cnistonca uomina - Old Fulton History

Page 2 16 October 1957
At Pioneer Pionic
(The following poem was found by Mrs.Marion Piper Willey in a scrapbook
at the Castile Museum and Research Center. Can any of our
readers identify the author?)
Old Pioneer Picnic, it come agin, and Mother, she and I
Concluded that we'd go, at least once more, before we die,
For the "medder" grass it's cut, and the hay is in the bay,
And the wheat is harvested and mowed above the hay,
And there was nothin® much to keep us at home that day.
So I "Ketched" old Jen from out the pasture, and she's
always been so kind,
Afore I hitched her to the buggy, I put some grass there
in behind,
For her teeth, like mine, are failin' and somehow do not
grind,
And, as Pioneer Is such a glorious day, I want old Jen
as well as me
To have somethin' else but hay.
Well, when we got there that mornin', and after mother, she
Took out our picnic basket and I'd hitched Jen to a tree,
Mother spread a cloth, 'neath the shade trees all around,
And along with our son John, we "et" our lunch there
on the ground. _
You see, our boy he left us, ten years ago or more
And went off there to the city, a clerkin' in a store,
And I tell ye when he met us and we picknicked there that day,
It jest brought back to me the days before he went away,
And there was sorta lump a chokin' in my throat
And I think John noticed it, for sez he, "Let's go rowin
in the boat."
And he rowed us away across the lake, and all around
'Till 'twas time to the Pioneer Picnic Ground.
We sat close by the rostrum, where I'd ketch things good
and clear,
But I noticed that the faces of the old-time Pioneer
Are gradually gettin fewer, with each succeedin' yeari
But what stirred my soul the most was when they-first begun
To play the old-time martial music, like in seventeen
eighty-one,
And old John Rudgers played a snare, though he's eighty-four,
And his son, he played a fife, though he's three score
or more 0
And 'twas one of the Safford boys that played the big bass
drum,
While his brother beat another that was in the war with
Washington.
And the speeches, they was good and the music all was fine,
And what mostly touched our hearts was when they all sung
"Auld Lang Syne."
(Continued on page 17)