R.I.P

Junior Bentley holds the reins at Sandgate's Independence Day parade on July 4, 1983. Photo courtesy of John Hess. 

Today was not the first time I had attended a funeral in the little white church nestled in the folds of

the Green River valley.  I try to arrive a little early and take my favored place;  a seat in the last pew on the left.

The far view from the window shows a curve in the road, a gentle hill rising to the left and a sweep of meadow dipping to the bank of the Green River on the right. The nearer view is a jelly jar on the sill with a single orange blossom and a rime of small ladybug and cluster fly carcasses trapped in the spaces between the outside and inside panes. From my seat I can both see and hear the tick-tocking of the big, rectangular oak Regulator clock ... its gleaming gold pendulum marking off the minutes and hours and days.

It is a setting ripe for metaphors. But I resist. Instead, I watch the simple little white church fill. There are men and women of all ages and walks of life; natty sports coats mix with grease-stained Carhartts, the sound of walkers and oxygen tanks mix with the cries of a child. Black is the predominate color; that and the Amish-style beards (chin whiskers but no mustache) lend an other-worldly air. Not one person is using a phone or texting as the seats fill, men shuffling to make space for the women to sit.

This is a funeral almost devoid of tears for, as a group, these attendees are not given to crying and the deceased  had lived a long and good life. His recent distress was now over, a distress eased by care of those who loved him and by faith. It was, instead, a time to mourn a way of life fast disappearing from this valley. And to honor and remember a man whose very presence, existence, had exemplified the old values of the Vermont farmer with generations preceding him to the Vermont sod.

"Junior" as he was called -- even at 92 years of age -- was the quintessential Vermonter, living his entire life in the house in which he was born. He was spare of body and spare of words.  His deeds were what spoke and it is clear that he was quicker to give than to take. He was bound to the land, lock and key, and the bounty it gave forth, decades before it was fashionable to be so. There were few things he did not revere that came from the land (with the possible exception of zucchini and burdocks).

I was not part of Junior's inner circle.  But he was always there, his beloved animals standing like a welcoming committee at the portals of the town, his antique farm equipment coaxed into service both practical and ceremonial, and his nod or shake of the head lending credence to local political matters.

One of his inner circle told me, as we left the little white church, that Junior had once pointed to the cemetery on the hill and said that it was full of people who thought they were indispensable.

Well, maybe so. But this man and his gifts to the community come close ... like a belief in the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny, we cherished the almost unbelievable, almost mythical, way this man lived and subtly or not so subtly shaped our lives. Did he know, when he was alive, this effect he had?

I doubt it. I do not doubt that he would find it beyond comical that I equate him with the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. He would be much more comfortable joining in the fellowship of food than philosophizing.

The long table was groaning with salads, cold cuts, tilting towers of sliced bread, mac ‘n’ cheese and colorful Jell-Os.  There were no fewer than a dozen kinds of chocolate brownies and cakes. I think he would have loved the people gathered there, loved the food, and loved the community that he embraced and that had come to say "good-bye" wishing with all their hearts that the afterlife was abundant with fertile fields and critters to accompany him ... a place where words mattered little but deeds spoke volumes ...

R.I.P.

Previous Posts:

Making Tracks

Meant to Be

Thanksgiving for Dummies

Making Tracks

Author’s Note: The writing inspiration has been as muted as the snowless southern Vermont winter. It reminds me of the common entry in 1950s autograph books: 

"Can’ think

Born dumb

Inspiration won’t come

Rotten ink

Rotten pen

Yours forever

Amen”

I am heartened by the fact that a few loyal friends have asked if I have done any more writing.

I first wrote this little piece back in November but deemed it not good enough to post.

But I think I will because it is so true. And also because I re-visited a writing book that reminded me that writing begets writing. Not writing begets not writing.

Enough said.

The flame of October is past and the muted tones of November and early December are upon the hills … subtle sage frost-kissed greens and rusty oak vie with a dozen shades of grey on the forested Vermont landscape.

The conversation too has changed. The early morning coffee club at the old country store no longer talks solely about the roads and politics, but now about the winter predictors; wooly bear caterpillars, the Old Farmer’s Almanac and the height of the hornets’ nests. And it has turned to hunting -- turkey, bear and white tail deer.

“Eight-pointer feeding under the apple tree up Chunk’s Brook … hope he still hangs out there by the time I’m legal to shoot him.”

“Flock of turkeys … must be 30 of ‘em crossing Camden Valley by the pond every morning. Looks like a couple of big toms sharing that harem.”

“Surprised they’ve survived. Lots of fox tracks by that same pond”

“Gathering apples in my high orchard found a big deer yard. They gotta be well fed on all the drops.”

“Put up my tree stand and, man, did I see some big scrapings on the beech trees.”

“Bear scat near old Doc’s deserted cabin up West … been diggin’ up ground bees, too.”

Linn listened and wondered at the ability of the hunters to find the often elusive prey, to track them by their habits. How they watched for signs and soft footprints in the barely frost touched ground, distinguishing the coyote from the bobcat, the group from the individual as wild predators vied with the hunters. She marveled at the lore and the study that allowed a hunter to get to the heart of the life of these wild entities that they hunted, revered and consumed.

She heard the stories of the hunt from the grizzled old hunters as they impressed the neophytes, brandishing their orange pasteboard hunter safety cards as they stood in line at the old country store to buy their licenses, their permission to join the fraternity of hunters. Linn was a writer and she itched to record the stories told and the subtle passing of the torch from generation to generation. Her fertile imagination concocted the conversations that must have passed as the skill of tracking, observing, getting to heart of the hunt ... understanding, was shared. Yet, she knew that such understanding was beyond her. This was not her territory, her tracks to decipher or her skill to embrace.

In addition to being a writer, Linn was a reader. How ironic that she should, just as the mystery and excitement of the hunt was upon the community, chance across this quote:

“Animals, as they pass through the landscape, leave their tracks behind. Stories are the tracks we leave” -- Salman Rushdie

Linn came from a long line of storytellers. She kept snippets of her favorite stories folded in her wallet. She revisited favorite books, following the trail to a joy of words, wisdom and mystery presented and, sometimes, resolved, and to information. She hunted for the escape into a slightly alternative world just as the hunter escaped his work-a-day world for the brief respite of the hallowed woods in November.

“Ah,” she thought. “I better ‘make tracks’ and get on with writing my stories. No one has the same stories, the same track or the same scent.”  “Keep writing,” she shouted to her writer friends and to herself. 

Linn did not want them -- Eric, Paige, Phil, Mallory, Adair, Rachel, Sue, John, Ed and all the rest -- to disappear. She wanted a long adventure as she followed their tracks into the personal forests of their stories; the plots, the ideas, the interests, the intelligence, the emotion.

Nor did she want to vanish without trace.

Previous Posts:

Meant to Be

Stone Salad

WC ... It's Not What You Think

Meant to Be

I saw something on TV this morning that I could hardly believe. Seems that the new thing now is to have less rather than more "stuff" in our lives. The fad now is to be frugal. Holy shit! I've known the word "frugal" for so long I thought it was my middle name!

Let me do some explaining. My family wasn't exactly poor, but we had what we had by scrimping and saving and making do. Extras meant that we had new clothes for Christmas instead of thrift shop stuff or hand-me-downs. Extras meant a special outing to McDonald's for my birthday.

Then, to top it off, I married Joey and he made my frugal ways look like I was a gol-durn spendthrift.  He was recycling and up-cycling before he knew what those words meant; turning old tires into planters and swings, using old pallet wood for new porch steps and mixing leftover cans of paint 'til he had enough to freshen the walls of some room or another.

The odd thing was that Joey was not un-generous. When he had a dollar he'd share it with me fifty-fifty. He trusted, and I knew, that it was to be spent well.  He never asked -- and I rarely told him -- just how it left my pocket. I just said "thanks" and once in awhile I'd show him a trophy like the old floor lamp I bought at Salvation Army for two dollars that looked just like the one in the Orvis mail order catalog for over a hundred.

I guess I shoulda known that it would be this way. When we met, I was young and fulla vinegar and he was young and fulla piss. I had three jobs and still enough energy to get done work and go over to Snuffy's across the border in New York state and dance and flirt and have a few beers. He worked hard spring, summer and fall doing the yard work that he learned from his Pa. But Joey done his Pa one better and got himself some power things that made his work neater and faster. In the winter he'd plow some, but he mostly hung out at the Citgo station, the Wayside general store or the diner where I worked the late shift. Sometimes he'd piss me off coming in late and ordering a meal that required me to re-scrub the grill and do up the dishes when what I was itching for was to get the hell out and have some fun.

Back then, Joey lived in one of the half dozen "mobile homes" that my boss, Herbie, kept on his land across the road from the diner. There was a gol-durn revolving door of young marrieds and a mish-mash of short term renters coming or going through some stage of life. ... Herbie's trailers were a godsend.

I can't get through this story without I tell you a little about Herbie. He was a wheeler-dealer of the first order. His diner had a limited menu -- mostly breakfast stuff any hour that they were open.  He served a tolerable hamburger and a mean BLT.  And, when the spirit moved him, he'd concoct a pretty good hash or a tuna casserole topped with crushed potato chips.

Herbie made precious little money at his diner. Hell, he felt lucky if he broke even. But the folks that came in were always good fodder for his bartering and trading. He'd loan out his pick-up truck in exchange for bales of hay to insulate the trailers from the biting January wind  He'd trade hunting rights on his land for venison, lunches for lawn mowing.

What Herbie couldn't barter, he'd buy up -- dime on the dollar -- most anything anyone had in excess or needed to be rid of. That's how he got the beds, dressers, pots, pans and dishes to furnish his trailers. Herbie found his ways to be not only an economy, but a challenge and a hobby. He never tired on the game and mostly felt he came out on the long end of the stick. I guess he must've, since it was rumored that he died a wealthy man.

Now Joey was living in one of Herbie's mobile homes. He never told me -- and I guess I never asked -- if he left home on his own or got kicked out. It didn't matter, really, he was on his own and away from a house that was so clotted with brothers and sisters that he couldn't even shit in peace. Only thing he missed much was his ma's cooking and he didn't have a clue how to do for himself on that score. When he got tired of cold cereal, Pop-Tarts or a can of Campbell's chicken noodle, he'd show up at the diner.

As for me, I'd been on my own for over a year. My ma had died and the family didn't get along so well after that. I was living with my Aunt Betty who never had kids. She never had a clue either. so as long as I was kind to her and kept my room neat, she'd pretty much let me do what I wanted. And I wanted to do lots of things. That's why I worked three jobs. You can't do stuff without some money no matter how frugal you were. Maybe Herbie could with his easy manner and an eye for the deal, but it weren't so easy for the rest of us.

I didn't consider myself a specially lucky person, but I was blessed. I was blessed with a ton of energy and I knew I was smarter than most.  I knew, too, that I was easy on the eyes with my curly hair and curves in the right places. I figured if I worked hard I could get most of what I wanted. I wanted some travel and adventures and then I wanted to settle down to a good decent life ... but I wasn't in a hurry for it.

That's about what I was thinking when along come Joey.  He was tall and good looking and best of all he knew how to laugh. He didn't have it so easy but that never stopped him from telling a joke or laughing about some of the crazy stuff folks did. We saw eye-to-eye about the strangeness of people and even if he pissed me off sometimes with his timing, it got so I looked forward to the nights when he came in the diner.

It was coming on Christmas and neither one of us was looking forward to it. It's 'sposed to be a happy time but we were both feeling a little cranky about getting into family things and didn't quite know how to get round it. Two of my jobs crapped out on me; the old lady I'd been watching fell on her  butt and was in the hospital and money ran out on the grant where I'd had a spell at the court house learning to clerk.  I sure as hell wasn't gonna have a very merry Christmas on my diner money. That's what we were grousing about when Joey looked at me over the remains of his tuna casserole. "Let's go to Florida for Christmas," he said.

I was stunned and thought of everything I could to object. But Joey shot holes in every damn one of them., even to to the fact that I'd miss a real Vermont Christmas tree. Joey went right out to the woods and cut down a pretty little pine tree, threw it in the back of his Ford 350 and dared me to find another excuse. He knew me pretty well and could tell he'd already wore me down. So I packed a few things, left Aunt Betty a note, a pair of pink fuzzy slippers and a box of her favorite Cella chocolate covered cherries for Christmas. I told Herbie I'd see him in a week and off we went.

God, I felt half scared but free as a bird. I was gonna see something besides snow and hills!  I was gonna see honest-to-god  palm trees and have sand between my toes!  Yippee!

Off we went, and I gotta tell you, we had a ball.  We drove and drove, stopping only to get a bite to eat or to gas up the truck. We watched the sun set in West Virginia and watched it come up when we hit the Florida line. We stopped at a roadside diner that kinda reminded me of Herbie's where the locals gave us a few tips on where we could find a good beach and where we could have a good time without spending a bunch of money.

We found the beach about mid-day, planted our Vermont Christmas tree in the sand, rolled out some big ole towels and had ourselves a Christmas to remember soaking up the sun, rubbing sunscreen on each other and wading into the clean salty water.

We were both sorry when it was time to head back but we didn't figure that the beach life was for us long term. By the time we left we were sun burnt and burnt out on not having any work to do. We needed to get back where we belonged.

The drive back seemed longer than long. We weren't quite sure what was waiting us when we got back, being a small town and all. But we didn't really care. By now we were thinking that maybe we were an item, a couple, cuz we sure did know how to have some fun together. We just weren't sure how much that counted.

When we got back to Vermont it was the middle of the night, wouldn't ya know. Neither of us wanted to bust in on Aunt Betty and scare her to death so I went right home with Joey to his little trailer. We crept into the little huddle of trailers under the cover of dark, Joey pulling the curtains over the windows before he snapped on the overhead light.

Now, I'd had quite a few surprises in the last few days but none compared to the surprise when my eyes saw what was before me in his rooms. There, bold as brass, was the coffee table my dad had made out of a slab of pine for my mom on their 10th anniversary.  The sofa was the same stripey gray one that I'd sat on to watch TV when I was just a little girl. Next to it was the lamp with the red geraniums painted on it and the white shade on top of it that I had known all my life.

I was so stunned I couldn't say a word and Joey didn't know what was the matter with me. I think he thought I was scared to spend the night. Truth be told, I was scared of what it meant to see all this stuff just like I remembered it. It was like coming home and finding a piece of me that I thought had been lost a long time ago.

Joey came and put his arms gently around me. He'd figured it out before I did. Herbie'd gone after my ma died and bought out her household when the family coulda cared less and had no place for her belongings.

If I was on the fence about my dealings with Joey, I saw this as a kind of sign that we were meant to be together. And now here it is 25 years later. I can't say we ever had another adventure quite like plunking our Christmas tree in the Florida sand but we've had our times. And Herbie's lessons kind of live with us too. We wheel and deal and make do and we have a more-than-decent life.

And, for once, we're on the cutting edge of the "in" frugal thing -- without changing who we are or even trying to!

Previous Posts:
Stone Salad
The Room with 10 Doors
Thanksgiving for Dummies

Stone Salad

(Note: This story is true. I tried -- oh how I tried -- to fictionalize it but, really, the truth is stranger than fiction. There may be a bit of revisionist history and faulty memory but, that said, it is essentially a true story.)

The house was a Victorian lady with a tall imposing tower-- well beyond her prime. Her once lush chocolate brown had faded to a dun color with an undercurrent of yellow showing through. Her scalloped shingle decorations were missing pieces like an old mouth devoid of a few key teeth. The ornate screen doors retained their gingerbread scrolls but the screen itself was torn and frayed letting into the cramped entry all manner of flies, bees and hornets that died and littered the corners of the floor with their fragile carcasses.

She was an odd house for this little southern Vermont community where most of the dwellings favored a colonial style or farmhouse motif with screened-in back rooms and rocking chairs on porches, and potted geraniums emphasizing their whiteness.

Odd as she was, she perfectly suited her inhabitants. The master of this manor looked for all the world like Danny DeVito-- short and dark with a monk’s tonsure of hair fringing his shiny bald pate. He shuffled when he walked but at a pace that belied the concept of shuffling as he hurried to answer the multi-toned and lengthy gonging of the door chime. The chime was accompanied by the howling of three tiny dogs that sounded, as their howls echoed down the halls, as if they were the very Hounds of Baskerville, deep and belying their smallness. On sunny days, it was a laughable introduction to the household. On dreary days, it sent shivers up your spine.

His wife, or companion, was a ramrod-straight, quiet wraith of a redhead of few words. But who could blame her? The voice of the lord of the manor rolled from the depths of his diaphragm and filled the foyer with a mix of welcome and spookiness as the full-size half-nude bronzes populating the hall looked on. How this strange milieu was created in Vermont is anyone’s guess. It was rumored that this voice had been a great force in the halcyon days of radio serials and its owner had been a bit player in movies in the 1940's and '50's. I totally believed it though I had no proof. When I visited the dwelling there had been no Google to assuage my curiosity. The theatrics of the house and its inhabitants screamed of Old Hollywood -- another time and another place.

The atmosphere was one of what I called “moldy money“ – money so old, and earned so long ago, that its traces lingered like the scent of something unidentifiable … elusive. And what seemed like a fortune long ago no longer was -- yet the sense of it remained. 

Today the twin forces of faded wealth and fierce independent living co-mingled in this strange household. The large upstairs bedrooms were rented out as a kind of quasi-nursing home turned respite-care safe house for an assortment of people that society forgot. When the meager income from the moldy money would not pay the taxes, the rooms became available.

And that was why I was here.

The large front bedroom was sparse and spotless. A queen-size bed. A dresser. A bedside stand with a Big Ben clock ticking away the hours. Sheer, white curtains fluttering in the breeze. A large wooden armchair.

Marissa grinned her toothless grin as I entered the door. Her speech was halting and labored in the twisted convolutions of her wounded brain. Her hands and knees were stiff as boards and it was my duty as a visiting occupational therapist to help her exercise and feed herself. Yet we both knew that little real progress would be made, and that the funds would dry up when her progress became only maintenance. We both dreaded that day, and really worked hard at improvement-- like rolling a boulder up a mountain. God gave Marissa a wonderful gift in the form of the loveliest of singing voices … pure and sweet and unimpeded by the cerebral palsy that contorted her speaking voice. It felt like the closest thing to a miracle I had observed in my therapist’s life. Once I discovered this, singing was a part of our visits: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” regardless of season.

Another part of my visits was the constant invitation from the lord of the manor to join him for lunch. It did not seem a professional thing to do nor did I want to deplete their meager store of groceries. I declined time after time. But, as I suspected that our visits were drawing to a close, I wanted to stay, to soak up this odd environment, to enjoy this eccentric and lonely altruism. 

“Come,” he commanded, crooking his finger and heading down a dim hallway lined with Old Master style paintings, dark and imposing. “I’ll make you a salad … you’ve never had one like this before.”

And indeed I had not. The kitchen, surprisingly small and light for the rest of the house, looked sparse and bare. One large red onion was sprouting in a jelly jar on the sill. Thwack …

The green tip sprouts were amputated from the bulb of the onion, gone and chopped before I knew it. The tiny, ancient refrigerator flew open and, like a juggler plying his craft, a jar of this and a lump of that, a hunk of something and a bit of something else unidentifiable, polka-dotted the counter. 

One last green olive in a bottle was fished out and chopped, its red pimento heart becoming six tiny pieces, a spoonful of salty brine extracted before going back in the fridge. A dry lump of cheese no bigger than a marble was grated down to a fine sharp powder. One of the juggler’s pieces was a scrap of hard salami diced into the tiniest of miniature pieces.

Now my host coaxed a few hearty chunks from the root of a celery stalk, wrapped in moist paper and saved for who-knows-how-long but still useful. One tiny carrot became little golden pennies to add to the mix.

Smack … the flat of a knife blade squashed a clove of garlic and a heel of bread became croutons toasted with a few drops of olive oil from an almost-empty bottle.

All I could think of was the story that has gone around the world of the beggar denied food but allowed a pot and a spoon and water to boil, tricking others into contributing a bit of this and a bit of that to the stone he was boiling for his "stone soup." With all the contributions the result was the finest of soups … how clever was this beggar in slaking his hunger!

Magically the old, cut-glass bowl began to fill, and the garlic perfumed the air and invaded my senses. A single leaf of lettuce, a scrap of green pepper, one tiny tomato, a radish no bigger than my pinkie gave up their color and flavor as his knife flew. Yes, my host tricked all the bits and pieces of leftover and usually thrown out food into a salad the likes of which … as my host had said … I had never tasted before. It was rich and complex and delicious and needed not a speck of dressing as the flavors blended into a sumptuous gustatory delicacy served in small but oh-so-satisfying portions.

Within a month, my patient visits were terminated as Marissa was judged to be on a maintenance-only path and no longer eligible for therapy visits. I missed her joy at seeing me come in the door and I missed her clear, bell-like voice and the dual miracle of that voice and the magic salad.

Now, I make this salad often in my own home when I have bits and pieces that do not seem substantial enough to stand on their own.

And my children have it in their lexicon of family language:  “Rock Salad,” for my host indeed went by the name of “Rock.” And, in my mind, there’s only the slightest difference between the man behind the Rock Salad and the one behind stone soup: both were old tricksters of the highest order, making something wonderful out of a wholly improbable start.

This lesson will not be forgotten as the taste of that salad lingers still on my tongue the way the memories of Rock linger in my mind.

Recent Posts:

The Room with Ten Doors

Pennies

WC ... It's Not What You Think

The Room with Ten Doors

Alice felt a good deal like her namesake. Her mother had fallen in love with the “Alice in Wonderland” stories when she was pregnant and named her first born daughter Alice. Once Alice was old enough to understand the chaotic and mysterious story, she seemed to embrace the strangeness of life.

And today was definitely a strange day. She had accepted an invitation to “tea.” Now, I ask you, who in the year of our Lord 2015  -- in rural Vermont where women drive pick-up trucks, stack wood and shear sheep -- gets invited to tea? Alice, that’s who. And from the time she arrived at the old house on the banks of the Batten Kill, she experienced one strange and fanciful thing after another.

Her hostess was a quixotic elderly lady that she had befriended over the counter at the little red country store where she toiled away her days lacing imagination and fantasy with her work. There was never enough time to converse properly and thus Alice was pleased to accept an opportunity to chat unfettered by duty.

Entering the house, she was immediately assailed by the perfume so peculiar to old houses; a potpourri of dry wood and vegetation, of old books, wool throws and scented soap. The power of the aromas transported her to magical, long-ago times when she had, in fact, had tea with women that she thought then to be the very definition of “old,” women steeped in crocheted shawls and. marinated in history. But now, as she herself was considered old, Alice found fewer and fewer of these older women, these friends, family and mentors. She was not aware until today how much she missed them.

The house stood stoic, like a lad dressed for military inspection, as the hostess of the tea party explained some of its history and renovations, ownership and role in family holidays and summers in Vermont. And then, with a quirky grin, she told Alice that the very room that they were standing in, not a big room at all, was the room with ten doors. Alice’s head swiveled, for she had not seen ten doors at all. But there they were, blank, white identical doors marked only by the black-strap, pounded-iron latches; one door to the attic, one to the cellar, another to the kitchen and yet another to the parlor. There was a door to the powder room and one to the “tub” room, a door to the porch, another to a closet and yet another to a bedroom. The tenth door was the door that allowed entrance to -- or exit from -- the mysteries and surprises that the walls contained. Oh, how Alice longed to peek behind the doors.

Instead, she followed her hostess into the kitchen where, to her amazement, the outside window boxes pressed their rich blooms of phlox and geranium right to the old wavy glass as if asking permission to come in. “Ah,” she thought, “this is what window boxes are meant to be but rarely are!” Alice almost expected to see a miniature white rabbit with a pocket watch emerge from among the blossoms and say: “I’m late, I’m late – for a very important date.”  Why, Alice asked herself, had she waited so long to get to know this lady better?

Tea was placed on a tiny round table and served in porcelain cups with a vase of fresh flowers and tiny tea cookies. Alice and her hostess sat in comfy chairs, looking out over the lawn and spreads of black-eyed Susans to the banks of the river below. And then … and then … Alice began to peek behind the doors. Not the ten physical doors, mind you, but the doors of the mind of this woman who had lived a long time, experienced so much, who was wise and funny.

For three hours, Alice sat and sipped, free associating and sharing with her hostess. Doors of literature flew open, touching love poems were read. The shock of shared widowhood was discussed and the quality of their loneliness was compared. Instead of the usual topics of roads and weather that were covered over the country-store counter, they examined the naivete of believing that race relations where solved years ago and the chaotic political scene of today. The joys of music and importance of family were explored, youthful pleasures were recounted. The complications of the electronic age were analyzed. The changing of the scenic vista beyond the window boxes – trees growing and houses sprouting in what used to be fields – were discussed as a metaphor for the changes in life that could not be controlled. The mystery was that these discussions had no rancor or regret.

Alice realized she was reluctant to leave the rabbit hole she had gone down, to close the doors that had flung open. She had not expected to hookah-smoking caterpillar, but by the end of the tea she would not have been surprised to see an eleventh door open in the ceiling, tumbling down a set of stairs toward another thoroughly delightful tea party in the attic of the mind.

So, thought Alice, if she could dispense one piece of advice to her women friends, it would be this: Put your pickup truck in “park,” let the wood tumble where it may instead of stacking it neatly, and let the sheep shearing go for another day. Accept an invitation to “tea” if one presents itself -- or create a tea party of your own.

And then she thought of one more thing: If you’re lucky enough to be invited to “tea,” please leave your electronic gizmos at home -- they will be there long after these rare trips into a mini-wonderland of truly shared digressions, confessions and history lessons of the past are no more.

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Pennies

WC ... It's Not What You Think

"Why we just can't get enough of Alice" (from the L.A. Times)

Pennies

Hokey was troubled.

He watched as he stood in line at the old, red-painted country store in the Vermont valley he called home. The store had been there as long as he could remember and it had not changed much. It still carried a big, motley variety of necessities (duct tape, bread, milk, stove pipe) and a few items that one maybe did not need but wanted to make life a little more pleasant. When he could barely look over the top of the curling linoleum on the counter, it was a stick of licorice-flavored Black Jack gum or a paper of candy dots costing a precious penny that would give him a little joy on the weekly trip to the store.

Now there was a shallow dish on the counter by the computerized cash register that urged folks to "leave a penny" or "take a penny." He was so very old school and couldn't quite wrap his grizzled, aged head around the fact that a penny had so little value that people would toss them willy-nilly into a dish for others to take. Yet almost every customer in the line tossed a penny -- or two or three -- into the little dish with no more thought than they would give to throwing away a gum wrapper or a used Kleenex.

Hokey grew up in an era where a penny was important. Hokey grew up with a Papa who told him to: "Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves." He took this advice to his childhood heart and had saved almost every coppery coin he could since he was six years old, only spending one or two on a Saturday trip to the store. Hokey did not get an allowance like kids today, for he was expected to help with chores simply because he was part of the family ... every member meant more work so every member had to share in that work. What pennies he gathered came from selling eggs or helping old Mrs. Cooper weed her garden. He was a willing worker and he wanted those pennies because he wanted them to turn into dollars. Dollars! What a magical word and what power he would have when he had dollars!

And here he was, 86 years old, bent by time and gravity, still living in the old creaky house with the hollyhocks by door, same as it had been all his life. He couldn't understand much about the modern era and had long ago given up trying, just as the young ‘uns had given up trying to understand his unusual moniker. He didn't bother to tell them that "Hokey" was short for Horatio, just as his pal Corny's name was short for Cornelius. They didn't know how to use a scythe and he didn't know how to use a cell phone. He didn't think either of them cared.

But all generations surely understood money, didn't they?  Didn't everyone know you had to save for what you wanted or for a rainy day?  Hokey's dollars had not brought him magic or power but evaporated like drops of water on a hot stove lid in a series of rainy days comprised of sick kids and broken down tractors. He had spent the pennies that had turned into dollars to pay for what he felt was important. And what he had felt was important was the kids, some biological and some orphans taken in and given a home out of the kindness of his heart and their enormous need to be somewhere where the rules were known and stable. Hokey was not a particularly proud man but he was pretty sure that his penny/dollars had been well spent on the kids, now decent adults. And to take care of them he had to keep his income coming in and repair the tractors and plows and presses that kept his hardscrabble farm producing cider and hay and whatever else he could glean from his land and labor.

Now he watched with more amazement than amusement as the shallow plastic dish by the computerized cash register overflowed with coppery coins so disdained that they were in jeopardy of being discontinued altogether.

Hokey waited patiently as the line at the old country store was moving along slowly, the clerk checking IDs for underage beer drinkers and trying to answer the questions of the tourists that visited his valley during the summer months.  Just in front of him, a classy young blonde lady bent and picked up a penny that had fallen, unheeded, on the worn floorboards.  But instead of tossing it in the dish, she held it in the palm of her hand.  She looked at it almost reverently as a tiny smile quirked at edges of her glossed and pretty mouth.

After a moment, she put it in her pocket.

Hokey was curious and asked, to pass the time, why she didn't just toss it in the dish.

"Oh, it's a bit of a long story" she replied. "My Daddy told me to save pennies and after he passed away and when I find a penny it reminds me of him. It seems like he is still talking to me, telling me to take care of people and pennies."

Hokey immediately liked this unknown departed Daddy and felt a spark of kindred spirit with his attractive offspring.

And Hokey guessed he was right to feel this empathy. For a startlingly attractive little girl, coppery, nappy curls creating a cumulus cloud above her café au lait complexion scampered rounded the corner of the counter and hugged the knees of his waiting companion.

"This is Penny" she said. "She needed me and I needed her ... we saved each other. I'll never throw away a penny, ever."

Now it was Hokey's turn with the clerk and he did not have the words or time to continue this unexpected conversation.  He really didn't need to. He understood perfectly despite the age gap.

He went out to his battered pickup truck with a smile and a renewed faith that pennies were still important. And perhaps there were some in the modern generation that shared, if not the knowledge of how to use a scythe, the value of the little coppery coins in all their manifestations.

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WC ... It's Not What You Think

She did it.

Carlotta moved to Vermont.

But now she was no longer Carlotta, but Carly. Approaching 40, this new name sounded more youthful and sexy and it shed, with its fewer letters, a whole American Tourister showroom full of baggage. It was the outward sign of her beginning transformation.

Her recently departed mother was fond of saying: "Life is messy -- clean it up," and she could be heard muttering this mantra as she changed the kitty litter, raked up mountains of leaves in the yard, laundered greasy clothes and scrubbed crusty dinner dishes.

Now it was Carly's turn to do a major clean up on a level her mother could not have foreseen; sweeping out the clutter of a bad marriage with its garbage heap of guilt and self-doubt, getting rid of the go-nowhere job that numbed her mind, purging the bad relationships and trying to make a clean, new life.

Carly had not chosen lightly. She had looked at a number of places before finally settling on the slower pace of Vermont. She thought she knew the pros and cons. On balance, she felt that if she took her time and found just the right spot she could be quite content with what the state had to offer. Oh, she knew better than to be duped by the slick photos of iconic covered bridges and white-steepled churches that could be caught in an idyllic moment or Photoshopped to perfection. She well knew that the pretty red barns contained piles of manure and that the real black and white cows -- so cute on T-shirts and ice-cream cartons -- had to be milked both dawn and dusk and that it was hard, crappy labor.

In other words, she tried to be realistic and prayed to the God she was aware of -- but not sure of -- that her inevitable surprises would be of the pleasant variety. As the newly minted Carly, she stepped with a wrinkled but lovely optimism, as hopeful as an emerging butterfly's wings, into Vermont life ... the real thing... not the capitalized Vermont Life magazine version. And the real thing is what she got.

After a series of dingy motel rooms, she found a tiny furnished rental over a garage up a steep driveway off Wilcox Road in the west part of the Norman Rockwell's old village of Arlington. It suited her in every way except ... except that there was no camaraderie here. There was only isolation so complete that she felt she was on another planet where the inhabitants scooted around in pickup trucks or CRVs or Subaru Foresters, completing unknown missions before disappearing like rabbits down their holes into dwellings that she could only imagine.

Carly found a job in one of the outlet stores in nearby Manchester. She had to cross the level stretch of meadowland known as Wilcox flats to get to work and never failed to enjoy the changing landscape of Mount Equinox towering to her left and the cows belonging to Wilcox Dairy grazing at the foot of the slope. She had tasted the local ice cream that came from those very cows: Sweet Cream, Double Chocolate Fudge, Pumpkin and Maple Gingerbread Snap. She had graduated from the oh-too-small pints to the half gallons, savoring not only the flavors but the notion that she could, on a regular basis, see the cows that gave the cream from their full udders to become her favorite treat. It was a start to being connected and she found the very name "Wilcox" to be a kind of talisman on her journey. It had obviously been around a long time with all manner of roads, meadows and businesses bearing the name, and she was determined that she too would be here for a long time -- if she could just get acquainted with some people as well as cows.

Oh Carly tried. She went to lectures at the big independent Northshire Bookstore, she went to plays in nearby Dorset and Cambridge. She went to church and joined a gym to work off the effects of too much Wilcox that she devoured in front of endless movies alone at night. People were not unfriendly but they were not exactly welcoming either. Carly slogged through, coping on her own. Like the fabled postal carrier of old, she didn't let snow or ice or mud or flat tires or power outages get her down. But ...

Just when she was about to despair, she got invited to a party! Her co-worker, Mary, had become a savior of sorts -- not quite the bathtub-enshrined icon on the lawns of Believers kind, mind you, but a welcome source of comfort. Mary chatted about the taciturn nature and almost witness-protection privacy of the natives and adopted by newcomers that prolonged the assimilation process.

"Come," she said. "I'm havin’ a shower for my daughter, Pat. She's getting married soon and I'd like you to come meet her since I'll probably be talkin’ a lot about it. There's gonna be a lot of folks there for you to meet."

A few days later Carly received a written invitation to the "Patty's Potluck Party" bearing the curious letters BYOWC at the end. Carly just assumed it was some rural variation on the standard RSVP and since Mary already knew that Carly was more than anxious to attend and would be there come hell or high water, Carly didn’t give it a second thought, instead focusing on what to get for a gift, what to wear, and what of her marginal culinary skills would be appropriate to exercise on behalf of the gathering.

“God, this was fun!” Carly said to herself when the appointed day rolled around. This eclectic group was not exactly the social scene she had envisioned but it was surprising to feel such a part of laying out dollar-store cutlery and hanging the tissue-paper bells from the doorways. Carly had been enlisted to help arrange the trays of slippery deviled eggs, disposable tins of lasagna and tuna casserole around a centerpiece that was a wobbly chocolate cake the shape – and size -- of a tractor tire. Carly sipped "chateau screw top" wine as she learned bits and pieces about the old and the young, the rich and the poor that inhabited the valley, each nugget delivered haltingly as the evening flew by.

Carly joined in on the cleanup, watching as each woman went to her respective colorful tote bag, each one pulling out the same opaque plastic tub that was so familiar to her: the kind that held her favorite Wilcox ice cream. Leavings of macaroni salad, squares of lasagna and brownie and slippery deviled eggs were quickly divided up among the tubs.

"Carly, where are your containers?" asked Mary.

"What?"

"I clearly said on the invite to BYOWC … Bring Your Own Wilcox Containers -- for the leftovers, so you can take some home, you know."

Carly didn't know. She had no idea that the Wilcox tubs were considered so valuable -- as makeshift berry baskets, paint buckets, freezer containers and pet dishes -- that no one would willingly part with one from their own supply. Carly swallowed her laughter at the mystery of the invite code but vowed that now that she was in on it she would not forget. It was as if she had been given the secret

handshake at a sorority initiation. 

Next time – for she was sure there would be a next time the way her surprising clean, new life was taking shape -- she wouldn't forget.

And Lord knows, she certainly had plenty of Wilcox containers!

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