A Place Where Time Stood Still moving to Vermont

When you are married sometimes you find yourself doing things that you really did not want to do.  When my husband, Tink, had finished up his degree at the University of Virginia in Physical education, we found ourselves needing a better position.  He put in applications for jobs all over the country, but somehow the right job did not come along as easy as we would have liked.  It was getting along the summer a year after he received his Masters Degree and he had not found a job as yet.  Don't worry he said, I'll find a job just before school starts up.  Trusting in blind fate we packed up our boys and the family dog, Cedar, and headed out to visit his parents in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

He had posted his request with his undergraduate school Springfield College. They were checking out positions that would work for him.  While we were in Wisconsin, a call came from Springfield saying that there was a position at Lyndon State College, in Lyndonville, Vermont.  Would he come out, check out the college and talk to the head of the P.E. Department, Dudley Bell?  Vermont sounded like a dream to Tink, who was used to cold weather, ice, snow and lots of skiing.  Not so much to me, but we needed a job, and he had worked so hard to get this education.  The pay was pretty good too.  So we packed the car and headed to Vermont. That drive took us across the entire state of  New York. It kept going, and going.  I thought that we would never make it across the state.

We finally arrived in Pittsfield, Mass. Dudley was acting as tennis coach for the summer at the Country Club there.  We pulled up to the house where he was staying, an old converted pony barn.  They had graciously offered to let us stay the night.  With our funds running short this was a real bonus.  The barn turned out to have been a studio for Alexander Calder.  I imagined him working on his mobiles here.  As an art major this was really exciting.  Calder had actually worked there. 

Dudley had also gone to Springfield College.  He and Tink really hit it off.  He offered him the job, if he would like.  It starting almost immediately.  We left and headed north to check out the school and talk to the administration there. Lyndonville itself was not much.  It was not as picturesque as  New England villages and towns further south in the state.  The college itself consisted at that time of an old Mansion that had been donated to the state as well as some modern buildings.  President Taff used to visit, and there was a chair where he had sat next to the fire that was extra large to accommodate his girth.

Tink was truly enchanted the answer to his dream.  He would be the gymnastic and soccer coach as well as teaching anatomy and physiology.  He could stay in a college apartment, until we were able to find a place.  Then the boys and I could move up to be with him.  He really wanted it.  I was scared of the snow and the cold winters and being so far from home.  I remember hesitating and then relenting.  Yes, he could take the job and we would move to Vermont. Oh, me.

We headed home so he could get ready to return to Vermont and start teaching.  I remember worrying about having enough money to make it home.  We must have had a Visa, but it was not as easy to use as it is now.  Somehow we made it back to Charlottesville.  That was when my work really began.  There were things to finish on the house that belonged to my parents.  My brother was still in school at U.VA and he was living with his new wife Ellie in the basement apartment.  A neighbor had expressed interest in the house if we ever wanted to sell it.  We called them and they decided to purchase the house letting my brother stay in the apartment.

My mom and her best friend, Betsy Martin, came up to help me organize and pack.  We even polished silver and wrapped it in saran wrap. We got things ready for a garage sale.  Making enough money to help us fund the move.  A month later, Tink arrived, to drive the family to Vermont.  We had all the boxes packed.  There were some loose ends left to finish: however, Tink was stunned.  He had trouble getting a handle on doing anything, he was just too disorientated.  Some how we did get everything together.  The last thing was trying to catch the family cat who was scared by all the confusion.  We lured her into the car with a piece of a hamburger.

On the way to Norfolk to drop my Mother home, we were stopped by the police because a light was not working on our car.  A fuse was replaced and we were on the road again.

After a nights stay in Norfolk with my folks, we left to head north across the bridge tunnel to the Eastern Shore of Virginia.  When we made it to Vermont, I was amazed at how the yards were all decorated with pumpkins and scare crow people stuffed with leaves.  We stayed in the College facilities until the moving Van came with all our stuff.  It had already started getting cold in early October.

We shopped in St. Johnsbury, Vermont for a winter ski Jacket for me.  I was shocked when at 4:00 pm it was already beginning to get dark.  Life was about to be a lot different than what I was used to in Virginia.

That first Sunday we started going to  church in East Burke, Vermont.  An older lady who reminded me of some of my grandmother's friends greeted us after Church.  She made a strange noise. Ah-yup.  It sounded like a belch to me.  Afterward I mentioned this to my husband.  He laughed at me saying that was their way of saying yes.  Well, I guess I did have a lot to learn.

 When you are not looking life rushes by.  Remember how when you were a child, it seemed like centuries for Christmas to come.  Now It seems like by the time you get through one Christmas another is on it's heels.  When my boys were still children, people would say enjoy them while they are still little.  Fortunately, I really did enjoy them.

We moved to Vermont in the early 1970's.  Everywhere we went I had the impression that time had not only stood still, but actually had slid back into the earlier part of the twentieth century.  The house that we rented was an old farm house.  The floors were linoleum covered. You entered into the country kitchen.  This was a large room that was divided in two by a partition.  We ended up using the front section as our family room.  Behind the house was a field and beyond that was a woods. Iin the woods was a pond, which the locals referred to as the duck pond. When you walked in the woods you could see pheasant tracks.  I never thought at the time that there were more than likely bears in the woods.  Down the road was a beaver pond.  I remember being very upset that they had set traps for beaver there.  While we were there a stray dog, Border Collie, that we had saved from porky pine quills, got his leg caught up in a trap and tore up his leg.  Unfortunately this happened on a weekend and there were no vets to help a farmer friend had to put him out of his misery.  I still feel regret to this day.  What a gentle dog, he was.

 Across the street from the house was an old barn.  This was a medium size barn and we toyed with the idea of buying it and renovating it.  We thought about making half of  it into a bunk house for skiers coming to ski at Burke Mountain, just outside of town, and the other half into a home for the family.  I remember toying with the idea of making do, using a Gallo wine jug as a hanging lamp shade, and using flat small river stones to pave counter tops in the baths and kitchen.  The beams in the barn were huge rough cut maple. All these ideas ran through our minds, but we also were looking for a house at the same time.  Then we found just the thing, a one room school house!

The house was the Old White School in East Burke, Vermont.  The man who had been living there had put up a partition in the main room of the school and added a kitchen, and  a laundry room.  The basement was divided in two with the furnace and utilities on one side and a bar rec room on the other.  We used this area as a bedroom for the boys to begin with. The partitioned off area on the main floor was our bedroom. It was not long before we started our own renovations.  We had fourteen foot ceilings in the main area.  We took down half the ceiling and lowered it to eight feet.  We found a stair case that had been taken out of the railway station in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont and recycled it.  The lowered area of the second floor became the master bedroom with a balcony that over looked the living room.  You would go up eight steps to the original attic area.  We divided this into two small bedrooms each with a closet and a window.  These were for our sons, Chris and Scott.

 .I was scared of freezing as the temperatures would drop way below zero.  One day Tink came home and announced that he had found some old wood stoves.  One called the General had originally been in a one room school.  I was excited.  We purchased those stoves and went to work placing them in the house.  The General was a large round oak stove of the Victorian era. Tink built a raised brick hearth and backed the wall to the ceiling with brick as well.  This became the center piece of our living area and did an excellent job of keeping us all warm and snug.  After the arrival of the General, we rarely used our oil furnace.  There was the one night where the temperatures dropped drastically way below zero.  Forty below zero was just scary.  So, Tink, ratchet up the General to get the house nice and warm.  We awoke that night hot.  I looked over the balcony to see the General glowing orange. I woke up Tink and he said, " Oh, no, I forgot to turn down the damper."  He raced down the stairs and managed to turn the damper down.  Then he came back up stairs and opened the windows to let some of the heat out.  I can only imagine what a passerbys might have thought if they had seen all our windows up at forty degrees below outside. When the temperature got that cold you could hear the electricity moving through the lines.  The skies would be clear and beautiful, but don't take a deep breath.  If you did you would feel the pain from the cold in your lungs.

While living in Vermont, we would take treks into the woods.  One time we found a secret place that seemed designed just for us.  Up, up a hill through a meadow, into a woods to a place where fir trees grew.  Where if you ducked down under a branch, you would come upon an opening into a circle of trees. Their evergreen fragrant branches bent low forming walls.  The ground was covered in lush, green, deep moss.  This felt like a place of dreams where magic surely could happen in an enchanted Forest.  We sat down on the soft moss floor, and looked up to a roof of tree tops.  Everyone was quiet experiencing the magic of that special place.

There was a stream behind our house and on hot summer days the family would sit on the large stones with our feet in the water or swim in the icy cold swimming hole.  Afterwards we would feel cool no matter how hot the day.  No need for air conditioning.

There were times that we would walk up a hill to pick wild blackberries. One time on our property we found an old orchard of apple trees.  We picked a basket full of the apples even though we were bumpy and not perfect.  I peeled and cut and cooked those apples making some of the best apple sauce ever. 

In the winter the boys loved the snow, playing in the snow piles with their trucks just like they did in the dirt.  They both learned to ski, even Scott, who learned at three years old.  He would cry when he would fall down for me to come pick him up. I had spikes that I could extend from my crutches, so I was able to manage very well. All bundled up, how they loved the snow.

One winter in Vermont.  After church service one of the local men brought his horse drawn sleigh and gave rides to the children who had never ridden on one before.  He gave our whole family a wonderful ride through the open fields.  Years later Chris would hire a sleigh for Melissa and himself, on their honeymoon in Vermont.  There was something about living in the cold north that gets into your blood and keeps us coming back.

We lived there three years.  Everything was an adventure.  We bought and fixed up an old one room school house.  It had huge school windows that looked out across fields.  It was in these same fields that we saw our first and only Moose while we were living in Vermont.  We lower half of the fourteen foot ceilings and made an loft bedroom and bath plus over the original ceiling two small bedrooms for the boys.

We put a huge deck on the back looking over the woods.  I planted great ferns around the decking. Chris had a birthday party out there

From our windows we could see the top of Burke Mountain, and a vast field with a farm house at the far end.  My friend Mary Lou Bell would call and say put on some coffee I'm skiing over.  I could look out the large school house windows and see this little figure in the distance cross country skiing toward my house.

Tink bought a ski mobile.  He loved taking it out in the winter.  There were dirt roads across the river and up the hill from our house.  These were fun to run the ski mobile on.  He insisted that I go out with him to tan old logging road across the road from our home.  I have never seen anything like that before.  The trail ran under huge fir trees that were laden with snow.  It looked like something off a Christmas card.  While we were riding in the wild, I suddenly thought about what would happen if the ski mobile broke down.  I would have really been stuck.  There was no way for me to have gotten out of the situation on my own.  I walked with crutches.  The snow was deep even for an able bodied person.  This thought, that drifted across my mind, took the pure joy of the moment away.  Fortunately we made it home safely.  I don't remember going again, but the experience has lived forever in my mind.

Another adventure that I had in the north was riding a motorcycle.  I would sit behind my husband and hold on tight.  I had my own helmet.  On one ride in particular we stopped at the East Haven Church where I was scheduled to sing a duet with a friend from church.  Those of you who have heard me sing do not laugh.  I was always told that my voice sounded nice, but that I could not carry a tune.  In East Burke, they were so desperate for voices, even my voice would do.  Also, I could follow another singer.  My friend Chris Finley, a contralto, was very good and I could follow her.  So I got off the motorcycle grabbed my crutches, that were strapped unto the motorcycle, walked into the church and hung my helmet on the coat rack and proceeded to go in to sing.  After singing "Ten Thousand Angels," I went out grabbed my helmet got back on the motorcycle sitting behind my husband and left. This stuck me as being slightly absurd.

One treat for the boys was going to the zoo.  We had to go up past Island Pond, Vermont, over into Canada to go to the Granby Zoo in Sherbrooke, Quebec.  Most of the people spoke French.  I had taken several years of French in High School. I understood more than I could speak.  My husband on the other hand had never taken French and knew nothing at all of the language.  So we lost our way and needed help to find the zoo.  Being the man, Tink said he would ask directions.  I watched from the car.  He spoke to a man and I saw the man gesturing.  When he came back to the car, I said," You spoke to someone who knew English?" " No," he said, "But some how I understood everything he said."  He did find the way.

One thing that seemed so much from another era to me was the town meetings.  The town hall definitely predated anything that I'd ever experienced in Virginia.  It was very interesting attending the meetings and listening to the discussions.

 The drug store in Lyndonville had cokes for fifteen cents!  They never changed their prices while we lived there.  There were no Chinese restaurants near by and no place to buy pizza.  I had to learn to make my own.  I would buy supplies from the Chinese grocery while I visited family in Virginia. There was Luigi's in Lyndonville.  On Tuesday nights you could get spaghetti and a small bottle of Lancers for $2.50 now that was not bad, but no pizza.

While living in Vermont, with Tink teaching at the college, I was able to get free education.  I decided to get my teaching certificate.  When the time came to do my student teaching, my good friend Sue Throckmartin was teaching in a one room school, something that to me was from another era.  It worked out that I could be her aid and do my student teaching at the same time.

The spring of 1975 we decided that we would try for a baby girl.  Scott was turning five that June. I wanted a girl so badly that we try every crazy thing.  My husband said that I had him doing everthing except standing on his head.  I remember that we discused names.  We never did really find a girls name that we agreed on.  Finally deciding on Leigh Anne, however we decided that a boy should be named after my Dad, Donald Lewis.
did not want me to get pregnant again as I had a long labor with my second son, Scott. I think that they really missed having us close by.  After hearing about the new baby to come. Dad offered to let us open a branch of his art gallery in Williamsburg Virginia.  The temptation was too much and we decided to sell our house and go back to Virginia.
We got things together and put a  'for sale' sign out in front of the house and staged a garage sale.  Before we knew it we had a sale for the school house.  We invited all our friends to a wine and cheese party.  We supplied the cheese and crackers etc and everyone brought a bottle of their favorite wine.  It was a wonderful party.  We had the opportunity to say good bye to all our friends.

Just prior to our move Tink threw his back out.  Fortunately we had movers taking care of the heavy lifting.  School was starting before we left for Virginia.  Chris flew down to Virginia by himself where he was met by my parents.  Mother said she would never forget the sight of that little boy clutching his stuffed toy.

We packed up Scott and our golden and the same cat that tried to escape when we left Virginia and headed back to the south.  Part of our hearts have always loved Vermont.  I have truly been privileged to have lived in these two beautiful states.

Traveling back to Virginia when we reached the Eastern Shore we could smell the salt water and knew we were coming home again.