Offering greetings from the Grange

The conversation went something like this.
“Looks like there’s a penny sale at the Grange this weekend,” said I.
“What’s that?” responded my wife.
“I have absolutely no idea.”
We were on vacation at my wife’s family’s cabin in southern New Hampshire, and I was looking through the local twice-a-week newspaper from Peterborough. (There used to be two distinct weekly papers in Peterborough, but in these challenging times they have merged. They still, however, put out two editions a week.)
“What’s a penny sale?” my wife asked again.
“Maybe we should find out,” I responded (or words to that effect).
When the weekend rolled around, we were once again at the nearest supermarket.
The only trouble when it comes to vacationing with family is that most of your money is spent at the grocery. No tours. No nightlife. No big name entertainment. No casinos. Just groceries.
“Let’s stop at the Grange on the way back to the cabin,” said a vacation version of me.
It was on the way. We’ve driven past the Grange for more than 40 summers. It’s a handsome, utilitarian, white clapboard building at a turn in the road. In fact, it looks about what you would imagine a New England Grange building to look like. Humble and proud simultaneously.
The Grange, for those of you who dozed off during that semester of American History, was an early and long-lasting attempt to band farmers together to speak with a single voice for American agriculture. It played a number of other roles as well, many of them social. But it was a pioneering effort.
Later came groups like the Farm Bureau and the Farmers Union. But the Grange had deep roots.
So we stopped on our way back to the cabin and checked things out.
It turns out that a “penny sale” is much like a white elephant sale, but with a twist.
Folks had brought in items for sale — crafts, an occasional antique, cast-offs and miscellany — and then people like us bought chances on each item. Once upon a time, I suppose, each chance cost a penny. These days, the price is higher. But it was still an easy way to make a donation to help protect a local landmark, so I bought a couple of sheets of tickets and Connie and I started placing them in little jars in front of each item. At an appointed time, there would be a series of mini-raffles and each of the pieces would have a winner.
The best item available was five quarts of fresh blueberries, and though we had already picked a quart on Pitcher Mountain with our eldest grandchild, that got most of our tickets. But we did our best to spread things around.
And then we forgot about it.
That is, until about a week later when the cabin received a phone call.
The penny sale was wrapping up, and it turned out that we had not only won an item, we had won several. Since we were, by that time, packing up to come back to Indiana, the thought of adding more to the mix was a little daunting.
“I’ll go over and take care of it,” I said.
When I got to the Grange I found we had won: Two used books about the glory days of the Boston Red Sox, two packages of paper Chinese-style lanterns, a not-very-pretty stoneware casserole dish and a red geranium with a single bloom.
Quite a haul, I thought, as I gathered things up.
The man from the Grange was helpful and friendly, and we started talking about the Grange — not just the old building but the historic organization.
“You know,” I said, “there’s a guy I know back in Indiana who has been a high-ranking officer in the Grange. I did a story on him a few years ago for our newspaper.”
The man at the New Hampshire Grange was intrigued.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Indiana,” I said, hastening to add that my wife’s family had roots in the region going back 100 years. “The guy I’m thinking of is John Valentine.”
“Oh,” said the man from the New Hampshire Grange, “everybody knows John. Everybody knows John and Nancy Valentine. Say hello for me.”
So, John and Nancy, here it is: Greetings from Antrim, New Hampshire.
Editor’s note: All remarks in quotation marks in this piece are reconstructions by a guy who was on vacation, wasn’t taking notes and is beginning to show his age.