The Hale Street Gang and Me

My Writing Workshop on Saturday @ AVA Gallery

2012-01-26T06:23:00.000-08:00

Come join us this Saturday, January 28, for a "Pictures Into Words" writing workshop at the AVA Gallery in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Bring a photograph from your personal collection, something that tells a story or stirs a memory. The workshop is from 1 to 3 pm and costs $5 (yes, that's right: five dollars!). AVA is located just off the green in Lebanon's historic district, in the old Carter's overall factory.

Our Books Are Now $12.95

2012-01-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

Scroll down the right-hand side of our blog and click on a title to order a copy of The Hale Street Gang, volume 1 and 2; An Ordinary Woman, by Ruth Demarest Godfrey; or Our House in Arusha, by Sara Tucker. The link takes you to our e-store. From there, follow instructions to have the book shipped to you or, if it is a gift, directly to the recipient. Copies of our books can also be purchased at the Korongo Gallery at 18 Merchants Row in Randolph, Vermont. All four books are now $12.95 each; orders over $25 qualify for free shipping.

Party, Party, Party: More Pictures from the Opening at AVA

2012-01-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

Hello, Maggie: Margaret Egerton, poster girl.

AVA did a great job of hanging the show.

Portraits in Writing is in the middle gallery of three.

These women rock: From left, Bente Torjusen-West, executive director of AVA; Victoria, super-intern; Yours Truly; exhibition coordinator Margaret Jacobs.

D'Ann Fago and Charles Cooley.

David Ford, of the Main Street Museum in White River Junction.

D'Ann Fago and Sara Tucker.

Vision Quest IV, works by Ted Chafee, Steve Chase, and Gidon Staff.

Jake and Liz Guest (right) of Killdeer Farm in Norwich, VT.

A Splendid Evening at AVA

2012-01-14T05:22:00.000-08:00

D'Ann Fago and her daughter, Celie, at the AVA Gallery in Lebanon.

Great turnout last night, despite the snow, for the joint opening of D'Ann Fago's 70-year retro and Jack Rowell's Portraits in Writing. Lots of enthusiasm for our project from all kinds of folks, young and old. I'll post more of Jack's pictures later (gotta go shovel some snow now). We'll have another reception on February 4, at 2 pm, for family and friends who couldn't make it last night.

Our Friday 13 Opening: Stormy Weather

2012-01-13T06:11:00.000-08:00

Sloppy stuff is falling from the sky this morning, just in time for the opening of The Hale Street Gang: Portraits in Writing at AVA Art Center in Lebanon, NH, this evening. For those of you who won't make it to the party, you can listen to the Vermont Folklife Center's recordings of the writers reading from their work by calling 802-922-9259. The prompts for the various recordings are as follows:

101

Mary Jacobs reads from

A Day in the Life of a Country Nurse.

102

Charles Cooley reads from

The Summer Justin Tucker Broke His Leg.

103

Cookie Campbell reads from

My Annie.

104

Nancy Rice reads from

The Farm We Grew Up On.

105

Mary Hutchinson reads from

My Two Grandmas.

106

Sara Tucker reads from

the late Margaret Egerton’s

Building a Nest.

107

Loraine Chase reads from

Mother and Dad.

108

D’Ann Fago reads from

Feudin’ Country.

109

John Jackson reads from

Pop.

110

Idora Tucker reads from

Wartime.

111

Cynthia Jackson reads from

The Night the Bed Fell In.

112

Ruth Demarest-Godfrey reads from

The Teacher Who Would.

My Brief Acquaintance With Mr. A.M. Rosenthal

2012-01-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

By D'Ann Fago

I once wrote an article for the Herald—

That would be the Randolph Herald—

About a family of housepainters.

Whatever needed a slap of paint

Got it from the Maynard Brothers.

It wasn't a bad story, if I do say so myself.

After it was published, I got a note

From Mr. A.M. Rosenthal of the Times.

That would be the New York Times.

Apparently he'd been visiting New England,

Because he said he'd read the article

As he was just passing through.

I kinda liked the sound of that: "just passing through."

It was a very nice note.

So I wrote him back:

Dear Mr. Rosenthal,

I just came in from squirrel hunting,

Had a bag of squirrels over my shoulder,

And there was your note.

So I dropped the gun, hit the dog . . .

Et cetera. I was quite pleased with myself.

I showed the letter, and my reply, to my son John.

He was a freshman at Wesleyan at the time

And very aware of new horizons—

His, that is, through me.

And he said, "You can't send that."

So I rewrote the letter and proposed some story ideas.

I think I mentioned some commission or other at the State House

That had just accepted women—it was kind of a big deal.

I then sent this very formal pitch letter to Mr. A.M. Rosenthal and waited.

Eventually, a reply came: "Thank you, Mrs. Fago, but we have stringers for that."

And that was the end of my acquaintance with the New York Times.

It’s my favorite story about not listening to your kids.

Last week, I finally got up the nerve to write to Mr. Rosenthal again,

I was disappointed to learn he's been dead for the past five years.

Party at AVA Gallery January 13

2011-12-24T08:46:00.000-08:00

Some of the Gang (clockwise from top left): Cookie Campbell,

Margaret Egerton, John Jackson, and Ruth Demarest Godfrey

Next stop for Portraits in Writing: AVA Arts Center in Lebanon, New Hamp, on Friday the Thirteenth. (Watch for dangerous ice.) Jack Rowell's photographs of the Hale Street Gang will share gallery space with D'Ann Fago's Retrospective. Come join Jack, D'Ann, me, and the gang for this very special opening. Now that we're in New Hampshire, I think we can call this a "national tour," don't you? AVA is at 11 Bank Street, just off the green. The party is from 5 to 7 p.m.

Charles Cooley: A Letter to Santa

2011-11-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

Dear Santa;
It’s that time of year. I have been as good as I know how. I contributed to both parties and helped to disseminate scandal about the enemies of both of them. I have lined the roadsides and covered my lawn with candidates’ signs whether they were Republicans or Democrats. I even did what I could for an Independent or two.
Here’s what I want this year. Please balance the budget, find me a job, and give my regards to every member of Congress. Don’t let them touch Social Security or Medicare unless they want to give me something extra. Tell them that if taxes aren’t reduced they will get a lump of coal in their stockings. If you see anybody getting something I don’t get take it away from them. The $300 I got from the gov’t (or was it $600) was very nice but it’s gone now and I need some more. I know there’s a lot of rot about how everybody must sacrifice if the budget gets balanced, but, seriously, does that mean me too? Haven’t I sacrificed enough already? I went to all the trouble to fill out forms for a mortgage to buy a house while I was on welfare and then some bank I never heard of said they were foreclosing. What more can I give up? I need my snowmobile and flat screen TV. (Thank Congress for them, by the way.)
About that job. I’m not planning to live in poverty, you know. I can’t really afford to work for less than 75 grand a year tax free. I hope it comes with benefits, too. A place to live and a meal allowance and two pairs of work shoes a year will really make it worthwhile. That and my Social Security benefit will get me by, I think. I’m 67 years old so it shouldn’t be full time and, oh yes, I’ll need a car. Isn’t gas awful, though? Makes me envy you with the reindeer.

Charles Cooley: My Grandmother and Her Politics

2011-11-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

I never heard Grandma Small (above, right) utter the words “President Roosevelt.” If she wished to make it clear that she was talking about the president from 1933 to 1944 she would say “that man in the White House.” Grandma had two sisters who would come to visit her occasionally. One of them was as loyal to the Democrats’ philosophy as Grandma was to the Republicans’. The other sister might have been a Socialist for all I can remember but when the three of them got going about current events and politics the atmosphere of the neighborhood would be assaulted by sounds approaching warfare. I can’t recall anything Grandma ever said about President Hoover. However, during his administration, she would have become homeless when Grampa lost his job due to the Great Depression if my parents hadn't provided a place for them to live. My opinion of Herbert Hoover and his administration is that he was a good person who was president during an unfortunate time. When he was inaugurated in March of 1929 the economy was ready to go into a recession no matter who was president. He did, however, sign the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which made matters worse and tried to restrict government spending to add to the misery. I imagine FDR learned a lot by watching and waiting. He was certainly different. In 1935 the Federal Insurance Compensation Act was signed into law and the first checks for benefits went to people who had never “contributed” to the so-called “trust fund.” Since welfare as it existed in the first years of the Depression was powerless to make much impact to relieve suffering I see Social Security as a welfare measure at that time. I think calling it an “entitlement” encourages people to look upon it more as an insurance annuity where the more you pay the more you get. A few concessions to the needs of the beneficiary have been made but they are very few and show no sign of doing anything to shore up the viability of the program. Whatever Grandma may have thought about Social Security, I am sure the benefits her household received were a godsend at the time. I never heard her say anything about that, though.

Free Writing Workshop This Saturday

2011-10-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

This morning I met one of my literary heroes and gave her half of a pumpkin muffin and she told me how much she LOVED my new book. Also this morning, my friend Linda had a very serious conversation with Nelson, as in Mandela, at the end of which she burst out laughing and couldn't stop (Nelson didn't laugh). We were doing a writing exercise in which you get to meet a famous person of your choosing. Sometimes this writing stuff gets so SERIOUS that you need a giant dose of the ridiculous to balance things out. Come join me this Saturday for a free workshop at the Korongo Gallery in downtown Randolph, and we'll do a series of fun, fast-writing exercises that mix fact and fiction and, well, we'll just see what comes out. I never know how these workshops are going to go—who's going to show up, what will work and what won't. We'll find out on Saturday. The workshop begins at 9 am and goes till 11 am. Latecomers welcome. Bring a notebook, a pen, and a personal memento. I have no idea what we'll do with the personal mementos, but we'll figure it out. Korongo is at 18 Merchants Row, next to Fenix Fine Foods. Info: 802-728-6788.

From Our California Fans

2011-09-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

Margot, a resident of Chaparral House in Berkeley, California, enjoys a visit from her daughter. Margot and other CH residents read and discussed our anthology The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots over the summer, and their response to the book was enormously gratifying. The following article ran in the Chaparral House newsletter:

When the Berkeley Adult School goes on summer vacation, Chaparral House loses three of its programs. Activities director Sandi Peters gets a little creative with her staffing and finds some very qualified volunteers to become “substitute teachers” for these programs. She looks to other staff members, like admissions director Paul Cooley. When Sandi approached him about replacing the Wednesday morning “Then and Now” segment, Paul thought of reading a book titled The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots to Chaparral residents. His office is located right next to the activities room and he hears a variety of volunteers who read aloud for residents. The book is a collective memoir put together by a group of Randolph, Vermont, senior citizens. It was edited by his cousin, Sara Tucker, and Paul's father and two aunts were among the twelve writers in the collection.

“It wasn’t my intention to simply sit in a chair and read the book to residents," Cooley says. "I thought of classes that I took in college called oral interpretation. Students who were theater majors took literature and developed them for performance. I was thinking I could use a book club format where I read the author’s memoir, one at a time, and then asked the residents questions about what I had just read. It could also be used as a form of reminiscence therapy. It’s a great way for elder groups to find common ground to relate to one another. In hearing about the families and loves and war times of The Hale Street Gang, our residents were able to discuss their lives in a way that I had never heard before.

"One resident recalled author John’s memoir about fishing and his playful speculation that the worms may have talked to one another. She used to teach and it reminded her of an assignment she gave to a student where the student rose very early each morning to document their movements in and out of the earth. The student came to the same conclusion.

"One of my favorite sessions was reading to them about marriage and courtships. After I had read to them about Ruth and Harrison and about John being dumped by Dolly McBride only to send him to his eventual wife Cynthia sometime later, the residents told me their wonderful stories about meeting their husbands and wives. This one lady who dozed through many of our sessions was awake for this one and said to me that she knew she was going to marry her husband on the second dance at the USO. She wanted to be clear that it was the second dance—and not the first, because on the second dance, it was cheek to cheek.

"My best decision was to invite actors—Marilyn Kamelgarn and John Hutchinson—to read segments aloud to the residents. Both Marilyn and John reached the residents in a way I couldn’t because they looked the part. When Marilyn read a very amusing piece that my aunt wrote about being angry with a boy she was dating, it garnered not only giggles, but my aunt got a fan! Marilyn’s interpretation of Ruth and her relationship with her sisters resonated so much with resident Margot that she asked me for my aunt’s address so she could write her a letter. I heard my aunt was thrilled to get it. I look forward to George going on Christmas break so I can take his time slot, and I hope my cousin Sara can get the Hale Street Gang to write some holiday memories for my actors to perform."

Not Hurting People With Your Words

2011-08-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

This issue comes up from time to time in our memoir-writing groups. Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl, states that memoirists rarely want revenge through their stories. "What we want is salvation. We want to finally be freed from whatever pain we portray, to finally take responsibility for our part in it. We want, ultimately, to have our pain matter, to mean something, and, most hopefully, to provide some sort of solace to our readers. So I forged on with this aim in mind." To find out what happened when Cohen showed her book to her parents after it had already been bought by Hyperion and was well on its way to being published, click here.

Another Postcard from California

2011-07-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

The residents of Chaparral House in Berkeley are reading In Cahoots and have been sending us messages via Facebook. Here's the latest, from book-group facilitator Paul Andrew:

"Fun Book Club today. We were able to access the Web—clumsily, but ended up hearing D'Ann's reading of being a dancer and Ruth's story about the nosy neighbor who got an earful about the whorehouse for 80-year-olds. This got giggles from my residents who could hear.

-the education process in rural Vermont that Idora went through and discussing each of their experiences in grade school and Junior High.

-and how old was old enough for college? Riding a sleigh to school was a source of fascination too for them all to hear. Many of our residents come from warmer climates and moneyed backgrounds."

Thanks, PA, and greetings to our friends at Chaparral House. We are delighted that you're staying in touch.

Join Us on Saturday, July 30, @ 1 pm

2011-07-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

The village of Woodstock, Vermont, will hold its third annual book fair, known as Bookstock, this weekend, with more than 30 free workshops and presentations. I'll be talking about memoir-writing in the Town Hall Conference Room at 1 pm on Saturday. With me will be Mary Jacobs and Shirly Hook. Mary will read from In Cahoots, Shirly will read about the time Moochie ate her T-shirt, and I'll tell the story behind the Hale Street Gang and give people some advice on how to start (or finish) a memoir of their own. Tip: Park at the Elementary School.

Marion Roach Smith: The Memoir Project

2011-07-16T14:16:00.000-07:00

What can I say? She's good. A 2-minute video by Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project.

Saturday Mornings @ Korongo

2011-07-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Today we held the first of our informal readings at Korongo, the art gallery on Merchants Row in Randolph. Dorcas's piece, about growing up in Brookfield, gave rise to a discussion of how to structure your memoir. By coincidence, this afternoon a friend sent me a link to a really good piece about that very topic, and here it is: "Structure. Period.

The Saturday-morning reading series will continue through the summer and perhaps beyond. We're here from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Feel free to drop in. Readers and listeners welcome.

Update from Chaparral House

2011-07-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

From Paul Cooley, our California correspondent, comes this update on the reading of The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots by the residents of Chaparral House in Berkeley:

"Today's topic: Educating our elders about haying, thanks to Idora's memories. Discussing woman's work vs men's work and what that means. Margaret inspired memories of Toronto under the British flag for one resident. D'Ann inspired the unique delicate and often complicated relationships between mothers, daughters, and sisters."

I'd love to meet these folks. Skype, anybody?

Postcard From California

2011-07-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

Chaparral House in Berkeley, California, has posted a Facebook "review" of The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots. On June 29, CH staff member Paul Cooley wrote on my wall: "The first meeting of the Chaparral House Book Club was a success! After reading [the anthology] of the Hale Street Gang, David recalled his family cook, Deidre and Bettey remembered the Ice Man in vivid detail and Lou recalled his time as an Infantryman in WWII!" Today I got this update from Paul: "Book Club continues to inspire great conversation. Today's topic was D'Ann's grandfather's employee Charlie teaching her morals from a simple [explanation]: 'Because you don't, that's all.' It led to a huge discussion on where we learn our morals growing up—other than our parents." ("D'Ann" is of course author D'Ann Fago.) Chaparral House is an eldercare residence, and we are so pleased that its residents are enjoying our stories. Thanks, Paul, for organizing the reading of In Cahoots and for sharing the response with us.

Excerpt: "How to Write a Memoir" by William Zinsser

2011-06-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

I was in New York recently for a writers' conference and ran into somebody from my past—she was the books editor at Cosmo back when I ran the magazine's copy department. In the conversation that ensued, Betty mentioned her friend William Zinsser, whose book Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir I've been carrying around with me for months. I'm a big fan of his, so I asked Betty how she knew him, and she told me they're in a singing group together. I am so jealous. It turns out that Zinsser is a lover of old-timey songs, a subject he often addresses in his blog for The American Scholar (to read his post "Stardust Memories" click here). He's even written a book called Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs.

By pure coincidence, two members of the Hale Street Gang have been writing about music in their current memoirs, and it is not unusual for someone in the Monday group or the Tuesday group to begin humming a little tune and then somebody joins in and pretty soon we're all sitting around the table singing. I clearly remember one winter afternoon when Margaret Egerton was still with us and both she and John Jackson happened to mention the same song in the pieces they read aloud that day. It was "Love's Old Sweet Song" ("Just a song at twilight . . .").

So now, of course, I want to start a singing group where friends gather round the piano on Friday nights and sing old Beatles and Pete Seeger songs.

I am eternally indebted to Zinsser for helping me learn the memoir-writing process. Here's an excerpt from his book On Writing Well:

Most people embarking on a memoir are paralyzed by the size of the task. What to put in? What to leave out? Where to start? Where to stop? How to shape the story? The past looms over them in a thousand fragments, defying them to impose on it some kind of order. Because of that anxiety, many memoirs linger for years half written, or never get written at all.

What can be done?

You must make a series of reducing decisions. For example: in a family history, one big decision would be to write about only one branch of the family. Families are complex organisms, especially if you trace them back several generations. Decide to write about your mother's side of the family or your father's side, but not both. Return to the other one later and make it a separate project.

Remember that you are the protagonist in your own memoir, the tour guide. You must find a narrative trajectory for the story you want to tell and never relinquish control. This means leaving out of your memoir many people who don't need to be there. Like siblings. (To continue reading, click here)

Everyone Has a Moment. What's Yours?

2011-06-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Arthur Suydam/Smith

This morning, as I was searching for something new to inspire the memoirists in our groups, I found my way to "Smith," the online magazine launched by Larry Smith, who pioneered the six-word memoir. For anyone interested in memoir-writing, Smith is a gold mine.

Question: "Can a single decision, happenstance, accident, call, conversation, or even email change the rest of your life?"

The magazine posed that question for a story project called The Moment and invited readers' submissions. The resulting book will come out in January 2012. A sample:

Moments Are Like This…

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, overhead her parents talking one evening, and her four-year-old world was profoundly rocked. She writes: “Hearing my mother’s voice calling to my father like that filled me with the most eerie and unsettling realization—namely, that these two people, my parents, existed separately from me.” Read her Moment.
Jeremy Toback was at an anti-war rally in DC when he realized that he could not stop the war in Iraq, but he might be able to stop his marriage from falling apart: Read his Moment.
Cheryl Della Pietra picked up the phone at 3am to find it was Hunter S. Thompson calling. She had one moment to accept the offer to become his assistant, provided she could leave the next morning. Read her Moment.
AJ Jacobs watched as his third-grade science teacher chucked a piece of chalk at his friend Max. As a stunned classroom looked on, the teacher said, “I shouldn’t have done that.” That was the moment AJ realized that adults are just as big fuck-ups as kids.

Continue reading at Smith.

Farm Girls: May 7 @ 2 pm

2011-05-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

The first in a series of readings by writers who farm and farmers who write. Where: Korongo Gallery on Merchants Row in Randolph. When: Saturday, May 7, at 2 pm. Who: With Dorcas Wright, Dorothy Herrin, Idora Tucker, Ruth Demarest-Godfrey, Charles Cooley (if he shows up; it's planting season), Estelle Therrien, special guest Bette Lambert, and others. How much: It's a free event, very informal, come join us.

Cookie Campbell: Q Is for Quirks

2011-04-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

Cookie has been using the letters of the alphabet as writing prompts, creating a chronicle of her life from A to Z. She read her latest entry to the Morning morning group this week:

Q is for "quirks." The world is full of them. Or should I say the world is full of people who are full of them? Whatever.

Think of all the people who won’t walk under a ladder, or do a quick turnabout to avoid a black cat.

The elder Clayton Campbell would have been my father-in-law if he had lived long enough. He would not sit at a table with thirteen diners. Nor would he leave the table. His wife was supposed to do that, and long after his death she still left the table if the count was thirteen. I knew “Old Clate” for as far back as I can remember, and I was never aware of any noteworthy quirks except for the number thirteen. However, there must have been many, and as I look back I realize quite a few of them rubbed off onto his sons. . . .

A new job started on Friday always brought trouble. Things broke down, the weather turned foul, livestock came down with something, or maybe even the farmer would be hurt or catch a bug. The answer to this was simple. Thursday night, 9 pm, dark as a pocket and guess what: the job was well started. This particular son would plow two or three furrows or mow two or three swaths; then he would go to bed and sleep the sleep of the just, knowing all would be well.

For about two and a half years after our marriage Bun and I lived on the family farm. Bun farmed with two of his brothers and I helped with the household chores and worked at the hospital off and on. I was not allowed in the kitchen except to set and clear the table, and dry and put away the dishes. I kept the house clean and the ironing done. It was a good arrangement, even though it sounds a bit strange. I loved my mother-in-law and we got along well. She did have a quirk or two that I just couldn’t seem to get my mind around. No one wrote checks on the first day of the month. You’d spend the whole month writing checks and that was bad. The same went for Mondays, too. Birthmarks didn’t just happen. Each one was an indication of something that happened during the pregnancy. Usually something unpleasant. She had a favorite example. Years ago, when dresses hung to the floor, a mouse ran up the leg of a pregnant lady. She grabbed a handful of skirt and the mouse and squeezed it to death. How brave! When her baby was born it had a birthmark on its leg—right where Mommy had latched onto that mouse! Now really. I had a very small mark high up on the inside of my leg that I never told her about. I was afraid of what she might concoct about my mother to explain it. You paid for your sins. She truly believed that, and it did make for some hard feelings once in a while. Only “bad” women wore red.

Are you beginning to think I picked the wrong letter? Well, live with it. I’m going to continue in this vein. It seems kinder than the “S” word.

I grew up with some of these (actually, I think I grew up with all of them, and I’m sure many of them will ring your bell, too):

You can’t swim for an hour after a meal. You’ll get stomach cramps and drown.

Sneakers are bad for your eyes. Something about the rubber.

Fresh water saps your strength, but sea water is fine.

Death comes in threes—ask any one.

There’s something about dropping silverware and why is it we throw salt over our shoulder?

If you sew on Sunday, you’ll have to pick all the stitches out with your nose when you die.

If your nose itches or your ears ring someone is talking about you, and if you forget what you were about to say it means you were going to lie.

You do not walk on a grave.

You do not count the cars in a funeral procession and if you have a sudden unexplained shiver or shudder, well, someone just walked over your grave.

I’m sure there are thousands more and I may think of a few or you can jog my memory. Either way, I have had fun with this.

Next Event: "Farm Girls" Reading @ Korongo May 7

2011-04-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Gertrude Small and Harry Cooley, Randolph Center, Vermont.

For some time now I've been wanting to host an event that would celebrate farmers who write and writers who farm. Since women outnumber men in the Hale Street Gang, we decided to call our next reading "Farm Girls." Among the readers will be members of the community, including Bette Lambert, author of Farm Wife's Journal. Bette and I went to school together (she was Bette Silloway then), and I'm thrilled that she'll be joining us for what I hope will become an annual event. Korongo is the new art gallery on Merchants Row in downtown Randolph. The May 7 reading will begin at 2 p.m.

Here's an excerpt from a piece Idora Tucker is working on—perhaps we'll include it in the reading, though Idora has said that someone else will have to read it, as her voice is giving out. Working title: "Manager Mom." It is a profile of Idora's mother, Gertrude Small (my maternal grandmother). Gertrude was a town girl who became acquainted with farm life as a young woman when she married a farmer by the name of Harry Cooley:

Gertrude Small, an early portrait.
I don’t know how Mom felt about becoming a farmer’s wife. Had she envisioned that at the time of her marriage? She never told me. It is a hard, demanding life, with no time off if your farm is a dairy farm. Her early life had not prepared her for the sort of life she was undertaking. Mom’s responsibilities did not include milking cows, feeding chickens, or driving horses during haying. There was more than enough to keep her fully occupied about the house. A farm wife, even one who does not work caring for the animals or growing crops, has a house to keep clean, meals to prepare, laundry to do, and children to bear and care for. In Mom’s case there were eventually five of us born over eight years in the 1920s. (continued after the jump)

Idora Cooley (right) with her sister Ruth.
Our house was more modern in some respects than most farm homes of that era. We had a limited amount of electricity powered by a set of Delco batteries that sat on a high shelf in the dairy barn. We had electric lights, a washing machine and a radio, and the barn had milking machines run by electricity, but that was it. The cook stove was a wood-burning Glenwood model. The hot water was heated by a kerosene burner located in the bathroom, or in a kettle on the top of the wood stove. The washer was the old-fashioned wringer type and the clothes were hung on lines outside to dry. Everything was ironed with irons heated on the wood stove. (Better choose a cool day to do the ironing.) An ice-box located in the cellar contained a big chunk of ice, cut in the winter and stored in sawdust in an icehouse. In the days before we had an electric refrigerator that was the way we cooled our food. The house had no central heating, but was heated by wood stoves. Most of the work related to heating with wood was men’s work: the cutting of the wood from our woodlot, the splitting of it for the stoves, even the carrying of it from wood box to stove and removal of the ashes, was for the most part up to the men and boys in the family. We had a phone (party line) and indoor plumbing. We had few labor saving devices—no vacuum cleaner, for instance—but considered ourselves to be well off, and were so considered by our farmer neighbors. Today I can begin to feel like a nap just thinking about all the meals we prepared and dishes washed; all the clothes laundered, hung out to dry, ironed and put away; all the furniture dusted, floors washed, windows and curtains washed; and the harvesting and preserving of food that we produced for our own consumption.

Gertrude Cooley with grandson Brian and daughter Idora.

Although all hands were expected to contribute to whatever food harvesting and preservation project was scheduled for the day, Mom was in charge, the one who did the scheduling and delegated the chores, according to the needs of the family and the abilities of those able to assist. During the ‘20s she had also incubated the babies and was in charge of their care, including breast-feeding each one in turn. To think that she was considered to be a frail child! What a lot about farm life she had to learn after her marriage.

Charles Cooley (left) with his cousin Buddy and brother John.

Most of the time Mom appeared quietly serene. I do not remember seeing her angry, but when I asked some of my generation what they remember in this connection, they were able to tell me of a couple of incidents when she was more than a little angry. It must have been the exception to her usual manner, as the memory has stuck with them over many years. My sister tells of an occasion when our brother Charles was in his middle teens. He was called from his bed in the early morning to chase the cows. Our dairy herd would sometimes find their way from their pasture into some place where we didn’t want them to go. The vegetable garden was one of their favorite spots to trespass. It always made everyone very angry when the cows failed to observe their limits and all available children and adults were pressed into service to chase them back where they belonged. So when Charles was roused to do his duty he thundered down the stairs from his bedroom, cursing vehemently. Out the door he rushed. When he came back, having accomplished his mission, Mom was waiting at the door brandishing the big iron skillet. “Charles Cooley,” she shouted in a voice we seldom heard, “if I ever again hear you use such language, I’ll let you have it with this skillet.” My, oh my.

Come Join Us at VTC on April 20

2011-04-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

The next reading by the Hale Street Gang is an event we've been looking forward to all year. VTC prof Sarah Silbert has again invited us to join her class in a joint presentation of memoirs by seniors and college students. This exchange between young and old took place for the first time last spring, and it was just great. We hope you'll join us for this special evening. The event is free and open to the public. We'll gather on Wednesday, April 20, at 6 p.m. at the Shape building at VTC in Randolph Center.

Spring Writing Classes Begin Monday, April 18

2011-04-10T05:28:00.000-07:00

Our touring exhibit has stirred up a lot of interest in memoir writing. The March 19 workshop at the Chandler Gallery brought together 35 aspiring memoirists, an impressive turnout. Now to continue what we’ve begun. I’ve been busily moving forward with plans for more events—8-week classes, introductory workshops, and readings. You don’t have to think of yourself as a writer to sign up. If you can write a letter, you can write about your life.

There are a million reasons to write. People come to my writing groups because they want to preserve family stories, to learn more about themselves, to further a work in progress, to enjoy themselves, make new friends, and have fun. Writing is good for the soul and good for our health (yes, scientists say so). Joining a writers’ group can be a life-changing event. The rewards are truly endless.

I will be continuing to lead the writing groups at the Randolph Senior Center, but for the moment they are full. So in addition, I'll be holding some classes at Korongo, the new art gallery on Merchants Row in downtown Randolph (click here to read about the gallery in 7 Days). The classes will meet during hours when the gallery is closed. It's a cheerful little space and the perfect size for small groups. It will also do nicely for occasional readings—there's room for about 35 folding chairs, the exact size of a good turnout in little Randolph. Our first reading will take place on Saturday, May 7, at 2 p.m. "Farm Women" will feature several members of the Hale Street Gang, as well as younger women who both write and farm (how do they do it?).

The Writers Studio @ Korongo
Spring Classes

April 18–June 21

Memoir Writing (all levels)

Every life is important, and everybody has a story to tell—but where to begin? And how to continue? And who’s going to care? Whether you are writing for family members or strangers, your story must first get past that unpleasant little voice (we all have one) that says, “But you’re not really a writer,” or “What a waste of time,” and so on. This 8-week course is designed to help draw out your story, bring it to life, and give you confidence in both your ability and your right to tell it. We will explore memoir-writing techniques through weekly assignments and small-group discussions. Suitable for beginning memoirists as well as writers wrestling with a work-in-progress. (Cost: $80)

Monday morning: 10:30–12 noon

(April 18 to June 13; no class May 30)

Monday afternoon: 2–3:30 p.m.

(April 18 to June 13; no class May 30)

Tuesday morning: 9–10:30 a.m.

(May 3 to June 21)

To sign up for one of the classes listed above, email me at saratucker@aol.com. (Don't procrastinate, though—there are very few spots left.)

Bonnie Willis: Raspberry Shoes

2011-04-09T16:14:00.001-07:00

The exercise that led to the following piece was to recall an object that had a lasting impact on your life.

In 1966, when I was living and working in Manhattan, I bought a pair of deep rosy pink shoes; the color of raspberry sorbet. They were not expensive, but pretty shoes with sling backs and not too high heels. One might think that these would be for special occasions—however, this was the era before women wore sneakers and changed into their fancier shoes when they got to work, so I wore these or another pair of a similar style for the walk each day. We lived on East 81st and I worked in a design studio on West 39th Street off Fifth Avenue, so the walk was long, especially with the long city blocks. I soon discovered that my raspberry shoes went with everything I wore to work; a little black dress—stunning. Colorful sixties-print dress—great, especially if it was in one of my fabric designs.

I wore the shoes practically every day. They always made me feel happy and gave a bounce to my step. I believe the shoes expressed my most positive creative nature. What I learned was to follow your bliss. Adopt the unique and unusual as your usual, if this is what your true self requires to glow with life. Eventually, the shoes became too worn to wear, so I put them back into their green and white polka-dot shoebox. I kept the box in the back of my closet as a reminder of that happy time. Every time I opened the box, I was back in those moments of confidence and joy.

Last year, I was in the Twin Cities visiting my family. My sisters and I spent a number of hours in one of our favorite places—a thrift shop, of course. The best one in St. Paul is the Unique Thrift Store. (We refer to it as the Unique Boutique.) The store is large, clean, organized with great stuff. We were having lots of fun finding clothes for ourselves and each other, and then I saw them—a brand-new looking pair of shoes in the same beautiful pink! They were just my size. I bought them immediately.

Photo by Jonathan Kim for Creative Commons

Our Chandler Moment

2011-04-09T16:14:00.000-07:00

Portraits in Writing spent the month of March at the Chandler Gallery in Randolph, and it was pretty special—kind of like one of those episodes of American Idol where the winner goes home in a limo. Besides the big party, we did three readings and a workshop. About 400 people saw the exhibit during gallery hours, and hundreds more during intermissions for various events. Thank you, Becky, Betsy, Sandy, Andrea, Mickey, Rebi, and everyone else at Chandler who helped to make our homecoming memorable.

Our House in Arusha Is Now Available at Amazon.com

2011-03-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

The Chandler Gallery in Randolph is hosting a series of events this month in connection with Portraits in Writing, Jack Rowell's portraits of the Hale Street Gang. The room was full last Saturday for a reading from In Cahoots. Readers included D'Ann Fago, age 93, who read from her memoir about Breathitt County, Kentucky. My mother, Idora Tucker, read from her recently published memoir Childhood. I read an excerpt from Margaret Egerton's memoir about the flapper era. Mary Jacobs read "Feeding a Circus," Charles Cooley read "Sugaring with Grampa and Buddy," and Mary Hutchinson read "The Glory Days of the Randolph Playground."

Our next reading, on Saturday March 26, will be from my own memoir, Our House in Arusha, which is coming out the end of this month. Copies are now available on Amazon.com and at the Chandler Gallery. It will start appearing in bookstores in April. Here's the back cover copy (see below for how to order online):

Set against the backdrop of a colorful Third World city, Our House in Arusha is the immigrant's story in reverse: Three refugees, driven by separate catastrophes, leave behind the comforts of the developed world to seek shelter and stability in a chaotic city of mud huts, tin-roofed shanties, and decaying colonial mansions in northern Tanzania. No sooner are they settled into their new home, however, than they receive some startling news: bomb-making terrorists are operating right in their own neighborhood, a quiet enclave where the only reliable disturber of the peace is the landlord's rooster. In the year that follows, fragile loyalties will be tested again and again as each member of the family struggles to make a place for himself in a tantalizing and dangerous world.

To order a copy, click here: Our House in Arusha on Amazon.com.

Now Showing at the Chandler Gallery in Randolph

2011-03-05T06:41:00.000-08:00

We had a sunny day and a terrific turnout for the opening reception of The Hale Street Gang: Portraits in Writing at the Chandler Gallery in Randolph last Saturday (February 26). Around 130 folks came to see the exhibit of Jack Rowell's photographs, hear the recordings, cluster around a lavish spread prepared by Chef's Market (gorgeous little tea sandwiches) and Chandler volunteers, and collect autographs. Next event: A one-hour reading of short new pieces on March 12 (Saturday) at 2 p.m. at the gallery. The exhibit is open until March 27. Hours are Thursday 4 to 6, and Friday through Sunday from noon to 5. The writers and I are doing much of the gallery sitting ourselves, so come on down, see/hear the exhibit, and keep us company.

Big Day at the Chandler Gallery

2011-03-05T06:33:00.000-08:00

Shari Voghell gets a signature from Cookie Campbell.

Jack's sister, Janet Miller, a Hale Street heroine.

D'Ann Fago's A Life in Art hangs adjacent to Portraits in Writing.

The buffet crowd.

Charles Cooley signs for Gail Evans-Africa.

Jack's friend Robin listens to D'Ann Fago's "Feudin' Country."

Checking out the buffet.

Chef's Market's veggies (everything else devoured by this time).

Jack with artist Phil Godenschwager.

Brent Björkman of the Vermont Folklife Center and Sara Tucker.

Ruth Godfrey, Pam Stafford, Idora Tucker, Mary Hutchinson.

Ruth Demarest Godfrey: Socks and Blocks

2011-03-05T04:57:00.000-08:00

Ruth and Harrison at Randolph Center in the 1940s.

During my long, interesting marriage to Harrison, there were many episodes that now seem very funny to me and did at the time. Most of the time, they didn’t seem funny to Harrison, or he was able to conceal any feeling of humor about the event. Perhaps the way that I viewed the situations was the fact that he was responsible for correcting the problem, while my only job was to watch and cheer. I suppose I felt that it was my job to supply the levity, and sometimes it seemed a lot funnier to me than to Harrison.
   These little stories are about a couple of things that happened during our long life together, which was often characterized by one of the following feelings on my part: frustration, hilarity, madness (of the insane type) and helpless affection. There was always some sort of reaction on my part. I would be glad to have an opportunity to feel those things again. We always emerged on the other side still loving one another, and we did manage during those lean years to keep the bills paid and to produce three worthy sons. These happened during the years when I was a stay-at-home mom. Financial affairs eased up considerably when I decided to return to work.
   One morning, when Harrison was dressing to go to work, he found a hole in one of his socks. This infuriated him, and he reacted by flinging the sock out of the bedroom into the hall, with loud expressions of his disapproval of my homemaking attributes. In those days the wife was supposed to darn holes in her husband’s socks so he could continue to wear them. Now we know that darns may cause blisters on the feet and the socks should be thrown out. This act aroused my stubborn streak, and I made a silent vow that I would never pick up those socks if they stayed there forever. Day after day, the socks lay there on the hall floor, growing furrier by the day. I vacuumed around them. I stepped on them. The kids ignored them. Harrison ignored them. Since I was at home all day, friends and neighbors frequently stopped in, and it would have been difficult to miss that pair of socks lying on the hall floor, so I would precede them into the living room and casually kick the socks into the bathroom. When they left, I would kick them back out into the hall. I would not give in! Never a word was exchanged between Harrison and me about the presence of a pair of dirty, dusty socks in the middle of the hallway. It began to seem so funny to me that I told my friends about it and they started checking on the socks as soon as they got to the house. “Are they still there?” they would ask. This went on for months. One day, as I passed through the hall, there seemed to be something different. What was wrong? Suddenly it hit me. The socks were gone! I never asked, and Harrison never told me, but apparently he decided to give in and tossed them into the laundry hamper. The saga of the socks had ended.

   The next episode is the one about the blocked drain in the kitchen sink. The whole thing was my fault, because I had rinsed off some muddy boots in the sink, and this had caused the blockage. One day I noticed that the water wasn’t going down fast enough, and I appealed to my ever-resourceful husband to unplug the drain. We had employed plumbers to do this sort of thing at times in the past, mostly when I thought paying a plumber was preferable to the resulting rage if I asked my husband to do the job. We had found, however, that Harrison was a much better plumber than any we could hire, so we had given up on calling in the men who were supposed to know what they were doing. Harrison was having trouble getting the sink unclogged and things were escalating. I resorted to a tried-and-true method that I had for keeping things under control. I quietly called a friend of ours and suggested to him that it would be a good time for him to pay us an unexpected visit, which he did. He arrived shortly. Harrison did not like to display his truly impressive vocabulary for anyone outside his immediate family, so things quieted down considerably when our friend arrived. I went into the bedroom and made a tool I thought would have one of two effects. It would either cause Harrison to “lose it” completely, or it would make him laugh. Here I have to admit to an irresistible urge to exacerbate such things as a means of bearing them. If they became ridiculous enough, they wouldn’t seem so bad. I straightened a wire hanger and attached a tampon to the end of it. “Back in the day,” the well-bred woman did not display such articles used for women’s functions, and did not talk about them. They were not advertised on television as they are today, with accompanying dialogue. Back in the kitchen, I said guilelessly (I hoped) to Harrison, “Here, dear, here’s something you may be able to use,” One look, and our friend started to laugh and Harrison soon joined him, but he refused to try to use my ingenious “tool.” Eventually, the job was successfully completed and all was quiet and peaceful again.

Portraits in Writing: The Chandler Opening

2011-02-23T16:07:00.000-08:00

Sandy Waldo and Andrea Easton at the Chandler Gallery in Randolph.

The show went up today, thanks to the skills of two very capable women and one very devoted husband. Andrea and Sandy did most of the work, arranging and hanging with lightning efficiency (lunch was a jar of Planters peanuts). Betsy Cantlin helped schlepp, made coffee, and handled small emergencies. Patrick Texier, my darling husband, handled me, putting up with my crabbiness and coming to the rescue when D'Ann Fago's work was delivered without labels. Jack Rowell took pictures and cracked jokes. The two exhibits—Jack's "Portraits in Writing" and D'Ann's "A Life in the Arts—will open on Saturday at 2 p.m.
At 3:00 this afternoon, with 50-plus pieces in place, Patrick and I left Andrea and Sandy to finish up (at least 20 pieces to go) and went to the Depot for soup and sandwiches. Then to Belmain's for foamboard, which Patrick turned into labels for D'Ann's work. The two exhibits work beautifully together, and the Hale Street Gang looks as if it was made for the Chandler space.
We have a few finishing touches to do on Friday. Tomorrow I'll be talking about the opening on WDEV with Jack Donovan at 3 p.m. and on WCAX with Kristin Carlson at 5:30.

Idora Tucker: Downtown Randolph in the 1940s and '50s

2011-02-22T03:43:00.000-08:00

Memories of a time when nobody talked about buying local. You just did it.

I was married less than a week after graduating from college and a few months later Ransom was called into the service. We spent the next few years away from Randolph, but in late 1945, just after the end of WW II, we returned and moved into our new home on Highland Avenue. Our acquisition of our home is in itself an illustration of the way in which business was conducted at the time. Several months before the end of the war I was living in San Francisco and Ransom was the ship’s doctor on a troop transport, carrying servicemen to and from the Pacific war. Our parents, both Ransom’s and mine, contacted us and advised us that we should buy a house soon. They told us that right after the war was over real estate would increase in value dramatically. We asked them to get together, to select a house for us, and we would send any money needed to seal the purchase. They selected the house, drew a floor plan for us, we sent a very modest down payment to the local Savings and Loan. That bank (note the word local) would hold the house for us without further payment until we were back in Randolph. The house, selected for us when I was 23 years old, is still my residence now that I am nearly 90.

The hot water tank was in the bathroom, on the second floor above the kitchen. I never understood why only about half the 25-gallon tank got warmish – never hot. My sister Ruth and her husband lived with us during some of that time. I sent the laundry to a local person, as we had no washer. You can imagine what our baths were like. We had no shower, so Ransom took most of his showers at the hospital. The rest of us did the best we could. I heated water for dishes on the stove. Needless to say, one of our highest priorities was to purchase a hot water heater, so as soon as there was one available, I called the local hardware store, J.H. Lamson and Sons. I told old Mr. Lamson that I wanted to buy a 50-gallon hot water tank. That sent him into a state of complete disbelief. “Girlie,” he shouted into the phone, “what are you going to do with FIFTY GALLONS OF HOT WATER?” I calmly replied, “I’m going to wash things.” I was by then accustomed to being addressed in this manner, the young and younger-looking naïve wife of a respected doctor. I did get my water tank and have had one that size to this day and it has been a rare day when we have run out of hot water.

There were other pressing needs. We purchased a refrigerator that I used for many years. As an adult, my son Jim took the refrigerator when I replaced it. We had to buy a kitchen range and a washing machine. All those items were purchased locally. Besides Lamson’s Hardware, there was Scribner’s that advertised “everything for the kitchen but the girl.” The Scribner family also owned The Music Shop. It was not a bit unusual for members of local families to own more than one business. The Lamson family also ran a furniture store. The Tewksbury family were owners or part owners of the clothing store known as Tewksbury and Raymond, as well as Tewksbury and Mayo, the latter in the funeral business, I think.

It was very important to me at that time to be able to purchase almost everything locally. Besides the convenience of not having to go out of town, if anything did go wrong with any of my purchases I could contact the local merchant who would be able to get it straightened out.

As the children came along there was, of course, more and more shopping to be done. We had only one car, so I walked downtown several times a week, taking the children with me, doing only a few errands in each trip. Besides getting some of the shopping done in small amounts, it also served the purpose of getting the children outside. The downtown atmosphere was very relaxed. I could go into any store, buy anything, if I didn’t have the money with me to pay for it, the store would put it on my tab until I did pay at some future time. On one occasion I was buying groceries at one of the first stores in town that was a member of a national chain. My grocery cart was piled high as I was doing my big grocery shopping of the week and had the car to bring home my purchases. Next in line behind me at the checkout counter was a well-known local gentleman, a judge, no less. He looked at my cart and at the children, and remarked, “I’m glad I don’t have to pay your grocery bill.” On another similar occasion I had loaded my week’s groceries into the station wagon when that ornery vehicle quit on me right in the middle of Merchant’s Row. Fortunately, a neighbor pulled up right behind me in her car. We moved my groceries and my kids into her car and proceeded toward my house. We passed by the filling station where we usually had our car serviced, pulled into a space in front of the station, and I said to the proprietor, “Bob, my car has quit on me and it’s standing in the middle of Merchant’s Row. I have a ride home. Will you go get the car and do whatever it needs?” He did. At that time, that’s the way it was. We were neighbors and friends who trusted and helped one another.

Tune In on Thursday, February 24

2011-02-21T18:40:00.000-08:00

Tune in to WDEV (AM 550, FM 96.1) on Thursday at 3 p.m. to hear Jack Donovan talk with Charles and me about The Hale Street Gang: Portraits in Writing, opening at Chandler Gallery in Randolph on Saturday (photography by Jack Rowell, cupcakes by Aunt Ruth and Dorcas Wright, doors open at 2 pm). Last spring Mr. Donovan had Mary Jacobs and me on the air to talk about the Hale Street Gang back when we were still raising the funds to mount the exhibit. Now that it's a fait accompli, we can tell him how we did it—with the support of lots of friends. Charles plans to read his little piece on humility ("I don't like to brag, but I'm a really humble dude").
Next stop on Thursday: WCAX in Burlington to speak with Kristin Carlson. We'll be on the air between 5:30 and 6 p.m. (Channel 3). Charles is going to wear his new blue sweater and get a haircut at Ken's Barbershop. Jack will document the event for posterity. It's not every day one gets a haircut at Ken's.

Ruth Demarest Godfrey: Cluck, Cluck and Doodle Doo

2011-02-21T18:28:00.000-08:00

Photo by Melisdramatic @ Creative Commons

During a trip to New Jersey to visit friends and family, following the death of Harrison, I met a man whom I had previously known slightly. My status, however, had changed since I knew him before and he was quick to make his move. Things progressed from casual to eager and soon Ted was planning a visit to my home in Vermont.

Here you need a little background on Ted to explain some of his ideas. He was a city-bred man, who arrived in Vermont with many city-bred ideas about how to live in the country. He was gentlemanly, handsome, well read and well traveled, always courteous and thoughtful. I can still envisage him on that first visit, sitting bolt upright in the back seat of my friend’s car, looking all around. “ See all that land around the house!” he may have been thinking. I think he started thinking about how to put that extra land to use as soon as he saw it. The idea that I just wanted it to be there, empty, escaped his city-bred consciousness.

The arrival was not without its interesting aspects. My little white Lhasa Apso, seeing the arrival of the car, made haste to return to the house. However, Dalai had been on a little foray around the edges of the lawn and had apparently come upon something of a very malodorous nature, and she arrived at the steps simultaneously with my guests, completely covered in something very smelly. After a very quick hello, I grabbed her up and immediately took her into the bathroom, where I gave her a bath. I did not want to have my fastidious friends making her acquaintance when she was in such a condition. Coming out of my bathroom with my very clean little dog, I was greeted with the news that Ted’s clothing was completely saturated with the odor of 711 cologne, it having spilled in his suitcase. My second post-arrival task was to take all of Ted’s clothing and throw it in the washer. Only then was I able to issue a polite greeting.

After that first visit Ted came to see me frequently. When he saw that I had a deck in the back, he decided that would be a wonderful place to put a hot tub. He had never seen Vermont in mid winter. I pointed out the impracticalities of a hot tub outside. He still thought it would be a lot of fun to leap through the snow and into the tub, where a social time could be had by all. He asked me if I thought my relatives and friends would object to going naked into the tub, I told him I thought some of them might not object to the nudity, although I didn’t know any such, but I thought they would all object to plowing through snow naked to get to the tub. After a discussion of the pros and cons of the idea, Ted abandoned it.

Another idea that occurred to Ted, by now my husband, was that we should have a cow because they were so cute and friendly and would look so nice grazing. In succession, he suggested getting a horse, some goats, and some sheep. Each time I repeated the information that there wouild need to be a barn. “I could easily build one,” said Ted, with a cavalier disregared for the fact that, sweet as he was, he could not have built anything at all. I was able to fend off the livestock until poultry came up.

When Ted was growing up in Charleston, S.C., the family had some chickens in the back yard. He loved them and they became his playmates Therefore, when he happened to be at our neighbor’s house and overheard some plans to give their rooster to another neighbor for his stew pot, it was too much for a Ted, who offered to give the rooster a home to save him. He brought him home and there he was. He was a very feisty rooster and I hated him a lot, but I loved Ted and thought I needed to let him have his fun. Little did I know how that fun would escalate!

Some time after the rooster moved to our yard, we went to a political rally at the home of someone who lived nearby. As luck would have it, we met there a woman with her daughter and her daughter’s pet goose. The goose was on a leash, but the dogs who came along to the meeting terrified the goose, so the daughter picked him up, where he proceeded to nestle his long neck into her neck. Ted was entranced. He started conversing with the woman and learned that she had quite a lot of poultry. He told her of his recent acquisition of a rooster and she persuaded him that he should have some hens to make the rooster truly happy. I did not want him to be truly happy, in fact I hoped he would die of loneliness, but Ted did, and soon the woman arrived at our house with three hens, which he gave to Ted as a gift.

Apparently he had charmed her. I reluctantly allowed Ted to keep them. They were terrible. As long as they spent their time clucking and wandering around at a distance from the house, I could tolerate them, but one day I saw them come onto the front porch. Looking out the door, I saw that they were leaving little piles of manure on my porch. I wasn’t pleased and rather pointedly told Ted that he had to get out there and clean the porch, and that he would have to figure a way to keep them away from the house. Of course, this necessitated the building of a house for them, which Ted engaged a friend to build. After it was built it was dragged down the road and put in place beside the tractor shed. Then Ted found someone to run electricity out to the henhouse, and had some water piped out there. It was hen heaven. The rooster saw Ted as a threat to his harem and tried to kill him every time he came near. He would launch humself off the ground and go for Ted’s face. Ted was terrified. One day the rooster got on our rear deck. When I saw him there, I was enraged and determined that since he was small and I was large, in addition to being a human being, that rooster would get off that deck. I grabbed a baby gate that we used to keep our puppy in the kitchen, and a ski pole. Using them as a red cape and a sword, I made like a bull fighter, and edged that damned rooster off the deck with loud, angry words (not

“ole!!) He left. After the hens started to lay eggs, one night in winter, Ted told me that the rooster would not “let him” get the eggs out of the nests. I was cozily settled in my bathrobe and slippers. Once again, my mindset returned to the one I had when I chased him off the deck. That beast was not going to get the better of me. I put on my boots and coat and out I went. This time I had no weapon and was mad enough so that I was able to rely on loud threats to persuade the rooster to let me into the henhouse to get the eggs. Ted thought the rooster was easier on me because he did not regartd me as such a threat to his ladies, since I was female!

One day when I had somewhere to go, Ted told me that he was going to attend a poultry fair nearby. “Don’t even think of coming home with anything!” I said threateningly. He said he wouldn’t. When we both arrived home later in the day, Ted said he had a good time at the fair, and I started to prepare our dinner. After a while he went out to his car and came back in with a large box that said “Chiquita Bananas” on it. Before I got to asking him what was in the box, I happened to see four webbed feet sticking out of the bottom of the box. He had bought two ducks!

I don’t remember when or where we acquired a bantam rooster. He was the only one of the whole bunch I didn’t hate. I didn’t know why I liked him, but I did. He wasn’t fierce and he caused no trouble. I liked his cheerful little crow in the morning.

When our friend died in Hew Jersey, we went down and Ted asked the lady who had given him the hens to keep our poultry for us while we were gone. We just never went after them. Ted never brought up the subject of poultry again! We finally managed to give our really expensive henhouse away.

John Jackson: Grama and Grampa

2011-02-21T18:11:00.000-08:00

The Wallkill River near Walden, New York

Photo by Deep Shot @ Creative Commons

I had a personal relationship with only one pair of grandparents. My father's parents have been dead for over 100 years. My father was very young when they died and did not volunteer much information about them if, indeed, he had much to share. I know that my grandfather Jackson was named Amos Ezekiel Jackson and that he was born in Sheffield, England. When he first arrived in the USA, he worked as millwright in a knife company in Middletown, NY. After several years in that position, he moved to the New York Knife Company in Walden, NY. I have the impression that he had a drinking problem. There was a family story that on occasions when he was fired for drunkenness, he could and did shut down the factory(it was powered by waterwheels) in such a way that he had to be re-hired so that he could start it up again. True or not, it makes a good story. Since my father had a brother thirty-five years older, I assume Amos had more than one wife. That's all I know, or think I know.
The grandparents I knew were Harvey and Rachel Halwick, my mother's parents. Since my mother was married at fifteen and I was born when she was twenty, I knew my mother's parents when they were still quite young. My mother was the only surviving child of their marriage, so that I didn't have any competition from uncles, aunts or cousins. My brother was five and a half years older than me so that I had the position of an (almost) only grandchild. I've often speculated about how they got together. Rachel was born a Terwilliger, an important family in the mid-Hudson Valley. Pictures of great grandmother Terwilliger, who was also alive when I was young, seem to show a rather grand dame. I know that, when he was young, Harvey worked as a gardener on a large estate in the neighborhood. Could it have been a case of the daughter running off with the hired help? In any event, it was not an altogether happy marriage. They seemed to get along pretty well but Harvey was a drinker. He was fired from the gardener job and they moved to Walden. They both took jobs in one or another of the three knife factories in town but Harvey couldn't keep a job very long. Paydays were his downfall. By the time I knew them, Harvey had settled into the role of a house-husband and Rachel worked at a sewing machine in the local underwear factory. Her machine was right across the table from my mother's.

Harvey tended a large garden, mostly flowers, and worked around the house. Since their house was only a short walk from my elementary school and they school didn't have a cafeteria, I would walk every day over to Main St. where Grama and Grampa lived and have lunch with Grampa. He made me lunch. I particularly remember canned spaghetti, a great favorite of mine. On weekends, Grama would often make sugar cookies, another favorite, so that lunch with Grampa was great for me. I would sometimes help out in the garden, occasionally doing more harm than good. Another Grama specialty was her version of vanilla ice cream. It was only available in the winter since it consisted of snow, condensed milk and vanilla. In those benighted days, it was a huge treat.

In those days, I was a demon moviegoer, seeing usually at least three shows per week, two of them double features. The double features were Saturday and Sunday matinees. The third was a single feature on Tuesday evening that also featured bingo or a prize drawing. On Tuesdays, I always went to the movies with Grama. I don't know how I managed it but I have the definite feeling that I also often got to the Thursday double feature as well.

Grama's brother, Uncle Arthur, a tugboat captain in New York Harbor, would occasionally visit. Those were fabulous occasions both for his colorful persona and the fact that he always gave me a nickel, a big deal in those days.
Grampa's brother, Uncle Roscoe was also a drinker and lived for a while in a derelict car on the edge of town.

Dorothy Herrin: Summers at Lakewood

2011-02-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

The Lakewood resort was built around the summer theater. The theater was built originally in 1898 by a trolley company which was seeking to establish an amusement park on the shores of Lake Wesserunnsett in Madison, Maine. It was in 1901 that Herbert L. Swett was hired as manager. Mr. Swett had the vision to build Lakewood into a resort with a theater that became the most important summer theater in America between 1925 and 1941. It was at Lakewood that many new plays were tried out before going to Broadway.

Of course, I was born in 1942, after the heyday of the theater. Lakewood became for me the most significant place in my life. I was born five miles away in Skowhegan, and spent my first summer at Lakewood when I was 4 months old. At that time my dad worked in Skowhegan for his father in the machine shop he owned, and my mother was the postmaster at Lakewood. During subsequent summers when I was too young for my mother to look after me and work too, I was taken care of by various nearby relatives. When I was old enough, probably about 7, I started spending the entire summer at Lakewood with Mother. We lived in Connecticut by then, and I left school early in June so that I could go to Maine with Mother.

Those summers until I was out of college are the sweetest memories of my life. Lakewood was owned and operated by Mr. Swett’s two daughters and their husbands. Mr. Swett himself died in 1945 so I don’t remember him but I remember my dad’s stories about him. Daddy was very fond of him and had a lot of respect for his business capability.

In the beginning I spent most of my time playing with various other children who summered in the area. It was quite an adventure for me as an only child. Mother and I enjoyed the privilege of eating in the dining room where the guests ate meals. Therefore I had to dress and act appropriately from a very young age. I ran errands for my mother all around the grove. Each week there was a new play to attend; sometimes I would like the play so much that I would go several times. Once in a while there was a play that I wasn’t allowed to see because Mother thought it was too risqué. A Streetcar Named Desire fit that category! Best of all, I had bit parts in four of the plays starting when I was nine years old.

Billie Burke and Clark Gable, 1934

Needless to say I was pretty star-struck. During the years when I was a child, we had our own company of actors who were there all summer. Later on the theater started using the “guest star” system. Each week there would be a new company of actors moving in so I got to meet some of the important performers of the day, such as Edward Everett Horton, Martha Raye, ZaSu Pitts, Billie Burke, Faye Emerson. Once in a while I was asked to assist one of the stars with wardrobe changes. I remember when I did that for Billie Burke. Miss Burke was somewhat elderly at the time and wore white gloves to hide her wrinkled hands! I decided to wash all her white gloves with bleach. However, no one told me about diluting the bleach. I scrubbed those gloves in that bleach until my hands were so burned and blistered that I was in misery. I know I didn’t tell her what I had done to burn my hands so badly. I can only wonder how long those gloves lasted after my laundering.

Miss Billie Burke

Lakewood as I remember it was a beautiful place. You entered through stone gates near the golf pro shop on Route 201 and drove down a paved drive into what we called the Grove which was the area including the Inn and the Theatre and the lakefront. The first buildings you passed on your left after passing through the gates were the cottages which were rented to travelers. They were cedar shingle buildings which accommodated from 2 to 6 people. A bit farther along on the right was Bungalow Service which was where my mother’s post office was and where the cottage reservation desk was. There was also a bedroom and bath off the back. This was where my parents lived early on in their marriage and later where the two young men lived who worked each summer as combination clerks and bellhops. During my teen years I was often enamored of one or another of these young men. Like the waitresses at the Inn, these young men attended various New England colleges and came for the summer for employment.

Going farther down toward the lake, you would pass the tennis courts on the right and a lovely tree-shaded pergola before you would bear to the right and see the Inn. The main dining room of the Inn looked out over the water. The front entrance faced the theater. These two buildings were imposing white clapboard structures, always beautifully maintained and would have been considered the heart of the resort. Beyond the theater was the Shanty which served light snacks and was always a popular place during intermission at the theater. And beyond the Shanty were four lakefront cottages which were available for overnight guests. On the broad sweep of lawn in front of the Inn you would see groupings of white Adirondack chairs.

If, instead of bearing right to go to the Inn and Theater, you stayed to the left and drove down to the waterfront and along the shore, you would pass the Colony House which was a large, cedar shingled guest house looking over the lake. During most of my childhood it was owned by a family separate from Lakewood, but there was always a cooperative relationship. In fact my mother and I lived in a beautiful downstairs bedroom in that house for several summers. Beyond the Colony House were various privately owned cottages as well as cottages owned by Lakewood and used to accommodate the staff and the actors.

It was to this magical place that I was privileged to go every summer. I spent my winters in Connecticut yearning for summer to come so that I would be off to Maine again. As soon as I was old enough for a job, I was on the payroll. My first official job was as sidehall waitress in the dining room where the employees ate. There were long tables covered in oilcloth. My job was to keep things clean and to help out as needed. Employees picked up their own food out in the kitchen so I didn’t actually serve them. However, they tipped me each week, and that constituted most of my pay.

Another of my early jobs was helping Mrs. Swett in the Gift Shop. She had a storage room in the back of the Inn where I helped her with opening shipments and pricing items. The Gift Shop itself was near the main entrance to the Inn. I served as clerk in the Gift Shop on Sunday afternoons. Mrs. Swett was very fond of me and always very good to me. I loved helping her in the shop. While she was no longer involved in the management of Lakewood, she was the matriarch and I’m sure her opinions were heeded by her daughters and their husbands.

There were certain people who came back to Lakewood year after year. The golf pro, Leo Hansberry, and his family were among them. Leo’s son, Leo Jr., was a friend of mine from the time I was old enough to be at Lakewood with my mother. Polly Hansberry, Leo’s wife, was a close friend of my mother.

Other staff were also like family to me because they returned year after year throughout my childhood. One was the chef, Gordon Gilbert, and his assistant, Mickey. Both of them did hotel work in Florida in the winter. The two of them were dear to me. As I came in through the back door to the Inn, I would often encounter Mickey at a big butcher block table cutting up meat for the next meal. Gordon would be in his office nearby or out in the kitchen supervising the meal preparation. Of course, I always made friends with the pastry chef but I don’t recall that there was ever a person who returned to that position year after year.

The waitresses seldom returned for more than a year or two. However, the hostess, Enid, was there ever since I can remember. She was a home economics teacher in the winter and had lived with my family at one time when I was a baby. She was a little dynamo of a woman, hardly more than five feet tall. She ran a tight ship in the dining room but was, I think, well respected by the waitresses. She remained a close friend of my parents throughout their lives, and I kept in touch with her until her death a few years ago.

Across the street from the Inn, at the theater, were the offices of people involved in the management of the resort. A true fixture was Mildred Fogg, the treasurer. Her desk, in an office above the box office, afforded her a view of everything that was happening in the area. Along with Mildred in the offices on the second floor were the family members who ran the whole operation after Mr. Swett’s death. Libby and Twinnie were the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Swett. Libby’s husband, Grant Mills, was what I suppose would be considered the general manager while Twinnie’s husband, Henry Richards, was in charge of the operation of the theater. Libby and Grant lived in Connecticut in the winter, not far from where we lived in Stamford. Twinnie and Henry spent their winters in New York City where Henry was involved in planning and hiring for the following season at the theater. Neither couple had children until Libby, at the age of forty-something, gave birth to Michael. I was a teen-ager at the time and did some baby-sitting with Michael at their home which was a large farmhouse on the edge of the golf course. Michael seldom came down into the Grove and was never really very involved in the day-to-day life of Lakewood.

You would think that I might have been a waitress when I got old enough but I was never interested in that job. I did fill in on busy nights but I really disliked waiting on tables. My job of choice was assisting my mother and her staff of two young men in the guest registration office which was called Bungalow Service. I was a “jack of all trades,” I suppose. I ran errands back and forth to the theater and the Inn. I assisted Mother with the post office, filled in for her when she went for meals, often helped her with cashing up and delivered mail when there was something that needed special attention. Most people came to Bungalow Service to pick up their own mail. I also greeted travelers and rented cottages. The two young men took turns taking guests to their cottages. They took along a pitcher of ice water since the cottages did not have potable water piped in. The ice was harvested from the lake in the wintertime and stored under sawdust all during the summer. Each day someone would drop off big chunks of ice at Bungalow Service and at the Inn. In the afternoon the bellhops chipped ice, filled pitchers, and delivered ice water to each cottage that was occupied that day. One of my best friends to this day, is a man who worked with me and my mother at Bungalow Service for two summers when I was in college. Duane became a teacher and later a school principal. He has been helpful to me numerous times in my professional life.

Idora Tucker: A Walk in the Cemetery

2011-02-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

My granddaughter was just a little girl and I was well into my seventies when we had a conversation that got me to thinking seriously about death. Of course, death was nothing new to me, but I had never given it much thought, except as a loss to surviving family and friends. This is how it happened.

We went for a walk in the cemetery near my home, a walk that we often took when Courtney was visiting. She was perhaps seven at the time, young enough so that I was surprised that she could do the arithmetic as fast as she did, in order to calculate how old people had been when they died. Our first visit was to the grave of someone whom I had known well and whom Courtney had known slightly. A little further on, we stopped to peer into a very elaborate crypt. It was so dark inside that we couldn’t see anything through the small openings, but we speculated as to what must be in there. I had to confess that I really didn’t know the exact details.

In the older part of the cemetery she noticed that there would often be the markers for two or more women who were identified as the wives of the one man at the site. She asked for an explanation of that, and I told her that in that time many women didn’t live very long lives, that they either died in childbirth or had so many children that it destroyed their health. We also talked about the difference in medical practice from that day to our day, which meant that many people died of diseases which today we are able to treat successfully. She followed that up with a question about the many babies and young children who lay in the cemetery, and I was able to explain that to her. There is a small building at the edge of the cemetery, used to store tools for the care of the grounds and probably for digging the graves. I asked Courtney if she knew what that building was used for. Without hesitation she replied that it was used to refrigerate the bodies until burial. Where did that come from? Maybe it was once true, but not in my memory.

Somehow we got into the subject of cremation, and Courtney wanted my opinion on that practice. I shared my thoughts on the matter with her. At the time I felt that what happens after a person dies is for the survivors and therefore I was planning to leave it up to my family to decide all the particulars. Since then, I have changed my mind, but at the time Courtney seemed to take my explanation in stride. Then the zinger that got me thinking. She said, “I think I would like to be buried, because then there would be something of me left.” That was the end of the conversation that day. We continued on our walk, turning our attention more to the lovely, sunny day, to the flowers, and to the bird songs. For me, though, that remark by my little granddaughter so many years ago led me to think about death in a different way, raising in my mind a whole series of questions which I have pondered off and on ever since.

What is death, anyway? What exactly is left after the body dies? I don’t now, nor have I ever believed in the idea of a place in the sky called Heaven. Nor do I believe in a fiery furnace designated as Hell or purgatory. I think those ideas, like many others in the Christian Bible, as well as in the sacred books of other religions, were created in ancient times to explain the mysteries of life and death which were in a sense unexplainable. Parts of the Old Testament are based on historical events, passed down by word of mouth through many generations until they were eventually written down. The New Testament contains much historical truth, but also many stories created to explain the unexplainable. It makes for interesting reading, often supplying guidelines for living one’s life if one is willing to dig deep enough to find it, but not necessarily to be taken literally. In some religions, perhaps most, that makes me a heretic. It still leaves us with the question, what is left after the body dies? I believe that what is left has at least two aspects. One is our DNA if we happen to have descendants. The other is what individuals whom we touched during our lifetime remember of us. Now that I am in my ninetieth year I often am reminded by family and others of the ways in which my life has influenced theirs. What they tell me is almost always favorable, but there are ways not so good that could be told by some who don’t speak up. How does the idea of the soul fit into this thinking? I’m not sure. I do know that I don’t fear my own death. Like everyone else, I hope not to become a burden to my children, and I hope to avoid a long, painful death. I even approve of the idea of ending one’s life voluntarily, but I’m not at all sure I would be able to do that myself. I cringe at the various euphemisms that are used to avoid the word dying. Passing is one I particularly dislike. Passing to what?

Thoughts about dying inevitably lead to thoughts about living. How are life and death different? There are uncounted ways that are clearly visible, but does that mean that once our physical body shuts down that’s the end of us forever? Courtney’s remark that burial would ensure that there would be something of her left made me think about what is left, if anything, after one dies. If one accepts the idea that a part of what is left is the memories that our survivors have of us, and our influence on their lives, that is a pretty strong incentive to live a life that will encourage them to be the best they can be. For me that is a stronger incentive than the promise of an eternity in Heaven or punishment in Hell.

So what is the purpose of life? The idea of a supreme being who directs the course of life, whether of an individual life or all of life as we know it, even of the universe, may be a comforting answer to some, but it leaves me with more questions than answers. It has not seemed hard to me to understand what I should do with my one life, but I can’t seem to get much further than that. The purpose of my life has been to nurture my family and to do what I can to be of some small help to those with whom I come in contact, knowing that any one individual can’t accomplish much, but if everyone would try to do his/her bit to make the world a good place, we would all be living in a more caring place than is now the case. That’s where I get stuck. Why is it that individuals can work for the good of all, but that the human race doesn’t behave that way? You can hear me getting confused.

The phrase “out of the mouths of babes. . .” comes to my mind. Who would have thought that a remark by a seven-year-old child would have triggered a search for the deepest meanings of life and death? My own children don’t like to discuss death with me, particularly when it has anything to do with my death, so I have tended to push such thoughts to the back of my mind. My grandchild, however, in her innocence and her natural child’s curiosity, opened my mind to thoughts which up to that time I had pretty much ignored.

Charles Cooley: Winter Roads

2011-02-17T14:57:00.000-08:00

"The tunnels that we dug were not just igloos. We made some that were nearly 75 feet long."

In 1930 Vermont towns had for the most part abandoned the snow rollers and were striving to make winter roads usable by automobiles. It must have been quite a shock to Selectboards to figure out how to get the snow off the roads. I doubt if they were accustomed to budgeting for snowplows even if they knew they had to have them. The technology of both automobiles and highway maintenance has come a long way since then. Today as far as snow removal is concerned I believe rural highways are maintained at least as well as urban streets and sidewalks are.
    Back then the trucks used by many towns for highway maintenance were often privately owned and hired as needed for road maintenance. Randolph did not use a truck to plow snow for several seasons after the Town started a policy of maintaining roads for use by automobiles in the winter. The first machine for that purpose that I can remember was a crawler tractor outfitted with a V-plow. The tractor was owned by Charlie Belisle and maybe the plow was too. I don’t know what the financial arrangement was. The tractor was quite slow so the snow was not thrown away from the road the way the faster trucks do it today. Consequently the snowbanks were higher than they usually are now.
   Plowing didn’t start until the storm was over. I suppose the reason was that by waiting for the storm to stop the road only had to be plowed once for each storm. Of course the result was that roads were often impassable until they were plowed. The plow was so slow that some roads were impassable for quite a while. I believe Randolph had about 100 miles of town highways at that time. Some of them were not used in the winter but at 4 or 5 mph it took several hours to get over the roads one time. Fortunately one time was enough to make the road passable, but if there was a lot of snow the result might be a path too narrow for cars to meet and pass. In such cases the operator of the snowplow would make a few wider places where cars could pass.
    The snowplow had “wings” that extended its reach on both sides. The wings could be raised and lowered with chainfalls. This required an assistant for the driver. Early in the season with not much snow the wings could be lowered to the same height as the plow and the result was a nice wide road.    If there was a lot of snow or if the banks were high the wings had to be raised to lighten the load for the tractor. Often the wings were only used to push the top part of the snowbank away, making a flat elevated path near the top. Under the right conditions the snow might become hard enough to walk on that path. Since we walked home from school quite often I liked to climb up on the path where I could look down on the cars.
Snowplowing, once started, was usually continuous night and day until all the roads were plowed.    There were often interruptions due to breakdowns. There was no heat on the tractor so it was a cold job and the two operators could not be faulted for taking a coffee break now and then. Charlie Belisle was our next door neighbor and quite often one of the men who worked for my father during the day would work on the plow at night. This was convenient because when the plow went by our house at night it would turn in and plow our driveway.
When the banks grew high enough they became ideal places to dig tunnels. The tunnels that we dug were not just igloos. We made some that were nearly 75 feet long. Our cousin, Buddy, lived in a house about 500 yards from our house. One winter John, Buddy and I started a project to dig a tunnel from our house to his. I believe we only dug about 50 feet before we gave up.
   When the wind blew and drifted the snow, it of course ended up in the road. It sometimes got nearly as deep as the banks created by the snowplow. My father once told me about some drifts that developed on the Hibbard Hill Road that got so deep and hard that dynamite was used to clear the snow. To prevent some of the drifting the plow would sometimes be used to plow a strip on the windward side of the road to trap the snow. Of course snow fences were used for the same purpose but they sometimes got buried and became ineffective.
   The roads were hardly ever bare in winter. Salt had not been invented, it seems, or else it was too expensive. Consequently the roads became coated with packed snow and ice. If there was a hill it was a good place to slide. There was nowhere near as much automobile traffic so we did quite a bit of sliding in the road. I’m sure it made my mother nervous but we did it anyway.

"There were days when we didn’t get to school on time, but there were no days when we didn’t get the milk delivered. That milk sometimes seemed to be the whole point of our existence"

When I got a license to drive on the public highways my father bought a small truck and we started carrying our daily output of milk to the receiving station at the railroad in Randolph village. This was something that had to be done every single day and it was expected that it would be completed by ten a.m. The driver, usually me, had to put the cans of milk on the truck and unload them at the “creamery.” Prior to the purchase of our own truck the job was done by an entrepreneur who served that purpose for several farms and was paid by the farmers for the service. It didn’t matter to us that subzero temperatures made trucks of that vintage nearly impossible to start or that the snowplow might not have cleared the roads yet that morning. Nor did it matter to us that icy conditions had rendered the place where the milk cans were made available for loading inaccessible to the truck. The milk truck was supposed to perform its daily ritual without our assistance. When I became involved in this task it mattered a lot to me. I not only delivered the milk to Randolph but I delivered myself and a couple of neighbors to high school when school was in session. I had to get the truck started when it was cold and load the milk cans which, by the way, weighed as much as 110 lbs. Needless to say there were days when we didn’t get to school on time but there were no days when we didn’t get the milk delivered. That milk sometimes seemed to be the whole point of our existence, after all.
    Now back to the kid stuff. When the snow started to melt in the spring the snow banks made a channel for the water in the road. Grampa Small would patrol the road near our houses and create ways for the water to escape from the road into the ditches. This was a source of great fun for us boys. Some of the resulting brooks had sufficient water to float little toy boats. With the weather getting warmer we spent a lot of time playing in the water and “helping Grampa.”
    Now, dear readers, you must pay the price for the entertainment furnished by the preceding paragraphs. Although the maintenance of the town highways has improved exponentially since the 1930s and automobiles are vastly more dependable it seems as though there is even more mayhem and disaster on winter roads. This is not a direct result of those improvements, but rather the result of the way the driving public, meaning you, have reacted to those improvements. I am a paragon of virtue with respect to navigating winter roads successfully. You should heed my sage words of advice on this subject. I have probably driven more miles on winter roads in Vermont than 95 percent of the driving public and I have for the most part done it successfully. I know how to put on tire chains under the most adverse conditions and I have all the necessary reflexes for dealing with the operation of my own vehicle under all sorts of emergencies. I am here to tell you what you should do about driving in the winter and you should listen carefully. I do this not to save your life but to save mine because we both travel on the same roads. First and by far most important slow WAY down in winter. Your all -wheel drives and fancy braking systems are little if any help in stopping on slippery roads. By slowing way down I don’t mean to stay under the speed limit. I mean slow down to way under the legal speed limit. That means not more than 30 mph on town highways. Second and nearly as significant is stay put wherever you are if there is a hint that anyone can get into trouble because of the condition of the roads. By staying put I mean stay off the road with your car. I do not want some crazy flatlander running into me because they don’t know what to do about bad roads. Time was when almost everyone in Vermont could walk to work if need be. We lived and thrived with that condition, but now the countryside is overrun with people who moved to the country in the summer oblivious to the fact that winter comes every year. Most of the households now have no way of earning a nickel unless someone gets the car out and goes to a job miles away. Better to forgo the day’s pay than to get me and yourself killed on the way to or from work.
   Those two precautions could eliminate most of the automobile accidents if they were understood and practiced by all drivers. It is more than I expect of most of you to bear with me for a discussion of how and when to brake, how and when to put on tire chains, maintaining a proper interval between cars traveling in the same direction and using winter tires that are not all worn out. They are important but they will have to wait for the next lesson.

Randolph’s Chandler Gallery Welcomes the Hale Street Gang

2011-02-03T05:25:00.000-08:00

Margaret Egerton in her 100th year. Photographed by Jack Rowell, January 2010

Mark your calendars for Saturday, February 26, at 2 pm. That's the date of our homecoming party at the Chandler Gallery. Other important dates:

March 12: Reading/authors’ talk: Members of the Hale Street Gang read from and talk about their work. At 2 p.m.

March 19: The 10-Minute Memoir: A writing workshop with project leader Sara Tucker. From 10 a.m. to noon.

March 26: Reading and book-signing: Our House in Arusha, by Sara Tucker. A behind-the-scenes look at the writing of a family memoir. At 2 p.m.

Jack is mulling the food options. Stay tuned. Here's the official press release:

The Hale Street Gang: Portraits in Writing comes home to Randolph on February 26, when the Chandler Gallery pairs the touring exhibit with a retrospective by Bethel artist D’Ann Calhoun Fago. Portraits in Writing features the work of Braintree photographer Jack Rowell and twelve members of the Greater Randolph Senior Center who have been writing down their life stories with the help of project leader Sara Tucker.

Rowell’s larger-than-life black-and-white portraits of the memoirists are the focal point of Portraits in Writing, which incorporates audio of the writers reading from their works-in-progress. The project began when Rowell attended a public reading in the fall of 2009. Impressed with the energy and experiences of the writers, who are all in their eighties and nineties, he later set up a four-day photo shoot. Gregory Sharrow of the Vermont Folklife Center recorded the writers’ voices. The multimedia exhibit debuted last fall at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury and moved to the Statehouse in January.

“The community has really rallied around this project,” says Tucker, noting that much of the funding came from individual supporters with connections to the Randolph area. An initial grant from the Lamson Howell Foundation was followed by an online fund-raising campaign that enabled friends and family members around the country to make contributions of $10 or more via Kickstarter.com. The Corner Frame Shop in Randolph donated its services, and a grant from the Vermont Community Foundation enabled the publishing of an anthology, The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots, as well as a series of workshops and readings.

The twelve five-minute memoirs reflect the experiences of an eclectic group. Margaret Egerton, who finished writing down her life story shortly before she died at the age of 99, remembered the fear she felt as a child in wartime England; Loraine Chase’s reading recalls how her hardworking parents weathered the Depression; Mary Hutchinson tells about growing up in a household that included two very different grandmothers. D’Ann Calhoun Fago was a twenty-year-old graduate of the University of Kentucky when she was hired to teach art in Jackson, a hardscrabble Kentucky mining town known for its outstanding homicide rate; her memoir “Feudin’ Country” recalls that formative experience in her development as an artist.

The retrospective of Fago’s work that shares the Chandler exhibit space was curated by Paul Gruhler for the Governor’s Office last fall. Fago has figured prominently in the cultural life of Vermont for over 40 years. Though she is best known as the longtime director of Vermont’s Arts and Crafts Service during the 1960s and ’70s, her life in the arts began in her native state of Kentucky and moved on to North Carolina, Georgia, New York City, and eventually Vermont. In traversing the arc of her artistic journey, Fago has employed a broad range of media in a wide range of styles. Watercolors, charcoal and pencil drawings, and works in other media explore the natural and human worlds. Fago’s interest in people is particularly striking. She grew up identifying with society’s marginalized people, and for over 75 years her prolific output has returned to that inspiration. Marilyn Neagley, a friend who worked with Fago in the 1970s to preserve Shelburne Farms, notes that she “quietly supported the work of the younger generation, not only through her own commitment to the arts, but also through her deep sense of social justice. With elegance and a marvelous sense of humor, she humbly helped to provide a container in which their work and ideas could grow.”

The dual exhibit opens February 26 and runs until March 27. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, February 26, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Events are free and open to the public. To register for the memoir-writing workshop, email saratucker@aol.com or call 802-236-9609.

Exhibit hours: Thursday 4–6 pm; Friday through Sunday, 12–5 pm; and by appointment (802-431-0204).

We Love the Montpelier Bridge

2011-01-21T04:57:00.000-08:00

Big air kisses to AARP Vermont, the Community National Bank, and the editorial staff of The Bridge (Nat Frothingham, Marsha Barber, and Dylan Waller) for the smashing spread on the Hale Street Gang in the January 6 edition. For anyone who hasn't seen it, you can download a PDF version here.

The Bridge staff were all present at the State House opening reception last week. So what did I do? FORGOT TO MENTION THEM IN MY THANK-YOU SPEECH, HASTILY PREPARED THAT MORNING! What a dope. Same with the other sponsors of the Bridge's special-edition section: AARP Vermont and the Community National Bank, capital organizations worthy of being recognized at the State House whether they had sponsored the Bridge pages or not, which, of course they did. But I ramble. Aargh. Sorry, guys.

To do: Head back to Toastmasters for a refresher course.

Idora Tucker: Christmas 1944

2010-12-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

This piece was written to read to the residents of Joslyn House, where many in our audience would have their own memories of this time.

Christmas of 1944 was unique in my lifetime, and totally unlike any Christmas in my experience up to that time. Our country was involved in WW II. My husband was an army doctor, assigned to a troop transport, whose home port was San Francisco where I was living in order to be with him when his ship came into port from the Pacific War. I was 23 years old, married for a few months more than three years. My younger brother Charles, eighteen at the time, was in the Navy and stationed down the coast, close enough that he visited me fairly often.

It was common knowledge that our servicemen and women in all branches of the armed services would be a part of the invasion of Japan. They were gradually fighting their way, island by island, toward Japan, with huge loss of men and materiel, so huge that we couldn’t bear to discuss the numbers.

The invasion of Japan was expected to be tremendous slaughter on both sides. My husband, my brother, and my sister’s husband would all be a part of it. That thought was always there, although we didn’t talk about it.

As Christmas approached, Charles and I realized that we would be a gathering of two. There was no question of getting together with our family on the east coast. The difficulties of the travel involved made that impossible. All public transportation was needed to transport troops. It also looked as if Ransom would be at sea. So Charles and I hunkered down to do the best we could, given our circumstances.

I am surprised that I remember so little of what we actually did to acknowledge that it was Christmas. About all I remember is feeling rather lonely and lost, with that constant, underlying worry about what the future held. Charles and I were accustomed to happy anticipation of Christmas. At least, I was. We were with our large family, often augmented by visiting relatives. There was a large Christmas tree with gifts under the tree. Did Charles and I have a tree in San Francisco? I don’t remember. We always had a feast that included extra goodies. What did Charles and I eat? Did I cook a nice meal? I don’t remember that either. Nor do I remember whether Charles bunked in for the night. Sometimes he did, though he had to sleep on a couch not designed for sleeping, or on the floor. There was no extra lighting as that was strictly forbidden on both coasts during the war.

I was glad that Charles was there to spend Christmas with me. It helped. All in all, not one of the better Christmases in my memory.

Charles Cooley: The Best Tree Ever

2010-12-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

Christmas at the Randolph Center elementary school, 1930-something. The little red schoolhouse is now part of VTC. This piece is one of several that were read by the authors at a get-together at Joslynn House in Randolph last week.

“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Knight reminded us at the end of the school day,“you boys who are going after the tree must bring what you will need so that you will have it here when you start out. Don’t forget.”

We had been preparing for Christmas since Thanksgiving and for Herb and Bob Farnsworth, Olin Bradbury, Allen and Harrington McMurphy, Nelson Chadwick, Buddy Sawyer, Joe Lawsing and me this was one of the highlights. The rehearsals for the theatrical production that we would subject our parents to had become tedious and boring to most of us. The yearly allotment of colored paper that we called “construction paper” was nearly used up on the cutouts that we had stuck to the windows and hung from light fixtures. The week following Thanksgiving Peggy Bickford had decorated one section of the blackboard at the front of the classroom with a gorgeous rendering of a wreath drawn with colored chalk. The McMurphy boys had made arrangements with one of their neighbors to cut a tree from his woodlot for the school. What would ordinarily be considered extra curricular activity had gradually crowded out the primary tasks of elementary education by the last week before Christmas vacation. Getting the tree and setting it up for the girls to decorate would consume most of our time on the last two school days before Christmas vacation.

The next morning, when the last bell summoned us we rushed in to the classroom. Sleds were not permitted so they were left at the bottom of the steps but there were no rules covering saws, ropes and hatchets so we kept these as evidence that we hadn’t forgotten Mrs. Knight’s admonition of the day before. After the Lord’s Prayer and the salute to the flag Mrs. Knight sent the “tree detail” with a few stragglers off, reminding us that we should try to be back before noon. We set off in a noisy cavalcade down the East Bethel Road.

The McMurphy boys had done some scouting so when we got to the woods they led us to a tree that they represented as the best one for our purpose. “It’s not big enough,” Bob Farnsworth said. “Let’s look for a bigger one.” It was only fifteen feet tall and we were looking for a candidate for Rockefeller Plaza. Harrington said, “My dad said it was plenty big.” “Fathers always want to get little trees.” Joe observed. “We should look for a bigger one. We’ve got plenty of time. Mrs. Knight only said we should try to be back by noon. She didn’t say we had to.” As we looked at the tree it shrank before our eyes and the image of our classroom allowed for cumulus clouds floating below the ceiling. The discussion made a lot of sense and the weather was inviting more sylvan adventure. Herb stashed his Flexible Flyer sled near the entrance to the woodlot and we dispersed to explore.

Our activity began to stimulate our appetites after an hour of searching for the perfect tree and we began to think about what remained to be done before lunch time. Bob Farnsworth had located a tree that appeared to be a hybrid including some Sequoia heritage but it was near the back of the woodlot and the task of cutting it with the tools we had brought looked impossible even to us. We reconvened before the fifteen-foot specimen recommended by Mr. McMurphy. It was near the entrance to the woodlot and it did look well filled out and symmetric so we attacked it with a saw.

When it was down as many of us as there was room for got under it and tried to carry it. It was apparent that it was impossible to carry the tree on our shoulders as the branches tangled our feet and we couldn’t walk. We decided to drag it. Fortunately we had brought some ropes and we attached them to the trunk close to the bottom of the tree and commenced the march back up the hill to the school. Joe thought we should use the Flexible Flyer to support the bottom branches and protect them from wear and tear but after trying it out we decided it was too much trouble. The boys pulling the sled kept pulling it out from under the tree and after putting it back a few times we gave it up.

The road was nearly bare but the surface was frozen. We had good footing once we got to the road and we could take turns dragging the tree so we made pretty good time getting back to the school. But our search had consumed so much time that the other students had been reconvened following lunchtime. Our arrival with the tree rendered any semblance of order null and void.

No one had brought anything with which to fashion a stand to hold the tree upright but a reconnaissance in the basement yielded some scraps of board and a few nails. While Joe and I were looking for those the tree was ascending the stairs to the upstairs classroom. During the ascent it was noticed that the contact with the road had scraped one side of the tree down to “the bone.” “We’ll have to turn that side toward the wall,” Buddy said.

While the stand was being built and attached the cumulus clouds blew away and some skeptics began to comment that the tree was too tall. Nelson suggested that we should stand it up to see how much to cut off, if any.

After struggling with it for a few minutes Herb said, “We can’t stand it up unless we cut some of it off.” Olin grabbed a saw and took hold of the trunk of the tree a couple of feet below the top, preparing to cut off the top. “No, no Olin!” said Allen. “We have to cut it off at the bottom.”

“Then it won’t stand up.” But Herb was already prying the stand off and Olin began to see the light.

By the time we had made two reductions of the tree’s height and rebuilt the stand twice the tree was more or less upright and the worn side was rotated toward the wall so the girls could have at it. The first thing was finding enough string to guy the tree into a more vertical position. While the girls did this and started decorating, the lumberjacks ate their lunch it being nearly three o’clock. Tomorrow we would complete the decorations and come back in the evening with our parents to do what the adults referred to as “celebrating Christmas.” Poor Mrs. Knight had earned a Christmas vacation. But the most fun was getting that tree!

Merry Christmas

2010-12-23T10:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday a bunch of us went to Jocelyn House in Randolph for a Christmas reading and carol sing with a dozen-plus residents and staff members. One of our writers lives at Jocelyn House, which is a stone's throw from my house, and we love to go there because the atmosphere is so convivial, thanks in part to the kind and friendly staff. We were welcomed with a punchbowl and big plates of home-made cookies. A couple of friends from the River Bend chorus helped us out with the caroling, and John Jackson played Father Christmas. Charles took some pictures but I don't have them yet—the one above dates to the 1950s; it's my cousin Johnny, looking very starry-eyed, and his mother at the farmhouse in Randolph Center.

The readings were wonderful—I don't have time to post them now, because I need to finish up my Christmas shopping and visit with Ellen and Susan Reid, old friends who are stopping by this afternoon for tea.

Thank you, Jocelyn House, for a lovely party. Next: Valentine's Day.

Estelle Therrien: Television Comes to Town

2010-12-14T18:45:00.000-08:00

In 1952, TV came to town. For four years we had tried different TV people and checked various salesmen in an attempt to receive a TV signal at our farm. Nothing! There were hills on both sides of us, so the experts kept saying we would never get TV at our house. Of course, people in the surrounding hills were able to get a signal just fine. The experts would come, see the high ground all around us, and give the same verdict: No way would the signal come through. Each time my husband would suggest that they should try putting an antenna on our garage roof, and each time they said it would be of no use, the signal could not come through. After several of the experts had pointed this "fact" out, my husband finally stood his ground and said, "Try it anyway."

Watching from the kitchen window and seeing what was going on, I decided to invite them all to come in for coffee and some fresh doughnuts. I didn't have to ask them twice. Several doughnuts and cups of coffee later, they went back to work and decided to try the garage idea, and voila! It worked! It was four o'clock and one of my favorite female singers, Kate Smith, was singing "God Bless America." The workers had warned us that if we did get a signal, we'd only get New Hampshire. My husband didn't want New Hampshire, he wanted NBC, which was coming in just fine with our antenna on our garage roof! We were delighted, but looking back, it wasn't altogether a good thing: The day the TV came was the day the family circle was broken; from then on the TV had precedence.

We were only the second family in Brookfield to get TV, so it wasn't too surprising that it acted as magnet for kids and adults, too. Our kids had chores to do after school, but the neighborhood kids who didn't live on farms came over to watch afternoon TV while our kids did their chores. Our girls had chores as well as the boys, but their household chores took less time than the boys' barn and farmyard chores. With my "the quicker you get them done, the quicker you can watch" echoing in their ears, chores were done in no time and they were free to enjoy the soaps, which at that time each lasted only fifteen minutes.

Our whole family enjoyed watching Ed Sullivan on Sunday evenings and Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights. The kids got to stay up to watch these shows, but as soon as they were over, I'd say, "Kiss your father good-night and off you go to bed." We all broke up when one night as they were trooping out Little Roland went over and, putting his arms around the TV, planted a big kiss on the announcer's face.

Thursday nights, wrestling was on, and most of the folks on our road arrived, popcorn in hand, to enjoy watching it with us. It made for quite a roomful. The schoolteacher, indicating the crowd, commented, "You're getting pushed out of your house, aren't you?" Seats were at a premium but, never at a loss for ideas, my husband created a little theater. He built a sturdy wooden platform, brought it into the house, and fastened down on it . . . three back seats reclaimed from old cars. Problem solved, comfortably and at little expense.

Sometimes I miss the old shows: Hit Parade; Have Gun, Will Travel; Dodge City (Matt Dillon): I Love Lucy, and, later, when we got more channels, Across the Fence. After a few years, our TV got a little temperamental and we had to whack it once in a while to make it behave. Ten-year-old susan, responding to the flickering TV as she had seen the adults do, gave it such a good whack that the TV light shaped like a tiger that sat on top of the TV, took flight and crashed into pieces as it landed on the floor, no great loss.

Photos: From top, Paul-W/Creative Commons; John Atherton/Creative Commons.

John Jackson: Christmas Memories

2010-12-14T18:06:00.000-08:00

John and Cynthia Jackson.

Looking back over seventy years, I often have trouble separating Christmas stories from Thanksgiving stories, but some things stand out. One involves presents. There were many wonderful things about Christmas at the Jackson house but presents weren't one of them. In common with most of my working-class friends, it seemed like we got nothing but clothes. That's not entirely fair. There was usually a package of little metal figures, sometimes cowboys, sometimes soldiers—very useful for battles fought over the patterns on the living room rug. I say not entirely fair because I know that there were years when I got a wagon, or a bicycle and even, one year, the best and most wonderful Flexible Flyer sled in the world. But what I remember most is the clothes. After appreciating the clothes as best I could, I would go out and walk up to Bucky Bartlett's house.

George Robert Bartlett, Bucky's father, was Walden's most prominent lawyer. He was also a major figure in my father's circle of friends. I've mentioned in previous memoirs that Pop had a remarkable intelligence and a personality that made him many friends, crossing class boundaries in our small town. "Bob" as he was widely known, had built a small office building in town. It had his office on the first floor, which I remember as being wonderfully classy with an atmosphere like an English club with dark wooden Venetian blinds. In the back was a dental office for his father-in-law, Dr. Ward. Upstairs was an apartment for his executive secretary. My mother and father had a job maintaining the first floor, working many nights and weekends. During the depression, my father had occasional work serving legal papers for Bob, usually borrowing his car since we didn't have one. That sounds like he was an employee, which he was, but their relationship extended to fishing trips to the Adirondacks and the seashore. He even offered to help Pop adopt a daughter if he really wanted one.

What drew me to the Bartlett house, just a short walk away, were the wonderful presents. It seemed to me that anything Bucky wanted, he got. It not only included the most wonderful toys but even extended to an aviary in the back yard when Bucky got interested in pigeons. Not just ordinary pigeons but fancy pouters, rollers, and ones with fancy plumage. And there was the boathouse on the bank of the river. It was the only structure on the entire riverbank and it contained two canoes, the only ones I had ever seen up close. I remember a small pointed tower with a wire to a little airplane that flew in circles around the tower. Somehow you could make it speed up, slow down and even go up and down a little bit. There was always the best of assorted sports equipment. The Bartlett side lawn was the sight of vicious games of tackle football, of course with no pads or uniforms. Bucky was smart, an outstanding athlete, handsome almost to the point of prettiness, and of course the apple of his father's eye. As you can well guess, I fantasized about being Bucky instead of poor me.

Fast forward ten years or so. Because of a small difference in our ages, Bucky was one year ahead of me in school. In his senior year, he was captain of the football team and president of the student council. The night of his senior prom, he went home early feeling quite ill. It was 1945 and long before the Salk vaccine. Many people had mild cases of infantile paralysis, sometimes not even realizing they had it. Bucky's was a severe case. When I first went to see him in the hospital, he was in an iron lung. That was a large metal cylinder pressurized to help the patient breathe when his diaphragm was paralyzed. Fortunately, he recovered enough to breathe on his own, but he was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Contrary to what you might think, it didn't completely ruin his life. He went on to graduate from law school, take over the law firm, marry, and have a family. But, as you might also guess, I stopped wishing that I were him.

Cookie Campbell: "N" Is for Noël

2010-12-14T17:36:00.000-08:00

Idora Tucker, Cookie Campbell, and Mary Jacobs. Photo by Jack Rowell.

Sometimes we all need a good rant. Last week it was Cookie's turn. I think we all kind of appreciated the following--Christmas being the way it is. The "two books" Cookie mentions are those she is reading for the two different book groups she attends monthly, "My Kitchens" is a reference to the piece she's working on for the writers' group, and the books she's wrapping as Christmas gifts are copies of the one she wrote (My Annie).

"N" Is For Noël

No. It’s for right NOW. And now is running over. My plate is full. I’m running out of steam. I’m trying to read two books, find one for a future read, finish “M” is for My Kitchens. I must write, print and mail a Christmas note to my children and grandchildren (after I track down a few addresses). I need to wrap the books (this year’s Christmas gift) that haven’t been passed out yet, buy mailers and trudge to the post office. I’m supposed to be selling raffle tickets for the senior center - Vermont Castings gave us a gas grill as our main lure. If every member just bought one book and sold one book we’d be over the top. I’d like to decorate some but everything needs dusting or polishing before it can happen. And how much should I do? I don’t know when I’m going to Delaware or coming back, for that matter. Or exactly how I am going or coming. Three parties - Randolph House, Senior Center and NFSBank PPClub. I’ll try to beg off the Upper Valley Services one. Oh, and a special birthday party that I wouldn’t miss for the world … unless someone comes to take me south. Herb’s partner is having major surgery in a couple of days and my niece sent me a place I can Google and stop all the unwanted catalogues. I’m trying it. Hope it works. I hate to wear anything that I think I should pack for the holiday, but I hate to run around looking like a bag lady. I went to Chandler this afternoon for the Christmas concert. The first half was great. The second half was very classical and in Latin - I think. It was dark when we came out and I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Did a quick scan of the crowd and latched onto Pat, and she led me home. I’m so in the habit of going with Mary (who opted out for this one) that I forgot about my habit of “drifting.” That’s another story that Mary should tell. I haven’t done any cards. I bought them when Rite Aid had a great sale a couple of weeks ago. Very few go snail mail nowadays, but I leave one at each apartment here. And if I find a card that does not have a Christmas wish, just a holiday wish, I write one in. I do have some shopping to do. Five great grandchildren (three are biological and two were acquired) plus an eight-year-old grandson who belongs to my ex-daughter-in-law and her second husband. Annie needs things - actually she doesn’t need a thing, but she needs things to unwrap. At least she always has and I’m going on that fact. I did manage to sew Velcro on her robe this afternoon and I’ll give it to her at her ISA meeting tomorrow. Remember them? The review of last year’s accomplishments and the long and short term goals for next year? I have just turned on the printer. I don’t want to think about next year and goals. Jeannette just called from Waukesha with her granddaughter’s address and e-mail address in Ireland. Clayt’s Lizz is going hiking in Ireland and Clayt and I think it would be nice if the two met - providing the hike goes anywhere near where Meghan lives. So we need to get dates and itineraries and heaven knows what more they’ll think of. One of Jeannette’s friends came to Vermont - New Haven - for Thanksgiving and made her homesick telling her about Middlebury and Burlington and Stowe and the Trapp Family Lodge. Now that I’ve bored you to tears with this harangue I think I will print it, shut down for the night, finish the wine I poured for dinner and toddle off to bed. At least I hung up or put away all the laundry so I don’t have that to wrestle with.

The Hale Street Gang Goes to the Statehouse

2010-12-07T05:33:00.000-08:00

"Portraits in Writing" will leave Middlebury on December 18 and re-open in Montpelier on January 3. Jack Rowell's portraits will be hung in the Statehouse Cafeteria, a great place to be seen by people from all over the state. There will be a reception on January 11 at 3 p.m. IMPORTANT: You'll need a photo I.D. to get in. The audio portion will be delivered via cell phone. The handheld listening devices will accompany the show to the Chandler Gallery in Randolph, which opens on February 26.

Bonnie Fallon: Responsibility

2010-12-07T05:16:00.000-08:00

"My mother queried my father:

'Do you intend that your daughters

grow up to be warriors?'

I'll never forget his response."

Is taking responsibility a personality construct present at conception? If not, Mom and Dad got it embedded in me at an early age. Being the oldest daughter of three may have pressed the cognition. In any case, I have watched with amazement throughout my life the people who have no instinct for responsibility. Their inaction, when faced with the need for immediate decision making or effective preplanning, seems to stem from abject fear, or apathy.

One day during the winter of the fifth grade (my sisters then being first and third graders), we were walking the mile to school. Up rose, from behind a stone wall, a group of boys from my grade, pelting us with snowballs. The girls were scared.

When Dad got home from work, I told him about it. He took us outdoors even though supper was ready.

"George! Not now."

"It won't take long. They can't put up with this."

As he fashioned a target out of cardboard, he told me, "You have to meet boys on their terms and beat them at their own game."

He showed my sisters how to quickly make small, hard snowballs. He worked with me on my throwing ability. The idea was to focus my energy on efficient speed and accuracy. If my projectiles didn't get those boys in the kisser, I wasn't going to have any effect. About an hour's instruction on arm positioning and body stance to gain the most velocity was enough to have me hitting the bull's eye most of the time. The girls were so busy making snowballs for me that they hadn't time to think about their fear.

Several times mom called out, "George! Supper's getting cold." Once she queried, "Do you intend that your daughters grow up to be warriors?"

I'll never forget his response. "Yes! They need to be able to handle things."

The next day we trudged down North Road with alertness. I don't remember if I was afraid, but I was ready. Susie, the first grader, was scared. Leila was her stoic self.

"All you have to do is make me good snowballs fast," I coached.

There they were, behind their wall. We crouched down on the road side of the plowed low snowbank. The battle was on. The girls were great, and I was totally focused on blamming every one of them in the head.

Sixty years after the fact I don't know how many there were. Maybe six? It seemed like a phalanx. In fairly short order, they crept away from their wall. We were all late for school and had to stay after. Mom was furious. Dad was gleeful and congratulatory to all three of us. After all, a battle can't be fought without ammunition.

We never had any more trouble from boys. Pete Gilman and I shared leadership of our small class pack after that. How my delight that day in subduing the "enemy" jibes with my adult hatred and disgust with war in general is a mystery.

Charles Cooley: Humility

2010-12-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

"I have always thought of myself

as a humble person

and sometimes I brag about it."

—Charles Cooley

Anyone who thinks that memoir-writing must be very serious business should see the Tuesday group in action. It's all I can do to maintain even a loose sort of order. (This classroom videos on our YouTube channel were all made by the Tuesday group—the Monday group meets at 8:30 am and is marginally more sober.) The following doesn't exactly qualify as memoir, which is the first thing Charles said when he read it to us last week. We didn't care; we were too busy laughing. You have to hear Charles reading this to get its full effect. Maybe one of these days I'll have time to record this and other readings. Patrick and I are opening up a little gallery and press on Merchant's Row in Randolph next year, and one of the things we want to do is record walk-ins, like StoryCorps does. Maybe Charles will assist us (he has a video camera, and we don't.) Here's his essay on humility:

It seems to me that since we can’t depend on candidates for government office to tell the truth consistently while they are campaigning we should look for indications of good character in their behavior. Contrapositively, we can reject bad behavior. Arrogance is bad behavior. I hope this is not a fleeting opinion that I formed during the Bush administration because I have in mind a solution. Modesty and humility are antidotes for arrogance. They are not quite the same thing because modesty can be cast to the four winds with your clothing, as it is in the Miss Universe competition, whereas humility doesn’t depend on your clothing.

I have always thought of myself as a humble person and I sometimes brag about it. To paraphrase Mark Twain or Max Schulmann, I conceal a great deal of intelligence and wisdom with a cloak of humility. Maybe they put it the other way around but that’s the way I think it best describes my virtues. The evidence of my humility is overpowering. There are so many things that I might have done if I had been willing to acknowledge my potential instead of trying so hard to be the humble person that I would like to know better if I were someone else meeting me for the first time. I might have been a great warrior conquering all the bad arrogant dictators and setting their oppressed subjects free but great warriors have great enemies and few friends. They usually don’t even try to hide their arrogance. In my formative years I intentionally behaved in such a way that I was considered stupid and lazy rather than smart and ambitious. That’s how humble I am. My older sisters and parents tried to have me grow up to be a well organized, intelligent contributor to society but because I saw so clearly that this was not the way to be humble I successfully resisted and became what I am today much to their dismay.

If I were not such a humble person I would become a lobbyist and do what I could to promote an annual national competition to select the most humble person in the country. The program could be modeled after the National Spelling Bee and would be called the National Humble Bee. The winner would travel around the world promoting humility in public appearances. High schools would adopt humility competition as a varsity sport and give up football as too dangerous and expensive. Universities would give scholarships to especially talented competitors in humility and form conferences to foster competition. I can even predict international competition in the Olympics. There is a great potential for a new industry to develop around such competition and I would become famous in spite of what my sisters think of me.

About Our Anthology

2010-11-20T06:38:00.000-08:00

Opening reception at the Vermont Folklife Center.

Yesterday I spoke for the first time with Val Perry of the Bloomingdale Writers' Connection in Florida. Val contacted me after seeing our exhibit at the Vermont Folklife Center, and we spoke for an hour; we could have spoken for another hour if I hadn't been late for a date with my sister at the Berlin Park & Ride. Anyway, Val's group has been thinking about publishing an anthology, and she had some questions for me about how we did ours. I told her that we used an online print-on-demand publisher (in our case, CreateSpace.com), and that we raised the money through Kickstarter.com and old-fashioned fund-raising. The Vermont Community Foundation and the Lamson Howell Foundation gave us a substantial portion of our funding, and the rest was donated by individuals and small businesses in the community. Donors saw great value in our project as a means of building community and preserving local and family history. To read about our Kickstarter campaign, click here.

We are selling the anthology through our local independent bookstore, Bud & Bella's, and at book-signings, workshops, and online through out blog (click on the cover image at the top of our home page and it will take you to Amazon.com.) The proceeds are helping us continue and expand our memoir-writing project. The greatest rewards are personal, though. To give you an idea, here is the beginning of a piece my mother began writing the day after the book-signing at Bud & Bella's:

The room is very crowded. A little bell sounds as the door opens and closes, opens and closes. Our audience is beginning to stand as all the chairs are taken, and some are even sitting on the floor. The room is becoming warm, even though we are seated where we get cool air from outside when the door opens and closes, opens and closes. How very rewarding. This is my first time as author-presenter-autograph signer and I couldn't imagine that there would be more than a token number of family members and close friends. Instead, we are overwhelmed, if not over-run. A small group of octogenarians are ready to read excerpts from the anthology the Hale Street Gang has recently published, our very first. I'm one of the group, one of those who will be reading. In fact, I am the first reader.

Our large audience is very appreciative. No one leaves before we have finished reading. They buy a number of copies of our anthology, The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots; make complimentary remarks about it as they get their copies autographed; and leave me feeling happy, although exhausted after only two hours of exertion that couldn't be much less demanding.

Now that I am in my ninetieth year (I like to put it that way instead of just saying I'm 89), my participation in the Hale Street Gang is one of the most pleasurable activities in my limited repertoire of activities. Thank you, Hale Street Gang, thank you daughter Sara for providing us with the necessary leadership, thank you, Jack Rowell, for your wonderful photography and for all you have done to further this project, and thank you to many others who have contributed their help and support, including financial support. I'm inclined to think that the writers' group is running neck and neck with two other favorite activities: reading, and visiting with family and close friends (not too many at a time).

Ruth Demarest-Godfrey, Idora Tucker, Nancy Rice.

Exercise: Write a Scene

2010-11-20T05:34:00.000-08:00

My mother in her teens.

Recently we've been working on scenes as a way of strengthening our writing. Here's one written by my mother, Idora, for her memoir entitled "Musical Memories." As the music teacher in the Randolph school system for 25 years, Miss Esther Mesh made a deep and lasting impression on my mother and countless other students. Scads of admirers turned out last month for a reception honoring Miss Mesh (now 101 and utterly charming), in whose name over $100,000 was raised for the restoration of Chandler Music Hall. She gave a 20-minute speech that had us all laughing and crying, and she didn't even use her notes. A few days later, my mother began working on a piece about the impact of music on her life, a story in which Miss Mesh plays a pivotal role. "An important aspect of my association with that gifted teacher was what I gained from participation in the chorus," my mother wrote. When she read her work-in-progress to the group last week, I suggested that she highlight some of the turning points in her narrative by turning them into scenes. A week later she read parts of it again, including this lovely passage:

"On a warm spring evening I am seated on the bleachers in a crowded auditorium. Although it is a large space there are so many bodies in it that it is becoming a little too warm. Several hundred boys and girls from the high schools in Vermont face the audience. Although the audience is conversing softly, the members of the chorus are absolutely silent. The conductor enters the auditorium and everyone in the audience rises and applauds. The members of the chorus applaud, but do not rise. There is a pause, and at the conductor’s signal the members of the chorus stand without making a sound. We wait for the opening notes from the orchestra. I am tempted to hold my breath, but experience has taught me that it is better to take a few deep breaths, so I do that. This is not my first time at the annual Music Festival in Burlington, the highlight of my school year. We have spent a large part of the year learning the music that the state chorus will perform, as well as music which our high school chorus will perform on another evening under the direction of Miss Mesh. The magic begins. Beautiful sound begins to wash over and around me. A few tears escape as I open my mouth and begin to sing. Every eye is on the director. Every motion means something. The pauses must be in perfect accord, the increases in volume must be absolutely right, enough but not too much. The conductor’s baton provides us with the cues we need. There’s nothing quite like it. During my high school years I went to the Festival three times and was so impressed with it that when I delivered the salutatory address at my high school graduation I told about the Festival chorus in the essay part of the address. I was to have only one more comparable experience during my lifetime, and that was when I was a senior in college."

The Hale Street Gang: Phase 2

2010-11-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

In early January, I will hold a workshop for people wanting to start a memoir-writing group that meets outside Randolph village. The Greater Randolph Senior Center serves Braintree, Brookfield, and Randolph Center—in fact, most of the Hale Street Gang drive to the center from outside the village. With winter coming, it seems like a good time to do a little outreach into the more rural parts of our service area.

The photo, by the way, is of my aunt, Ruth Cooley (now Demarest-Godfrey), who drove that little Austin all over central Vermont back when she was an itinerant music teacher in the public school system.

If you've been thinking about joining a memoir-writing group and would like to participate in the January workshop, send me an email and I'll give you the details once I've established a time and place.

You do NOT have to be a senior to join, although the workshop will be designed to attract seniors. As the workshop leader, I will organize participants into small groups (5–7 people is ideal) that will continue to meet once a week for 12 consecutive weeks. There will be a small charge for the initial workshop, which will include some follow-up during the 12-week period.

Let me know if you're interested, and I'll make sure you get a follow-up email.

October Signing at Bud & Bella's

2010-10-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

Reading at Bud & Bella's Bookshop in Randolph, October 30, 2010. Nice turnout, with old friends and new (a bit crowded...some folks had to stand and others sat on the floor...next time we'll make better use of the space). Cookie got a balloon, several bouquets, and a bodacious birthday cake made by Cynthia Jackson. Jack took the picture.

The 10-Minute Memoir: A thank-you note

2010-10-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all who attended the writing workshop at the Illsley Library in Middlebury on Friday, October 30. It was the first time I'd led a workshop of that kind, and I was buoyed by the nice turnout, the enthusiasm, and above all, the stories I heard. I want to read them all. To Penny, Maureen, Lydia, Sarah, Kirsten, Melissa, Debi, Allison, and Maya: Keep writing, please, please, please. Remember: You can start a group with 3 people, and you can write in short intervals (even just 10 to 20 minutes) and if you make it a daily habit, you'll be amazed at how much you can accomplish.

If you would like to hear about upcoming workshops, send me your email address (I forgot to bring the guest book yesterday). And if you have feedback about yesterday's workshop, I'd like to hear from you. You can email me at saratucker@aol.com.

Check the blog in a few days, because I'm going to begin a series of posts about the tools of memoir-writing. I'd like to make the blog more interactive, so if you have questions, use the "comments" section below.

Happy Birthday, Cookie!

2010-10-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Cookie:
You are the salt in our soup, the sprinkles on our sundae, the "J" to our "oy," the whump that fluffs the pillow, the "X" that keeps us guessing (what will it be?).

With love and admiration,

The Hale Street Gang

Saturday Oct. 30: Reading @ Bud & Bella's, 3 PM

2010-10-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots

(215 pages, paperback, $16)

Reading and Book Signing

Saturday, October 30 @ 3 p.m.

Bud & Bella's Bookshop

Main St., Randolph, VT

Yesterday I bought eight silver-metallic Sharpies at Belmain's for the reading and book signing this Saturday—one each for Mary Jacobs, Cookie Campbell, Idora Tucker, Ruth Demarest-Godfrey, Charles Cooley, Cynthia Jackson, and John Jackson. Oh yeah—and me. Now I'm delighted to say I gotta buy 2 more: D'Ann Fago and Loraine Chase will be joining us. Most of the writers will read a short excerpt from the new book. Idora has chosen the following:

"Mrs. Gifford is the widow of a well-known local physician, doctor to my family when I was growing up. In fact, he saved my life when I had a ruptured appendix, long before the days of antibiotics. However this is my very first contact with Eliza, as she is known locally, and she has come to offer me advice on how to be a good wife and helpmate to my doctor husband. . . . The room is very sparsely furnished, and we are seated on two Montgomery Ward chairs brought in from the kitchen. Under Mrs. Gifford's considerable bulk the legs of her chair are gradually spreading further and further apart . . ."

More about the Hale Street Gang:

Seven Days: Young at Art, by Megan James

Estelle Therrien: Upstairs at the Brookfield Farm

2010-10-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

With Halloween a few days away, here's something to put you in the mood: I believe this is the first piece that Estelle brought to the group when she joined us last summer. I've been saving it for the spooky season ever since.

The winter of 1943, when we moved into our farm in Brookfield, was a pretty cold one. My sister-in-law and her husband had an apartment on the second floor. One day when the men were outside cutting wood, she and I decided to check out what was upstairs in the shed and garage on the property. To our surprise we found an embalming area, sheaves of wheat, black suits with no backs to them, white shirts with no back, embalming fluid and a folding table for getting the deceased ready for burial. By the time we found four coffins, we were both pretty excited. When the menfolk returned, they were just as excited as we were. They looked at each other and started laughing; the two of us looked at them. They explained, "We have the heavy handles on the barn doors, the ones for carrying the coffins." We all laughed then. As time went by, we decided to wallpaper the bedrooms because somebody had done their homework on all the bedroom walls. We used the embalming table for preparing the paper.

By the time we found

four coffins,

we were both

pretty excited.

The next summer we had some company from Massachusetts. After dinner that Sunday, my two brothers and two in-laws went to check the treasures upstairs in the shed. My mother and aunts and I were doing dishes in the sink by the window that opened onto the porch. We heard some singing and we stopped to listen. We looked out the window and there came a procession along the porch: my brother was lying in one of the coffins, covered with one of the black suit-fronts and holding an American flag. He waved the flag, keeping time with the funeral march that the four "bearers" hummed as they filed past the window. They decided to take the coffins to Brookfield Pond, to soak them overnight so they would swell and seal. The next morning they drove up to the pond. Lo and behold, the coffins had disappeared! The Old Guard had picked them up and we never saw the coffins again.

In the 1980s, someone compiled a history of Brookfield. The sudden and unwelcome appearance of four coffins in the pond was remembered—put there, no doubt, by "flatlanders." The coffin incidents kept us laughing throughout the years. The Old Guard must have remembered, too, since they included the story in their history. We never found out where the coffins went, but someone of the Old Guard must know, even yet.

Dorcas Wright: Brookfield in the Forties

2010-10-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

Brookfield student body. Dorcas is middle row, center.

Dorcas has been writing about the Brookfield of her childhood. She moved there from Lyndonville as a youngster, and today she is writing a memoir of the little village as seen through the eyes of a deeply impressionable child. Dorcas is a member of the Hale Street Gang's Tuesday group, and yesterday she read a beautiful passage about haying with her dad—just the two of them and a horse to pull the wagon. (D'Ann said it reminded her of a Breugel painting.) I'll post that excerpt a little later. Meanwhile, here is Part III:

Vermont had some very cold, snowy winters around the early forties. Children had a wonderful time. There was hardly any traffic and the roads were usually badly plowed so they made excellent sliding. On some nights it was possible to slide from the top of Bridge Hill to East Brookfield. We had to have a truck lined up to carry kids and sleds back to the village. Sometimes we would tie a rope to the back bumper of a car and get dragged back up the hill. It certainly would never be safe to do that now.

Horses were still being used in the winter to deliver the mail. We used to rent horses to the rural carrier because there were days when it was easier to drive a horse than it was to dig out a car.

The local church provided some social events, but it was hard because there were so few young people. In the summer we looked forward to "vacation Bible school." There were summer people who added to our church population.

Mostly our recreation centered around the pond and the floating bridge. We spent a lot of time by the pond, collecting frog's eggs, fishing, and swimming whenever weather permitted. Sometimes we got a surprise dunking when it wasn't planned. Wild apple trees, probably started by cores dropped from some student's lunch, grew by the shore. As kids, we knew where every type of apples grew and remembered our favorites. Aunt Jesse had attached a raft about midway on the south side of the bridge. There was no sunscreen then and no one was aware of the effect of sun on skin cancer. We soaked up those rays by the hour.

When we got bored with just lying around, we would head for the store, where there was a soda machine where the caps would fall into a container. A kid could have great fun with a handful of soda caps. One of our games was to stand on the top rail of the bridge and toss a certain number of caps into the water, then jump in and retrieve them. The person who brought up the most caps won the game. You had to judge the timing so that you didn't jump too soon and create so many bubbles that you were unable to see the caps, or wait so long that the caps had sunk lower than you could catch many of them. The older boys liked to dive off the rail and swim under the bridge, coming up on the other side. There were always a few moments when we all held our breath waiting for them to surface. They always told stories about how many scary things they encountered under the bridge, such as long tangled weeds, hanging chains and a skeleton or two. No adult seemed to worry about the danger we might get into. The younger children learned to swim at the cove where the water was shallow. My sister Debbie could swim like a fish at four.

Brookfield Pond today.

The 4-H clubs were very active. They provided recreation and a lot of education. I was involved in cooking, sewing and gardening. The drill of the time was to finish with a perfect project. It was easier in the cooking classes to finish with edible and reasonably perfect-looking muffins. But in the sewing projects it was another thing entirely. The hand-stitching had to be neat and eight stitches to the inch, it should look as neat on the backside as it did on the front. By the time the project was finished you hated the item you were making. A lot of girls were really turned off because of this stress for perfection and never did sew again.

The boys raised dairy animals learning how to groom them and show the animals at fairs and other competitions. Many young farmers got their start with herds they had raised themselves.

The adults played cards. Eighty-eight was the favorite, along with Oh Hell (also called diminishing whist), where one less card was dealt each round until there was only one card to bid on. If you didn't make your bid it was "Oh, hell" and there was one more card dealt each round until the number of cards dealt was the same as when the game started. The game could get quite lively. That was when the kids would crowd around the register upstairs and listen.

Other times there were dances at the schoolhouse or more often at the Masonic temple. Everyone went from babes in arms to grandpas and grandmas. The waltzes, fox trots and polkas were danced to, but more popular were the old dances—the contra dance, line dances . . . Best of all were the square dances. Perley Keyes called the squares. John Harford played the drums. His eyes would be closed and he looked for all the world like he was sleeping, except his hands never missed a beat. Four couples made up a square, three called dances were a set—tunes like "Honolulu Baby," "Marching Through Georgia," "Duck for the oyster, duck for the clam, duck for the hole in the old tin pan, and all swing your partner." What good wholesome fun it was. As kids we danced in the schoolyard at recess, without music but singing the calls. It sure burned a lot of energy.

John Harford on drums: "His eyes would be closed and he looked for all the world like he was sleeping, except his hands never missed a beat."

The Gala Writers' Reception

2010-10-07T06:10:00.000-07:00

Ruth Demarest-Godfrey, Idora Tucker, Nancy Rice.

The reception at the Vermont Folklife Center on Saturday was a blast. With over 100 guests attending, the place was packed. Many of the visitors were from the Randolph area, and many had donated to our project through Kickstarter and other venues. The day was sunny and bright, and the drive over the hills to Middlebury spectacular. I had a surprise for each of the writers: an advance copy of our new book, The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots. The book is now available via Amazon.com. To order it, click on the title (above); it will zip you to Amazon's "E-store." Bud and Bella's Bookshop in Randolph will also have copies later this month; I ordered them this morning, but shipping is slow (they are due to arrive on October 28.) The list price is $16. I am really proud of this book, which is a true collaboration, the result of two years' work at the Randolph Senior Center with our memoir-writing groups.

Sara Tucker and some of the gang, at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury.

The writers had no idea the book had arrived, so it really was a complete surprise. The back cover reads: "Meet the Hale Street Gang, twelve senior citizens who gather every week in the village of Randolph, Vermont, to share their life stories. Most are in their eighties; the eldest is ninety-nine. Their clubhouse is the senior center, an elderly mansion in a fringy neighborhood south of the railroad tracks. Together, they weave a rich, lively, and intensely personal tale of twentieth-century America, its nexus a small town nestled in the Green Mountains."

My favorite part of the program was sitting and listening to the music of Beth Telford and Jim Green, who came over from Braintree and Randolph to play for us. I hope we can talk them into doing the same when the exhibit opens at the Chandler Gallery in Randolph in February. At least they won't have to drive so far.

Dorcas Wright: Brookfield, 1939

2010-09-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

The old Brookfield schoolhouse, now a private home. The photograph is by Jessamyn West.

This is part II of Dorcas's memoir about growing up in Brookfield. (Part I is below.) Dorcas is working on an extended memoir, so she considers this a rough draft.

There were about six other children in the village and that first year there were a total of nine students in the village school. No running water, two "two-holers" in the back of the woodshed for toilets (one for girls and the other for boys). Needless to say, no one tried to linger in the johns. A big wood stove heated the building. When that stove was cranked up, if you were facing the stove you were too hot but your back was cold and your feet were always freezing. A few years ago, after we had done a lot of renovating to the schoolhouse, I had a chance to visit with a very old man who had been a student at the village school. Forrest Upham came into the kitchen, looked around, went into the living room, and stood about where the old stove stood. Looking carefully, I guess to see if there was anything left of his memories. "I went to school here, you know. Coldest goddamned place in the world." He was right, you know.

We spent a lot of time by the pond, collecting frog's eggs, fishing and swimming whenever weather permitted. Sometimes we got a surprise dunking when it wasn't planned. Wild apple trees, probably started by cores dropped from some student's lunch, grew by the shore. As kids, we knew where every type of apples grew and remembered our favorites. We had a dress code. The girls wore sweaters and skirts, probably woollen, and hideous long brown cotton stockings held up by garter belts. We wore one outfit for the whole week, changing into work clothes after school to keep our school clothes clean longer. Baths were once a week on Saturday.

So that was the Brookfield that we arrived at in late august 1939. The family moved into the Fisk house, which Aunt Jessie had purchased from her brother and sister after their mother died in 1935. My father had lived in Brookfield with his grandmother when he was a boy. He used to tell me about being sent by Grandmother Fisk with a basket to dig up freshly laid turtle eggs. She would scramble those eggs and have them for supper. Dad said that they tasted kind of fishy.

Anyway, he was no stranger to the village. We had visited Jessie many times and were not really unknown, but it was hard to be accepted in these small Vermont towns. That first winter my mother and I were terribly lonely. Mom had four sisters and four brothers all living in the Lyndonville area. Dad's family lived in St. Johnsbury. They all were a big part of our lives. The winter was cold. The Fisk house was literally freezing. Plants froze in the bay window while the wood stove was burning. We had a little Scotty dog named Cookie. Somewhere she found a half of a pig's head that had been slaughtered and brought it home. Cookie nudged it under a doormat and was very protective of it. The floor was so cold that the head never thawed and finally Mother was able to get it away from the dog and get rid of it. The only heat upstairs came through a register in the floor. It didn't do too well heating the room, but it was a great place to keep track of what was being said down in the kitchen.

Dad had two hired men to help with all the animals. A young fellow from the Bronx named Tim Tracy lived with us and took care of the horse barn. A local handyman helped Dad in the dairy barn, shoveled roofs and did other jobs that needed tending to. We delivered milk to the village. That was mostly my job. Sometimes I loaded the bottles onto a sled and pulled the sled or hitched up a horse to a big sled. At sometime in those years I had a young pair of steers that I was training to be an ox team.

Perley had improved the ice harvesting business and had bought tools imported from Canada. One tool was a gasoline-powered saw that was self-propelled. The ice was kept cleared of snow, which made for good skating before the harvesting started. The ice block should be clear so that one could read a newspaper through 24 inches of ice.

Dorcas Wright: Brookfield, 1939

2010-09-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

Brookfield's floating bridge with the Fork Shop in background.

Dorcas is one of several residents from the neighboring hamlet of Brookfield who have joined our group over the past few months. She moved there in 1939, when she was eight and her father was hired by her Great Aunt Jessie—Jessie Fiske, that is, the original owner of Green Trails. Dorcas is working on a fascinating portrayal—part history, part personal memoir—of life in the little village, which happens to be one of the most charming in all of Vermont (she now lives in the former schoolhouse). She begins with a little historical background:

Brookfield in 1840 was a bustling town. There were seventeen mills at that time powered by the water from the outlet of Colt's pond. The town had a large hotel, a boardinghouse, a barbershop, and three stores. In the center of the village there was a factory for making forks for the farm. I have heard a story about a village resident that worked in that building for forty years. It was said that his shoes had worn grooves in the floor. I spent five years working in that building when it was a restaurant. I never saw those grooves, but I think that I left some of my own.

Continuing down the stream was a sawmill and a creamery where milk was collected. The cream was separated, and the cream was sent by rail to be sold in Boston; the milk was returned to the farmer to be fed to the calves and pigs. The butterfat of Jersey cows was higher than any other breed, and that was why the Jersey cows were so prized in Vermont.

A very necessary business was a blacksmith shop for shoeing the horses and repairing wagons. Brookfield had several businesses in town that made chairs. Dropping down the stream, there was another sawmill, a grist mill for making flour, a cider press, a tannery, and a grinding mill that ground bones to mix in with plaster for finishing the inside of houses. At the bottom of the stream was a pipe organ factory. Colt's pond also was a major source of business. Every winter, when the ice got twenty or so inches thick, it was cut into blocks, moved to the icehouse. There it was packed in sawdust and the shipped by rail to the Boston markets. This was a big winter industry until the 1940s.

This Brookfield had only the ice-cutting business remaining when my family moved here from Lyndonville, Vermont, in 1939. Harold and Clarice Gage, two-year-old Deborah and I came to live in the Fiske house and manage a summer resort for my Great Aunt Jessie. She was the first woman professor of botany at the new Douglas College, which was the woman's division of Rutgers. Miss Fisk was also head of the seed lab for the New Jersey Department of Agriculture for thirty years. She researched the care of the best kinds of grasses for golf courses. She also worked with the New Jersey state police on the weed marijuana. Jessie also ran a riding school, which allowed her to pursue her ardent love for horses. In the summer of 1932 Jessie brought her horses and four students to her mother's house in Brookfield. The students were all named Mary and became known as the four Mary's. The plan was to spend the mornings riding horseback and studying the local weeds. In the afternoons a swim in the pond was just what the Mary's needed. Jessie and the students were fed at Ella Benham's, which was the next house up at the beginning of Ralph Road. This house is now the residence of Ed Koren, who is well known as a longtime cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine. His long-haired depictions of native Vermonters are highly recognizable and dearly loved. (More after the jump.)

The summer was so successful that Jessie started Green Trails. It soon became apparent that Jessie needed someone to manage the operation when she was in New Brunswick. My father, Harold Gage, was Jessie's nephew, the son of Jessie's sister Olive. He seemed to fill her needs for a manager. So the Gages moved to Brookfield. My father bought land at the south end of the village to stable his dairy cows, and a new era had begun.

This was not the bustling town of 100 years before. With the invention of steam engines for power and electrification of the rural areas, which came to this village in 1937, the water flow was no longer the most efficient way to create power. Vermont was still stuggling to recover from the depression. People had moved away to find better jobs and most of the old mills were no longer in evidence except for old stone foundations. Part of the creamery was still standing. The Woodman Hall was lying partly in the brook. The photography shop was gone. The Fork Shop had been bought by Jessie and converted to a restaurant where she fed her guests. The Davis country store and the post office supplied the town's mail and other immediate needs. At mail delivery time, roughly 4:30 p.m., the old people of the village would come in and sit around the old wood stove. Oh, the stories that they would tell while they waited for the stage to bring the mail from Randolph. And then wait for the mail to be sorted by the postmistress, Bernice Davis. Bernice was also a pillar of the church. She played the organ and was the town authority on the correct way to do anything, or so it seemed to an eight-year-old. Perley Davis was an old-time character. he was fat, jolly, opinionated, and an authority on any village business or history. Perley would not sock any product that he himself did not like, so some things, like molasses, had to be bought out of town.

The village school was located on a slight hill just beyond the Fork Shop and bordering the pond. It was built in 1946 as an elementary school on the first floor and a two-year high school on the second level. Jessie graduated from that school in 1910. She then went on to Randolph for the last two years of high school. This was the school where I registered in the third grade in 1939. The high school had been closed in 1920, due to financial problems and not enough Brookfield students to warrant it. The upper floor had been ruled unsafe and we were not allowed up there. Sometime a cable had been installed from the floor to the ceiling for extra support. That cable was a great thing to twirl around. I will let you in on a secret. When the schoolhouse was remodeled in 1970, that cable was built into a partition and is not visible, but when the wind blows, and the house moves, it makes a moaning sound or sometimes it sounds like someone is walking around. The rumor is that my mother who loved the schoolhouse dearly and even died upstairs haunts the house, probably. I told my children and now my grandchildren that if it is haunted it is by a kindly old grandma who is just checking to see how the family is behaving. (To be continued.)

Loraine Chase: Grandfather Morse

2010-09-17T07:19:00.000-07:00

Grandfather Morse.

The Hale Street writers' childhood memories are filled with grandparents, who were an integral part of family life before World War II. Grandfather Morse was no exception. He was Loraine's only surviving grandparent, her grandmother Morse having died shortly after the birth of Loraine's mother, and she spent a lot of time with him. The exquisite photograph above was taken in the 1920s (Loraine was born in 1926). I love the way it overflows with gentleness and affection, despite the formal setting. Loraine's memories of "helping" her grandfather around the farm remind me of Charles's memories of Grampa Small (click here). Loraine writes:

My only surviving grandparent lived with his oldest daughter and her husband on a farm in Moretown, Vermont. It was a beautiful white farmhouse with wraparound porch and surrounded by nasturtiums. I had a swing and a beautiful wicker doll carriage which I wheeled my around. I recall the milking cows and the garden attended by my grandpa. I guess I thought I did something to help him, but it was mostly about keeping company. I also recall the ice house with sawdust packing.

Grandpa hitched up Dot and took me riding in a horse cart similar to Amish. We purchased items at Ward store and after returning home I was treated to a juicy cherry chocolate.

I remember the hot haying task, piles of hay pitched onto the hay wagon by pitchfork. Aunt Etta made a special spice tea for the workers.

Close by I had two much older girl cousins and I became very close to them. One of them came to live in Barre with us to attend Spaulding High School, as there was no high school in Moretown. The other girl attended Waitsfield.

I got passed around in the family and at my uncle’s farm I enjoyed floating a little boat in a watering trough. I played a lot of croquet games. My cousin and I cooled off in the river.

One of my cousins was a telephone operator in Waterbury where I had another aunt. I spent time with Aunt Minnie and my cousin, and we attended some Gene Autry movies when her time allowed. I remember “Don Fields and His Pony Boys” country music. He was heard from radio WDEV Waterbury. I enjoyed the music and enjoyed dancing by myself when listening.

Loraine Chase: Mother and Dad

2010-09-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

Plainfield, Vermont, 1931.

Loraine grew up in Plainfield and moved to Randolph in 1952 after her husband accepted a job with the local feed store. The following is excerpted from "Mother and Dad," a tender portrait of a hardworking couple who turned a Depression-era family loan into a memorable mom-and-pop business. Loraine's recording of "Mother and Dad" is included in the exhibit now on view at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury.

I was born in Montpelier September 26, 1926, when mother was 26 years old. We lived in an upstairs apartment on Main Street in Montpelier in 1927 at the time of the flood. Dad was working for a furniture store on State Street. I was told mother panicked when the water kept rising up the stairs. She went across the hall to speak to an elderly tenant and he scolded her for being there without her baby. In due time, she saw Dad coming home in a boat.

From Montpelier, we moved to a little cottage in Barre. Dad was then working for Standard Oil. I attended kindergarten there. I have some memories of playmates living in back of us.

My brother was born five years younger than me. I have been told that when the landlord came to attend me when Mother went to the hospital, I was standing up in a chair by the counter and I told her I wanted to fix supper for Daddy.

We moved to Plainfield just before time for me to start first grade. We rented an apartment and Mother told me the woodwork was all painted blue and that was her mood there. Mother was always worried and I think Dad was an optimist. He borrowed money from my grandfather to start a service station. My grandfather regretted he had not loaned all his money, because he lost when the banks failed during the depression. Dad built a small building and it became our home and place of business—a Gulf service station. He built a garage with a grease pit where he sold tires and serviced cars. He had some previous training in Detroit.

I recall the black woodstove with reservoir and the metal tub that my brother and I took our baths in. The icebox was on the outside on a little porch. The milkman delivered milk to our front door early morning and the cardboard tops rose up high from the glass bottles in the winter.

Mother was a wonderful cook, and she made lots of homemade bread and most wonderful sticky buns. Her claim to fame was her brownies, which I think she sold two for five cents. People purchased them to send to their servicemen overseas during World War II. No package baking then. She also sewed with the treadle machine. She made me a winter coat and matching hat with a fur ball on the top.

Before I was in high school we had a nice house built there. That house had a nice sun porch. Mother turned that into a little ice cream parlor and sewed sandwiches and of course brownies. That grew and became a small convenience store.

Dad had a green thumb, and he made a rectangle picket fence with a trellis. He had beds of various flowers there near the road. He also had a hedge of cosmos that grew tall and full along the driveway by the house. He produced a vegetable garden and mother canned many preserves. My parents worked very hard seven days a week.

During the war, Dad went to work in the Windsor machine shop, and mother held the fort and pumped gas, which was then rationed.

My dad had some health problems, and he just passed out occasionally. Mother and us kids rubbed his arms and legs and he came around. The doctor never knew what his problem was, but in due time, I never knew of that happening. Eventually, they physically needed to sell the business.

New home.

Dad built a nice house in East Montpelier, where they lived for several years, and he tore down an old barn to build a very nice camp at Nelson Pond. It was next to the Chase camp. Happy families. Dad found the spring there which was used by some other campers.

After selling the East Montpelier home, they lived at camp in the summer and rented in Barre winters. Mother did housekeeping for some homes in Barre. They eventually rented an apartment back home in Plainfield.

My mother died at age 69 of heart failure. She was borderline sugar. Dad was alone for 10 years. He attended the Plainfield Senior Center and often took walks. He did very well to keep the spirit with a broken heart.

Mother and Dad.

Hangin' with Bob, Greg, and Jack

2010-09-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

Bob Hooker, at the Vermont Folklife Center.

Spent the day yesterday in Middlebury with Bob Hooker, Greg Sharrow, and Jack Rowell, hanging the Hale Street Gang's "Portraits in Writing" exhibit, which officially opens on Friday, just in time for the town's Art Walk. It felt like Christmas, opening up all the cartons. First to go up were Charles and Ruth, above (we thought it would be nice to put brother and sister together). Jack took this photo of them and Bob as a sneak preview, since most of the writers won't see the exhibit until October 2, the day of our reception.

Also this week, Alex Hanson from the Valley News had lunch with the Tuesday group. The room where we meet has become so cluttered with debris (the remnants of last year's Christmas bazaar, supplies for discontinued art projects, old photographs that nobody can identify) that there is barely enough room for us anymore. We managed to squeeze enough to accommodate both Alex and Jack, who stopped by just as Emilie was ringing the dinner bell and was easily persuaded to stay for some shepherd's pie. I don't know what Alex made of it all, but I guess we'll find out on Saturday when we pick up our copy of the Valley News. He's probably wondering how we get anything done in all the chaos.

Estelle Therrien: Plenty of Dancing and Laughter

2010-09-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Estelle grew up on Voghell Road in Randolph. She now lives at Jocelyn House, in Randolph village, and is a regular at the senior center, where she likes to play mah-jongg. We are thrilled to have her in the Tuesday group. Many of her early memories concern the French-speaking community to which her family belonged. She titled the following "Thoughts As I Grow Older," but I thought that seemed too somber for a piece about dancing, partying, and drinking moonshine:

All the French People Partied at the Drop of a Hat

This is not a day-to-day journal, it's just my thoughts as I grow older and all my friends and neighbors are dying off. There is nobody to talk to about the farm, Abbotts, Blairs, the little house on the hill. It is strange; I don't want to let it get me down in the mouth, and mind you, I won't, God willing.

Dancing! Square dancing! Loved it, especially the swing around! My Dad was a great dancer; I loved it when he was in our square. At one party, he came over and took my hand and led me onto the floor; it was one of the best dances I shall always remember. It was at a wedding reception, before I was married, and it was in an old farmhouse, which was where all the parties I ever knew were held. All the French people had parties at the drop of a hat, usually Sunday nights.

Especially in the winter it was so cold! At that time there wasn't any Prestone for cars, so they let all the water out of the motors so they wouldn't freeze. After the party they would have to fill them up again, but they sure didn't seem to mind. The wives would heat the water in a big boiler on the stove (wood, of course). By the end of the night it was warm or boiling. The men put on their war mackinaws, mittens and hats, then each one had a pail to carry the water. Very exciting! Then the women and children would run to the cars, wrap themselves with blankets and snuggle down for the ride home. No heaters in cars! Everybody had such a good time, but they still had to get up 'round five o'clock in the morning. I often wondered if my parents stayed up, because the parties lasted till quite late. Then, too, they always had a little moonshine, which was passed out in an ounce glass, everyone taking their drink in turn, out of the same little glass. That's all they had at one time, but of course it was handed out quite often. But nobody seemed to get drunk, as there was a lot of singing; everybody would take turns singing a song, and there was always plenty of dancing and laughter.

One Monday morning my sister and I were sorting clothes to do the washing, talking about the most recent party and the new family that had moved into town. Now we were talking about the men in the family, who were all good looking. I was telling my sister that Homer was the best looking, but what a name! We both laughed, but my father said in his soft voice, "Never laugh at a man's name, as you might be having him for a husband." And I DID! My sisters in Massachusetts always sent our letters to Mr. and Mrs. Omar Therrien. That was the French way to spell and pronounce his name. They didn't approve of his American version. But he stubbornly held onto the name he was baptised with: Homer Therrien.

We Did It!

2010-08-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

The summer is ending in a flurry of activity, as we prepare for our opening at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury, Vermont. That's right--we made our fund-raising goal on Kickstarter, thanks to some 60 donors. The exhibit of Jack Rowell's portraits of the gang, along with recordings of the writers' reading excerpts from their work, will run from September 10 to December 18.
Save the first Saturday afternoon in October, and come to the Writers' Gala Reception. Meet the writers, and hear the music of Beth Telford and Jim Green, who have generously offered to play for us. Stay tuned for more events (workshops, readings) in late October.
Note: The reception date of October 2 is a change due to a scheduling conflict. (The original date was September 18--but now you can go to Tunbridge Fair that day.)

Summers in Vermont: A Family Album

2010-07-21T14:59:00.000-07:00

I made this little video (double click to get a full screen!) in memory of my cousin David Stouder, who died in June. His birthday is tomorrow. Several people, including family and friends, remembered David with donations to our project. I wanted to make a video celebrating David's life, but since I don't have many pictures of him, I settled for an "album" about the summers we spent together as children. David, who grew up in Kankakee, Illinois, was loved by a large extended family. In the pictures I found, he is surrounded by cousins—toasting marshmallows, playing cowboys-and-Indians, hanging out in the late afternoon on the lawn of his grampa's house. The following piece was written by David's cousin Richard:

One Cousin’s Remembrance

When I was about twelve years old, my Aunt Marion invited me to fly to Chicago and drive to Vermont with the Stouder family. I had spent a very meaningful summer or two in Randolph Center, in prior years, and my beloved aunt thought this would be fun for me. She was right.

Part of the experience was for me to spend a couple of weeks in Kankakee, with the Stouders, prior to the trip. My anxious Mom got me on a plane at Newark, New Jersey, and before I knew it, I was greeted by my three cousins, Beth, Susie, David—the Stouder cousins—and my dear Aunt Marion. Since it was summertime, we went swimming at the country club, walked downtown to shop, Uncle Allan took us to lunch at nice restaurants, etc. For this rural/suburban New Jersey kid, flying to Chicago alone, walking through the “large” downtown of Kankakee, and having lunch with my judge uncle and cousins was all new and exciting.

As we were all kids then, arts and crafts were something we were all into. There was a store in Kankakee that sold unfinished plaster-of-Paris items that David and I walked into one day. We had no such store in Ringwood, New Jersey, where I lived, and I’d never seen such a store where you could purchase such items. David and I went into this store, and if memory serves me well, we purchased two items. I bought a large plaster fountain. David bought some praying hands for his father. I still remember what he was looking for. He told the proprietor that since his father was blind, he wanted something he could feel. I remember Dave carefully touching a lot of items before he settled on this one. He had me feel it as well. “Do you think this would be good for my Dad?” he asked. He also consulted with the proprietor. The one employee said to the other, “His father is blind, and he wants something his dad can feel . . .”

There may have been some special occasion coming, I don’t recall. Since Father’s Day was right around then, it might have been something for that day, or perhaps a birthday. Maybe David was just thinking about his Dad. The hands are those long, sleek, plaster-white, very reverent-looking two hands, with just a little wrist showing, that you still see in religious cards and trinkets. Maybe they are supposed to be the hands of Jesus the Caucasian, or God, the really white guy. Even this Christian cleric doesn’t quite know their genesis.

All I recall is that David settled in on two items, the praying hands and a Nefertiti head. I remember being impressed that David knew about Nefertiti, since I’d never heard of “him.” “She’s a she,” David scolded. “An Egyptian queen.” I was impressed that David knew about “her,” since he was younger than I. “These sophisticated Illinois cousins of mine,” I remember thinking. “They are all so darn smart!”
We walked home to 880 South Greenwood Avenue, the Stouder family home. David showed his Mom the praying hands. I showed her the large cardboard box—say two feet high and one and a half feet wide or so, probably weighing twenty pounds, with the disassembled plaster fountain inside. There was only one thing left to do. We had to get the fountain back to New Jersey, via the Kankakee to Vermont route.
Aunt Marion pondered for awhile how this transport might occur: UPS, parcel post, train, perhaps? In the end, she bit the bullet, packed kids’ clothing around the plaster fountain, put it into the box, stuffed it into the family’s fuel-efficient—eight miles per gallon—Chrysler New Yorker station wagon, and away it went! Along with the fountain were four mostly agreeable, pubescent kids, two heavy-smoking adults, one large German shepherd, and a whole summer’s worth of suitcases, to Vermont. It, and us, stopped at two Holiday Inns, one somewhere in Ohio and the other in Batavia, New York, before we all arrived in Randolph Center, Vermont, for a wonderful summer of family and relaxation.

There we joined with eighteen cousins, a revered Gramp, one of his two lady friends (at a time), and many wonderful, loving aunts and uncles. We ate raspberries by the fistful and fresh corn by the grocery “sack” (a strange Illinois term I’d never heard before). We hiked up into the wood lot, waded into the leech-infected Frog Pond, and mostly got along pretty well. And there, together, we all just loved life.
Before we left Kankakee on our trip east, I believe David painted the praying hands, the color now eludes me. He gave them to his grateful father, my Uncle Allan. I recall my dear uncle saying, after he carefully looked over the hands, “Thanks, Dave.” —Richard Demarest

The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots (Sneak Preview)

2010-06-16T02:21:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Thursday) I leave for France to visit my in-laws. Patrick's mom is 87 and showing her age, and we have two brand-new babies in the family, so the annual visit is pretty important, but it's always a little hard to leave home. Anyway, we'll be back July 2, but if it feels like I'm absent over the next two weeks, that's why. Meanwhile, here's a rough draft of the introduction to our "collective memoir," which we will publish later this summer. The title seems to have morphed from "Fishbone Alley" to "In Cahoots." What do you think of the intro? Is it done? Or do I need to take time out from vacationing to perfect it? The real question is, does it make you want to read the book?

IN THE FALL OF 2008, MY MOTHER AND I ENROLLED in a six-week memoir-writing class at the senior center in Randolph, Vermont. My mother was then eighty-seven, and I hoped the structure of a class would encourage her to keep working on the memoir she had begun years earlier and then put aside.
Randolph is the town where I was born. I went to the Randolph Elementary School, learned to swim in the Third Branch of the White River, to ski in Mr. Farr’s cow pasture, to skate at the town rink by the bridge. I bought penny candy at Merusi’s store, popcorn at the Playhouse movie theater. I still remember the sternness with which old Mr. Merusi used to view every child who crossed his doorstep, as if we were all bent on mischief, and the way Mrs. MacLaine used to patrol the aisles of the movie theater clacking a metallic noisemaker, the signal for us to simmer down.
In 1972 I graduated from Randolph Union High School and went off to college. From there, I moved to New York City and got a publishing job. Over the next thirty years, I married, moved approximately twenty times, divorced, married again, and raised a stepson. Then I came home to Randolph.
My husband and I settled in at 36 Highland Avenue, my childhood home. I was tired of big-city life and needed a change of pace; my mother needed some help. I began driving her to her appointments around town, becoming a regular in the water-aerobics class at Shape, the book discussion at Kimball Library, the Lift for Life class at the senior center.
The Randolph Senior Center is on a half-forgotten street just south of the railroad tracks; when the neighborhood dogs slip their chains and come looking for kitchen scraps, Rose, the cook, stands on the front porch brandishing her spatula and threatens to call the police. At the senior center, you can get a flu-shot, a pedicure, or a lesson in how to declutter your home. You can play bridge or make a patchwork book bag or take a little nap sitting up. At the senior center, Emilie rings the dinner bell Monday through Thursday at 11:55, and we all say the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance before we form the chow line. There is hand sanitizer on every table and a little envelope for your suggested donation, and Rose and Janet serve the meatloaf and watery vegetables cafeteria-style. The coffee is 50 cents on the honor system—there’s a wooden salad bowl for your change—and it tastes like 50-cent coffee. You can come through the door feeling mean as a snake and you will still get a chair and a squirt of hand sanitizer and a plateful of food.
I started going to the center to lift weights. The Lift for Lifers were some twenty gray-haired ladies who hoisted dumbbells and leg weights from a seated position, their chairs in a circle. They talked as much as they exercised (I had noticed the same tendency in the water-aerobics class), and my mother attempted to keep order by wearing a whistle around her neck and blowing on it whenever the talk threatened to overtake the hoisting to the extent that we might not finish on time. After several months of this routine, it was announced one day at lunch that a memoir-writing workshop would begin soon.
The class convened on a Monday morning at eighty-thirty. My mother and I were the only two students present. I asked the instructor, a young woman who was just finishing up her MFA, if she would like to postpone the class while we recruited a few more students, but she was undaunted by the small turnout. The next week, another student joined us, and then another, and soon we were six. The class ended, the instructor left, and we were on our own.
Because I am a professional writer, the others quickly decided that I would be their leader. It was a humbling assignment. My “students” were all capable writers who had done far more living than I, and I wasn’t sure what I could teach them, but I happily accepted the role. A year later, I invited the seniors to start a second group that would meet on Tuesday afternoons. Every week we gather at a big round table in the craft room and, surrounded by a jumble of Christmas ornaments, scraps of cloth, and other bric-a-brac, read aloud from our memoirs-in-progress. I do not tell the writers what to write about. That is entirely up to them. I just listen, waiting to see what themes will emerge.
It interests me, for instance, that so many of their childhood memories concern grandparents. The influence of grandparents and their integral involvement in family life was a given in an era when assisted living meant moving in with the kids. The older folks helped with the many chores that were typical of rural households before World War II. My mother remembers her grandfather churning butter, tending the vegetable garden, and keeping hens, as well as peddling the eggs door-to-door, on foot, in town. This was when he was well into his eighties. Grandmothers helped with the sewing (most clothes were made by hand), the ironing (a long day’s work), and dozens of other tasks that don’t exist today (does anyone darn socks anymore?). One of the tasks assumed by both grandmothers and grandfathers was, of course, the care of young children, which explains why they figure so largely in these early recollections.
Writing is never an easy task, and old age doesn’t make it easier. Some of the Hale Street writers don’t drive anymore. Some don’t see or hear like they used to. They struggle to make their pens do what they want, to understand what their computer means when it says, “Overwrite?” They wrestle with imperfect memories, and lives that are too long to fit comfortably on the page—where to begin? What to leave out? What to include? And yet there they are, every week, pages in hand. Why do they do it? More than the writing, it’s the sharing, the sense that their lives have meaning and will continue to do so after they’re gone.
Whenever we gather, we laugh a lot. I suspect this is instructive. Despite their hard knocks, the writers themselves are a resilient bunch. There’s little that escapes their sense of humor. Six of them were born in Vermont, five of those in Randolph. The rest moved here from the Hudson Valley, the Midwest, Kentucky, and other parts of New England. At some point, I began to think of our work as the literary equivalent of the locavore movement. Their recollections are idiosyncratic and intensely personal, and that’s what makes them so effective. Together they have created, quite by accident, a vivid portrait of small-town life that spans the twentieth century.

Mary Hutchinson: Farr's Hill

2010-06-11T03:53:00.000-07:00

I was among the last batch of Randolph kids to master the stem Christie on Mr. Farr's hill, and Mary Hutchinson was my instructor. She also taught me to blow bubbles at the old Randolph playground, which she wrote about for an earlier post. It was an era when playgrounds and ballparks and ski lifts were built not by federal stimulus money or state aid but by volunteer armies of dads with shovels and hammers. Here's a glimpse of what it was like:

Mr. Farr was a farmer who gave up his weekends after chores to operate a ski lift. He also ran it during holiday vacations. Farr’s Hill was one of the first ski tows in Vermont. It opened in about 1936, just two years after the tow in Woodstock, the first in North America. Mr. Farr operated this rope tow for about thirty years. He would stand there all afternoon and many mornings in his visor cap, denim barn coat, and barn boots, and look upward, ready to stop the lift if someone fell off. He would climb partway up to help a child up if necessary. He was always jolly with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. “As I say” was how he often began a sentence. He would stand there all day when the day was sunny and bright, all day when it was blustery cold, all for no charge for thirty years.

A neighbor, Helen Frink, was often on hand to help one learn to ride the lift. She would hitch up her horse and tie on a rope so you could get the feel of the rope. This helped eliminate many falls off the rope tow.

Before the ski tow opened, Mr. Farr had a skating rink and a toboggan chute. I only ventured on the toboggan chute once. It was too scary for me.

Our ski clothes were quite different in the early days. We wore woolen pants, a woolen shirt of some kind, and often woolen mittens. Those of us who were fortunate had leather mittens to go over the woolen ones. Mittens didn’t last long on a rope tow. At the end of the day our woolen pants were covered with tiny snowballs from falling down.

To get to Farr’s from our home we walked, wearing our ski boots and carrying our long skis and poles over our shoulder. Up School Street, onto North Main Street, across the bridge, and up the steep stairs behind the present firehouse, across a field and up the road where the Herrins now live, and there we put on our skis and skied diagonally to the tow. Once there, everyone lined up horizontally across the hill and sidestepped up the hill and then back down to pack the snow. This helped to prevent ruts and big piles of snow from building up where people turned. It also helped to preserve the snow longer. Once this was done, there would be a line of about twenty-five kids waiting and shouldering and edging each other to see who could get through the line first. The tow stopped often as a kid would fall down and have to get out of the way before you were on your way again. If you happened to be on a steep section of the hill it was mighty hard to hang on and be ready when the rope started again with a jerk. For thirty years Randolph kids spent many weekends skiing and trying to bump each other off the rope by thumping the rope. At times we went in a corrugated warming hut to huddling around a cast-iron stove, which stood without a warning label and could burn your mittens brown if you got too near it.

Often money was given to Mr. Farr to help defray expenses, and a small calf was given to him at the dedication ceremony of the new Pinnacle Skiways. The beginners’ slope at Pinnacle was named Farr’s Trail.

Cynthia Jackson: Loss

2010-06-10T05:37:00.000-07:00

Loss, losing, lost; loose, loosing, found. I am losing, losing every day—each hour as it goes by:

My calendulas and marigold, as the summer sun becomes the cooler autumn sun, and moves across the sky nearer the horizon.

My favorite shoes grow shabby, then shabbier and finally fall apart.

My once smooth, soft skin becomes rough, spotty and wrinkled.

My pepper hair surrenders to a briny assault.

My hopes of becoming really organized have been mislaid, lost.

I know about loss, big loss:

My parents and my grandparents, of course, and now, my two brothers are both gone. A young cousin, his life newly reclaimed from drug abuse, swept out to sea in the undertow of a huge wave bringing news of an approaching hurricane off the North Carolina shore. Friends, some known since primary school, some close, some less so, but all part of the fabric of my life—gone.

I know about little losses, some very painful:

My cats: Boots, Tiny, Tiger and Bozo, Fluffy, Mischief, Tigger I, Obadiah, Tigger II,Tranquility, Rosie (for Franklin Delano). And things: the little cameo from the gold ring, given to me by my grandmother’s friend and lost while playing with Fluffy. My wedding ring, lost while swimming and playing in the water with my children. A fantastic mask of feathers and glittering jewels from my daughter. A Christmas ornament made by my son, crushed.

I know the loss of places: My homes, fifteen of them, from Vermont to Florida, from Wales to Japan, where I lived as a baby, a child, a young woman, an old woman. However, my homes of long ago, transformed though they may have been by their new owners, remain in my mind as they were, so vivid that I can enter them, see motes dancing in the sun as it filters through the maple leaves, the windows and the oak shutters, then splashes across the book-piled table, along the carpeted floor and up the legs of the chaise longue, whose leafy pattern was faded long before I had ever seen it, smell the books, the carpet and the dust dancing the limitless dance in the sunbeam.

They are lost . . .

But they are still mine, loose, loosed from the reality of every day, so free, free to stay with me where I can find them at will, until I, too, am free, and all the things of this world will drop from me as I am loosed into the air to dance freely along the beams of sunshine and moonlight.

How Now Brown Cow

2010-06-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

One time I had a long list of dates to memorize for a history test and Mom sent me to the barn to get Dad to help me. Dad was sitting beside a cow on his three-legged stool, with his head against her flank. He proceeded to make up a jingle for each date I had to learn. I’ve forgotten most of them now, but the next day I did not forget one, and I aced the test. One I do remember is “In 1609, Sir Hudson felt so fine, he sailed right up the Hudson River, in 1609.”—Ruth Godfrey

Grandparents Great and Small

2010-06-06T06:34:00.000-07:00

My great-great-grandfather,
Henry Boardman Cooley, circa 1860.

I am fascinated by the few faint memories of great-grandparents that have surfaced in our group. Often these are spectral figures dressed in quaint clothing—old-fashioned lace caps; long, rustling skirts; shirts with high, stiff collars; lots of buttons. Wheelchairs (especially interesting from a child's point of view) and beds so high they require footstools also have a tendency to crop up. These ghostly characters say little if anything in the dreamlike memories they've implanted; D'Ann Fago's memory of her maternal great-grandmother (below) is a rare exception. The story about the knife in the pie may be apocryphal, or maybe not, but D'Ann's memory of the woman who told it is quite clear. She also remembers that her great-grandmother "left her room to come down to meals, but she could barely walk and she couldn’t hear. She was very patrician—didn’t miss a thing. She had been the copy editor at her husband’s small-town newspaper. She was a very definite little woman with strong ideas about everything."

The photograph above is a print made from a daguerrotype that was unearthed in my grandfather Cooley's old farmhouse; it shows his grandfather, Henry Boardman Cooley, in the 1860s. Handsome man. Unfortunately, I know nothing about him. Henry's great granddaughter Ruth has this memory of the Smalls, a set of great-grandparents on her mother's side:

"I remember, dimly, a couple who seemed ancient to me. They may have been close to the age I am now! I think they were wearing black clothing, my great-grandmother in a long dress that came to the floor. That is my entire and only memory of meeting my great-grandparents. I have since learned that Great-Grandpa Small fought in the Civil War with his four brothers and his brother-in-law and that all survived. Great-Grandpa was at Appomattox." —Ruth Demarest-Godfrey

A Pie for Johnny Reb

2010-06-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

Photo: David C. Foster @ Creative Commons

"My grandmother’s mother lived in our house. She used to tell me stories about the Civil War. There was a famous Confederate prison in Louisville, and she and her sister used to write to the Confederate soldiers who were being held there; they smuggled knives into the prisoners, hidden in the pies they baked." —D'Ann Fago

John Jackson: Pop

2010-05-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

Son of the American Legion: A young John Jackson.

Colorful characters abound in the Gang's memoirs. John Jackson has written extensively about his father, a World War I veteran who worked in a knife factory. Among John's earliest memories are the tattoos his father acquired as a young man. "Eighty years ago, long-sleeved shirts and coats were a standard part of male attire," John writes, "and I was quite old before I realized that my father’s tattoos were in any way unusual. I assumed all fathers had them. The most spectacular was a large parrot, which extended from elbow to wrist. A line drawing of a crawling baby represented—I think—Baby Snooks, a newspaper cartoon character." The following is excerpted from John's memoir "Pop":

John Arthur Jackson, known to his two sons as Pop and to most of the rest of his world as Art, was born in 1895. His life story is complicated and, in many ways, undocumented. I certainly can’t claim objectivity, so the following account must be accepted on faith. There is no one alive who can challenge the few facts I possess.

By the time my father was nine years old, both his parents were dead. I don’t think he went to school much after he was orphaned. He lived with a cousin and he worked, perhaps as an apprentice. He was allowed to keep ten cents each week from his pay; five cents of that was put into the church collection plate. The other five cents was for clothing and wild living.

At the age of twelve or thirteen, he left and lived on his own, camping for a time near the village fairgrounds. At about age fifteen he went off with one of the circuses that visited the fairgrounds each year. He became a roustabout, putting up tents, feeding animals, and so on. When he was sixteen or seventeen, he joined the army.

Most of Pop’s army experience was in the Coast Artillery in Panama; he became a “hard hat” diver on a mine-laying ship. He was discharged from the army in 1917, but a few months later, when World War I started, he was called up and sent back to Panama.

Near the end of the war, he was cutting loose a mine cable that had become entangled in the propeller of a ship, when a nearby mine exploded. Pop was seriously injured. For the rest of his life, he received a partial disability pension and was in and out of veterans’ hospitals. He had attacks of something akin to asthma, and I suspect in today’s world he would be diagnosed with PTSD.

It took Pop eleven minutes to walk home from work. Since his stride was measured and military, the time didn’t vary. I was expected to be at the table, ready for supper at 5:11. Pop would walk into the house, wash his hands in a chipped enamel pan from under the kitchen sink, and sit down for supper.

My mother worked as a sewing machine operator in an underwear factory, getting home about 4:30. This made putting a meal on the table by 5:11 a little tricky. I would often stop by the underwear factory when I got out of school to pick up a shopping list. The sewing room at the factory was large and open, with long rows of tables with sewing machines on both sides. My grandmother worked at the sewing machine opposite my mother. I would pick up my list, go shopping (I often bought salads and cold cuts at our local delicatessen), and have the food home ready for preparation by 4:30.

On Thursday, my mother and I would meet Pop on Main Street and we would shop for payday supper. It often included round steak, salads, Frisbee’s pie, and ice cream!

Pop was very active in the local American Legion and in the Masonic Order. One of our family activities every year was to place a flag and plant a geranium on every veteran’s grave in four local cemeteries. One of the graves was that of a veteran of the German army in World War I. Every year, my mother would make a World War I German flag down at the underwear factory and we would place it on the German soldier’s grave.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, my brother Jimmy joined the Army Air Corps. Pop tried to join all of the armed and semi-armed forces, but he wasn’t accepted. In the first place, he was forty-six years old, pretty old for most of the services. In the second place, he had a 25 percent disability from World War I. He was rejected by every service, including the Coast Guard and the Maritime Service.

He consoled himself by going to work for the Spence Engineering Company in Walden, which had war contracts. By doing that, he felt he was making at least a small contribution to the war effort. The company had a long history of war work. During the Civil War it had been known as the Rider Erickson Engine Company. Erickson was the designer of the Monitor (of Monitor and Merrimack fame), and some of the parts of the famous ironclad were made in Walden. Another war-related activity involved donating blood. Pop had a type of type-O blood that was much in demand on the battlefield. He would go to New York City as often as they would take him, sometimes carpooling with other donors, and donate his blood, which would be flown, unprocessed, to Europe.

Early in 1942, a public meeting was called by the Army Air Corps in the high school auditorium. The purpose was to convince the people that a station of the Aircraft Warning Service was needed in the Walden area. Somehow, probably just by volunteering, Pop was chosen as the chief observer with the responsibility to set up and administer a station in Walden. It required the finding of a proper location for the observing site and organizing volunteer observers, two at a time, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. That’s a pretty big job for a town of 5,000 people. In short order, we had a temporary station in a trailer on a farm near town. It was a pretty inconvenient location, particularly with gasoline rationing and was impractical for winter operation. Within a few months, a permanent station was set up on top of the Telephone Company building right in the middle of town. It was the tallest building in the downtown area, overlooking the twice life-sized bronze statue of President McKinley holding a large American Flag. The station operated as required until the end of the war. Obviously, there were many occasions when people had to miss their assignments. The shifts were six hours starting at noon. When substitutes were needed, my father, my mother and I were the easiest ones to find. At the end of the war, Pop got a medal for serving over 2,000 hours, Mom got one for over 1,500 hours, and I got one for over 1,000 hours.

Ruth Demarest Godfrey: War Bride

2010-05-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

Ruth and Harrison, 1943.

Harrison was from New Jersey. After a hot and heavy courtship, much of it long-distance, we decided to marry. Our marriage happened in a great rush, as Harrison knew he would be called up soon. After all, it was wartime, 1943. My mom was in Chicago, visiting my sister Marion. Harrison and I went out after informing my dad of our plans. When we got home, I found a note on the table that bore our telephone. It was the telegram that Dad had sent Mom. “Come home. Ruth getting married next Sunday.” It was the Saturday before. Although I understand that Mom had to stand for hours at the railway station to get a ticket home, she nevertheless arrived in a couple of days and arranged a small home wedding for us. How thoughtless the young can be! I put a terrible burden on her and didn’t even realize it at the time. Always equal to any situation that involved her children, Mom got the show on the road. On the day of our wedding, June 27, 1943, my mom entered my room early in the morning and put up the window shade on a beautiful, sunny day. “Time to get up, Ruthie,” she said. “Happy is the bride the sun shines on!” I can still hear her saying those words and I can see her smiling face as she said them.

Our wedding was held in the living room of our farm home. My sister, Idora, managed to get there from New Jersey, where she was living while her husband was stationed at Camp Kilmer. Her husband could not make it. My other sister, Marion, was in Chicago, and she did not manage to get there. It was very short notice and travel was difficult. On our wedding day, a B17 bomber, en route from Nevada to Maine for embarkation, crashed over Randolph. All but two of the crew were killed. The whole episode was observed by wedding guests who were sitting on our lawn waiting for the wedding to take place. In fact, the wedding supper was held at the Montague Country Club in Randolph, and we shared the dining room with the two surviving crew members.

Three weeks later my husband was called into the army. I moved to New Jersey, with many a backward glance, in order to be close enough to see him when he got weekend passes. Hello to young love, but farewell to my paradise in Vermont.

Now, many new faces. Different ways of speaking, of doing things, and of being. I went to work at Wright Aeronautical. I had to become accustomed to people who were not Vermonters! Vermont was much farther away from New Jersey than it is today. I was asked many questions about our life-style. Did we live in yurts? Did we eat raw meat? Did we go to school? How did we get around without roads and cars? Who chose our husbands for us? Did we get to vote? Was sex the same in Vermont? Were we safe after dark? Did everybody carry a gun? How did it happen that I looked and talked the same as other people? Were flatlanders safe in Vermont? These were not well-traveled people. I tried to be very tolerant of their ignorant, foolish questions and gradually caught on to their ways and made friends. My job was sort of spasmodic. Sometimes I had a great deal to do, and at other times I had nothing. The city of Paterson was in a wartime frenzy. When people behaved in a way that I found unconscionable, I attributed it to the times: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” The absence of the husbands left a clear field for some of the more enterprising and less principled guys, and they did not hesitate to take full advantage of the situation. I would not go to their periodic parties, having been warned ahead of time about their libertine ways, and being from the more staid state of Vermont, but enough stuff went on in the office so that I could see how things were. Such behavior would have caused many raised eyebrows in my native state. Vermonters were often guilty of immoral behavior, but they were better at concealing it. At least, they used to be. Bear in mind that was all many moons ago and much water has gone over the dam since then.

I think many New Jersey women had accepted a subservient role when working with men. I had not been raised that way. Girls were as important as boys in our family and all the rights and privileges of boys were their due. At Wright’s, it was the policy to review our job performance every three months, and if it was found to be satisfactory your salary would be raised. There were three steps in our department. After I had finished the third month of the second level, I did not seem to be advancing to the third. When I asked for an explanation, I was told that my performance was perfectly satisfactory, but it was a company policy not to promote women to the third step, that of senior planner. “Whoa, there,” said I. “You are not talking to a second-class citizen here. You are talking to a girl from Vermont! You give me a job that senior planner would be required to do, and if I cannot do it satisfactorily, then you can deny me the promotion. Company policy be damned!” Well, they didn’t want to listen to me, but Wright’s had a very strong union. I sought out the union steward and laid my case before him. He said, a little weakly, I thought, “But it’s company policy.” I told him that the union was there to protect and fight for the rights of the workers and I wanted him to fight for me. He took on the battle and after a couple of weeks he came back to me and told me they had overturned the policy and that I would be promoted to the third level. I felt a certain sense of triumph. I had no way of knowing if they did the same for the other women planners or if they did it to silence my Yankee voice.

When Harrison returned unscathed in 1946, he decided that he would like to live in Vermont and we bought a little house in Randolph Center and started our family.

The Gang's Spring Fling

2010-05-25T03:03:00.000-07:00

Complete forgot to post this little video, made on May 15 at the downtown Randolph "Spring Fling." With John Jackson, Ruth Godfrey, and me. We were handing out free advice on Main Street, but we didn't last long—you'll see why. Videography by Charles Cooley, edited by Yours Truly.

Margaret Egerton: The Great War

2010-05-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Knitting socks for soldiers during WWI.

Photo from Creative Commons

I was born in 1910. My father was a groundskeeper and chauffeur for a rich Clevelander, who had a walled estate at the top of a hill that became known as Cleveland Heights, which was a fast-growing suburb east of downtown Cleveland. My mother hated her exile from England and finally convinced my father to return. We sold our home and purchased tickets for the crossing. Unfortunately, these plans were made without any forethought about the war until after the sinking of a passenger ship caught in the German blockade surrounding the British Isles. My father was still an English citizen, and as soon as he reached England he would have been drafted into the army and taken into the trenches in France. He therefore canceled his ticket, and in 1915 mother, my brother, and I sailed for “home.”
My memories of living in England are vivid but fragmentary. Adult discussions about the danger from the enemies were pervasive. The huge German airships known as zeppelins were invented during the war to carry bombs to English cities, and during the frequent air-raid warnings we would scamper into hallways and safe havens away from windows and shattering glass. I remember sitting in a movie looking at time-lapsed photography of beautiful flowers with their petals opening up when the words “Air Raid Take Cover” flashed on the screen.

During the blackout, shops used blinds to keep light from shining out. I remember seeing the small OPEN sign in a shop window as we walked by. That was one of the first words I learned to spell.

I remember the war bond rallies in Trafalgar Square, where Red Cross ambulances that had rescued the wounded from the trenches were on display, parked around the lions. The trucks were tattered, with bullet holes and bloodstains.

Dad wrote to us faithfully but his letters were censored and only a few were delivered. He often sent me the “funny page.” I remember Mother reading “Mutt and Jeff” and “Dolly Dimples” to me from a U.S. newspaper.

I remember standing with her in a building and talking to refugees from Belgium. Talk about atrocities committed by the invaders of that hapless country created great fear of the enemy and much prejudice of the “Huns.” I remember visiting my grandmother, who was living in Chelsea with her daughter, my aunt Nellie. My grandmother, Caroline Annie Purkis, lived to be almost one hundred. At the time we visited she resided in a big feather bed with a canopy and a footstool, which I climbed when I visited her. She wore a little white flannel cap on her head with her straight hair parted in the middle. The strings of the cap could be tied under her chin, but when I saw her they were loose and on top of her cap. I remember saying to her that she looked like a German wearing his helmet shaped with a metal point on top. My grandmother was a gentle old lady who gave me lots of hugs, but she was very angry with me when I called her a German Hun.

As soon as the German blockade was lifted, ships began taking shell-shocked American soldiers back to the United States. We sailed home with the soldiers, who entertained me and the only other little girl on the ship. It was a lark to be so spoiled with attention. I remember eating half an orange with great relish, as it was the first time I had enjoyed fresh fruit since leaving the States.

What delight I had in celebrating the Armistice on November 18, 1918, waving my American flag and ringing the bell attached to the handlebars of my tricycle as I pedaled up and down Amesbury Avenue. It was an exciting and happy time.

But living in a war torn society had left lasting impressions. My mother had suffered too long the anxiety of separation from my father and had severe headaches from which she never fully recovered. I must have absorbed a lot of her anxiety. I had trouble going to bed alone in the dark. A lighted candle was beside my bed, but frequently it was extinguished, and when I awoke in the dark I remember pleading with my parents to let me join them at the foot of their bed. It was many years before I overcame my fear of sleeping in the dark, and now I use a nightlight.

Mary Jacobs: Spring Day at Travis

2010-05-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Randolph Center looking north.

The Vietnam war officially ended January 27, 1973. Vietnam released 590 prisoners by April 1 and the last U.S. troops left March 29. The war was not over for the families of MIAs. Where were their husbands, fathers, brothers, and other family members that were listed only as missing in action? Were they still prisoners, or dead?

In the spring of 1973, Cookie and I were visiting my son John at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California.

North Vietnam had released the remains of seven MIAs and they had been flown to Hawaii for identification and were now being returned to the U.S. to their families for burial.

John came home one evening and said he had obtained permission for us to attend the ceremony at the Air Force base.

It was mid afternoon and we stood on the edge of the tarmac with military officers in full uniform, a few veterans wearing their old uniforms, and several families with small children and babies.

Off the end of the runway were seven waiting hearses.

We were waiting patiently when there was the loud roar of motorcycle engines. Into the waiting area roared about twenty big Harly motorcycles ridden by what appeared to be Hell’s Angels. They had tattoos, silver chains, long hair, and strange-looking helmets. A closer look showed each wore one or more articles of a ragged military uniform.

Earlier John had explained to us that each casket would be escorted by a military colog guard and the highest ranking officer from their branch of the service.

Soon, a big C5 (cargo plane) could be seen coming out of the clouds. It was very low and very very slow—in fact, you wondered why it didn’t fall to the earth.

It landed and slowly, slowly taxied up the runway. At this point, everyone was absolutely silent, the babies stopped fussing, and children stood still. The motorcyclists came to full military, a position that they held throughout the ceremony. It was an awesome moment.

At this time, the families, each with a chaplain, came onto the runway. I wondered how many of the young people had never seen their father.

The cargo doors at the rear of the plane opened and a Marine Honor Guard and a Marine General exited. They were followed by marines carrying a flag draped casket. The chaplain said a short prayer and all escorted the casket to the hearse.

This was repeated six times. All branches of the service were represented. During this time, the hikers had stood at attention, saluting each casket.

I cannot describe my feelings at this time: sadness, a great pride in America and its people, and great respect for the Hell’s Angels who came to honor their comrades.

The only other time with similar feelings was at the Punch Bowl Cemetery in Hawaii. There are 33,230 grave sites here and it is filled to capacity with World War II and Korean War veterans. On a small hill overlooking the many white crosses is a thirty-foot female known as Columbia standing on a symbol of the prow of a U.S. Navy ship. Engraved at the base of the statue are the words spoken by Abraham Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby who had five sons that died in battle.

The words are “The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid such a costly sacrifice upon the alter of freedom.”

Cookie Campbell: My Annie

2010-05-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

The last piece in our Mother's Day series was originally published here several weeks ago. I first met Cookie Campbell, Annie's mother, when she came to the Randolph Senior Center one Monday morning and explained that although she didn't really consider herself a writer, she had "a story that needs to be told." Over the next 18 months she set down an extraordinary memoir—excerpted below—about raising her daughter in an era that called for parents of children with Downs syndrome to be pioneers. Ann was born fourteen years before Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975; children like her were routinely denied a public-school education. Many were institutionalized. In making the decision to raise their daughter at home, Cookie and her husband could count on little support apart from family and friends. But the story Cookie had to share is one of triumph: Today, Ann Campbell is a loving and beloved member of the community, and if opportunities for children with Downs are far greater today than they were when her life began, it is in no small part due to families like the Campbells.

In 1961 "politically correct" had not been invented, so my poor friend and doctor had to come to us and say, "I'm sorry. She's Mongoloid."

Our long road began.

Stunned? Well, yes. Speechless? Oh, yes. So speechless I fell asleep and spilled my ice water. Prepared? Is anyone ever? These things happened to other people.

We were given choices which really were no choices at all. We could take her to Brandon and leave her or take her home. There was no way in God's world that I could put her in Brandon, so when she was five days old we bundled her up and headed for home.

Ann. Easy to say, and easy to spell, if the time ever came.

Hank and Clayt, at nine and eight years, were in school, but Herbert was four and a half and came to help fetch us home on a sunny Friday. He hardly made a sound, but watched and listened and every once in a while he gave a little pat. By the time the school bus rolled in at 3:15 he was feeling fairly comfortable and a bit proprietary.

The two big boys came in, gave me a hug and took a quick peek at the little sister before snacking, changing and going outdoors.

The next morning they were ready to ask questions and more importantly, to hear the answers.

She's Mongoloid. It means she is retarded. She'll be slow. She won't be able to learn as much as you. I don't know if she'll learn to walk. I don't know if she'll talk. I just don't know. We have to take good care of her. Love her. Teach her everything she can learn. We've got to wait and see.

My sister came that day—Saturday—and immediately fell in love with Ann. Since I wouldn't give her Ann to take home she took Hank, saying it would lessen my work load. I think he was anxious to go (he who had never been away overnight) because he was unsure about his feelings for Ann and maybe thought he could sort things out if he had time alone. He was supposed to stay for two weeks, but by the first Friday he was homesick and miserable and happily came home to all of us.

Clayt was much more accepting and hopeful. "Well, if she can learn a word, fine, and the next day she can learn another word. She should be okay." And so went about his business.

Herbert, meanwhile, is still watching and listening and doing kind little things.

Mary Hutchinson: Grandmother Carpenter and Gram Dustin

2010-05-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

From my own family album: A Balch family picnic (that's Grandma Small on the left).

It's interesting to note how many of the Hale Street Gang grew up in households that included grandmothers and grandfathers. "Assisted living" meant moving in with the kids. The older folks helped with the many chores that were typical of rural households before World War II. My mother remembers her grandfather churning butter, tending the vegetable garden, and keeping hens, as well as peddling the eggs door-to-door, on foot, in town. This was when he was well into his eighties. Grandmothers helped with the sewing (most clothes were made by hand), the ironing (a long day's work), and dozens of other tasks that don't exist today (does anyone darn socks anymore?). Families looked after their own, a situation that naturally caused a certain amount of tension. I love this piece of Mary Hutchinson's because it looks at the situation from both angles, plusses and minuses, and with a good deal of humor. She says it is "written from the viewpoint of my younger sister, Carol." The theme of contrasting grandmas was arrived at independently by both Mary and Ruth, whose piece "My Two Grandmas" was posted earlier this week.

“Stand tall, point your toes straight ahead, and walk on the balls of your feet.” —Grandmother [Alice] Carpenter

“Just walk and get there the best you can, child.” —Gram [Jennie] Dustin

My grandmothers, both widows, lived with us for ten years. These were trying years for an overweight adolescent of twelve. I was the youngest of five children; the other four had left to go to college or war, leaving me to fend for myself.

Grandmother Carpenter was from an aristocratic family of Harvard graduates. Her father and brother had been prosperous dentists, and her deceased husband had been chief justice of the Supreme Court for the state of Connecticut. One of the highlights of her social life was leading the grand march with the governor at the Governor’s Ball. I remember how she would don her sparkling diamonds and rubies and strut around the living room as though she were back in the ballroom. How straight and tall she walked: She kept herself in condition by faithfully performing a ritual of exercise each morning. Her teeth were her own, she continually reminded everyone. Every afternoon she took a brisk walk. In the winter, if the conditions were such that she could not walk in the road, she would briskly walk back and forth across the porch which stretched the entire length of our house.

According to Grandmother Carpenter I never could speak properly. As we washed the dinner dishes in the evening, she would have me practice saying, “How now, brown cow.” I would exaggerate my Vermont accent to irritate her. She was constantly correcting my grammar and pronunciation. My eating habits irritated her as well. I loved to eat: She would actually grab candy right out of my hand. “Can’t love anything that can’t love you” was her immediate retort in the event that I dared to mention that I loved apple pie. She was determined that I was to lose weight. There were no fat people in Connecticut according to her, “Just in Vermont.” When she returned to Connecticut for a short visit, her first errand would be to go into the bank and exchange her “dirty Vermont money” for new money.

Grandma Dustin, my father’s mother, was a native Vermonter raised on a farm and accustomed to hard work. Married and teaching school at sixteen years of age, I’m sure she had little time to worry about her physical appearance. She was short with a definite hump to her back, slightly pigeon-toed, and walked with a slow gait. But how she could cook: I loved her homemade bread, cookies, and pies. I was especially fond of the creamed salt pork gravy she made to heap on mounds of fluffy mashed potato. I could devour half a loaf of her bread spread with her creamy homemade butter.

Gram Dustin never wasted a thing. She would rip out old sweaters to knit mittens for her five grandchildren. Our clothes were patched and repatched. She would fashion dresses and coats out of old clothing discarded by others. She would save bits of ribbon, lace, buttons; anything that would add a touch of elegance to the recycled clothing.

Each morning after breakfast Gram Dustin would come out to the kitchen sink, take out her false teeth, and brush them. Another of her distracting morning rituals was to march through the kitchen to the downstairs bathroom to empty her slop pail.

I remember the presidential election of 1944 (when Franklin Roosevelt was running for what would be his fourth term) extremely well. Grandmother Carpenter was a staunch Republican and was positive that Thomas Dewey would win. Gram Dustin, a Democrat, was rooting for FDR. Each night at the dinner table they would debate the qualifications of their respective candidates. At times these debates got very heated and the two elderly women would be practically screaming at each other. Roosevelt carried thirty-six of the forty-eight states, settling the entire affair. Needless to say, conversation regarding the election came to an immediate halt.

The presidential election soon was forgotten as the two women gathered anxiously in front of the radio each evening to listen to Lowell Thomas report on the progress of the war. Two of their grandsons were involved in the draft and this seemed to be a bonding factor in their relationship. As they sat knitting, Grandmother Carpenter working on war bandages, Gram Dustin creating mittens, they became closer because of their common concern: two grandsons off to war. At other times they would work on crossword puzzles or play solitaire. Gram Dustin never missed a day of “When a Girl Marries.” As soon as this “awful program” came on the air, Grandmother Carpenter would pick up her knitting and leave the room.

How my parents ever managed to control their frustrations through those years remains a mystery to me. To have lived ten years so peacefully with these two contrasting personalities, both strong-willed and proud of their heritage, was a challenge, an amazing feat and highly commendable.