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By Shayna Orent
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
Following weeks of extreme weather shifts, summer finally found its groove for the Up In Smoke BBQ, hosted by the Friends of the Dover Council on Aging. The evening was a perfect “high-70s and calm” as Dover residents of all ages congregated at the Caryl Community Center to socialize, listen to live music, and chow.
The BBQ, which is one of the Friends of the Council on Aging’s fundraisers, has been an annual event for the past four years. The organization hosts this and other events to raise money for the Dover Council on Aging, which is able to do more for the community’s senior citizens with the help of the Friends. Recent projects include installing a hearing loop in one of the community center rooms, as well as new carpeting.
Says Linda Pettit, president of the Friends of the Council on Aging, “our main goal is to provide things for the seniors in town that the town COA is unable to accommodate … We do lifetime learning classes every spring and every fall with a lot of speakers and cultural events. We do trips to various places like Tanglewood and Newport flower shows, and we subsidize all the bus and the transportation for all those activities.”
The theme this year was red, white and blue, due to the event coinciding with Flag Day. Hamburgers and side dishes were plentiful, as was dessert — an entire long table adorned with various kinds of cookies and pastries atop red and blue tablecloth was set up perpendicular to the main course.
The event usually attracts about 100 people not including children, and this year had a similar-sized crowd. The kids had plenty of space to play in the community center’s park area. While helping her son onto a swing, one attendee reminisced that she had once upon a time gone to school in what is now the community center. As Linda Pettit put it, “we’re townies.”
At the top of the hill, local folk, country, and bluegrass band, The Centre Streeters, performed. Founded by the late Bill Foehl, the band has been playing together for almost 40 years and includes several generations of musicians. Dock Murdock and his son Putnam Murdock play banjo/dobro and guitar, respectively, while Tim Roper is on the fiddle, Will Swan plays mandolin, and Linda Foehl plays bass. Their harmonious sound gives the impression of band members who have been playing together for decades, a perfect fit for an event celebrating a community with deep ties. Linda Foehl describes the sound thusly: “our harmonies are fabulous, because when you are with each other so long, it’s just like magic.”
