WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Labor Day marks the effective end of summer, though we still have a couple of weeks to go on the calendar.
But it’s been a long, tough year for almost all, and there’s also a heated presidential election less than two months ahead.
Sounds a bit like 1968, when the country suffered through the tragedies of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, riots in cities like Washington and Trenton, a losing war in Vietnam, and a tough presidential campaign between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat Hubert Humphrey.
But there can be tranquility in normalcy, and that may have been the case 52 years ago.
Photos from the Valley News that month show a mother literally dragging her reluctant son toward school. (This year, after months at home with Mom and Dad, youngsters may be sprinting toward their classrooms.)
Another showed so-called “flower children,” including a man smoking a pipe, watching an outdoor concert by the Fat Band in Bradford, Vt.
And, as they do in “construction season” throughout time, work crews were resurfacing the Route 4 bridge over the Quechee Gorge, just in time for the leaf-peepers of fall.
More significantly, the Sun Oil Co. agreed to take down five towering Sunoco signs that month, including one along Interstate 91 in White River Junction, as part of an agreement for less visually intrusive highway signs near the exit.
That same year, Vermont passed its anti-billboard law, to the eternal gratitude of motorists who enjoy driving along scenic interstates that feel more like parkways as a result.
And, of course, by mid-month, families could flock to the Tunbridge World’s Fair, where in 1968 the boys all appeared to be wearing shirts with collars, not T-shirts with vulgar sayings.
Alas, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no fair this year.
But social distance and soak in the outdoors. There’s a lot to enjoy now in both New Hampshire and Vermont, and the light in September is some of the best to be found.
News staff writer John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.