by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, July 22, 2023.
“You talk about reunions and old home weeks, but say, wouldn’t it be a treat to get that old crowd together once more for one of those old-time picnics up stream?” asked J.I. Weston in the Exeter News-Letter in 1903. Hundred-year-old nostalgia can seem a bit quaint, but he was addressing the problem of needed improvements to Gilman Park, particularly a launch for small boats. But let’s look at his memory of picnics.
A picnic is a fun event – even though it’s a lot of work. Elizabeth Dow Leonard minced no words in her description: “the ladies of the town made ready a collation for their lords and masters in some leafy grove. This entertainment was fully appreciated by the gentlemen, who had not the gallantry to invite the fair caterers to join them, but allowed us to look on, and when they had taken a sufficient quantity of wine, paid us with some complimentary toast, spiced according to the number of glasses drunk.” Her memories, of leafy groves, date to the early 1800s. She must have remembered some of the last leafy groves, because Exeter was largely deforested by that time. By mid-century, you needed to hold your picnic near water to catch a cool breeze.
No one in their right mind would head to the Squamscott riverbank for a picnic. The river was used as a sewer and even Weston’s nostalgia didn’t lend itself to wistful thoughts of the Squamscott. He described it as, “that dirty tide-water on the other side of the dams,” full of “open, hot, dirty salt marsh.” If one wanted a beauty spot for a picnic, better to go upriver to the freshwater Exeter, where, “one gets beautiful shade, foliage, fields, bullrushes, cardinal flowers, fishing, gunning, and more than all, to some of you, the remembrances of old time picnic parties.”
The favored spot on the Exeter River for picnics (often church or club events) was a spot just opposite “the Eddy.” There are postcard photos of the Eddy, but it has largely disappeared. Weston says due to logging and reuse of the land. It was just upriver from today’s Gilman Park, but on the opposite bank. To get there, you needed a boat of some kind. Henry Shute, author of the Plupy Shute series of books, wrote comically about church picnics. As a boy, he was something of a cut-up. In Bright and Fair, hands-down the funniest of his books, Shute describes a church picnic that, as a member of a different church, he was allowed to attend providing he ferried picnic goers across the river in his beat-up rowboat. His role as ferryman ends in disaster but it turned out to be the food that proved near-fatal. “i don’t believe, (the clever misspelling is part of the book’s charm) enny feller ever was so sick as i have been and still lived to tell the tale,” young Plupy says. “doctor Perry says they aint a doctor in Exeter that don’t lay in a lot of caster oil and rubarb and sody and a new popsquert (injectable morphine) and get a lot of sleep the nite befoar a chirch picknic.” Shute’s highly embellished fiction aside, this might be an accurate quote from the real Dr. Perry.
Plupy overate at the picnic, but even if he hadn’t, here’s a list of the food he says he encountered at a church picnic in the early 1870s: sandwiches – primarily ham or corned beef, pickles, lemonade, donuts, cream cakes, baked cakes, milk, cheese and raspberry turnovers, boiled eggs, blackberries, tea, coffee, sardines on crackers, custard, squash, blueberry and apple pies, jelly rolls, tarts, coconut cakes and all the ice cream you could want – pink ice cream (presumed to be strawberry), white ice cream (vanilla) and yellow ice cream (perhaps lemon).
In order for all this food (as described it is backed up by recipes found in the Exeter Cook Book, published by the Ladies of the First Baptist Church in 1889), to arrive at the picnic grove at the Eddy, everything had to be hauled there. There were no big, insulated coolers back then, so everything was probably lukewarm by they time they ate. All the ice cream was transported in the freezer tubs in which it was churned that morning. It must have been closer to soft serve than ice cream we’re used to. Lemonade (the drink of choice) was transported in large milk cans. Imagine hauling these up a steep, slippery riverbank on a hot day.
Shute’s list is mostly comprised of sweets. The Baptist Ladies would likely add some baked beans (possibly served cold) and potato salad. There are numerous recipes for potato salad in the cookbook, most of which have a vinegar and oil based dressing – not a bad idea considering that mayonnaise was made by hand and had the potential for appalling stomach upset in the days following the picnic. Even Dr. Perry would have warned against it. If they wanted to keep the beans hot, they’d have to bring a long a ‘fireless cooker.’ Helen Tufts mentions using one while vacationing upstate. “Mrs. Ingrum & I made a fireless cooker & cooked rice & apple sauce. Ma never saw such good looking rice.” A fireless cooker was similar to a slow cooker, except that it kept itself hot. One could be purchased from a mail order catalog or, like Helen and Mrs. Ingrum, could be made using a wooden packing box filled with hay (this is why they’re sometimes called a ‘hay cooker’). A tightly covered pot of heated food was nestled into the box and left to itself for hours – the hay or other insulation keeping the food at a safe temperature. Or one would hope it would. By today’s standards, it was dangerously close to breeding all kinds of deadly bacteria. Helen, Mrs. Ingrum and Helen’s mother reported no ill effects, so perhaps people were simply tougher back then.
At the end of the day, with no paper plates, all the dishes were rinsed in the river, everyone packed up, and it was all hauled home again. Another successful picnic. Be glad you weren’t invited.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: A family enjoying a picnic in 1931. Earlier picnics entailed a lot of work to pull off.