This is the busy month of the year it seems and these are the happenings for the last two weeks in July this year! Saturday, July 18 the Webb Lake Association has there Lake Day Festivities and the Fishing Derby. It will be the first Loon Count of the season which begins at 6:30 a.m. from the end of Fire Lane 24.

Webb Lake Association Lake Days is later that morning from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. in the big field at the head of the lake which includes music, craft & food vendors, airplane and helicopter rides, hot dogs, children’s games, and Maine Maple Syrup from right here in Weld. This year the Ladies of the Lake will have home baked “sweets” packaged in individual servings–one whoopie pie, two cookies, etc. —to have with your lunch, so let’s all pray for another good weather Saturday! The Ladies of the Lake will have their baked goods under a canopy at the General Store if it is raining and they don’t have Lake Days Saturday.

Tuesday, July 21 is the Weld Public Library Story and Craft Hour from 2:30-3:30 p.m. at the Weld Public Library. On Monday, July 20 there is a Special Town Meeting at 6:30 p.m. to discuss and vote on the upstairs heat source at the Town Hall after which the Selectmen will have their regular bi-monthly meeting.

The Weld Public Library Book Club meets at the Pirtle/Karasco residence on Tuesday July 21 at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 25 is the annual Heritage Days festivities beginning at 7 a.m. with the pancake breakfast upstairs at the Town Hall sponsored by the Rec Assoc., which lasts until 9 a.m. Remember that this year all of our handicapped friends can enjoy the breakfast because there is now a handicap lift on the stairs–if it’s not down when you come in just push the button to lower it.

The only thing scheduled for the week of the July 26 is the children’s final story and craft hour for this summer from 2:30-3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 28.

Reminder all the members of the Bicentennial Committee to wear or at least bring your shirts for a picture at 1 p.m. at Heritage Days!

From Spring 1999 edition of the Weld Enterprise: Beans Are Beans Only When Baked in a Hole in the Ground a la Maine Woods Style. In 1920, Howard Reynolds was the Sporting Editor for the Boston Post. That summer, he organized a camping trip along the Allagash River for several prominent Harvard and Boston College sports figures.

One of the guides for the trip was Weld native J.B. “Bernie” Houghton. The entire trip was serialized in the Boston Post newspaper over the course of that summer. One of the columns dealt with the proper making baked beans and it is this section that we present here. Mr. Reynolds spent many summers in Weld before retiring here. His daughters Caroline Rackliffe and Dorothy Skolfield still live in Weld.

Dean LeBaron Briggs of Harvard University once tapped a Harvard graduate who was eating lunch in Thompson’s Spa on the shoulder–“Tell me,” asked the dean, “what is the psychology of eating cheese with a piece of apple pie?” If Dean Briggs were on this Allagash trip, he would have another psychological question to ask: “Why is it that a young man who will scarcely finish a very small portion of baked beans at home will eat three very liberal helpings up here for breakfast and follow it with three more for lunch?”

“Is it the way they are baked out in the woods?” The guides are all quite frank in their opinion. Bernie Houghton, Sandy Mullen, Joe Connell and Walter Hennessy one and all agree that beans baked by a lumber driving crew or a camping party such as this are much better than any that can be prepared by any woman in any kitchen.

When you sit on a log in front of a campfire on a cool dewy morning and are handed a tin plate heaped with steaming hot brown colored baked beans right out of a hole in the ground, you can just bet that you will pronounce them the best ever and pass over your dish for more.

Certainly they were the best baked beans in the world. Of course you ate more than you ever did at any one time in your life before. How about those cream of tarter biscuits, piping hot right from the baker and those two pint dippers of coffee you drank? Weren’t they good too?

Cooks along the Webb River log drives prepared beans and strong coffee for each of the days meals. These two men were part of the 1902 drive (down the Webb River from Webb Lake) to Carthage and Dixfield.

It is dollars to doughnuts that there are many, many people in the world who will split their ticket at election time and vote for both Democratic and Republican officials but who will never cast a ballot except in one way when it comes to baked beans. They can always be counted upon to mark a cross opposite “those baked in a hole.”