting our brand out and saying, ‘we’re here,’” Alicea said.
The Hatfield Historical Society puts together several exhibits for each year’s Fall Festival. The exhibits, displayed on the second floor of the library, are all of a historical nature. Things that were once mundane, everyday objects become artifacts displayed by the society, and analyzed by historians, explained Jean Klocko Gromacki, who describes herself as a frequent “helper” of the Hatfield Historical Society.
Among the exhibits showed was a collection of kitchen utensils and tools — some going back to the founding of the town of Hatfield, according to Gromacki — a collection featuring many different types of antique dolls and a collection of vintage U.S. military uniforms. The Porter & McLeod business records collection, a more than century old assemblage of business records giving insight into the practices of a machine shop in the late 19th century, debuted to the public.
“One of the most fascinating things to me is this exhibit about an old farm village from the 1600s that was attacked by Indians,” Gromacki said, explaining that an archaeological dig had recently uncovered tools and evidence of a village in the northern part of Hatfield near the Connecticut River.
Gromacki says that it’s not a surprise that the area around the Connecticut River was where the small settlement was found.
“New England has really developed along the streams,” Gromacki said.
Concurrent with the festival, the Hatfield Lions Club unveiled a new mural at the club pavilion behind the elementary school. The mural, called “The Pride of Our Community,” is a legacy art mural celebrating the centennial anniversary of Lions Clubs International.
“The idea is to give a visible gift back to the community,” said Eric Patrick, president of the Hatfield Lions Club.
Patrick and the club considered several different locations for the mural before settling on the group’s pavilion. He said that site is the most logical one, because it’s where lots of people congregate.
Once it was decided where the mural would go, the club needed to figure out what the mural would depict. It had to represent the Lions Club and the community, and had to symbolize the connection between the two. So, the club decided to let the art students at Hatfield’s Smith Academy take a crack at the project.
“Our idea was having the students involved so that they could learn about the Lions Club,” Patrick said. “We had 30 designs from different students, but in the end we tried to incorporate something of each student’s design.”
The mural now depicts the black silhouettes of a lion and a young boy against a yellow backdrop. The boy is holding a long string that rises above the two beings’ heads and is attached to what would be a balloon, but instead is a Lions Clubs International logo.
All around the two are blue silhouettes of men, women, boys and girls doing various tasks. No matter what the painted figures are doing, they are doing it together — children holding hands or reading back to back, a group of adults holding up the Lions Clubs International logo.
One of Patrick’s favorite parts of the mural is a quote by Helen Keller that reads, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Underneath, the quote is written in braille. The braille part of the mural is three dimensional, so it is actual functioning braille and not just paint.
“Helen Keller wrote this in her letter to Lions, trying to galvanize them into action,” Smith Academy art teacher Julie Muellejans said.
Lions Clubs International is a nonprofit organization with more than 1.3 million members. Since 1917, Lions Clubs have done community service in more than 200 countries, with a particular emphasis on serving the blind and visually impaired, as well as children.