Dinky

The town of Tunbridge, Vermont, gathered in 2006 for a town picture that was posted here last year. But ten years before that, Tunbridge was featured in a sort of town movie, "Man with a Plan," a mockumentary that starred local dairy farmer Fred Tuttle as a candidate for Congress who was interested in the job because it paid a good salary. Fred needed the money to pay taxes on his farm and buy a hip replacement for his 91-year-old father. and he managed to spend only $12 on his campaign. His slogan was "FRED: Friendly, Renewable, Extraterrestrial, Dinky." His debate tactic was to ask his opponent how many teats there were on a Jersey cow. In the movie, Fred won the election and showed up in Washington, still in overalls, eating a sandwich on the Capitol lawn.

In real life, he got a fair number of write-in votes, enough to inspire him to make an actual run for the U.S. Senate in 1998. He ran in the Republican primary against a wealthy carpetbagger from New York, spending $200 this time, mostly on port-a-potties for his campaign rally, Fred Day. And just like in the movie, he won the nomination. The real Fred, however, couldn't go to Washington because his wife wouldn't let him, so after the primary he endorsed the Democratic nominee, Patrick Leahy, and retired from both politics and the movies.


Fred Tuttle died in 2003. But there must be something in the water in Tunbridge, at least when it comes to spot-on slogans. Tunbridge's main commercial activity, ever since 1869, has been an annual World's Fair--a world's fair, as opposed to a county fair, because you don't have to live in the county to enter your preserves or your team of oxen. The fair got a pretty sketchy reputation over the years, but the Union Agricultural Society that runs it has cleaned it up recently, so much so that the year we visited, there were protesters outside the gate demanding reinstatement of the World's Fair Demolition Derby. The 138th fair, which is set to open September 17, 2009, is being promoted by the singing Shugarmakers, who invite the world to come on down to Tunbridge and "Get funky--it's no big deal."