GRANTHAM — Clayton Smith heard the sirens before he saw the parade.

Wanting a better view of the convoy of fire engines and police cruisers, Clayton, 6, dressed in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt emblazoned with the American flag, broke free from his mother, Jasmine Barton, and scrambled on top of the rock plaque commemorating volunteer firefighters in front of the Grantham Fire Department.

From his perch on top of the rock, Clayton could see the twist in the road ahead the parade would shortly be coming around.

“I think that’s the parade,” Clayton said as the din of warbling sirens and blaring horns grew in the distance.

Soon enough, the head of the procession, a Grantham police car, rounded the turn. Then a string of fire trucks, some from neighboring towns such as Enfield, Croydon and Springfield, came into view, much to the delight of the giddy children gathering alongside their parents at the edge of the road.

The parade was just the first stage of Grantham’s Old Home Day, the town’s annual Independence Day celebration. In addition to the parade, which rolled down Route 10 from Yankee Barn Road down to Dunbar Hill Road and ended at the Grantham Town Clerk’s Office, the town’s recreation department also hosted a festival at Grantham Recreation Park that featured bouncy castles, live music and lots of food.

Jasmine Barton, Clayton’s mom, said she and her son would be attending the celebration at some point during the day on Saturday (the event went until 2:30 p.m.), but would first need to offload the haul of candy Clayton procured at the parade. Volunteers with Grantham’s emergency services had liberally tossed bits of candy out to spectators and Clayton had more than an armload full.

Barton, 26, said she’d been coming to the Old Home Day parade since she was little. This was Clayton’s first parade since he was a baby, Barton said, and she was glad he was finally able to experience one. The event wasn’t held in 2020 or 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As one parade-goer, a Chihuahua mix dressed like a butterfly, barked and huffed at all the honking horns, Clayton reminded his mother what really matters.

“Look, look, I got even more candy,” he told her.

The celebration at recreation park offered visitors a slice of down-home Americana: Root beer floats and chicken BBQ, massive bouncy castles and folksy live music.

Emily Rinde-Thorsen, Grantham’s recreation director, helped organize and orchestrate the event, which she called the “flagship” of the Grantham community. Rinde-Thorsen, 42, who had previously been the head coach of Colby-Sawyer College’s women’s lacrosse team before taking on this role in 2019, said she’s worked to continue adding activities to the event to make it bigger and more exciting for attendees.

“My goal is to, while our town is growing, continue to grow this event,” Rinde-Thorsen said. “This year, we have more vendors than ever.”

One addition Rinde-Thorsen asked for, a foam cannon, ended up being a huge hit with the kids.

As the instrument shot out reams of suds into a great white pile, 6-year-olds in bathing suits ran through and around it, coating themselves in bubbles.

A few clusters of those bubbles made their way over to the music tent, where Grantham resident Rob Oxford and his bluegrass/folk/country band Americana’s Most Wanted were performing their rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

Oxford pointed out one of the little clouds of foam and chuckled while a grandfather and his granddaughter danced along to the music.

“What a great day to be in Grantham,” Oxford told the crowd.

Ray Couture can be reached at 1994rbc@gmail.com.