Cars packed the Mattapoisett village and tents lined Shipyard Park as families and residents of all ages arrived at the Town Wharf for the Mattapoisett Lions Club’s annual Harbor Days thispast weekend. The event has become a staple of Mattapoisett’s summer calendar forapproximately five decades thanks to its wide variety of crafts vendors, live musicalperformances, and hot meals.
Harbor Days is the largest fundraising event for the Mattapoisett Lions Club, and funds from theevent go to support diabetes awareness, eye research, college scholarships, internationaldisaster relief, along with hosting free community events throughout the year.
According to Kimberly Ray, the President of the Mattapoisett Lions Club, despite intense rainingon the first night of the event, Saturday, July 18, this year saw impressive crowds.Regarding planning the event, Ray said, “We start in January of each year, and differentmembers coordinate different parts of Harbor Days, and it takes a lot of people to pull it off inconjunction with town support and all of the volunteers that come out who aren’t even”
Note to Sam: With the following section I wanted to connect the experiences of the two vendors I interviewed about how in their over four decades working at Harbor Days (44 years for McCarthy, 43 for Liddle) they’ve both felt rewarded seeing people enjoy their hard work and had the opportunity to interact with people they impacted with their work past.
For crafts vendors like Michael McCarthy who has come to Harbor Days for 44 years, the most rewarding part of participating is getting to connect with new and familiar faces. McCarthy said he spends most of his time working on his bird carvings in his workshop, but at events like Harbor Days he’s able to talk to customers about his work and connect with students he once taught and their families. “I’m usually by myself all the time in the workshop, and when I come out, I get a chance to see. Well, I’ve been here 44 years now. I used to coach. I used to refer to three basketball games for the kids’ grammar school, and I get to see, I get to talk to them now, who have their own kids. It’s fantastic.” He continued, “So, you get to see people who came here in the past. So yeah, it’s a great experience, and you know working for yourself, you can’t beat it.”
Dan Liddle, who has come to Harbor Days for 43 years, said, “One of the nicest things is the enjoyment we see on the kids’ faces when they buy things. We’ve got babies now coming in with their babies and explaining they had this as a kid. I Get chills.”
By Zakary Sarkarati