Vermonters unlock the past in exhibits at the history expo

Within the fairgrounds, this spirit was infectious. Men teetered by on high-wheel bicycles and stilts. Music from the main stage mixed with the sounds of cannons, and a chamber music trio in a gazebo played to picnickers. Inside several long, barnlike exhibit halls and seemingly dozens of tents, no one was selling or even pushing anything. Everyone was talking.

''People come to Vermont to talk to people," says Addie Minott of the Guilford Historical Society, one of the 106 volunteer-run societies that will be exhibiting at Vermont History Expo 2004. True or not, probably nowhere else will flatlanders ever have the chance to talk with so many Vermonters.

Vermont history, it turns out, isn't about battles and dates but about who and what is interesting enough to remember, and to talk about. Stop by the Guilford booth, and Minott will show you pictures of the theater curtains painted for village granges and town halls all around the state by Guilford-born Charles W. Henry. Between 1895 and 1915, Henry painted 85 curtains picturing local scenes and some exotics, like the Roman Colosseum. On display will be photos of Henry's family members playing musical instruments, which they did before they put on the plays.

At the Cambridge, Vt., booth, Ronnie and Georgina Little will want to talk about Cambridge-born Lucy Wheelock, founder of Wheelock College, and about composer Myrtie Wallace and the letter in which John Philip Sousa wrote to her: ''If you spend your time writing music, you will be queen of marches and I will be king."

At the Glover booth, Elizabeth Day will describe what happens each summer on the hill behind her house. Between 1798 and 1850, this was the Parker Settlement. Now it's just 20 cellar holes in which budding Glover archeologists have unearthed a number of artifacts, including a genuine clay pipe or two. Campers and coordinators will want you to start a similar project in your town.