Vanishing Vermonter promo

Vanishing Vermonters Loss of a Rural Culture

by Peter Miller

This is an excerpt from Vermont author and photographer Peter Miller’s upcoming book “Vanishing Vermonters, Loss of a Rural Culture”. To help support the publishing of this book in its entirety please visit “www.kickstarter.com/projects/1705472942/vanishing-vermonters” by July 15 and choose a support level that best fits your budget and interest. Your help is greatly appreciated.

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Kim Crady-Smith — Book store owner, Green Mountain Books & Prints — Lyndonville Kim Crady-Smith has an easy, wide smile and I feel relaxed and welcome in her crowded, jumbled yet organized store. I think it is one of the best independent bookstores in Vermont. She sells new and used books, well chosen. Kim lives in nearby Wheelock in an off-the-grid home with her partner, Jesse. She raises chickens and every week sells four to five dozen eggs from her bookstore and offers maple syrup from Wheelock Mountain Farm, a neighbor. Oh yes, she also displays jewelry created by her niece. And don’t forget the books!

Kim began working in the store in 1985, bought it in 1997. She sells new and used books; in the winter months more books come in than are sold, and in the summer and fall more books go out then come in. She also owns the Grindstone Café, a coffee shop that is around the corner, she is an auditor for Wheelock, a small neighboring town of Lyndonville where she lives, and Kim is a Justice of the Peace.

Then there are the off-the-grid chores at their homestead.

Kim was one of the first I called to interview for this book. In that first conversation, she said her complaint was not of the hardship of money, as she and Jesse live off the grid; rather, it is the crumbling of the rural culture she grew up with. That made me think a lot, and the result was that I broadened the direction of this book in trying to unmask the discomfort felt by so many rural Vermonters.

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or 16 years, we have lived off the grid, so our living expenses are low. My partner, Jesse, who is a laborer and does some carpentry, and I bought two spaghetti lots of 50 acres from a farm in Wheelock and lived in a tent while we built our house. It’s not done yet; we’re still working on it.

We heat with logs we cut on our land. We found an old cellar hole on our property. Dartmouth College once owned Wheelock, named after Eleazar Wheelock, who founded the college in 1769. It was in the barn that sat on our cellar hole that the town residents, throughout the year, would bring as rent their goods and leave them in the barn for Eleazar to pick up once a year and take back to Dartmouth. He died in 1779.

We don’t have water or electricity. Our water comes from a spring a few hundred yards below our house. We use seven-gallon jugs. It’s great in the winter as we can slide them over the snow. We don’t have electricity. We would have to put in two telephone poles to string the line and they would cost about $7,000. We would pay that to the telephone company that owns the poles and then we would be on the grid and have to pay the telephone company. Anyway, who wants to have all that power, all that hum?

We have a generator, but only use it when we are running power tools. We vacuum a couple of times a year and sometimes in the summer we turn on the humidifier in the basement. Propane runs our gas refrigerator, stove and some gaslights. There are many programs in the state where they

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will assist in buying and installing solar panels but you have to tin. He is an author and on the Library Board. His wife Penny tie into the grid and even with all that the cost to us would be is a teacher at Springfield College and she is an activist. Many about $12,000. However, the costs for solar panels keep comalso settled here because they were part of Bread and Puppet ing down and the quality is going up. in Glover. Those people incorporated into the community and We do have two grants— one gave us money to clear out the they embraced it as their own. wood and brush that grew up around an old apple orchard. The I don’t see that happening anymore and I don’t know if it other paid to clear-cut three acres as habitat for wildlife. is because people aren’t interested in building a community My bookstore in Lyndonville is a great place or if it is because they don’t feel welcome to to observe, talk and see what is happening with it. I also worry that there is so much red tape people. We used to have this idea that if we all through government that it is very difficult for We are poor just hang in together we would be okay through us to build our villages. One time Jesse and I but we’re rugged economic hard times. I just don’t see it happenwere talking about creating a community gaand we do what it ing anymore. I feel as though people are so isorage where a bunch of people got together, put lated in little groups and they don’t care about money into it, bought tools and then everybody takes to survive. I community. A lot of that comes from living in could use the garage to fix their cars. But you think our way is a Wheelock, which is a small town. I’m part of the just can’t do that because of all the regulations little bit different town government, which is run by eight people about insurance and liability and permits. I than other parts who are trying real hard to do a good job. But think our history is disappearing. eight people are not enough; you need the comThere are small changes to our way of life. of Vermont.” munity deeply involved to make the town keep There are more trespassing signs, which betagging along and working. came prevalent as more outsiders moved in, Wheelock is a poor town and people work bought land and renovated or built new houshard to make a living. We don’t have many scenic views and so es. Most of all, I noticed that the Vermont accent is disappearwe don’ t have many newcomers. I grew up in Vermont, I have ing. I believe Vermonters think it makes them seem unintellilived here all my life, my father is from Vermont and his family gent. I do have such an accent, like when I hang up the phone I has been here for generations and I think there is this idea that say, “Mmmm, Bye” and the “bye” is cut short, almost truncated, newcomers are bad. with an exclamation at the end. That’s such a Vermont thing.

In the 1970s, many communes were started here. Some of And of course how we say “cow.” The Vermont way of saying the hippies stayed. One who remained is my friend David Marit is “kaow.” My sister and I joke around with our accents and

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we can get into it and it rolls off the tongue without a problem when we get going. But you just don’t hear it with people anymore. My brother-in-law’s mother has a really true strong Vermont accent but the younger generations are losing it. It’s probably taught out of us.

We have many French-Canadians in the Northeast Kingdom.

There was a lot of shame about being French Canadian. I think that these people hid their background and language because they didn’t want people to know. I have a friend whose father was raised French-Canadian and he never spoke French, just English. After he had a stroke he went into the kitchen and asked what is wrong and all he could speak was French; he didn’t remember English and his daughter took him to the hospital. Once he recovered from his stroke he couldn’t remember French! Often their parents and grandparents would only speak French but the kids don’t speak French anymore. Spanish rather than French is taught in the school. That doesn’t make any sense when we live 45 minutes from the border where there is a French-speaking culture.

When we wanted fresh vegetables or fruit we went to the farm. Now it is the Farmer’s Market. It is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just a way of our life has been marketed. That’s kind of like the accent and also this bookstore. There really is nothing special about my store except there is nothing like this anymore in the world. So now it’s not just a bookstore, it’s a place to come to because it is an icon of the past, at least for people from away. I do think (Vermont’s) Northeast Kingdom is an icon in a certain way of life the visitors don’t find at home, which is kind of a sad thing. Maybe I have a skewed vision of

the world for I have never lived anywhere else.

And there are families who have moved to different states or are new to this area and there are few extended families that can say, “My grandmother is going to watch my children while I go to work or spend the weekend with my partner.”

What else do I think about community? I see people really striving to build their communities and I think it is harder than it should be and perhaps it comes down to an issue of time. We all have to work so hard to make our money to live that we don’t have time to be together. And when we do have time, what people are choosing to do is spend five hours a day on Facebook or looking at their (digital) tablet.

I think people leave Vermont for many reasons but here they leave because there is no economy. It is very difficult to get a job that offers any stability or a pension. If you want a job that you can raise a family with you have to work for health services, or in a school administration or the state. What we do now is service— it’s all service. There is no more manufacturing; farming is very difficult to make a living. So everything is about serving other people and mostly those other people are not from here. If you want a career in graphic design, you can’t live here. If you want a career in some other specialty you could go away, learn your skills and come back—possibly—but I do see it happening.

When I read about the salaries of CEO’s and administrators of companies or schools I hear about “extra money.” What the hell is extra money? Who has extra money? That just makes me laugh. I was talking to someone the other day and she said, “I’m going to take my extra money and do this . . . .” And I was

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like, what a concept to have extra money! There is People treasure our a huge difference between life but it’s changing what I think of as a lot of and becoming more money and what the rest of the world thinks of as a lot like the way the rest of money. If something was of the world is and I to happen to my car and feel like we’re losing it costs $1,000 to fix it, it something, you know.” would be really difficult for me to pay that bill. However, there are people who come from other places and visit my store and I love them. They’ll drop $150 bucks on books in an afternoon.

And if we need something and we cannot pay for it, we trade. I have traded books for work from a seamstress, for raw milk from a farmer, to a mechanic to change my oil. Yeah, I’ll trade anything for books if I need it. The thing about the Northeast Kingdom is we always were poor but it has made us incredibly independent. We joke about 2008 when the market crashed. The economic crisis didn’t really impact us because we are already poor. I think that attitude—we are poor but we’re rugged and we do what it takes to survive. I think our way is a little bit different than other parts of Vermont.

I look at my quality of life and it’s pretty great, you know.

It is so quiet and beautiful here. I have a job I love, I get to interact with really great people who are reading and thinking and want to talk about ideas here and at the coffee shop. I have

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access to any book I ever want to read, you know, and I am a reader.

I’ve never lived any place but Vermont. I grew up in Burlington and lived there for 20 years and I have lived here for 25 years. It’s not like I have never been elsewhere but my mindset is that this is the way it should be. But it’s not the way the world is and people treasure our life but it’s changing and becoming more like the way the rest of the world is and I feel like we’re losing something, you know. — Kim Crady-Smith

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Clem Despault — Stock Car Racer and Used Car Salesman — Waterbury Clem Despault is short, walks with a cant to the left side ( I don’t know why) and is better known as Desperate Despault by his stockcar racing buddies. He has won “hundreds of races,” he says, during a half-century at Thunder Road Speed Bowl in Barre; his name is engraved on the two granite monuments erected there that honor overall champions.

He’s 79 and lives for stock-car racing. Loves it. It’s his life, but he has done something else that he’s not recognized for: He helps the average—let’s say sort-of broke—Vermont Woodchuck.

Clem runs a salvage yard of dead cars and parts. He is one of the few left who sells cheap. “I will buy cars at auction, bring them home, fix’em, get them ready to be inspected and sell ’em.” He works on Route 2 west of Waterbury in a jumble of a garage that is surrounded by dismembered junks that he has cannibalized, mounds of tires and five apartments he has added on to his home. He lives upstairs, above the garage with Donna, blessed Donna. For 57 years she has worked for the Vermont State Hospital. It used to be called The Vermont State Insane Asylum. Oh, Donna has a lot to say about the way the government functions but she stays mum, good state employee that she is.

Donna manages everything except Clem’s addiction to racing.

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hem Motor Vehicle people got this new car-inspection system and that’s it—the state don’t want us in business! We got to buy this computer and hook it up to your car and to the state and company that makes it in California so they can get their money real quick. The cost of this new

inspection is $85 to $100 depending upon the station. Last year it was $40 to $50. It checks every sensor point in your car that needs inspection and if your car fails, it’s got to be fixed and the inspection has to be done again, with the added cost of the garage work and a new fee of $85. You know, to replace a gas and brake line is gonna cost you $1,500 to $2,000 and then you got rocker panels, even those pesky tire sensors that never work. It’s terrible! WHAT IN HELL ARE THEY THINKING OF? I got people who can’t afford to hardly live and they need a car just to drive a couple of miles to work or to buy food. This is a rural state, we’re poor and everyone’s got to drive, DON’T THEY KNOW THAT FOR GOD’S SAKE? I buy cars for about $400 to $700 and after I do what I have to do, I sell them for $750 to $2,000. Many people pay me $100 down and so much a week because . . . they can’t afford more. I get some good cars that run fine but now I got to spend $1,800 for a state computer and if I don’t fix it right and they inspect me doing the inspection and don’t like what I do then I could get a huge fine and I’m out $3,000 and you know the state will do anything to get money out of us, YESSIR! I’m not doing inspections and all the used cars I buy now will already be inspected. I’m auctioning off my auto parts and much of my equipment. What am I supposed to do? My customers don’t have any money. This state is broke. Thirty years working and it ends like this. WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS TO US? Before the state had the new computer set up I fixed up my

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leftover old cars that had some life in them and if they were he hired me for $100 six days a week. Then the Feds came, inspected before the deadline, that car is good for a year before locked up his trucks and equipment in the Armory for taxes and the next inspection. What’s wrong with that? I had people I was out of a job and didn’t know what to do. So I went to the ordering cars right and left to save money they didn’t have.

Feds and asked what they wanted for it all. They said $8,000. I Do you wonder why so many people are leaving the state? My didn’t have it and asked uncles, a brother-in-law, mother and friend who ran a body shop gave up, sold his business and father, the dog for loans and got enough to buy the equipment. home, moved to North Carolina. He’s paying $250 a year in Then the bank said they would finance the garage building and property taxes—$250 a year! I paid $250 that I had a sponsor. I didn’t know who property tax in 1970. Now I pay $6,500. it was but he admired the way I handled I’m not making more money. YOU KNOW? people who couldn’t pay me. I signed the YOU KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING! THEY papers and paid $250 a month. Then I A lot of businesses DON’T WANT US IN THIS STATE. YESSIR! found I was bidding for work against much are moving away, but I (Clem has to calm down or his triple bigger companies and I couldn’t make it. can’t retire because of bypass will blow. He collapses into an old I asked my wife Donna if she could get taxes. I can’t move and stuffed rocking chair beside a pile of tires. a loan from the family and she did and Just sits there and rocks a bit. Says nothI bought a salvage yard license and a I can’t sell my place so ing.—PM) couple of cars. I was 24 years old and the I’m stuck.” *** youngest used-car dealer in the state. My Clem continues: I grew up on a farm first car I paid $75 for, fixed it up and sold north of here. We had a four -holer outit for $200. That’s how I got my start 40 house with small holes for the kids on the left and they used a years ago.

In 1970, I bought the Route 2 property and moved my junkMonkey Ward catalog and we used the other end with a Sears yard and garage and set up an apartment for me and Donna, Roebuck catalog doing the honors. You haven’t lived until you then added on the five apartments. If it wasn’t for racing I’d be have used an outhouse when it is 30 degrees below zero! We a millionaire. Must have spent a couple hundred thousand on cleaned it out in the spring and fertilized our fields. buying and selling racecars over the 56 years I have been racing.

I worked a couple years in a body shop and wanted to do *** something on my own. Went to trade school in St. Johnsbury I was 23 or 24 when I got into racing. A friend, I called him and then I worked as a tool-and-die man in Connecticut. Came Peanut, visited and asked me to sponsor a car. I knew nothing back and worked with Bill Jennison who had a tree service and

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about racing but a lot about engines, so I said okay and he brought down one that had been wrecked racing in the Milk Bowl at Thunder Road. I straightened it out and he found a driver and I was his crew. I worked for two years and then told Peanut, before a big race, “Peanut, I’m not going to be your sponsor anymore. I’m not working on that car. Hank doesn’t know how to drive a stock car. I can drive it better than him.”

He thought about that. “You worked on it for two years,” he said, “so you drive it.”

I fine tuned that car and raced in the Milk Bowl. First time I was in a race. Round and round I went and then a car flipped in front of me and I hit a tree and completely totaled Peanut’s car! There it was smashed into that tree all folded up and the engine hanging out like a wet tongue. Peanut was walking in from the pit with his wife and kids and he looked at the car and then looked at me. “Clem, I guess you are going to be a race-car driver,” he said.

And that started my career.

The next year, Ken Squire, the owner of the track, bought me an old Studebaker and asked me to set up a race with Hurricanes. So I got 13 racers and Hurricanes and in that first race, in 1962, I took the Triple Crown. Last race I won was a few years ago. Yes, I can still crawl through the window to get into the seat.

I’m still racing. This is my last year. I will be 80 years old.

My last year. YESSIR! (Clem says that every year.)

A lot of businesses are moving away, but I can’t retire because of taxes. I can’t move and I can’t sell my place so I’m stuck.

I’ve built a lot of motors—good strong motors. I love racing

more than anything in my whole life. I would be in my grave if I didn’t race.

I don’t want to leave Vermont. Not I. Dozens of people have left that I know. Most are 60 and 70 years old and some can’t afford to leave. So many out-of-staters have moved in and got a little money and want to run the town and that pushes out the Vermonter so they don’t have a say anymore in our government.

There’s few young people to take over a business like I have and I learned from older people. I’m too old to get a loan. I’m a bad risk. I KNOW WE’RE NOT APPRECIATED ANYMORE! As Clem was saying this, he was tuning a new engine to race in Thunder Road. “Thought you said you were going to retire,” I ask.

“Well,” he grinned, more at himself than me. “Maybe next year.”

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George Woodard — Woodard Farm — Waterbury Center George is a neighbor and a friend of mine. Lives up the hill a few miles. He is a tall, lanky man with short chopped black-andsilver hair. (Sometimes—his haircuts are homemade.) He lights an easy smile or wiggles his face into a caricature of Red Skelton at his wackiest. He is quick with an observation that makes you laugh. Look carefully and you see a handsome, well-sculpted face which under his joking can reveal a more reclusive person. George is a musician, actor, film director and producer but primarily, George is a farmer. He has a barn with 30 stalls so he milks 25 cows. No more. His farm is organic and so is he. Drinks a beer on occasion but enjoys raw milk straight out of the bulk tank (a real treat when you visit). Always has coffee on. He has no dishwasher but he does have a computer room upstairs and knows how to run Final Cut Pro. Yes, he records and edits his own film. He runs the Ground Hog Opry and gives a few shows every year of songs, skits, music, and a mix of Prairie Home Companion, Hee Haw humor and some hilarious political satire with a nod to Saturday Night Live. The profits buys equipment for filming and other times it is for funding to support any movie he comes up with—a feature film The Summer of Walter Hacks that he produced in 2010 and recently a hilarious short on two bums trying to steal a truck from two old grannies. He now is making a feature production called The Farm Boy, mostly filmed on his farm. He is the only Vermont farmer who spent three years in Hollywood learning all aspects of the craft of moviemaking, then left Hollywood to return to the family farm. “What they do in Hollywood I can do on my farm,” he told me.

His farm is on a hillside, which, when he was a kid, had seven

farms on it. Now there are many developments, as Waterbury turned into a bedroom community. Only three dairy farms remain in town.

There were 23 when George was born in 1952. One afternoon when we were talking about the transformation of Waterbury, George said to no one in particular, “I wish I could put my farm into a backhoe and move it away.” But he won’t, and he ain’t selling, don’t bother to ask, for his farm was created by his grandparents, his Ma and Pa, his brothers, him and his Holstein milkers.

George also has that Vermont trait of working alone. That’s why when he has a film going most of it is filmed on his farm. (He built a hayloft for a scary scene in The Summer of Walter Hacks where a murderer stalks the hero of the film. Now he stores hay in it.) George creates the plot, uses mostly neighbors (and his son and nephew) for actors and grips, builds set, does the filming, cutting, inserting music—well, the whole stew with the help of lady friends who are assistant producers. And at the same time, he milks his Holsteins. Twice a day, of course.

The reason George is in this book is because he succeeds despite the prognosis from the state that small hillside farms weren’t worth fooling with. And there are Vermonters not caving into homogenization but keeping it raw.

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a and Pa bought our hillside farm from his folks, Walter and Eva, in 1947. It was right after Pa returned from World War II. I was born in 1952. Bernard, my older brother, was born in 1946. My sister, Joanna, was born

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in 1947. And Steve, my younger brother, was born in 1956.

Pa farmed with my grandfather and then worked a milk truck route and hauled logs to the mill and delivered fertilizer to other farmers. Eventually, my grandfather bought the entire milk route because he knew my father needed something to do, being about 18-years old. They built a sugarhouse in 1935 and they were milking some cows. This is the history of my grandparents and father and mother up through 1961 when my father decided to sell the cows. He became a bulldozer operator. My grades were so bad in high school I repeated my last year so I could get accepted in the agricultural program at Vermont Technical College. The most valuable thing I learned was how to weld.

We decided to rebuild our hillside farm. The barns were a mess because the frost had broken all the concrete underneath.

To rebuild was a major undertaking. My older brother Bernard was out of the Air Force and he did the construction. We had a 1926 Lane tractor sawmill that we bought in 1973 and we used that to cut out the lumber from our own trees to rebuild the barn. We had to jack up the

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barn and put a new foundation under three quarters of it. We laid new flooring, stables with comfort stalls and gutters. We put the gutter cleaner corners in so when we could afford the gutter cleaner and chain we could just throw the thing together and the gutter cleaner, when installed, would mean we would never again have to shovel out the cow shit.

We started milking cows in 1975. At that time, a small farm was considered 50 cows and we had stalls for 30. We started milking 10. Over 40 years we grew that herd to 25 cows and it’s a nice, small farm. We reconstructed the pasture, picked up too many rocks and realized this land was no good to plant corn and that was okay with me although the Agriculture people said we had to have corn and the small farm would never make it and you had to expand the size of your farm. So I read up on it and found that some of the big farms, with so many milkers, had a $3-$4,000 debt per cow and they were milking up to 400. Then I read where another guy had something like 50 milkers and his debt was $600 per cow.

And then I thought to myself that I got 30 cows and I don’t owe

anything. Who’s successful here? My have 25 milkers and 20 young stock so I debt is operating costs. have a herd of about 45.

This farm is important to In 1984, I went to California. I love My brother Steve was a tremendous the theater and acting that I did at the help.

He died way too early from cancer. me because it represents my Hyde Park Opera House. My younger He was a veterinarian and read reports family story and the family brother Steve kept an eye on things so I from all over the world. He set up the history is a fun story.” was gone for about three years.

New Zealand method of breaking pasWhy did I come back? We had put tures up into smaller pieces to get more so much work in rebuilding the farm grass growth and nutrition. We were that I wasn’t just going to just bale out one of the first to do that. Steve also of it. They don’t do anything in Hollywood that I can’t do here suggested we go organic and he helped with that and again we if I learn a little more about it. So Hollywood was my teacher. I were one of the first organic farms. The higher price we are paid acted, made sets, studied camera angles and lighting, talked to for milk is important. cameramen and directors.

So our farm is a family effort. That’s nice. I have a place. I It was my mother who suggested I become a farmer. Told don’t think all places are as nice as this one. No matter where her I hadn’t thought about it—this was while I was in high you are on this farm, it’s quite beautiful. But the most beautiful school. I started to think of it. First I said, ‘I’m not getting up at thing about this property is that I own it. And it is all paid off, 5 o’clock every morning.’ And then I thought it might not be a been so for years. I put in the time, seven days a week for 40 bad idea. I couldn’t read very well or tell you what I just read. years, to make the place work.

But I was good with my hands and mechanically minded. I This little farm . . . You have a bunch of cows and you have would see something broken and look at it and say, ‘Oh, I know land that you hay and pasture. There’s something that’s just what to do with that.’ You have to know all these things to keep nice about that. It’s just good. And cows are great. Cows on a a farm going. pasture are just one of the most beautiful things in nature.

So the reconstruction of the farm was a family affair. My And pastures are art. I have a lane that curls up through brother did the carpentry; my uncle laid the concrete work; Pa several pastures that are fenced off with a gate. The cows follow worked the bulldozer. Steve was the vet and I was the farmer. the lane and all I have to do is open the gate to a particular The first 10 cows freshened in 1975 and the barn wasn’t pasture and the cows go into the one I selected. Everything is ready. So we milked by hand. We started shipping milk in Deplanned ahead. I keep changing the pastures after each milkcember 1975, and we had a bulk tank cooler. I have 30 stalls. I ing. That’s kind of nice, because you work the pasture through-

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out the summer by dragging the manure and that keeps the flies down. The cows won’t eat the old grass unless it’s clipped.

So it keeps the pastures good until the first of October. The manure decomposes quicker so the grass stays young and fresh.

Good for the cows, good for me. We get two good cuts of hay and sometimes a third, because I open a new section of pasture each day. The cows can eat everything in that pasture and they are not walking all over the meadow and making a mess of it.

This is the New Zealand system. *** If you are going to be a small farmer there’s one thing you have to know how to do everything. By that I mean a little mechanic work plus electrical, plumbing and knowledge of veterinarian cures; some carpentry; and animal and pasture and field husbandry. You have to know how to do a little of that stuff to keep things going. Now, on a big farm one guy feeds the cow, another cuts hay, three guys to milk, somebody for each job. Here a high-school student helps me, he or she is going to learn many jobs instead of, say, learning just how to feed a calf.

They are going to learn how to do a lot of that stuff on a small farm.

This farm is important to me because it represents my family story and the family history is a fun story. All of the story of my grandparents and my father and mother through the years— good or bad, it’s interesting and it’s my history and it’s important to me.

Starting a farm like mine takes 20 years to get out from under. Kids should be taught finance in school instead of algebra.

Why did I have to take algebra, which I never used and flunked

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twice? They should be taught the tools they have to use on the job and they should learn music. That’s right, after a good day, they can sit on the porch and play the banjo. My father didn’t teach me, he just said play and I learned on his guitar. So did my brothers. And we sang too. There’s more to life than a bottom line.

I think there is too much emphasis on increasing your herd and land, which leads to higher bills for taxes and energy costs.

I don’t think that’s a good goal.

Ambition is good, but to me progress is not necessarily getting bigger and bigger. Progress for me is to be successful at the same size over a long period of time. If you make smart choices with your purchases, watch your finances and be careful about how you do things as opposed to saying ‘I have to keep up with farmer so and so’ who is making his farm bigger... you’ll be okay. — George Woodard

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Steve Norse — Vermont Freehand — Dorset Up a back road, above the town of Dorset, take a right on a long, curving driveway and that must be him, standing on the porch, waving—lean, baseball cap shading his eyes, black T shirt, big smile.

Young. I can feel his presence, something relaxing . . . a calmness. He lives on a mini estate, surrounded by open fields pinned by woods, a great presence of flowers and a lawn, which he mows. He’s done well, I think to myself, looking at the large white house, so beautifully landscaped until he led me upstairs to the small apartment he lives in with two cats over what was a garage. He is one of the caretakers. He trades part of the rent cost for maintaining the property, owned by a couple from New York.

Steve is a pipe-maker of renown—when he has time—for he also owns Vermont Freehand, a company that supplies pipe craftspeople from 135 countries with blocks of burl from Algeria, Italy, Greece, Meerschaum from Turkey, bamboo from China and morta from the Ukraine.

He has a large inventory of pipe stems, pipe kits, how-to and history books on pipes, plus many accessories and—yes—in the last six years he became the world’s largest supplier of pipe-making supplies.

Steve’s ancestors moved to Manchester in 1760. At first, they were farmers although Steve only remembers back to his grandpa who, in the 1940s, wore snowshoes to pack ski trails at nearby Big Bromley Mountain.

Many of the young Vermonters who started their own businesses learned their interests at an early age, through jobs or acquaintances within their community. We would now call it networking. This happened to Steve when, at the age of 11, he helped in the lumberyard of R.

K. Miles, which his father ran for a number of years and where Steve met the people who mentored him first as a cabinetmaker, and later in creating pipes.

The spring issue, 2017, of Pipes and Tobaccos quoted Thomas Chandler Haliburton, the Canadian writer, who in 1836 wrote in his book The Clockmaker: “. . . The moment a man takes to a pipe, he becomes a philosopher.

It’s the poor man’s friend; it calms the mind, soothes the temper and makes a man patient under difficulties. It has made more good men, good husbands, kind masters, indulgent fathers than any other blessed things on this universal earth.” Chandler, of course was a pipe smoker.

Doesn’t matter that Steven is incapacitated by a bad back and that two years ago he went blind in his master eye. He managed to overcome his infirmities and as a one-man operation built a small business with $200 in seed money that in six years became the largest pipe-making supplier in the world. Vermont Freehand now grosses more than $500,000 a year with no help or grants from the state or federal government, only with the good will and support of neighbors and friends who Steve grew up with. Steve graduated from Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester and did not go to college. What he did was listen and think, found his passion with wood and narrowed it to the niche of pipe making. Saved a good $160,000 in educational fees.

Pipemaking and supplying accessories to the world of pipe-makers gives Steve happiness, because he feels that crafting pipes allows him to share with others his passion. And it gives Steve Norse a living. Let’s listen to Steve:

Vanishing Vermonters • 21

I always liked wood. I must have learned it in the lumberordered the first blocks. The word spread and my business as a yard in Manchester. I helped pull out lumber and load trucks. supplier, Vermont Freehand I called it, blossomed. I became the Later I met Bill Tate, a cabinetmaker, who became my mentor. I largest pipe-making source in the world. I have been at it for 12 worked for him for 14 years and woodworking became my pasyears, 6 fulltime. I keep an inventory worth about $500,000 but sion. I worked on a back road up the mountain on the Danby much of my time is spent ordering supplies and shipping. I only pass. Hardly a car went by. It was beautiful and quiet but furnimake a few pipes a year but I am increasing that. I make very ture-making was beginning to take its toll on my body. I began light pipes for myself, they weigh less than an ounce. I like the to have back spasms, the result of a genetic problem with disks, standard shape called the billiard but I subtly refine the tilt, the the doctors said. It can be exceedingly painshape, the way it feels in your hand. ful and I have to visit the hospital for shots.

I live very inexpensively. I still help mainIt was then that a friend I met at work, tain this property and my rent is minimal.

Smoking a pipe gives Mike, a Harley rider and old enough to I am not married but I do care for Smith be my father, asked me to make a pipe. I and Wesson, my cats. I can live on $500 you the space to sit had so much fun and this pipe would last a month; the rest goes straight into my down, relax and let the longer than me. Smoking a pipe gives you business. In 2016, I bought out a neighbor’s BS go out of the brain.” the space to sit down, relax and let the BS pipe business, Pimo Supplies. I had been go out of the brain. I made 10 more, and friends with Al and Gina Baier, the owners, ordered different blocks of wood each time for years. Al had passed, and Gina decided to improve my skills. I found it satisfying to create something it was time to sell. I had been helping her ever since Al died that is . . . philosophical . . . working with the grain of the block and we made an arrangement and I now distribute their book, of wood and shaping the pipe just so for my customer. It is a written in 1936 called Pimo’s Guide to Pipe Crafting at Home. personal thing.

It’s the bible for anyone starting this craft. The next year I I realized that pipe-making put a lot less stress on my back bought The Pipe Maker’s Emporium, a supplier in Arizona. The and I started to think about making pipes and realized there business is still growing. needed to be a one-stop source for pipe-makers where they Bearded millennials are beginning to make pipes and often I could purchase different types of burl and other wood, pipe sell them pipe kits, with the bowl and hole for the stem already stems and accessories, kits for beginners and expensive burl for drilled. Then they move up. I sell an undrilled block of burl that the experienced craftsman. It meant stocking a large and varied they can finish into a pipe for $6 to $45. I do everything myself; inventory, pricing them not too high and prompt shipping. I I have no employees. I have perfected every step of making a

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pipe. What used to take me 8 to 10 hours now takes me 3 to 5.

I have no problem with the state or government. I have a broker handle my international shipping. Sales tax is negligible as most of my sales are out of the state and the country.

I learned to live with the pain in my back but then, two years ago, I lost the sight in my right eye—my master eye. Specialists had no idea why it happened. There was no pain; it was like a shade was drawn over my eyeball. So I lost my perspective. I had to learn how to walk down and up stairs, pick up a glass or silverware and how to reuse my equipment to make a pipe.

It took a while but I am blessed. I live with the trees, lawns and beautiful flowers. It is peaceful. My landlords are wonderful people. It is quiet and easy to concentrate and relax. I like maintaining this property and my pipe business is important because I am helping so many learn to make pipes. I consider the pipe not only beautiful but also soothing to the touch and spirit. Each handmade pipe has its own personality. Makes me happy.

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Frank M. Bryan — Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Politacal Science, University of Vermont — Starksboro Frank Bryan, Professor Emeritus, a poli-sci guru with more kudos and accolades than geese on a golf course, has practiced his craft of studying Vermont Politics and Town Meeting during 42 years he lectured at St. Michaels College and the University of Vermont. He was loved (sometimes) and revered by his students. He has a database of 260,000 Vermonters who have spoken at Town Meetings that is the source for his regression analysis (look it up in the dictionary like I did) of the Town Meeting. He has studied what they say, what their age and sex is, whether for or against but most of all he is interested in these people and how they self-govern themselves and treat their neighbors. Yes, he thinks town meetings make our state unique.

Hey, not bad for a Woodchuck spelled with a capital W, huh?

Frank’s mother worked in a mill and he graduated from Newbury High with seven others, learned to brawl and get walloped, then boxed in the Golden Glove, knows how to use a cant hook, milked cows and rode bulls in Montana rodeos, was a good shot and kept two braces of oxen. He is strong and sports darn tough biceps shaped through years of swinging a mall and axe. He lives with his wife Melissa Lee, an attractive woman who he once said was the sexiest wench in the galaxy.

They share a converted deer camp just off Big Hollow Road, near a hand-scrawled sign put up by a neighbor that reads “FILL WANTED PLOWING”. There is a pond in front of his house that appears to be a large mosquito-breeding reproduction plant. Trailers, some weary, are seeded along the road and at the bottom is a trailer park. For a while, Frank used to drive a school bus.

He really is a professor. You would think, with all those awards,

that he could do with a trepanation but look into his eyes for they tell all—they glint, sometimes sharp, but often they are sparked by wit and humor. Oh, he can be cutting but in a fun way, just read his “Real Vermonters Don’t Milk Goats”, that he wrote in 1982, although he is recognized for more serious tomes, “Real Democracy” and “The Vermont Papers”, (written with John McLaughry, who is also a speaker in this book). The first two chapters of that book will puff you up with pride when you read about our history, our love of independence, our sense of community and, yes, freedom. Oh and don’t forget stubbornness. Not only does Frank explain the essence of the Vermont philosophy, but also why and how it changes. Yes, he believes the smaller the town, the stronger democracy is nurtured.

Frank has this ability to analyze his sensory input and correlate it with a problem he is working out on political disparity. He makes you think that less is best, small is good but they can be complicated when you put them through, ummmm, regression analysis.

We are lucky to have Frank parse our sense of history and to comprehend what we have done to ourselves in the last half century.

A

t about 10 p.m. on a Saturday evening during the summer of 1973, I was hitching though a particularly lonely stretch of Vermont between Barre and Bradford, a little town on the Connecticut River. The blacktop followed the Waits River, which was dancing along beside me under a full moon. I had just sent the manuscript for my first book on

Vanishing Vermonters • 25

Throughout the urban industrial revolution, Vermont had Vermont’s government to the publisher. It contained an introfallen so far behind on the great American racetrack of “progductory chapter on the history of the state. I was unhappy with ress” that it had been “lapped” by all the other states. And now, it. My broodings centered on my lack of a (Frederick Jackson by damn, it was ahead!

Turner-like) paradigm summarizing the state’s history. How As a result of all this, Vermont clearly remains one of the to describe Vermont’s past in a way that would enlighten its most beautiful places on the planet. It is also a quirky place. future? What was our genetic code?

Best of all it contains its own unique genetic code. This set of While one side of my brain was caught up in this thematic interlocking principles consists of values such as community, enterprise, the other side was wondering about strange roars individualism, ingenuity, praccoming out of the hills to the southticality, diligence and humanity. west. They undulated with intenVermonters’ genetic heritage also sity—deep, guttural groans and means they can be taciturn and frubellows. It couldn’t be thunder, the This set of interlocking gal. They think “small” and they are skies were clear. They competed for intrinsically practical. Most beautimy attention to historical paradigms principles consists of values such fully of all, they are democrats in the as I walked alone down the road as community, individualism, sense that they actually believe in beside the river. ingenuity, practicality, diligence democracy and take it seriously.

Then it struck me. The sounds Why is this? Vermont escaped came from a dirt race track, the Bear and humanity.” hierarchy and its attendant authoriRidge Speedway near Bradford. It tarianism because of geography and featured small cars and big engines climate. All this began in the cold tearing around and around a quarwith the glacier. We were born hilly, cold, rocky and isolated ter-mile oval. Thinking about that, the idea of the “lapped car” (the only New England state without an opening to the sea). crept into my mind. Every such race seems to have a car so The historian Arnold Toynbee dismissed Vermont as being slow it is left far behind. But soon, as it passes in front of the “above the optimal climatic area” of the continent. grandstand, it is indeed, ahead! The other cars are behind it. It But (as the historian Ralph Nading Hill has pointed out) now appears to be out in front—leading the pack.

Suddenly back in the present, the other side of my mind—the this topographical toughness enhanced our genetic code. It side fussing over a paradigm for Vermont’s future—kicked in. also produced our quirky characteristics, which have combined The epiphany struck. to make us a truly exceptional people. In the U.S. Statistical

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Abstract we tend to score positively on a per capita basis on variables such as home ownership, doctors and student-teacher ratios and score low on variables such as crime rate.

But best of all, Vermont now ranks high in what scholars call “social capital”—the trust, neighborliness and volunteerism that make our democracy function. In his 2000 book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Harvard’s Robert Putnam ranked Vermont highest (above all the other states!) on his scale of “tolerance for gender, racial, and civil liberties.” If that doesn’t require a thunderous “hurrah,” what the hell does? At about the same time, political scientist Tom Rice ranked Vermont first among states on his “civil society” measure published in Publius, the leading professional journal of American federalism.

Such conclusions are not new. Praise for Vermont’s unique brand of civic virtue has been extensively documented. In short Vermont is an exceptional place regarding values most dear to those who appreciate humankind’s need for a living nexus between liberty and community.

During the heyday of urban industrialism, no American state had more people scrambling to leave than Vermont. This period is called Vermont’s “dark age” by historians. In 1950, Vermont was the most rural state in America. We had a tiny state capital, the population of our largest city was less than 35,000, and a greater percentage of Vermont’s citizens lived in places of fewer than 2,500 people than any other state. Vermont had been “left behind.”

This turned out to be a blessing.

That’s good news!

Fast-forward to the present. Instead of developing our enviable position (having emerged unscathed from America’s urban-industrial revolution), too many Vermonters have spent the last half century trying to “catch up” with a dying paradigm that reads: Agrarianism gives way to Urbanism which then proceeds to the Techno Post Modern Period. In short Vermont has spent its time and energy using “second wave” (urban-industrial) means to force a “first wave” agrarian ambiance on a “third wave” reality. This reality features a new techno-enhanced society of small, human-scale polities.

What’s the solution? A revolutionary decentralization of power to the states and within the states to the communities and a redistribution of functions to match the realities of human life. Let America handle systems policies such as defense, the monetary system, environmental protection. (Unfortunately, Vermont doesn’t own Lake Champlain or the Connecticut River.) Let the localities (towns and states) be the caretakers of the more human-scale policies of education, health care and social welfare.

The new model features a diffusion of life and the politics and governance that follow. Instead of a single (hierarchical) directive, this de-concentration will engender a network of interactions. Instead of authoritarian directives, democratic decisions from the bottom up will result. Instead of a symmetrical and rigid master plan, a variety of innovative systems will appear, serving in addition, as laboratories through which the networks can self-adjust with time. These systems will be sensitive to the special needs of citizens in the variety of settings in which they live, and thus become humane.

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Herein lies the future of the world. And it is hard to name many polities around the globe that are better situated to lead the way toward its most humane promise than the Republic of Vermont. But to make any of this happen, we must first arrest the erosion of power toward the American center, a center that remains hidebound and handcuffed by the idiocies of a time long past. — Frank Bryan

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