The 87th Old Fiddlers' Picnic at Hibernia Park on August 8 provided us with a wonderful, daylong adventure. Musicians of all ages and experience levels brought their fiddles, guitars, dobros, mandolins, and other instruments along and jammed together informally in the woods. Groups performed 20-minute sets on the main stage at Fiddlers Field. And we non-musicians who just like old-time music set up our chairs and soaked up the atmosphere of the perfect August day. It was a remarkably wholesome, welcoming and diverse crowd, with Amish families, toddlers, motorcyclists, hipsters, hippies, gray-haired folks, and dogs large and small.
The food vendors were excellent, and we made frequent trips to them for sandwiches, lemonade, popsicles and soft pretzels. Swarmbustin' Honey from West Marlborough had a tent, and Lou Mandich from Unionville's Last Chance Garage brought his antique Packard to the old-car display (Lou was sitting next to his car with Ruth Thompson and her son, Larry, from Newlin Township).
We rode a tractor-driven cart to the Hibernia Mansion with the intent of taking a guided tour, but because the tours didn't start for another hour, we decided to do some park exploration. We saw the children's fishing pond (reserved for young anglers), hiked up to the large earthen dam that contains Chambers Lake, envied the boaters out on the 90-acre lake, visited the campground area and eventually -- following the sound of the music through the woods -- found our way back to Scout Field and then Fiddlers Field.
After relaxing for a bit, we checked out the "beginners jam" at one of the pavilions, where kind old-timers welcomed neophytes. Their entertaining version of "Crawdad Hole" stuck in our heads the rest of the day.
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