American Scene: The Deep River Ancient Muster

"The noise shook green apples off the trees, moved a frog onto the railroad track, jolted nails out of the shingles in the roofs, and the hens in the poultry yards along the route laid premature eggs in fright." With slight Yankee exaggeration, a newspaper in 1885 described the first field day of the Connecticut Drummers Association in Walling ford, Conn. The fifes and drums echo anew each July along the Connecticut River, where sleepy New England villages like Chester, Deep River and Moodus quietly proclaim a heritage as old as the Republic itself. The occasion is the annual Deep River...