Local Affairs

Dear friends,

It’s been a winter with not much snow, though the ground has been white-crusted consistently, which is good for the plants. What are the local guys doing if they can’t snowmobile? Logging! Huge piles of red pine logs dot the roadsides here and there; their destination this year is the pulp market, I’m afraid.—that’s paper, maybe mulch. Kindly Dave Silloway and his nephews’ neat little lumber camp out in our south field

(an access favor we granted Rick, landowner of the ridge) is now dismantled so the men could get to sugaring. So the red pines never met their lofty destiny of telephone poles after all. At least the forest is improved for the growth of more useful species.

Changes came here with the logging. In early December, through snowless brush and brambles, Mark had driven his tractor straight up the lowest portion of the ridge, creating a new walking path for us that felt like luxury. He also mowed a sweet old field up there, making a new picnic spot. (He has Rick’s permission to improve his land.) Now Silloway’s new and well-done logging road bisects our modest new path, creating a feeling of intersection where so recently was only impenetrable territory. Other new logging roads put in break up the feeling of vastness up there. I have mixed feelings that apply to all roads: they are convenient, they invite walking, they open up new destinations, they invite the riffraff in with all their toys. Who knows how frequented these road-paths will be? Perhaps almost not at all, and we will continue to enjoy the more pleasant navigation up there.

Tomorrow is annual town meeting. Randolph, home of some bad politics, in a bad political age: the Randolph Herald, our regional paper which we really like, fears it will be a contentious meeting. I feel a little dread and a lot of fascination. You know the scene: the Almighty Dollarists versus the Common Gooders. Three Almighty Dollarists are running for Selectboard, with promises to cut the library hours and the kids’ summer camp and eliminate the catastrophic road blocks the town has placed in the way of all the businesses just dying to relocate to Central Vermont. They sent around a circular I found so loathsome I wrote my first letter to the editor. The circular contained the statement, “It’s all about money you know” (note the lack of proper punctuation). There was even a sub-header in it that said, “Be Angry and Don’t Forget.” This referred to one of their own who had been our town manager and gotten fired for polarizing and alienating the townspeople. His brutishness was known even in Montpelier. In my letter, I had a field day with the circular; it was a pleasure to dismember it. And I got to know some of the Common Gooders I hadn’t known before as a result.

Tomorrow is also our election day. I see it as a test of the Tea Party presence in our midst. I’ll follow-up after the Big Day. Stay tuned.

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The election and town meeting went well! After a wonderful zero-degree night, the sun beat on the snow, shining as brightly as a March sun can (heating up our sunspace to 85 degrees) and lots of people showed up, though it’s held on a Tuesday morning. (What are they thinking?) The most important local news: all three bozos lost the election, by at least 200 votes each. Despite the militarism and religiosity of the Randolph Fourth of July parade, I guess there are a lot of sensible people here after all. I feel much happier being a Randolph resident.

And the most important non-local impact of our meeting was this: the last article of business for the day is the “Is there anything else?” moment. At that time a young man in the back identified himself and said, “I propose the following non-binding vote. Because of the 2010 Supreme Court ‘Citizens United’ decision, I propose that we vote on two things—that money is not speech, and that corporations are not people.” Without discussion, when the moderator called for the vote every single person in that room save one reactionary Selectman who called out ‘Nay”, everybody in that room raised their voices in a resounding “Aye!” It was thrilling. Everyone knew about the issue already. Wow.

One more political note: It was presidential primary day and Vermonters are allowed to choose a Democratic or Republican ballot during town elections—no need to have registered as one or the other. Mark and I chose Republican ballots, just to get the satisfaction of being tiny foils to the front-runners. I felt wild, hearing the word “Republican” leave my mouth when asked which ballot I desired. Recreational voting. I voted for Jon Huntsman and Mark voted for Ron Paul. What does that say about us?

So now winter is brought to its knees by a bout of freakishly warm weather. An investment newsletter for commodities traders that I read said this non-winter is the result of the Icelandic volcano of last year, plus two in Siberia. They created an air pattern that kept the Arctic air from us and dumped it onto eastern Europe. Seemed to make sense.

Mud season is upon us a month early. Luckily, the first mud season variety show is tonight, at tiny Chelsea Town Hall, featuring the Old Groundhog Opry. If it’s great, I’ll let you know!

Love,

Josie

p.s. Photo of woman with creative hair style is our Town Meeting Moderator, a local lawyer and woman of standing—this year she forwent (word?) her suit and got expressive. She’s standing with a Frenchman, a pal of ours called Patrick who used to be a spy in Africa, among other wild things in his past.

Neighbors, Part II: Trapper John

Mark’s gone down to the hardware store in Royalton. I remembered something I hoped he would pick up, so I called the store. Mike-in-plumbing found me the drain stopper I sought, and I asked him if he would kindly give it to Mark when he came in. Applying my description, he surprised Mark as he entered the store by walking up to him and saying, “Here’s the thing your wife wanted!”

Trapper John went with him, whom I could have described to Mike-in-plumbing as “the loud little guy with the big hat and the beard” and Mike would have known who he was, though Royalton is two towns away. Everyone knows him for miles around because they see him walking the roads, and winning prizes for his vegetables at the fair (9 prizes this year, though one was, in fact a giant squash from our garden that he entered). Trapper John is our dedicated neighbor. He is a mixed blessing: I sigh as I write this.

John M. Brown is a local chap, born here, the runt of a large family that abused him rather seriously, I have heard (he’d never condemn his family but they have little or nothing to do with him). He’s fifty-eight years old, about four-foot-eleven, has a full grizzly red beard, wears a ten-gallon-sized East Coast gentleman’s version of a cowboy hat, and is always clean as a whistle those numerous times we see him in a week. He has a peculiar shape: he looks like he swallowed a basketball. Exactly. His back is swayed to support the basketball in front. And he’s short from his shoulder down to where his waist would be—he says he was born without an esophagus. We don’t know what to make of that. He bellows rather than talks, and punctuates his conversation with huge guffaws that show off his plump tongue and pink gums. He takes up a huge amount of psychic room.

Say I’m outside, weeding in summer. I’ll hear a wild turkey and look up to find it, only to see his sturdy self tramping across the field towards me. “I got somethin’ for ya!” he bellows with a big grin, and hands me a summer squash. “Yup. Mine’r up and goin’ ta town!” he brags. “I got some news for ya, too, “ he might continue. His voice will grow solemn. “Big fire up ta Brookfield. Two cows died.” And so he might relate some grisly piece of local news, or, of course, the weather is always exciting. “ Big boom-boom comin’ in anight, maybe four inches a-rain!” Then we’ll chat a little. When the conversation flags, he’ll just stand there a bit, watching me work. “A-yup,” he’ll say, to fill in the silence, rocking back and forth on his heels. “A-yup.” When every shred of conversational possibility has been milked, he’ll say, “Well, I just wanted to stop by and tell ya.” “So long, Trapper John,” I’ll say, “thanks for coming by.” And be so glad for peace and quiet again! But he’s given us a nice squash and his most pleasant manner.

Trapper John’s speech is packed with dialect and oddments such as “on to it,” as in, “I’m going to get me a new kind of flower to grow, one with more ruffles on to it” or, calling me up, “I got a new cell phone with more features on to it!” In the other night’s weather chat he talked about the “chill factory.” And, walking with him, you might hear that “that path peteys out.” He’s a fount of garden know-how, such as “you’ve gotta wait ta get your t’madihs in til the first week-a June, or Mr. Jack’ll get ‘em!”, meaning Jack Frost. His conversation is proof that television does not iron out peculiarities in speech.

When he was fifteen, in 1968, he moved to a patch of land by the Braley covered bridge just up the river and built himself a little house out of leftover husks of logs sloughed off at the lumber mill. I think his family must have been through with him. He may have completed third grade. He’s barely literate, but he can read and order from mail-order catalogues which he loves to do, and he gave Mark a fine new potato digging fork last Christmas on the handle of which he burned “Mark." He’s a ward of the state, meaning, I suppose, that on some level he cannot support himself—perhaps because of mental deficiency. Once I said to him, “You seem perfectly smart enough to me.” He said, “Bunch-a things I just couldn’ understan’, so I left school.” He doesn’t seem retarded at all, though he’s not what anyone would call bright. But he knows a ton about gardening and the outdoors—not all of it accurate, such as “lotta apples this fall, gonna be a hard winter” and “that’s poison ivy—don’t touch it!” (poison ivy is rare around here so he can be forgiven for mis-identification). He spends most of his time outside, growing fine vegetables and hunting, fishing and trapping—he’s closer to the animals than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s a true primitive.

So at the covered bridge just out of sight of our north fields he lives still, though a fire caught his cabin four years ago and burnt it to the ground. He tells the story of tearing back down from the ridge when he saw his house burning and then hearing POP! POP! POP! from inside it—instead of keeping on toward the fire, he hits the ground --all his ammunition is exploding. His house was a lost cause. Now he lives in a camper. Last fall a kind neighbor who happens to be the best barn-builder around gathered up a couple of guys and they built him a sturdy roof over the trailer so snow wouldn’t crush it. He’s got little lights, blue and white and a random pink or red one, strung up along the eaves for the holiday that continues 'till spring.

Now that trailer is in the midst of so much junk spread around that it is not a pretty sight, “purdy” lights notwithstanding. Old sheds full of stuff he might need some day, like rusty chickenwire, the hoardings of poverty—he’ll take anything and stuff it in somewhere or if not, throw it outside and maybe try to rig up a tarp or piece of sheet metal over it to keep it out of the weather. You can imagine the array, plastic bottles, old milk crates, a freezer, a refrigerator (saving room inside), bags and boxes with contents spilling out. But the piece de resistance coalesced in my stunned eyesight one day when I was standing in his yard, having dropped him off from a ride to a doctor (this is frequent; he cannot drive or afford a car). My eyes, avoiding the squalor, came to rest on a large object in a small tree in the thicket. “What’s in the tree?” “Oh,” he says proudly, “That’s ma cow’s head. The crows did a good job of eatin’ the brains so it’s all dried out nice.” Oh my God, what do you say?! Great piece of gear?!

Trapper John has his nickname for a reason, and the reason might be why he can love a cow’s head—he traps animals and sells the pelts. He even has a business card which Mark and I find hilarious: John M. Brown: For All Your Skinning Needs. We don’t have skinning needs currently—but when we do, he’s our man! (He roams the whole valley, tending his traps, which he has laid carefully after tracking various animals. He kills the animals, skins them, dries the skins all fall and winter; a good season will give him $200 .) This morning he told me that tomorrow he’s meeting a man “up Berlin” (someone will give him a ride, one of his non-doctor-ride friends in his world of hunters and trappers) who will buy his pelts. He sells some land animals plus muskrat, otter and beaver from the river. Interestingly, he sells his pelts to the Hudson’s Bay Company--they are, what, four hundred years in the fur business and still buying from podunk trappers? Anyway, Trapper John was concerned about today’s pelt because “some-a the tails ain’t dry yet, c’n make the whole skin moldy.” These particular ones are skunk. Don’t picture this!!

So, Trapper John has insinuated himself into our household, wrapped us in his web. As an undoubtedly lonely, non-literate, non-driver he needs our help. But it’s a careful and clever courting as well. He takes care of Oliver the cat and the garden and fiercely guards the house whenever we go away, even to Islesboro for more than two weeks, for free. “That’s what neighbors are for!” he says frequently. This freedom is valuable to us. He dealt with things here magnificently during Irene without any instructions from us—none of our stuff would have floated down the river if it had gotten that bad here. He brings us gifts from his garden, gives us thoughtful and extravagant (for a poor man), Christmas gifts. Yet I don’t always pick up the phone when he calls, and I’m glad when I haven’t seen him when walking past our door, rifle in hand during hunting seasons, hoping we will notice him. I sigh at the unlooked-for responsibility. Sort of like being accountable for a person whose life you’ve saved. Seen from our background, he is our very own lesson in acceptance. We’re beginning to notice this everywhere as a core value in Vermont, one of the admirable ways it’s different from Massachusetts; one value we still need to work to acquire.

Love, Josie, with input from Mark