FARMINGTON — Memories flooded back as friends, classmates and relatives greeted one another during Senior Day at Farmington Fair on Tuesday.

Under warm, sunny skies, seniors met friends they had not seen since last year’s fair.

“Farmington High School, the gray and the blue,” sang four high school classmates who have reunited on Senior Citizens Day for nearly 10 years.

 The classmates graduated in 1944.

“We’ll meet again next year if the girls (their daughters) hold up to bring us,” said Caroline Dingley Winch of Gorham.

She was joined by Jennie Stevens Martin of Brewer, Shirley Witherell of Farmington and Mary Pinkham Croswell of Waterville. The classmates planned to have lunch and reminisce.

On key and without skipping a word, their high school spirit revived as they sang:

“Farmington High School, the gray and the blue, now all together, smashing, crashing through. Who’s to be the victor? We’ll tell you true. Farmington High School, the gray and the blue.”

Winch and daughters Joanne Brewster of Falmouth and Suzanne Meserve of Portland come back to Farmington often to visit relatives and every year for the fair.

While poring through notebooks of photos compiled by Don DeRoche in a exhibit called Take Me Back to Yesterday, they found a photo of Winch as a barefoot little girl with her father and grandfather.

Winch was the daughter of Nelson and Mary Dingley of West Farmington.

“We love it here,” Brewster said. “It is our second home. There are so many fond memories.”

One of them was ice cream at Lowell’s Store in West Farmington when she was a little girl. Those who received a wooden stick with a red tip meant they got a free ice cream, she said.

“The displays of photos and memorabilia in DeRoche’s display are wonderful,” she said. “People are so excited. I hear about it from my mother but to learn and see it for myself makes it more real.”

“Everyone comes in drawn to the history,” she said. “They are totally engaged in learning about the past.”

Memories of the past involved not only Farmington, but the fair as well.

Growing up in Farmington, Marion Stevens remembered many fun times at the fair. There were 15-minute Vaudeville shows between the horse races. Sometimes it was a dog show or a tightrope walker, but it just broke up the races for her as a young girl, she said.

Touring the exhibition hall with her daughter and son-in-law, Ken and Linda Hinkley of Dixfield, Stevens remembered Ray Magno’s ice cream stand, the Jimmy Chitwood Daredevil shows of past fairs and the car tent, a tent filled with new cars. Many went on sale after the fair, she said.

It was also a time when children traveled the fair by themselves. Everyone just looked out for everyone else.

“It takes a town to bring up kids,” she said.

On Wednesday, the fair officers special ride prices from 1 to 9 p.m. for Regional School Unit 9 students released early from classes.

abryant@sunmediagroup.net