Antique Real Photo Postcard. Old Home Day Parade in Hillsboro, New Hampshire held on August 15, 1925. A cart that appears to be pushed rather than pulled by a horse, with what appears to be a propeller in the back. Two adults wearing police or fireman caps accompany this crazy cart, one steering and the other walking alongside. Photo by E.D. Putnam Son. Divided back, Defender stampbox, unused. Condition: Excellent. Comments: The tradition of Old Home Days began in 1897 in New Hampshire and still goes on every summer across New England. Parades, ball games, and band concerts are the order of the day, while new folks get acquainted and returning folks reconnect with their communities. Many towns around New England put on versions of the celebration every summer, usually for a day or a weekend. The whole thing stretches over the length of time that the inventor of the ritual, Frank Rollins of New Hampshire, envisioned back in 1897 when he created an official Old Home Week Association and lobbied towns around the state to take part. Rollins feared that New Hampshire's small towns were dying. He saw the farms and villages emptying out to better-paying factory jobs in the cities and to the promise of prosperity and easier farming in the South and Midwest. Taking office as governor in 1899, he responded with a nationwide appeal to native sons and daughters to return home, to rediscover the wholesomeness of small-town life amid an increasingly impersonal urbanized culture. He hoped that once lured back home, many would choose to stay. The whole idea was a public-relations campaign, built around nostalgia and a longing for some lost sense of community. Ironically, Old Home Days still serves its original purpose, but from an opposite direction. Its power of nostalgia and connection no longer entices former residents to return, but current ones to stay.