Alec Hastings's Blog
October 12, 2017
Review of the Ta Ta Weenie Club
The Ta Ta Weenie Club is a sockdolager in the storytelling tradition, a collection of rollicking tales that made me whoop and laugh. To borrow a phrase from author Bill Torrey, I was “as happy as a dog with two tails” when I discovered them. Whether you’re joining Bill in “Horsing a Potato Hook” or “Turd Grade,” grab the book with one hand, your favorite beverage with the other, and settle into your easy chair. You might just be there for a while. This fella knows how to tell a story. If you want to listen to Bill’s stories rather than read them, you can go to his website and see where he is performing, or you can find him on youtube. One common denominator in his stories is colorful—and I mean colorful!—language. He is a master of hilarious comparison. When Bill and his new buddy Harvey Mallard sneak onto the Ethan Allen Firing Range in search of super trout, and an army helicopter strafes the beaver pond where they were poaching fish minutes earlier, Bill’s “eyes bug out like a stepped-on toad’s.” One of Bill’s characters is so cold he “shakes like a dog passing a pine cone,” and another is “nuttier than a squirrel turd.” But the colorful language and humor you’ll find in stories like “Bush Buggy” and “Joy” are not all Bill Torrey has to offer. In the poignant tale, “A Walk in the Garden,” he talks about how his mother died on the operating table at fifty-three and how this affected what he did with his life afterward. Anyone who has heard, but not really understood, Ethan Allen’s declaration that the “gods of the hills are not the gods of the valleys,” may gain insight into Allen’s thought from Bill’s story “On the Hunt.” In “Nine to Five,” Bill discovers that vandals have broken the gauges on his logging equipment at a remote jobsite. Suspense builds when he waits for the perpetrators with a baseball bat and a camera, but the outcome is a surprise. “Celebration” reveals a romantic side to Bill Torrey, a man who well remembers his father’s warning that “life isn’t all romance.” A vein of humor runs through all these stories, not because Bill thinks everything is hee-haw funny, but because he understands that humor is just a special pair of eyeglasses. If you’re wearing those glasses, you can watch life turn bottom-side up and go in the ditch, but you’re still game to get your wreck back on the road and shift it into go-forward. Thanks for the ride, Bill!
October 3, 2017
Beyond Bumper Stickers
Before reading David Stewart's The Summer of 1787, I really knew little about the founding of our country. If asked, I would have said a bunch of men met in a stuffy room in Philadelphia (was it a back room?) and did the deal. They were the "founding fathers." I would have guessed that they were well educated and that they had money and powerful connections. Most importantly, I would have said that they created a brilliant new blueprint for a government that--theoretically, at least--left the ultimate power with the people. This last and most important bit was what I had always been told. Stewart's book showed me that this is a cliche that perpetuates an unthinking patriotism about a document that was both brilliant and flawed, that was the product of ingenious compromise and that was, at the same time, morally compromised. The Summer of 1787 also replaces founding father icons with real people, some worthy of respect and some not so worthy. The major players, the ones debating (and synthesizing the Constitution through debate!) were Washington's one-time friend George Mason, the studious notetaker James Madison, shrewd pro-slavery advocate John Rutledge, Connecticut's canny Roger Sherman, the peg-legged abolitionist Governeur Morris, and a newly-minted Scots-American named James Wilson. No doubt I have missed a few other delegates who made important contributions, but these are the ones who remain in my memory after reading Stewart's history. Knowing that he would become the country's first executive, George Washington moderated the convention debates and, for the most part, wisely restrained from offering his own opinions. Ben Franklin, old and ailing, relied on his fellow Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson to convey occasional but important suggestions to the other delegates. Stewart details the problems the delegates faced during that sweltering summer and tells how they solved them. Most of these problems revolved around creating a government that would share power as equitably as possible between large states and small ones. Since state populations were taken into account in schemes for balancing power, the question of whether slaves could be counted as people became an important one. Counting each slave as three fifths of a human being was a compromise that solved immediate problems and "united" the thirteen states, but it also proved to be one that led to the horror of a civil war and the unrest and division we still experience today. We hear a great deal of rhetoric today about what it means to be an American. For me, it was helpful to read a book that returns to the summer when America was born, to the details of the U.S. Constitution because it is that document and not any car bumper slogan that constitutes who we are. It is not a dead document. It has been changed (amended) multiple times. It is well to remember that as we move forward and to revere those who piloted our ship of state in the early days, but we are now the ones holding the tiller, and we must continue to fine tune the Constitution to fit the needs of a new world.
March 18, 2016
A Magical Mystery Tour Across the Universe
On seeing Julie Taymor’s film, Across the Universe, I was reminded of the summer I spent at Camp Rising Sun in 1967 when I was sixteen. As I watched the movie and listened to the Beatles’ great songs, I dove down Gracie Slick’s rabbit hole and took a magical mystery tour through my own past. I was skeptical about Camp Rising Sun before I arrived. Its name conjured up World War II Japan and kamikaze pilots flying zeroes into U.S. Navy warships. Louis Jonas, the founder of the camp, allayed my concerns on the day I arrived. Freddie, as we fondly called him, was bringing boys from all over the world to Rhinebeck, New York that summer hoping we would join his ongoing experiment to promote international understanding. We did join, of course. We played soccer, staged the Pirates of Penzance, learned about Socrates while sitting under a catalpa tree, and waited, love-starved and breathless, for Delmar Day when the girls from a nearby camp would visit us for an evening dance.
A counselor named Phil Terry became my friend that summer. One day I walked into his tent while he was playing a record by Mississippi John Hurt. I’m still grateful for that discovery. It led to many more. I also remember the day he showed me another record album he had just bought. The cover art was a collage showing the Beatles surrounded by famous people, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, of course. I was well acquainted with the Beatles—but not these Beatles. I didn’t even know the term psychedelic yet, but I think I had a premonition of the “long, strange trip” in store for me.
That album was a harbinger of all the exciting, scary, and momentous changes soon to come. My brother Scott left for college that fall, and I drove to Flagstaff, Arizona with the rest of my family so my father could earn a bachelor’s degree in anthropology. President Johnson sent more and more troops to the Vietnam War, and we saw atrocities from that war on Walter Cronkite’s nightly news. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, and race riots broke out in American cities. In 1969 the most famous rock concert of all time took place in Woodstock, New York, and that same year I registered for the draft.
I’m telling you all this because I can only think of the sixties in a personal way, and that’s how I need to talk about Across the Universe. In the late sixties I was falling in love, making lifelong friends, and hitchhiking across the country. I was puzzling over the rights and wrongs of the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, and my own future, and I was doing it all to the music of the Beatles. So were a lot of other people. This is what you will find in Across the Universe—something personal but also universal, a story set to music that will bring you to the heart of the sixties, to an experience in the best Hendrix sense of the word.
Jude, Max, Lucy, Sadie, and Prudence are all named from Beatles’ songs, and they are both individuals and types. Jude is a McCartney/Lennon look-alike who leaves Liverpool to look for the American G.I. who had a brief romance with his mother and then went back to the States never knowing he had a son. Jude and Max become fast friends, and when Max drops out of Princeton University, the two of them move to a bohemian, “hippie” neighborhood (Greenwich Village, I suppose) in New York City. Max’s sister Lucy joins them after her boyfriend Daniel dies in Vietnam. Jude and Lucy fall in love to the accompaniment of Lennon’s ballad “If I Fell,” and then these two and their many friends begin the great sixties experiment in communal living, anti-war and civil rights activism, free love, psychedelic consciousness raising, and of course, music!
It’s a wonderful film. What makes it so wonderful are the fresh, passionate interpretations of over thirty Beatles’ songs; the carefully chosen, sometimes exotic costumes that were a hallmark of the period (check out the Bread and Puppet sequences); the authentic props and on-location sets in Liverpool and New York; excellent camera work and special effects that often mirror the creativity of sixties-era artists; and a tight script that sends the audience on a history tour that is also magical. Director Taymor has won awards for costume design, set design, and musical direction, and the awards are well deserved. She assembled a skilled team of actors and filmmakers to produce Across the Universe, and the result is a beautifully rendered work of art.
The decade of the sixties was a time of great civil strife. Americans disagreed bitterly about the Vietnam War, racial integration, abortion, and changing roles for women, gays and lesbians (among other issues to numerous to name—plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les memes!). Could that account in any way for the mixed reviews when this film was released forty years later in 2007? I don’t know. If the professional critics were divided on the movie, however, ordinary viewers were not. A sample of over 300,000 people gave the film almost four out of five stars. I side with the people on this one. If you weren’t there for the sixties, or if you’d like to go back, take the tour and watch Across the Universe. I hope you like it as much as I did.
A counselor named Phil Terry became my friend that summer. One day I walked into his tent while he was playing a record by Mississippi John Hurt. I’m still grateful for that discovery. It led to many more. I also remember the day he showed me another record album he had just bought. The cover art was a collage showing the Beatles surrounded by famous people, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, of course. I was well acquainted with the Beatles—but not these Beatles. I didn’t even know the term psychedelic yet, but I think I had a premonition of the “long, strange trip” in store for me.
That album was a harbinger of all the exciting, scary, and momentous changes soon to come. My brother Scott left for college that fall, and I drove to Flagstaff, Arizona with the rest of my family so my father could earn a bachelor’s degree in anthropology. President Johnson sent more and more troops to the Vietnam War, and we saw atrocities from that war on Walter Cronkite’s nightly news. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, and race riots broke out in American cities. In 1969 the most famous rock concert of all time took place in Woodstock, New York, and that same year I registered for the draft.
I’m telling you all this because I can only think of the sixties in a personal way, and that’s how I need to talk about Across the Universe. In the late sixties I was falling in love, making lifelong friends, and hitchhiking across the country. I was puzzling over the rights and wrongs of the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, and my own future, and I was doing it all to the music of the Beatles. So were a lot of other people. This is what you will find in Across the Universe—something personal but also universal, a story set to music that will bring you to the heart of the sixties, to an experience in the best Hendrix sense of the word.
Jude, Max, Lucy, Sadie, and Prudence are all named from Beatles’ songs, and they are both individuals and types. Jude is a McCartney/Lennon look-alike who leaves Liverpool to look for the American G.I. who had a brief romance with his mother and then went back to the States never knowing he had a son. Jude and Max become fast friends, and when Max drops out of Princeton University, the two of them move to a bohemian, “hippie” neighborhood (Greenwich Village, I suppose) in New York City. Max’s sister Lucy joins them after her boyfriend Daniel dies in Vietnam. Jude and Lucy fall in love to the accompaniment of Lennon’s ballad “If I Fell,” and then these two and their many friends begin the great sixties experiment in communal living, anti-war and civil rights activism, free love, psychedelic consciousness raising, and of course, music!
It’s a wonderful film. What makes it so wonderful are the fresh, passionate interpretations of over thirty Beatles’ songs; the carefully chosen, sometimes exotic costumes that were a hallmark of the period (check out the Bread and Puppet sequences); the authentic props and on-location sets in Liverpool and New York; excellent camera work and special effects that often mirror the creativity of sixties-era artists; and a tight script that sends the audience on a history tour that is also magical. Director Taymor has won awards for costume design, set design, and musical direction, and the awards are well deserved. She assembled a skilled team of actors and filmmakers to produce Across the Universe, and the result is a beautifully rendered work of art.
The decade of the sixties was a time of great civil strife. Americans disagreed bitterly about the Vietnam War, racial integration, abortion, and changing roles for women, gays and lesbians (among other issues to numerous to name—plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les memes!). Could that account in any way for the mixed reviews when this film was released forty years later in 2007? I don’t know. If the professional critics were divided on the movie, however, ordinary viewers were not. A sample of over 300,000 people gave the film almost four out of five stars. I side with the people on this one. If you weren’t there for the sixties, or if you’d like to go back, take the tour and watch Across the Universe. I hope you like it as much as I did.
January 19, 2016
The Revenant: Let's Hope Hugh Glass Returns
The Revenant is an amazing film. Lubezki’s cinematography is as hauntingly beautiful and cold as Hugh Glass’ visions of his dead Pawnee wife. DiCaprio’s portrayal of Hugh Glass and Tom Hardy’s portrayal of John Fitzgerald are inspired. The on-location shooting, buckskins and eagle feathers, and overall authenticity of the film transport the viewer to the American frontier little more than a decade after Lewis and Clark passed through in search of the Northwest Passage. When the Arikara Indians attack a group of fur trappers, flintlock rifles boom and arrows fly. One feathered shaft thuds into a trapper’s back, and another pierces a man’s throat. The trappers and Indians grunt and gasp, trying to kill each other with war clubs and swinging rifle butts. With their numbers decimated, the remaining trappers clamber aboard their riverboat and flee. Then, they journey across the mountains to escape. The scale is epic. It is a violent, visceral film and very real.
I replayed scenes in my imagination for days. What stayed with me were the portrayals of Glass and Fitzgerald. What drives Hugh Glass is his love for his dead wife and eldest son and for his son still living. What drives John Fitzgerald is self-interest regardless of the cost to anyone else. The natural antipathy between these two men soon results in a betrayal, and they are pitted against each other for the rest of the movie. It’s easy enough to guess which one will come out on top. The Devil, of course, is in the details of how this battle royal plays out.
This much of the tale is true. In 1823 Hugh Glass was part of a fur trading expedition on the upper reaches of the Missouri River. He was badly mauled by a grizzly bear. A Tom Fitzgerald and a younger man (maybe Jim Bridger) were paid to stay behind, bury Glass when he died, and catch up with the rest of the company later. As the hours passed, Fitzgerald began to worry about an attack by the Arikaras. He and his companion took Glass’ rifle and knife and left, expecting Glass to die soon afterward. Instead of dying, Glass crawled to the river, built a raft, and made his way 200 miles to Fort Kiowa.
Throughout the film, Glass sees visions (and perhaps hallucinations) of his Indian wife who was killed when soldiers raided their camp. Here the movie enters the realm of fiction because only the barest outlines of Glass’ story have come down to us. He is haunted by memories of his wife, by the loss of a woman he clearly loved. Filmmaker Iñárritu portrays him as a modern Job, a man who suffers from a terrible burden of grief but who refuses to give in to despair. Glass tells his son Hawk that as long as he can “grab breath” a man must keep going, and this is effectively underscored when Glass’ labored breathing is amplified in the sound track every time death sits on his shoulder. Despite everything that happens to him, Glass does not compromise his humanity, his love for his family and his sense of honor and duty.
Fitzgerald, on the other hand, will freely compromise his humanity and anything else if it means furthering his own cause. He is Glass’ opposite, his nemesis from the beginning. When Glass advises General Ashley to leave the riverboat, cache the furs, and return to their fort overland for safety’s sake, Fitzgerald protests. He doesn’t want to lose his share of the fur money. He tells the other men Glass was married to a Pawnee, and they can’t trust him. It is really Fitzgerald who can’t be trusted as we soon learn. The story he tells about his father reveals his bankrupt morality. Starving in the Texas wilderness, his father discovers God is a squirrel. He kills God and eats him. The moral of the story, as Fitzgerald explains, is that God is an invention of fools, and in this dog-eat-dog world, it’s every man for himself.
For me, the essence of The Revenant is the choice every person must make between savagery and humanity, and don’t think I mean Indians or whites when I mention savagery. I mean both. On his journey to the fort, Glass encounters a Pawnee who has chased wolves away from a buffalo carcass. He gives Glass meat and saves him from starvation. The next morning when Glass awakes, his friend has disappeared. His fate at the hands of white men is soon revealed in one of the bleakest scenes in the movie.
Clearly, Fitzgerald is not the only person in the film with a savage outlook. In thinking about this I see parallels, of course, to the world of today. I think of terrorism, bigotry, and so on, but I also think of less obvious savagery, the rude or selfish missteps anyone can make, impulses to get ahead in line, grab what we want, and jockey for best position. These are the missteps that can erode our common humanity. Happily, I do not meet John Fitzgerald’s ilk every day, but I do meet such people. I have faith, however, that more people aspire to be like Hugh Glass. I do not know how often I meet these people. I’m not sure such people know their own mettle until it is tested. Nevertheless, I think they are here. I hope so, at any rate, and even though I know I’m no hero, I will do my best to be one of them or help them as best I can.
I replayed scenes in my imagination for days. What stayed with me were the portrayals of Glass and Fitzgerald. What drives Hugh Glass is his love for his dead wife and eldest son and for his son still living. What drives John Fitzgerald is self-interest regardless of the cost to anyone else. The natural antipathy between these two men soon results in a betrayal, and they are pitted against each other for the rest of the movie. It’s easy enough to guess which one will come out on top. The Devil, of course, is in the details of how this battle royal plays out.
This much of the tale is true. In 1823 Hugh Glass was part of a fur trading expedition on the upper reaches of the Missouri River. He was badly mauled by a grizzly bear. A Tom Fitzgerald and a younger man (maybe Jim Bridger) were paid to stay behind, bury Glass when he died, and catch up with the rest of the company later. As the hours passed, Fitzgerald began to worry about an attack by the Arikaras. He and his companion took Glass’ rifle and knife and left, expecting Glass to die soon afterward. Instead of dying, Glass crawled to the river, built a raft, and made his way 200 miles to Fort Kiowa.
Throughout the film, Glass sees visions (and perhaps hallucinations) of his Indian wife who was killed when soldiers raided their camp. Here the movie enters the realm of fiction because only the barest outlines of Glass’ story have come down to us. He is haunted by memories of his wife, by the loss of a woman he clearly loved. Filmmaker Iñárritu portrays him as a modern Job, a man who suffers from a terrible burden of grief but who refuses to give in to despair. Glass tells his son Hawk that as long as he can “grab breath” a man must keep going, and this is effectively underscored when Glass’ labored breathing is amplified in the sound track every time death sits on his shoulder. Despite everything that happens to him, Glass does not compromise his humanity, his love for his family and his sense of honor and duty.
Fitzgerald, on the other hand, will freely compromise his humanity and anything else if it means furthering his own cause. He is Glass’ opposite, his nemesis from the beginning. When Glass advises General Ashley to leave the riverboat, cache the furs, and return to their fort overland for safety’s sake, Fitzgerald protests. He doesn’t want to lose his share of the fur money. He tells the other men Glass was married to a Pawnee, and they can’t trust him. It is really Fitzgerald who can’t be trusted as we soon learn. The story he tells about his father reveals his bankrupt morality. Starving in the Texas wilderness, his father discovers God is a squirrel. He kills God and eats him. The moral of the story, as Fitzgerald explains, is that God is an invention of fools, and in this dog-eat-dog world, it’s every man for himself.
For me, the essence of The Revenant is the choice every person must make between savagery and humanity, and don’t think I mean Indians or whites when I mention savagery. I mean both. On his journey to the fort, Glass encounters a Pawnee who has chased wolves away from a buffalo carcass. He gives Glass meat and saves him from starvation. The next morning when Glass awakes, his friend has disappeared. His fate at the hands of white men is soon revealed in one of the bleakest scenes in the movie.
Clearly, Fitzgerald is not the only person in the film with a savage outlook. In thinking about this I see parallels, of course, to the world of today. I think of terrorism, bigotry, and so on, but I also think of less obvious savagery, the rude or selfish missteps anyone can make, impulses to get ahead in line, grab what we want, and jockey for best position. These are the missteps that can erode our common humanity. Happily, I do not meet John Fitzgerald’s ilk every day, but I do meet such people. I have faith, however, that more people aspire to be like Hugh Glass. I do not know how often I meet these people. I’m not sure such people know their own mettle until it is tested. Nevertheless, I think they are here. I hope so, at any rate, and even though I know I’m no hero, I will do my best to be one of them or help them as best I can.
November 14, 2015
Deer Season
Today is the second Saturday in November which means--bang, bang!--it's deer season. I'm not a hunter, but I cheerfully wolfed down the venison sausage my daughter Katie brought with her from northern Vermont courtesy of her hunter husband Rob. It's her birthday today--happy birthday, Katie!--and she and my granddaughter Charlotte are visiting while daddy pursues the wily whitetail in northern New Hampshire. Good luck, Rob, is what I say. I like venison. Rob texted Katie at 3:50 a.m. to wish her happy birthday. This guy makes me grin. He's got the get-up-and-go of twenty kangaroos! Good luck with the hunt, Rob!
So... it's Saturday morning and I have shaved as usual with my old-fashioned double-edged razor and shaving brush and soap in a mug, but this morning I had an audience. Charlotte stood on the toilet seat, fascinated by the whole process, as I gave her a blow-by-blow description. Last night when she and Mommy arrived, she asked me if we could "play." we pulled out Fischer-Price's now-old Town with Mailman and Policeman and the other Townspeople, and we drove around in our cars and delivered letters and visited the ice cream stand for vanilla cones and went to the hospital briefly when Mailman fell out of his car and got not-badly hurt. We made some phone calls from an old call box on the corner, and we talked to Noni and Daddy and each other, and then we decided it was time for a new "play,' so we dumped the box of Lincoln logs out on the rug. Out with the avalanche of logs came Cowboy Sam, Peapod his horse, Joe Bob the farm dog, Half & Half the pink pig, and the other farm animals. Cowboy Sam and Peapod rode out on the range and checked the fences and the herd, and then they rode back to the ranch at a gallop because dark storm clouds were rushing across the plain from the mountains far to the west, and Cowboy Sam was worried that they might be caught in a drenching rain. They rode fast and hard, and Cowboy Sam pulled the reins left and right so Peapod wouldn't step in a gopher hole, and finally they reached the old ranch house and stable just as the rain came down in a torrent.
Of course, I know these are the small, inconsequential details of life that appear and vanish like the quick and ephemeral lighting of birthday candles and the wisps of smoke from the many small firelets blown out in a single breath, but they are, perhaps, not so inconsequential as I just said. Life is made of moments, I suppose, and if we can string them together in some kind of story, if we can locate them on the map of imagination, perhaps we can be where we belong. And right now I belong here, at home, with Noni and Katie and Charlotte, and it's time to go play. See you later!
So... it's Saturday morning and I have shaved as usual with my old-fashioned double-edged razor and shaving brush and soap in a mug, but this morning I had an audience. Charlotte stood on the toilet seat, fascinated by the whole process, as I gave her a blow-by-blow description. Last night when she and Mommy arrived, she asked me if we could "play." we pulled out Fischer-Price's now-old Town with Mailman and Policeman and the other Townspeople, and we drove around in our cars and delivered letters and visited the ice cream stand for vanilla cones and went to the hospital briefly when Mailman fell out of his car and got not-badly hurt. We made some phone calls from an old call box on the corner, and we talked to Noni and Daddy and each other, and then we decided it was time for a new "play,' so we dumped the box of Lincoln logs out on the rug. Out with the avalanche of logs came Cowboy Sam, Peapod his horse, Joe Bob the farm dog, Half & Half the pink pig, and the other farm animals. Cowboy Sam and Peapod rode out on the range and checked the fences and the herd, and then they rode back to the ranch at a gallop because dark storm clouds were rushing across the plain from the mountains far to the west, and Cowboy Sam was worried that they might be caught in a drenching rain. They rode fast and hard, and Cowboy Sam pulled the reins left and right so Peapod wouldn't step in a gopher hole, and finally they reached the old ranch house and stable just as the rain came down in a torrent.
Of course, I know these are the small, inconsequential details of life that appear and vanish like the quick and ephemeral lighting of birthday candles and the wisps of smoke from the many small firelets blown out in a single breath, but they are, perhaps, not so inconsequential as I just said. Life is made of moments, I suppose, and if we can string them together in some kind of story, if we can locate them on the map of imagination, perhaps we can be where we belong. And right now I belong here, at home, with Noni and Katie and Charlotte, and it's time to go play. See you later!
September 6, 2015
I Heart Vermont!
Be warned. This piece of writing is Vermontcentric. Also, it starts right off with sacrilege. Here it is. The most important part of being a Vermonter is not being born in Vermont. Now don’t get your hackles up and your overalls in a twist all you sixth-generation Vermonters. Ponder this question from Francis Colburn before you light your kindling with this paper: “If your cat had kittens in the oven would you call them biscuits?” I know. You’re wondering who the heck Francis Colburn is and what your cat was doing in the oven in the first place. Well, Francis was a Vermont humorist some while ago. As to the cat—this was back in the days of wood-burning cookstoves. Maybe mother started a fire in the morning when the house was cold and let it go out. But then she left the oven door open, and Tabby found a nice, warm spot to have her babies. The point is this: being born in Vermont doesn’t make you a Vermonter any more than being born in the oven makes you a biscuit. Being a Vermonter isn’t just about where you were born; it’s about what kind of person you are.
If you wonder where you stand on the Vermont scale, let’s look at your qualifications instead of your birth certificate. Do you bleed maple syrup when you get cut? Would you gladly trade coq au vin or caviar for baked beans and pork? When you hear the word “farm,” do you feel a tug on your heartstrings? Do you like living in a state where “Gut Deer?” bumper stickers cross swords with those saying “Eat More Kale”? Do you remember the slogan “Spred Fred” with fondness? When you re-cross that Vermont state line after being “away,” do you feel like you’ve just returned to God’s country? If you answered yes to any of these questions, read on. You might be a Vermonter at heart even if you were born in Quincy, Mass. If you don’t aspire to this elite status... Lord love a duck! What’s wrong with you? Here’s the recipe for a true Vermonter.
You have heard that Vermonters are independent. I know this for a fact because as a high school English teacher in Bethel, Vermont (an outpost of real Vermonters), my students sometimes told me, “I’m a Vermonter, and I do what I want-er!” I also remember the story about my Vermont grandfather getting his fingers crushed between two steel rollers in a Ryegate paper mill circa 1920. The doctor said he’d have to amputate. My grandfather said no, so the doctor scrubbed Gramp’s mangled fingers with iodine and a vegetable brush. Gramp kept his fingers—albeit a little crooked—and was digitally able for the rest of his life. Yes, Vermonters are independent—some might even say stubborn or contrary.
Alongside the independent streak in Vermonters is a mother lode of ingenuity. Phrases like “cob together” and “jury rig” entered the Vermont lexicon because of the Vermonter’s penchant for unorthodox repairs and “making do” as in “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or go without.” Those were words to live by in the days of hillside farms. The Depression wasn’t hard on Vermonters—they were already living close to the bone. Anyway, I saw a Vermonter’s ingenuity when a friend’s car wouldn’t start. Back at my brother’s wedding the supply of beer was running low, so this was a serious situation. Four of us had just dropped a keg in the trunk, but now we were dead in the water. Fortunately, Sid Hoyt had a knack for tinkering. He popped the hood and noticed gas leaking around the bottom of the carburetor. He bought a jumbo pack of gum, chewed it all up, and then jammed the giant wad into the gap between the carburetor and the intake manifold where a piece of gasket was missing. The driver turned the key, the engine roared to life, and off we drove in triumph.
Vermonters are a tolerant lot. No, not all of them, you naysayers! I’m talking about the best Vermonters, the role models. Their credo is “Live and let live.” I will draw again on the Vermonters’ vocabulary for evidence. When I was growing up in the 1950s, I remember my elders using the word “rig.” Rig can be a verb, as in “I will rig a tripod to hoist that engine” or “Why did Thaddeus rig the card game?” It can be a noun, as in “Mister Jimmy Johnson has a new sugaring rig.” This, however, is the special Vermont use of the word: “Vilas is quite a rig, isn’t he?” Rig in that context means the individual in question doesn’t run on the same rails as everybody else. Vilas came to mind when thinking of rig because he was the town character in Woodstock, Vermont during my youth. In his heyday Vilas would appear on Central Street sporting a construction worker’s hardhat painted gold with deer antlers glued on either side. Stuck on each of the antler points was an orange Styrofoam ball. Picture that. With this headgear, the long hair and beard of a biblical prophet, a ragged barn frock, and an ever-present ripe smell, Vilas would walk up to tourists, stare, and say huffily, “Wish I had your money!” He was tolerated and deemed harmless, however. Agreement to this was expressed by saying “What a rig, that Vilas!”
Thinking about tolerance, I’m reminded also of the word “outlaw.” Commonly, an outlaw is a criminal, an undesirable. This is not necessarily true for Vermonters. To say so-and-so is an outlaw may be a compliment. I remember a close family friend of Scottish descent who came of age during Prohibition. To protect the guilty, I’ll call him Alan Stewart. When Alan and his compatriots had finished running a batch of whiskey through their still in Chelsea, he would scout for roadblocks on his Indian motorcycle. If he discovered the law, he would ride back and warn his friends who were driving the load. Yes, Alan was an outlaw, but he was also a Scot who wanted no truck with a law that said he couldn’t drink the whiskey favored by his ancestors. Being independent and tolerant, Vermonters give judgment some room to move, and for that reason they don’t swallow anything whole hog—not even the law.
Another Vermont trait is a wry sense of humor, an outlook really, that is shaped by irony and by a path in life sometimes twisted and not, as Frost said, the one always taken. Wry is even used to describe the “crooked” grin that goes with that outlook, and I’ve seen many a Vermonter with that grin over the years. It says they’ve seen life turn bottom-side up and go in the ditch more than once, but they’re still game to pull up their bootstraps and—as the younger Vermonters say—“get ‘er done.” Shoot, you need a sense of humor to boil enough sap to float the Titanic just to get a gallon of syrup or to grow a garden during a summer so short it can start on Sunday and be over by Saturday. Sometimes it takes wry humor just to drive home at night through that war zone of potholes and frost heaves we in Vermont call a highway.
I’m almost done because Vermonters are supposed to be laconic. They’re also decent, kindly folk. I won’t dwell on this because it would embarrass most Vermonters, but if you were around when Irene blew in, you’ll know what I mean. Neighbors who were flooded out, were flooded with casseroles. Up on the headwaters of the White River, towns like Rochester and Pittsfield were cut off, but volunteer firemen and others rode ATVs over the mountain to bring medicines, food, and other supplies. Vermonters help their neighbors and strangers too. I’ll bet more than one person reading this article, has been pulled out of a ditch during winter by a Vermonter who refused payment for the service.
Finally, a true Vermonter loves the Green Mountains like no other place on earth. If the beauty of these hills during the rest of the year isn’t enough, think of all those maples in the fall when they catch fire, red and orange, and gold. That kind of beauty gets in the blood. This love of the land and the Vermont outlook can be shared by in-staters and out-of-staters alike. If you like what you’ve read here, you’re a Vermonter at heart; I don’t care if you’re from Boston or Brattleboro. If you heart Vermont, every once in a while you’ll lift your head and gaze into the distance, off to the ridgelines above our small valleys. You’ll breathe in deeply and maybe you’ll smell clover, and maybe you’ll smell cow manure, but either way, you’ll be intoxicated, and right then you’ll say, “By God, this is the place for me.”
If you wonder where you stand on the Vermont scale, let’s look at your qualifications instead of your birth certificate. Do you bleed maple syrup when you get cut? Would you gladly trade coq au vin or caviar for baked beans and pork? When you hear the word “farm,” do you feel a tug on your heartstrings? Do you like living in a state where “Gut Deer?” bumper stickers cross swords with those saying “Eat More Kale”? Do you remember the slogan “Spred Fred” with fondness? When you re-cross that Vermont state line after being “away,” do you feel like you’ve just returned to God’s country? If you answered yes to any of these questions, read on. You might be a Vermonter at heart even if you were born in Quincy, Mass. If you don’t aspire to this elite status... Lord love a duck! What’s wrong with you? Here’s the recipe for a true Vermonter.
You have heard that Vermonters are independent. I know this for a fact because as a high school English teacher in Bethel, Vermont (an outpost of real Vermonters), my students sometimes told me, “I’m a Vermonter, and I do what I want-er!” I also remember the story about my Vermont grandfather getting his fingers crushed between two steel rollers in a Ryegate paper mill circa 1920. The doctor said he’d have to amputate. My grandfather said no, so the doctor scrubbed Gramp’s mangled fingers with iodine and a vegetable brush. Gramp kept his fingers—albeit a little crooked—and was digitally able for the rest of his life. Yes, Vermonters are independent—some might even say stubborn or contrary.
Alongside the independent streak in Vermonters is a mother lode of ingenuity. Phrases like “cob together” and “jury rig” entered the Vermont lexicon because of the Vermonter’s penchant for unorthodox repairs and “making do” as in “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or go without.” Those were words to live by in the days of hillside farms. The Depression wasn’t hard on Vermonters—they were already living close to the bone. Anyway, I saw a Vermonter’s ingenuity when a friend’s car wouldn’t start. Back at my brother’s wedding the supply of beer was running low, so this was a serious situation. Four of us had just dropped a keg in the trunk, but now we were dead in the water. Fortunately, Sid Hoyt had a knack for tinkering. He popped the hood and noticed gas leaking around the bottom of the carburetor. He bought a jumbo pack of gum, chewed it all up, and then jammed the giant wad into the gap between the carburetor and the intake manifold where a piece of gasket was missing. The driver turned the key, the engine roared to life, and off we drove in triumph.
Vermonters are a tolerant lot. No, not all of them, you naysayers! I’m talking about the best Vermonters, the role models. Their credo is “Live and let live.” I will draw again on the Vermonters’ vocabulary for evidence. When I was growing up in the 1950s, I remember my elders using the word “rig.” Rig can be a verb, as in “I will rig a tripod to hoist that engine” or “Why did Thaddeus rig the card game?” It can be a noun, as in “Mister Jimmy Johnson has a new sugaring rig.” This, however, is the special Vermont use of the word: “Vilas is quite a rig, isn’t he?” Rig in that context means the individual in question doesn’t run on the same rails as everybody else. Vilas came to mind when thinking of rig because he was the town character in Woodstock, Vermont during my youth. In his heyday Vilas would appear on Central Street sporting a construction worker’s hardhat painted gold with deer antlers glued on either side. Stuck on each of the antler points was an orange Styrofoam ball. Picture that. With this headgear, the long hair and beard of a biblical prophet, a ragged barn frock, and an ever-present ripe smell, Vilas would walk up to tourists, stare, and say huffily, “Wish I had your money!” He was tolerated and deemed harmless, however. Agreement to this was expressed by saying “What a rig, that Vilas!”
Thinking about tolerance, I’m reminded also of the word “outlaw.” Commonly, an outlaw is a criminal, an undesirable. This is not necessarily true for Vermonters. To say so-and-so is an outlaw may be a compliment. I remember a close family friend of Scottish descent who came of age during Prohibition. To protect the guilty, I’ll call him Alan Stewart. When Alan and his compatriots had finished running a batch of whiskey through their still in Chelsea, he would scout for roadblocks on his Indian motorcycle. If he discovered the law, he would ride back and warn his friends who were driving the load. Yes, Alan was an outlaw, but he was also a Scot who wanted no truck with a law that said he couldn’t drink the whiskey favored by his ancestors. Being independent and tolerant, Vermonters give judgment some room to move, and for that reason they don’t swallow anything whole hog—not even the law.
Another Vermont trait is a wry sense of humor, an outlook really, that is shaped by irony and by a path in life sometimes twisted and not, as Frost said, the one always taken. Wry is even used to describe the “crooked” grin that goes with that outlook, and I’ve seen many a Vermonter with that grin over the years. It says they’ve seen life turn bottom-side up and go in the ditch more than once, but they’re still game to pull up their bootstraps and—as the younger Vermonters say—“get ‘er done.” Shoot, you need a sense of humor to boil enough sap to float the Titanic just to get a gallon of syrup or to grow a garden during a summer so short it can start on Sunday and be over by Saturday. Sometimes it takes wry humor just to drive home at night through that war zone of potholes and frost heaves we in Vermont call a highway.
I’m almost done because Vermonters are supposed to be laconic. They’re also decent, kindly folk. I won’t dwell on this because it would embarrass most Vermonters, but if you were around when Irene blew in, you’ll know what I mean. Neighbors who were flooded out, were flooded with casseroles. Up on the headwaters of the White River, towns like Rochester and Pittsfield were cut off, but volunteer firemen and others rode ATVs over the mountain to bring medicines, food, and other supplies. Vermonters help their neighbors and strangers too. I’ll bet more than one person reading this article, has been pulled out of a ditch during winter by a Vermonter who refused payment for the service.
Finally, a true Vermonter loves the Green Mountains like no other place on earth. If the beauty of these hills during the rest of the year isn’t enough, think of all those maples in the fall when they catch fire, red and orange, and gold. That kind of beauty gets in the blood. This love of the land and the Vermont outlook can be shared by in-staters and out-of-staters alike. If you like what you’ve read here, you’re a Vermonter at heart; I don’t care if you’re from Boston or Brattleboro. If you heart Vermont, every once in a while you’ll lift your head and gaze into the distance, off to the ridgelines above our small valleys. You’ll breathe in deeply and maybe you’ll smell clover, and maybe you’ll smell cow manure, but either way, you’ll be intoxicated, and right then you’ll say, “By God, this is the place for me.”
August 26, 2015
Driftless
I read Winesburg, Ohio so long ago I can't remember anything about it except that it was a hybrid, a cross between a collection of short stories and a novel. The traditional novel has a hero or heroine, Huck Finn or Jane Eyre, for instance. In Winesburg, the reader has a window on a whole community. That's the case in David Rhodes' novel. The story starts with July Montgomery's return to Words, a town in an area of Wisconsin known as Driftless. Grahm Shotwell is a farmer barely hanging onto the land his family has owned for generations. His wife Cora is an assistant bookkeeper at a dairy co-op where she discovers that her employers are stealing. The beautiful and sensuous Gail Shotwell plays a bass guitar for a local band and works, unhappily, for a plastics factory. Pastor Winifred Smith serves her parishioners but dreams of having a child. Viola Brasso looks after her wheelchair-bound sister Olivia, and Olivia chafes at her imprisonment in her own body. Jacob Helm fixes machines and still grieves for his dead wife. There are other characters, and one thing Rhodes does really well in this novel is connect them all. The plot of this book is a little like that of a modern t.v. series that introduces multiple characters and multiple storylines over weeks of watching. All this is just the "mechanics" of novel writing, however. What I really like is Rhodes' characters. They are fully human, flawed yes, but wonderful too, just trying to make it through life like all the rest of us in the best way they can. Rhodes has some "word magic" for sure. I'm not religious in the traditional sense. I don't believe in a biblical, Old Testament God. I don't go to church. Nevertheless, I was captivated by Rhodes' description of Pastor Winifred Smith's encounter with God, with the life force all around us. It might sound like an LSD trip to some, but it's beautiful in any case: "She held this feeling for a moment and then realized something very uncommon was happening. The grasses in the ditch appeared to be glowing. The red, cone-shaped sumac tops burned like incandescent lamps in a bluish light unlike any she had ever seen yet instinctively recognized.... She looked at her hands and they seemed to be lit from inside, her fingers almost transparent. The light glowing within the grasses and the sumac glowed within her, within everything. They sang with her through the light, jubilantly, compassionately, timelessly connecting to her past, present, and future. Boundaries did not exist. Where she left off and something else began could not be established. Everything breathed." If Winifred encounters the sacred, other characters experience the profane--as when Wade Armbuster takes Olivia to a dogfight--but whatever Rhode's characters are doing, it's interesting. If you like this kind of story, a story that doesn't focus on a "main" character but on the interwoven lives of a group of characters, you might also enjoy Shelagh Shapiro's Shape of the Sky which takes place in small town in northern Vermont. Enjoy!
August 9, 2015
A Piece of String
Confession... I wrote this a six years ago, and you'll quickly see that--since it references October--my timing is a little off in recycling it now... but because I'm reliving this experience (I'm digging holes again for another set of solar panels), maybe the timing is okay after all...
It’s a Saturday in late October, and I’m standing just inside the big double doors of my ramshackle shed. The shed is not more than forty years old, but like a man who has spent most of his days working in the wind and sun, and a fair number of his evenings fortifying himself with spirits, it looks older than its age. The concrete floor is cracked and uneven, the tin roof is rusted, and the red paint faded. Through the door, I look south, down toward Blaisdell Brook, across the valley to a well-tended hayfield, and then to the hills beyond. I know I need a house, a place with warmth and food, but it’s these hills that always feel like home to me. I never get tired of looking at them. The sun is low in the west, and I pause to notice the slanting light in the sugarbush over toward Messier’s farm. Each tree is not just red or gold; it is glowing with these colors.
The weather has been gentling all day—warm enough to see a few bugs flying, plenty of sunshine and scudding clouds—but now, with the sun sinking into Mary Pugh’s woodlot, the hill is cooling down. I’ve been working since breakfast, raking leaves, stacking firewood, harvesting the last carrots and broccoli from the garden, planting garlic, replacing the valve cover gaskets on my John Deere lawn tractor, and doing a half dozen other chores that have kept me just where I want to be—out-of-doors.
Now, I’m picking up the tools and the hodge podge of other stuff I’ve been using for a project involving solar panels. Tools and lumber have been scattered around the yard and tossed helter skelter in the shed for a week now, but finally I have poured the last of the concrete around the eight inch, vertical iron pipe that will hold the rack of panels, and I’ve filled in the ditch that will bring power to the house, and I can put things away.
I’ve just hung up a shovel and stacked a small pile of the two-by-fours I used to brace the pipe when the concrete was poured, and now I’m puttering with odds and ends, feeling good about the day’s work. As I pick up a fallen piece of string and hang it from a nail, I suddenly see my grandfather, gone these many years, but making his way ahead of me in my imagination as we clomp down the stairs into the gloom of the old cellar at 3 Golf Avenue, Woodstock. I see dim but familiar shapes again as if, with the string, I have pulled back a curtain and uncovered the past.
In the entryway to the cellar, the spaces between the wall studs are packed with containers, the old fashioned canning jars that sealed with rubber rings, emptied cottage cheese tubs, a discarded cookie tin, rusty Prince Albert tobacco cans, and so on. These containers are filled with bent nails, nuts and bolts, fence staples, coil springs, no-longer-fashionable cupboard door knobs, hinges, hasps, screws, fish hooks, and the like. Hanging from nails Gramp has hammered in everywhere, formerly bent nails, I might add, I see tools that are still useful (a hoe, a rake, a shovel, etc.) along with ones that are relics of a bygone time (a scythe, a pair of ice tongs, an adze, a hay knife, to name a few).
In a way, what interests me most is the hoard of salvaged raw materials, the stuff —sorry, Gramp—most people would definitely call junk. Why in God’s name did you save baling twine, one gallon plastic milk jugs (rinsed out), a galvanized pail with holes in the bottom, and, of course, odd lengths of wire and string? I see all the detritus of my grandfather’s cellar and ponder its meaning all in the same moment that my piece of string drops over the nail, and I realize in that instant how like my grandfather I’ve become. I’m a saver of string.
That brings a smile, a half chuckle. I pull up a stump and sit down in the dwindling light to think a little more about my grandfather and the old days. Vermont has changed a lot—a heck of a lot—since he was born in 1904. During a life that spanned the twentieth century, he saw all the great inventions come: the skidder, the hay baler, the barn cleaner, and the tractor, to say nothing of the television, the telephone, the radio, the trans-Atlantic jet, the touring car, and the computer. No doubt that’s why his parents gave him the middle name Edison. Inventions and inventors were more admired in Gramp’s day then perhaps they are now.
Yes, Vermont has changed a lot, but I think some of the old Vermont still survives. If nowhere else, it survives in my dilapidated shed. I turn slightly—I’m getting so I can’t turn that well—and glance over my shoulder. It’s almost a mirror image of his cellar—tools and “useless” junk everywhere. Some of it, in fact, was his. I don’t have his old bridge jack, but I still have his block and tackle with the one-inch diameter manila rope and the wooden pulleys. A couple of his logging chains are hanging next to a dust-streaked window. A mattock, a crowbar, and a spade lean against the opposite wall. I used all these tools in the last couple weeks to dig a hole seven feet deep and install a sixteen foot long steel pipe in concrete. That’s the same pipe I mentioned earlier, the one for the solar panels. The steel company that sold it to me said the pipe weighed over four hundred pounds. It felt like all of that when Lee Franz and I hooked onto it with Gramp’s block and tackle and swung it into the hole.
More than one guy I talked to about the solar project looked at me like I was a tad crazy when I said I was going to dig a seven foot hole by hand. I’ll admit that there are places in Vermont where digging a seven foot hole by hand is not an especially bright idea. There are places in Vermont where stones were made fruitful in the great beginning, and then they multiplied. In fact, such places are probably the rule rather than the exception in this place we like to call God’s Country. Nevertheless, I was unphased. I hadn’t encountered any big rocks tilling my garden over the years, and I figured digging the hole myself wouldn’t be all that hard. Besides, like any Vermonter worth his salt, I wanted to save money.
This may sound odd, since, if you know anything about solar panels, you’ll know that saving money doesn’t feature in such a scheme. I’d just spent about $9,000 dollars on the panels and the gizmo that turns DC current into usable AC house current. Obviously, short-term gain was not a driving force in the story of deciding to install solar panels. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to hire a backhoe to dig that hole, and I can only account for this by saying my Vermont “stubbornness” kicked in. A voice I couldn’t quite identify (though I suspect it was Gramp’s) called from one of the cluttered corners of my mind and asked why I would hire a backhoe if I could do the job myself? My back, of course, spoke up on that subject long before I reached the seven-foot mark in the hole, but stubborn to the last, I ignored it and kept digging.
At four feet, I finally encountered a stone I couldn’t dislodge easily. I worked it and worked it, and worried it and worried it, and finally pried it out with Gramp’s pick axe. Now, it’s a stepping stone between the driveway and the kitchen door back up at the house. About the time I reached six feet, my wife decided to come out on the porch and check on me. No longer seeing my head, she thought perhaps I had keeled over from a stroke or a heart attack and was lying in the bottom of the hole in need of help. Just then, another shovelful of dirt flew out of the hole, and she returned to the kitchen, relieved that I was alive. Still, she insisted at supper that the hole was too much like a grave, and I should consider that fact if I began to get short of breath or feel inordinately tired. In this way one’s sixth decade makes it stealthy appearance.
All this, the return to Gramp’s cellar and the cogitations on my solar project, have come to me while sitting on that stump. There’s a time to work, and there’s a time to ponder. Before I know it, the outline of the hills is fading, and the only light in the sky is the afterglow of sunset. I feel good. I’ve been outside all day, surrounded by fresh air and fire-colored maples, working steadily but at the pace I wanted. A day spent puttering and remembering oldtimers like my grandfather leaves me at peace.
But all spells must be broken. Denise steps out of the kitchen and tells me supper will be ready in five minutes, and being hungry I’m glad. I padlock the shed, because, God knows, the priceless treasures inside need protection, and then I turn toward the house. “I’m a saver of string,” I think again. “Well, it could be worse.” As Gramp said whenever anyone asked him why he was saving a seemingly worthless piece of junk, “You never know when you might need that.” As I walk to the house, I take a last look at the sky. The stars are coming out one by one as the western horizon finally darkens. A steady breeze touches my neck. “Yes,” I think, “it could be worse. And I could live in a worse place too.”
It’s a Saturday in late October, and I’m standing just inside the big double doors of my ramshackle shed. The shed is not more than forty years old, but like a man who has spent most of his days working in the wind and sun, and a fair number of his evenings fortifying himself with spirits, it looks older than its age. The concrete floor is cracked and uneven, the tin roof is rusted, and the red paint faded. Through the door, I look south, down toward Blaisdell Brook, across the valley to a well-tended hayfield, and then to the hills beyond. I know I need a house, a place with warmth and food, but it’s these hills that always feel like home to me. I never get tired of looking at them. The sun is low in the west, and I pause to notice the slanting light in the sugarbush over toward Messier’s farm. Each tree is not just red or gold; it is glowing with these colors.
The weather has been gentling all day—warm enough to see a few bugs flying, plenty of sunshine and scudding clouds—but now, with the sun sinking into Mary Pugh’s woodlot, the hill is cooling down. I’ve been working since breakfast, raking leaves, stacking firewood, harvesting the last carrots and broccoli from the garden, planting garlic, replacing the valve cover gaskets on my John Deere lawn tractor, and doing a half dozen other chores that have kept me just where I want to be—out-of-doors.
Now, I’m picking up the tools and the hodge podge of other stuff I’ve been using for a project involving solar panels. Tools and lumber have been scattered around the yard and tossed helter skelter in the shed for a week now, but finally I have poured the last of the concrete around the eight inch, vertical iron pipe that will hold the rack of panels, and I’ve filled in the ditch that will bring power to the house, and I can put things away.
I’ve just hung up a shovel and stacked a small pile of the two-by-fours I used to brace the pipe when the concrete was poured, and now I’m puttering with odds and ends, feeling good about the day’s work. As I pick up a fallen piece of string and hang it from a nail, I suddenly see my grandfather, gone these many years, but making his way ahead of me in my imagination as we clomp down the stairs into the gloom of the old cellar at 3 Golf Avenue, Woodstock. I see dim but familiar shapes again as if, with the string, I have pulled back a curtain and uncovered the past.
In the entryway to the cellar, the spaces between the wall studs are packed with containers, the old fashioned canning jars that sealed with rubber rings, emptied cottage cheese tubs, a discarded cookie tin, rusty Prince Albert tobacco cans, and so on. These containers are filled with bent nails, nuts and bolts, fence staples, coil springs, no-longer-fashionable cupboard door knobs, hinges, hasps, screws, fish hooks, and the like. Hanging from nails Gramp has hammered in everywhere, formerly bent nails, I might add, I see tools that are still useful (a hoe, a rake, a shovel, etc.) along with ones that are relics of a bygone time (a scythe, a pair of ice tongs, an adze, a hay knife, to name a few).
In a way, what interests me most is the hoard of salvaged raw materials, the stuff —sorry, Gramp—most people would definitely call junk. Why in God’s name did you save baling twine, one gallon plastic milk jugs (rinsed out), a galvanized pail with holes in the bottom, and, of course, odd lengths of wire and string? I see all the detritus of my grandfather’s cellar and ponder its meaning all in the same moment that my piece of string drops over the nail, and I realize in that instant how like my grandfather I’ve become. I’m a saver of string.
That brings a smile, a half chuckle. I pull up a stump and sit down in the dwindling light to think a little more about my grandfather and the old days. Vermont has changed a lot—a heck of a lot—since he was born in 1904. During a life that spanned the twentieth century, he saw all the great inventions come: the skidder, the hay baler, the barn cleaner, and the tractor, to say nothing of the television, the telephone, the radio, the trans-Atlantic jet, the touring car, and the computer. No doubt that’s why his parents gave him the middle name Edison. Inventions and inventors were more admired in Gramp’s day then perhaps they are now.
Yes, Vermont has changed a lot, but I think some of the old Vermont still survives. If nowhere else, it survives in my dilapidated shed. I turn slightly—I’m getting so I can’t turn that well—and glance over my shoulder. It’s almost a mirror image of his cellar—tools and “useless” junk everywhere. Some of it, in fact, was his. I don’t have his old bridge jack, but I still have his block and tackle with the one-inch diameter manila rope and the wooden pulleys. A couple of his logging chains are hanging next to a dust-streaked window. A mattock, a crowbar, and a spade lean against the opposite wall. I used all these tools in the last couple weeks to dig a hole seven feet deep and install a sixteen foot long steel pipe in concrete. That’s the same pipe I mentioned earlier, the one for the solar panels. The steel company that sold it to me said the pipe weighed over four hundred pounds. It felt like all of that when Lee Franz and I hooked onto it with Gramp’s block and tackle and swung it into the hole.
More than one guy I talked to about the solar project looked at me like I was a tad crazy when I said I was going to dig a seven foot hole by hand. I’ll admit that there are places in Vermont where digging a seven foot hole by hand is not an especially bright idea. There are places in Vermont where stones were made fruitful in the great beginning, and then they multiplied. In fact, such places are probably the rule rather than the exception in this place we like to call God’s Country. Nevertheless, I was unphased. I hadn’t encountered any big rocks tilling my garden over the years, and I figured digging the hole myself wouldn’t be all that hard. Besides, like any Vermonter worth his salt, I wanted to save money.
This may sound odd, since, if you know anything about solar panels, you’ll know that saving money doesn’t feature in such a scheme. I’d just spent about $9,000 dollars on the panels and the gizmo that turns DC current into usable AC house current. Obviously, short-term gain was not a driving force in the story of deciding to install solar panels. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to hire a backhoe to dig that hole, and I can only account for this by saying my Vermont “stubbornness” kicked in. A voice I couldn’t quite identify (though I suspect it was Gramp’s) called from one of the cluttered corners of my mind and asked why I would hire a backhoe if I could do the job myself? My back, of course, spoke up on that subject long before I reached the seven-foot mark in the hole, but stubborn to the last, I ignored it and kept digging.
At four feet, I finally encountered a stone I couldn’t dislodge easily. I worked it and worked it, and worried it and worried it, and finally pried it out with Gramp’s pick axe. Now, it’s a stepping stone between the driveway and the kitchen door back up at the house. About the time I reached six feet, my wife decided to come out on the porch and check on me. No longer seeing my head, she thought perhaps I had keeled over from a stroke or a heart attack and was lying in the bottom of the hole in need of help. Just then, another shovelful of dirt flew out of the hole, and she returned to the kitchen, relieved that I was alive. Still, she insisted at supper that the hole was too much like a grave, and I should consider that fact if I began to get short of breath or feel inordinately tired. In this way one’s sixth decade makes it stealthy appearance.
All this, the return to Gramp’s cellar and the cogitations on my solar project, have come to me while sitting on that stump. There’s a time to work, and there’s a time to ponder. Before I know it, the outline of the hills is fading, and the only light in the sky is the afterglow of sunset. I feel good. I’ve been outside all day, surrounded by fresh air and fire-colored maples, working steadily but at the pace I wanted. A day spent puttering and remembering oldtimers like my grandfather leaves me at peace.
But all spells must be broken. Denise steps out of the kitchen and tells me supper will be ready in five minutes, and being hungry I’m glad. I padlock the shed, because, God knows, the priceless treasures inside need protection, and then I turn toward the house. “I’m a saver of string,” I think again. “Well, it could be worse.” As Gramp said whenever anyone asked him why he was saving a seemingly worthless piece of junk, “You never know when you might need that.” As I walk to the house, I take a last look at the sky. The stars are coming out one by one as the western horizon finally darkens. A steady breeze touches my neck. “Yes,” I think, “it could be worse. And I could live in a worse place too.”
July 23, 2015
The Log Drives of Yesteryear
In response to Vermont Public Radio's July 20 "Vermont Edition" show on the Connecticut River log drives (podcast available):
My father's family has lived on either side of the Connecticut River for generations, and a number of the men worked for timber tycoon George Van Dyke in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They cut trees, pulled logs out of the woods with horses, and worked the river drives. Many years after the last long log drive in 1915, my dad, Scott Hastings, Jr., was reminded of those days. One summer afternoon toward the end of the Great Depression, he took his grandfather for a boat ride. Dad was about sixteen and Great Gramp Oliver was "getting on" in years. My father was proud of his new rowboat because he had built it himself. Great Gramp had been taught the woodworking trade by the Shakers down in Enfield, New Hampshire, so he no doubt appreciated his grandson's accomplishment, but of course in those days that went without being said. Dad rowed along on the Connecticut River just below Hanover and above the site of Charles Wilder's paper mill (the hydro-electric dam had not been built yet), and Great Gramp sat quietly, puffing on his pipe. Then, he said, "Scotty, you see that iron ring in that boulder?" My father answered that he did. "That's where we boomed the logs on this part of the river." Apparently, my great grandfather had followed one of the drives too. I was glad to hear Tom Slayton and Mark Bushnell recognize the skill and bravery of the river drivers on Vermont Edition today. It was, indeed, dangerous work, and--whatever else they were--the men who laced up their caulk boots and faced the cold, roiling water of the Connecticut on a log drive were strong, colorful, often legendary characters. Part of the reason I am writing a novel (Amos Waters and the River Hogs) set during a log drive in 1885 is to evoke for future Vermonters a sense, not only of that time, but of those people whose courage and fortitude we can continue to admire and emulate. Thank you Jane Lindholm and the other producers of Vermont Edition for recognizing this part of our Vermont heritage.
My father's family has lived on either side of the Connecticut River for generations, and a number of the men worked for timber tycoon George Van Dyke in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They cut trees, pulled logs out of the woods with horses, and worked the river drives. Many years after the last long log drive in 1915, my dad, Scott Hastings, Jr., was reminded of those days. One summer afternoon toward the end of the Great Depression, he took his grandfather for a boat ride. Dad was about sixteen and Great Gramp Oliver was "getting on" in years. My father was proud of his new rowboat because he had built it himself. Great Gramp had been taught the woodworking trade by the Shakers down in Enfield, New Hampshire, so he no doubt appreciated his grandson's accomplishment, but of course in those days that went without being said. Dad rowed along on the Connecticut River just below Hanover and above the site of Charles Wilder's paper mill (the hydro-electric dam had not been built yet), and Great Gramp sat quietly, puffing on his pipe. Then, he said, "Scotty, you see that iron ring in that boulder?" My father answered that he did. "That's where we boomed the logs on this part of the river." Apparently, my great grandfather had followed one of the drives too. I was glad to hear Tom Slayton and Mark Bushnell recognize the skill and bravery of the river drivers on Vermont Edition today. It was, indeed, dangerous work, and--whatever else they were--the men who laced up their caulk boots and faced the cold, roiling water of the Connecticut on a log drive were strong, colorful, often legendary characters. Part of the reason I am writing a novel (Amos Waters and the River Hogs) set during a log drive in 1885 is to evoke for future Vermonters a sense, not only of that time, but of those people whose courage and fortitude we can continue to admire and emulate. Thank you Jane Lindholm and the other producers of Vermont Edition for recognizing this part of our Vermont heritage.
July 14, 2015
The Finger Lakes and the Pull of Water
Denise and I drove to the Finger Lakes recently. We vacated our routine. We went to see friends, visit the vineyards, and change our scene. I think a change of scene is good now and then. For me, it's mental refreshment. Eat, drink, and be merry for God's sake. Tomorrow the bottle may be empty.
We stayed in a roadside picnic area on the west side of Seneca Lake the night we arrived. We woke up Sunday morning to a clop-clop-clopping on the road, and we looked out to see a horse and buggy driven by a man wearing a broad-brimmed black hat and his church-going best. Over the next half hour ten more buggies passed, along with several young women riding bicycles and wearing bonnets and long dresses. A local later said they were Amish or Mennonite. He said the Mennonites have three sects. The members of one group do not ride in cars. Those in a second group can ride in cars painted black. A third group can ride in cars as long as the wheels are black. I don't know if this is true, but it made a good story. I wonder how many myths sprout from that which makes us curious?
We finished our coffee and drove on to Hammondsport and Keuka Lake to spend the rest of the day with friends, Bruce and Joan, who own Moon Shadow Bed & Breakfast. We were impressed, once again, with how steeply the hillside plunges into the lake. Cottages perch precariously on the lake's edge below the road, ready to tumble in should the earth ever quake, and the road itself cuts a shelf into an oh-so-steep hillside. Halfway up the west side of the lake the steepness slackens, the heights draw back, and a side road climbs to Bruce and Joan's place, a beautiful Victorian house they rescued from neglect. It's a colorful, welcoming home of purples, blues, and greens, of Bruce's amazing photographic art, Joan's wonderful cooking (fresh-baked sourdough bread!), and a treetopping view.
We sat on the porch and talked about whatever popped into our heads, drank cool libations, and communed with the porch gods. The porch gods, in this case, were hummingbirds and songbirds coming to the feeders. I felt at peace there, sitting with such good people, sharing the softness of a summer afternoon. Sometimes my attention was drawn to Bruce and Joan and Denise, sometimes to the birds, sometimes to the flowers and trees surrounding the house, but always it returned to the dazzling waters of Keuka Lake. What is it that draws us so to water?
I have paddled a canoe on many rivers and lakes in the Green Mountains and Adirondacks. I have paddled a sea kayak on Lake Champlain, the coast of Maine, the Bay of Fundy, and the north coast of New Brunswick, and always the water casts a spell. Always I feel its pull, like a forked stick in the hands of a water witch. That pull is especially strong on a hot, muggy summer day.
The temperature hit ninety-four degrees just before we left the Finger Lakes, and we rode our bicycles to a beach at the north end of Seneca Lake. We rode into a park and under the trees along the water's edge. The drooping branches of huge willows waved languidly in the breeze. The white, cottony flowers of enormous cottonwoods drifted through the air. The wind blowing off the water was blessedly cool. We swam, we read, we napped, and we let the world move on past. Ahh... so nice.
A few days ago we returned to Vermont. Word came that my California niece and her family were coming to the floating bridge in Brookfield. We joined a throng of relatives there. Soon, I found myself standing knee-deep in Sunset Pond, holding five-month-old Elsie, one hand under her bottom and a forearm securing her against my chest so she could look out over the water as her mom and dad swam gleefully away. I jiggled her up and down and hummed a silly little tune, and she was quite content. I listened to the voices around me and felt a great affection for my nieces and daughters, for their husbands and children. I stooped and dipped Elsie's toes in the water a little at a time. "What is that? Oh, oh, ahh... so nice." I'm sure that's what she would have said if she could have found the words.
We stayed in a roadside picnic area on the west side of Seneca Lake the night we arrived. We woke up Sunday morning to a clop-clop-clopping on the road, and we looked out to see a horse and buggy driven by a man wearing a broad-brimmed black hat and his church-going best. Over the next half hour ten more buggies passed, along with several young women riding bicycles and wearing bonnets and long dresses. A local later said they were Amish or Mennonite. He said the Mennonites have three sects. The members of one group do not ride in cars. Those in a second group can ride in cars painted black. A third group can ride in cars as long as the wheels are black. I don't know if this is true, but it made a good story. I wonder how many myths sprout from that which makes us curious?
We finished our coffee and drove on to Hammondsport and Keuka Lake to spend the rest of the day with friends, Bruce and Joan, who own Moon Shadow Bed & Breakfast. We were impressed, once again, with how steeply the hillside plunges into the lake. Cottages perch precariously on the lake's edge below the road, ready to tumble in should the earth ever quake, and the road itself cuts a shelf into an oh-so-steep hillside. Halfway up the west side of the lake the steepness slackens, the heights draw back, and a side road climbs to Bruce and Joan's place, a beautiful Victorian house they rescued from neglect. It's a colorful, welcoming home of purples, blues, and greens, of Bruce's amazing photographic art, Joan's wonderful cooking (fresh-baked sourdough bread!), and a treetopping view.
We sat on the porch and talked about whatever popped into our heads, drank cool libations, and communed with the porch gods. The porch gods, in this case, were hummingbirds and songbirds coming to the feeders. I felt at peace there, sitting with such good people, sharing the softness of a summer afternoon. Sometimes my attention was drawn to Bruce and Joan and Denise, sometimes to the birds, sometimes to the flowers and trees surrounding the house, but always it returned to the dazzling waters of Keuka Lake. What is it that draws us so to water?
I have paddled a canoe on many rivers and lakes in the Green Mountains and Adirondacks. I have paddled a sea kayak on Lake Champlain, the coast of Maine, the Bay of Fundy, and the north coast of New Brunswick, and always the water casts a spell. Always I feel its pull, like a forked stick in the hands of a water witch. That pull is especially strong on a hot, muggy summer day.
The temperature hit ninety-four degrees just before we left the Finger Lakes, and we rode our bicycles to a beach at the north end of Seneca Lake. We rode into a park and under the trees along the water's edge. The drooping branches of huge willows waved languidly in the breeze. The white, cottony flowers of enormous cottonwoods drifted through the air. The wind blowing off the water was blessedly cool. We swam, we read, we napped, and we let the world move on past. Ahh... so nice.
A few days ago we returned to Vermont. Word came that my California niece and her family were coming to the floating bridge in Brookfield. We joined a throng of relatives there. Soon, I found myself standing knee-deep in Sunset Pond, holding five-month-old Elsie, one hand under her bottom and a forearm securing her against my chest so she could look out over the water as her mom and dad swam gleefully away. I jiggled her up and down and hummed a silly little tune, and she was quite content. I listened to the voices around me and felt a great affection for my nieces and daughters, for their husbands and children. I stooped and dipped Elsie's toes in the water a little at a time. "What is that? Oh, oh, ahh... so nice." I'm sure that's what she would have said if she could have found the words.
