Ralph Ayers dubs himself a “local yokel,” but “yokel” doesn’t fit rhythmically with a day of the week so we’ll call him a Townie.
Ayers is probably best known for his columns in the Daily News and his tireless efforts to help plan and execute the yearly Yankee Homecoming celebration.
This will be the 52nd or 53rd year he has been part of Yankee Homecoming. Planning, bustling and driving people around in a van to familiarize them the area.
“It”s something I look forward to,”he said in an interview last year. “I’ve been around for 86 years and still going strong.”
About those tours, you have to watch it because sometimes, he confesses, he likes to throw in some interesting, but possibly not entirely factual, information.
“His stories are true, with some humorous fibs added for your entertainment,” it says on the Yankee Homecoming website.
Ayers has been informally nominated by City Council President James Shanley as Newburyport’s first Poet Laureate. So what if there no such position “yet” and the nomination was made on a local blog. It’s the nod that counts.
According to a recent issue of the weekly paper, the Newburyport Current, Ralph Ayers, now 87 years old, can tell you what life was like before MasterCard and Visa, and when deferring gratification was a given. He remembers layaway plans, Green Stamps and Christmas Clubs, all of which may be making a comeback actually, I remember all those things, too but it just goes to show what a local voice he really is.
Ayers also volunteers on the Newburyport Local Emergency Planning Committee and does so many, many things to benefit the city: always has, always will, he says.
This coming Sunday, May 3, he is joining Newbury Townie Dick Cunningham for a conversation at the library called, “Newburyport and Newbury: Oddities of the Past!” It starts at 2 p.m.
