HERMON — Old-Fashioned Fun Day is being planned as a community get-together with a small-town flavor.

In keeping with the spirit of Maine Street ’90, Saturday, July 21, will be a day to celebrate local heritage and share a sense of community. The fifth annual Hermon Fun Day will kick off with a parade and continue throughout the day with many other activities.

“It’s a day to get out and meet all your neighbors again,” said a former town official.

In a January letter to all Maine Street ’90 communities, Gov. John R. McKernan asked Mainers to “step back for a moment and reflect on Maine as you grew up. Towns nurtured their children with wisdom and warmth; families shared the anecdotes and personal history compiled over the decades.”

“Maine Street ’90 is a vehicle toward this goal,” he wrote, saying the future rests with the children. “We must give our children the best education possible, and make sure they have good jobs and challenging opportunities right here in Maine.”

Hermon Fun Day is aimed at stirring community pride in a celebration of the town’s history and its future.

“We’re trying to pull the community together, to get them to know other people,” said a Recreation Committee member.

Buzzy LaChance is one man who will certainly be out and about Saturday, July 21. LaChance, 48, was born on Pine Street in Hermon. He is proud of his roots and has enjoyed living in Hermon for about 25 years. “I guess it was the small town of it,” he said. He dislikes the town’s rate of growth, though, and has seen the town change from a big farm community to a suburb of Bangor.

“It’s kinda getting back to the old days,” he said of Saturday’s summer celebration. The old days meant wandering down to the corner store and knowing everyone you met. Nowadays, LaChance said, “if you know three out of 10 people you’re doing well.”

This year LaChance has organized a cribbage tournament. The cost will be $3 a player. Half of the purse will be shared between the winner and runner-up, and the other half will be given to the Recreation Committee. “Anybody’s got a chance to win because I’m not playing,” he said.

If there is one thing LaChance would like to see return to Hermon Fun Day it would be the horse-pulling contest. It was always a crowd pleaser, he said, but the event’s demise was just another step in the community’s decline from farm life to suburbia.

This year’s big draw is the dunk tank. Friends or foes will pay $1 for three shots to soak town councilors, school superintendent, principals, and the girls and boys basketball coach. Proceeds will go toward renovating the outdoor basketball court at the elementary-junior high school.

Decorated bikes, organization floats, Boy and Girl Scout troops, and fire trucks will decorate the parade. It begins at 10 a.m. at the corner of New Boston Road and Route 2, and will proceed up Route 2 to Hermon Corner, finishing at the elementary school on Billings Road.

On the way to the frog races — bring your own frog or borrow one — or before watching the antique chain saw demonstration, residents are encourged to pick up a pie at one of the many food booths.