Tonight we had another educational program at our Historical Society, it was a slide show of every Blandford resident who served our nation’s military; from the Revolutionary War to the present day. There were actually three hundred strong from Blandford who served in the Revolutionary War, our own General Knox, who became a close personal friend to General George Washington, was included with an accompanying picture. I was surprised to see a Jones amongst the 300, my friends laughed along with me, saying that he was fighting on the wrong side. The Civil War hadn’t as many combatants, but there was one young man of note, he was only twenty years of age and he made his way all the way down to Philadelphia and took part in twenty battles. He actually captured a confederate flag during one of those battles. We have the copy of that confederate flag with the square of the original flag and the young man’s Congressional Medal of Honor on display at our Historical Society. I was particularly impressed with the young man’s courage, patriotism and sense of duty, walking from Blandford, MA to Philadelphia, PA isn’t a small feat, even on horseback it takes courage and determination. We moved along in history to the Spanish American War and we had the one soldier, he was in a group picture honoring the veteran’s returning home from World War 1, he was featured along with the old white bearded Civil War veterans and the brand new veterans just come home in 1918. As we moved forward to both World Wars, the audience became more lively because old family members, old friends of the family were present in every slide, it was a nice trip down nostalgic lane for our society’s members, quite a few of them were featured when we got to Korea and Vietnam. They were all young and handsome in their nice starched and pressed uniforms, I could tell that they were very proud of their time serving the military and our country.
The slide show started after we had finished our potluck dinner, I wasn’t very creative this time, I brought brownies and I wasn’t the only one. This gathering could have been called potluck dessert because the dessert table was very well represented as opposed to the dinner table. I was happy because there was an excellent chicken curry salad and a lovely barley, tomato, cucumber, cilantro salad and finger sandwiches. Passing by the dessert table on my way to sit down, I couldn’t help but linger to see what delectables might tempt me later on. There was a gorgeous fruit platter, there were chocolate covered strawberries, cheesecake balls rolled in ground nuts, chocolate glazed chocolate squares, banana bread, blueberry muffins, banana walnut bread, brownies, brownies with walnuts, fudge and more brownies. I might be missing something, but wasn’t that one huge spread of sweets? It was a lovely night at the Historical Society.
laurieanichols 