Once a year, the little town of Pittman Center celebrates Heritage Day. The event starts at 10 and offers guided tours of the local museum, music, a dog show, Southern food, several play areas for children, and horseback rides. Many vendors bring a booth with their wares: arts and crafts, mainly. The local school has a fundraising booth, mainly offering sugary treats concocted, God bless them, in the Land of Low Nutrition.
Many things are free: take a picture by a rusty truck decorated for fall, listen to country music, walk around, watch a dog show, let the kids jump in the pumped-up play area, and walk through the Heritage Museum. You must pay for food and arts and crafts.
We have not been there in a long time, so this year we decided to take the kids and show them an authentic Southern event. Our area was built on arts and crafts, before tourism became a thing. So Heritage Day is a history field trip, if you will, and a social studies one as well.
We were disappointed. There were very few people in attendance, the music made me wonder if they could not have booked somebody slightly better, and the food, of course, was junk. I don’t mean to sound negative, but that was just my impression around 1:30pm. Maybe it’s an inaccurate snapshot of an otherwise glorious day.
It was really hot that day and maybe most people came in the morning. Whatever the case may be, it was not something that made us want to put this on our calendar year after year. Having said that, it’s really close to our house and if we have nothing better to do we can always stroll through it. Doing things as a family of four always leaves an impression on the children, even if it’s not something to rave about.