Where They Know Your Name

It was one of the few times that I didn’t have a camera, a situation made more ironic by the fact that most of my visits to this country inn at the center of Arlington Vermont had been to serve in the capacity as wedding photographer.

We went for a birthday party – two actually .  My son goes to school with the daughter of the innkeepers, but neither he nor his brother had enjoyed a meal there before, and, when we sat down at our table with our impeccably-prepared meal, he said, “Mom, is this a fancy restaurant?”

The buffet had been beautifully decorated, and expertly-arranged flowers adorned every table.  It was a beautiful as any wedding, but without any of the tension that such a momentous ceremony can create.  But as we looked around the tent-covered patio and carefully restored barn and gardens, we children cavorting noisily in the paths.  We saw the innkeepers’ children showing off their new rabbits.  And we saw waitstaff, plucked from the ranks of our neighbors (who could very easily also have been guests), hosting friends rather than customers.

“It’s the fanciest,” I replied.  “Where else can you have a meal like this and still get to pet a rabbit?”

Karma Soup

We were sitting at our favorite diner a few Saturdays ago when my husband asked, “Do you think we should get a straight pick again?”

We’d had chickens before – sometimes we got the chicks from the feedstore; sometimes as refugees from a school project – so when we accidentally ordered the straight pick a few years ago, we felt pretty confident we could handle life with the three roosters that had made it into our coop.  Besides, we knew that baby male chicks are usually macerated at birth, so sparing them might feed our karma a little.

So we brought home our chicks, and because we buy our birds strictly for eggs, we had no qualms about naming all of them.  We called the hens, “The Ladies”.  They were very similar in appearance (all Rhode Island Reds), and they liked to help me in garden and at the laundry line.

The roosters were easy to differentiate fairly quickly, however, and our boys quickly came up with names.  Thing1 named the Red rooster “Red”, and a Barred Rock with feathery feet was named “Fluffy”.  Thing2 chose “Chickie” as the name for the smallest of the three roosters, and, in the beginning, the name suited the downy white bird.

Fluffy quickly found a home with a family who wanted to build up their flock, and for a while it seemed as though Chickie and Red would rule the roost jointly.  But Mother Nature had different ideas.

Just as the hens started giving us eggs, the roosters started noticing the hens, and, much to our consternation, began demonstrating the facts of life on an hourly basis.  With 12 ladies and 2 roosters, you’d think Red and Chickie would have been in seventh heaven, but Roosters, as it happens, will let a woman get between them.  And when Red decided to go after one of Chickie’s hens the feathers started flying.  The fight escalated quickly, and, as Chickie became more enraged, I realized we were about to be a one-rooster family.  I grabbed an old fireplace screen that hadn’t made it to the dump and dropped it between the two combatants.  It didn’t stop the fight, but at least Red was safe – for the moment.  And I patted myself on the back as I counted my accruing karma units.

Red had never heard of karma, apparently, because just a few short weeks after I had saved his life, he charged me at the laundry line.  The attacks became more frequent, and, in the absence of any good books on chicken psychology, I deduced that I had injured his pride a few weeks earlier.  Red wasn’t aware of my theories, of course and went on attacking me.

The day he attacked my youngest son, however, he used up the last of my good will. Thing2 was driving matchbox cars on the ground when suddenly Red flew at him.  I saw him attack and got between them before Red could hurt him, but I was furious.  An hour later, Red learned about consequences, and we discovered that, unlike revenge, karma should be served with stuffing.

Just Your Average Monday

I’d never noticed his holster before.  Perhaps because we were always passing too quickly to see, or perhaps because his unusual riding style leaves us scratching our heads until hewas too far away to see anything else.

But today he had just finished filling up as I pulled into the gas station, and as he adjusted his trademark red scarf over his lean, shirtless torso(an other part of his trademark) and stood up to ride, his feet planted on the bike’s footboards, I noticed that he was wearing a gun belt.  It looked like something out of a western, and when he sped away, it was apparent that he was sporting a holster on each side.

Thinking that the chrome-colored firearms might be fake or for decoration, I went into the station and asked my husband, “Does he always carry?”

“You never noticed that?”  My husband asked.  “He always carries at least one Colt .45.”

“Really?” I was only curious because I knew it wasn’t deer season or bear season or decorate your gun-rack season.

 

“Well, except when he wears his nickel-plated Colts.  They’re pretty cool.  But only on special days”

“I guess he’s trying to remind everyone that it’s a special day,” I said.

 

 

Volunteers


Today I got a fresh crop of volunteers.  I’m just starting to see the first descendants of last year’s veggies in places I didn’t plant them this year.  The flowers, however, have arrived!  Out come the weeds that happen to be flowers, and into the mason jar go the flowers I never planted (a gift from Irene, maybe?) that are now acting like weeds.  But hey, they’re pretty and they’re free.

 

Mouths of Babes

“What’s senility?”  asked the imp at the kitchen table.

“Loss of memory that’s usually associated with old age,” I replied absently.

He laughed and then stopped abruptly, smiling at me at for just a moment.  Barely controlling a grin, he looked back at his computer with a strange, happy expression on his face.  It wasn’t discretion or valor. It was the smile of someone who is saving something special for rainier day.

Little Miracles

One of the pitfalls of living in a rural area is that your kids are likely to run into lots of people who keep livestock – large and small.  And after they meet the afore-mentioned chickens, pigs, dogs, goats, you-name-it, they work like crazy to steer all subsequent conversations to the “Can we get chickens, pits, another dog, another cat, you-name-it” question, secure in the knowledge that we do have somewhere to keep them.

Taking your kids to a sheep herding demonstration starring a dog who could melt the heart of a snowman practically guarantees a sudden interest in acquiring sheep and another dog, and today was no exception.

The one difference today was that the dog who inspired the latest request has been inspiring many of author Jon Katz’s recent blog posts, and that piqued my 11-year-old’s curiosity.  Unfortunately for him, Thing1 is currently grounded from any electronica, but he saw an opening.  Thinking, perhaps, that interest in reading about sheep online (as opposed to polishing the kitchen chair playing video games) was a more reasonable request than an actual sheep (or the requisite additional dog), he casually mentioned he might be interested in Red’s journey to Bedlham Farm.

Trying to avoid repetitive stress disorder from the inevitable refrains of ‘No computer’, we turned to the tried-and-true distraction – ‘what’s for dinner?’  But our five-year-old, also serving out a sentence of no electronica, was ready for this and began quizzing us about Red and sheep and who had herded the sheep before last week.  And as we answered, I remembered that the story of Red’s predecessor Rose was waiting at home for us.   I dropped a copy of ‘Rose in a Storm‘ on Thing1’s lap as soon as he got home and plopped on the couch.  He eyed it with suspicion – it is summer vacation after all – but the little red dog had him wondering about sheep and dogs and farms, and he started casually flipping the pages.  I said nothing and left for the grocery store.  I got back an hour later and found my normally reluctant reader, remarkably lost in the story of another remarkable little dog.

Any Given Saturday

Once Little League is done, we make it a point to spend our Saturdays dragging Thing1 and Thing2 to at least one art museum or event.  We  engage in this torture, partly because we want to expose them to some sort of culture that doesn’t come out of an iPod, but also because we love to hear the grumbling as we travel to and from the designated venue.

Today, however, we screwed up.  We thought we had the rugrats where we wanted them – we promised an art opening in a country setting and even a little poetry at a show curated by Maria Wulf, a New York fiber artist and wife of author Jon Katz.  The two-day event is showcasing her quilts and Jon’s photographs along with work by photographer and collage artist Kim Gifford, painter Donna Wynbrandt, Diane Swanson, and Joyce Zimmerman.

On any given Saturday surrounding the kids with fine art and holding out the promise of poetry and even a talk by one of the hosts  would result in considerable push back.  But the minute we stepped into the gallery/barn, they seemed to be under a spell.  Colorful and popping with imagination, the paintings and collages provided plenty of eye-candy, but when Jon invited the crowd to congregate in the main barn, my husband and I realized that he and Maria were the ones casting the spell.

As a student of Jon’s at Hubbard Hall’s Writer’s Project, I (and exhibitor Kim Gifford) have had glimpses of this magic, and today, watching Maria and Jon share their lives and their art while nurturing the gifts of the other exhibitors, it created a little pocket of joy.  And joy is pretty strong magic.  It keeps a five-year-old listening contentedly to a poetess.  It inspires people in its midst to go out and create their own magic.

 

Talk of the Town

 

My husband works for a place where they claim to be the best strippers in town.  It’s a lot more family-friendly than you’d think, though, because they also repair and refinish the furniture once its stripped.  Like most small Vermont businesses they offer an array of complementary products like chainsaws and propane, which, in a rural area, makes it a better place to get the scuttlebutt than any beauty shop because everybody – contractors, farmers, and ex-urbanite immigrants – comes in at some point and jaws with the strippers.

It’s also one of the last places in the world where you can get the news of the day and not feel sorry you heard it.  So, after chauffeur duty this morning, I popped in for a soda and what I thought would be a quick visit before heading home to work.  When I got there, however, my husband was chatting with an old acquaintance who needed a ride from Arlington to Manchester about 8 or nine miles up (and I do mean up) the road.  I said I would do it, and, as soon as we loaded up the gentleman’s wheelchair into my car, we headed off.

We met this man over a decade ago because the previous owners of our first house had recommended him as a good source of firewood.  We got to know him a bit over the course of a number of deliveries but lost touch when the latest oil crisis spiked the demand for cordwood and we had to diversify our sources a bit.  I had not seen him since he acquired the wheelchair, and I sensed that we were both more comfortable with me not asking about it.

So we drove and talked about mutual friends.  Who was building this new barn; when that family had moved away; if this neighbor was really in a bad way or was that just a rumor.  A former contractor, he pointed out homes he’d worked on and noted changes in favorite projects.

We were still chatting when we got to Manchester, and learning that his ultimate destination was Rupert – another town and a big mountain away – I offered to drive him to Dorset, thinking I would offer to go the rest of the way when we got to there.  So we drove the next leg, talking about wood prices and where to get the best ice cream this summer.  As we neared the center of Dorset, I noted the lack of a good place to let him off, but he pointed out a place near the country store, and we pulled in.

I was imagining the hot climb he had ahead of him, but before I could say anything, he said, “I’ve been riding all over Bennington County to build up my strength.”  And with that he quietly got his gear organized, and settled the matter as he propelled himself down the last leg of the trip.