Ben Joslin Courtesy Old Mill Road Media
Twenty-Eight & Counting
By Gail Elizabeth Wind
No , I wasn ’ t born here , but give me just a smidge of credit . I ’ ve lived here for almost twenty-nine years . THAT ’ S TWENTY-EIGHT WINTERS AND COUNTING !
When we first moved here , every woman I met asked me , “ Have you spent the winter here yet ?” When I said , “ No ,” it was as if I ’ d put on Harry Potter ’ s invisibility cloak . Unless you ’ ve done at least one winter here , you aren ’ t worthy of being invested in as a friend .
About a week ago , I met a woman in the grocery store who told me she just moved to Vermont with her husband . I said , “ Oh , that ’ s nice ; have you spent the winter here yet ?” Her response in the negative reminded me of many young and old folks I ’ ve met in the last three decades who ’ ve come to “ try out Vermont ” and didn ’ t make it a full year . I told her gently , “ Well , hunker down , Vermont winters are nothing to smirk at ; I hope I see you next spring ,” and went quietly on my way .
We moved to our home in Newark , Vermont in a very strange way . Thirty-one years ago , my husband said , “ We ’ ve lived in Illinois near your family for almost ten years . I ’ d like to live near my family in Vermont .”
Knowing that he was not a terrific self-starter , I said , “ Sure , put a sign in the
yard .” He did more than that . He hired two realtors , one to sell our home in Illinois and one to find us a home in Vermont . That part of the story is nearly book-length itself , because it took nearly a year and a half , but we got here .
Hubby drove an overloaded U-Haul truck towing a 22-foot sailboat . He had one of our children as a passenger . I drove a ten-year-old blue Subaru Station Wagon with our other child . We switched kids at mealtimes and rest stops . Our eighteenyear-old cat , Smokey , rode in the sailboat . Our very pregnant , two-year-old cat , Poundcake , rode with me .
We arrived at our home on a dirt road three days before Mother ’ s Day , and after three days of heavy spring rain . . . in mud season .
We left the truck up on the road because our door yard was very spongy . We planned to bring the truck closer to the house when the yard had dried out a bit .
Overnight , our truck ’ s right rear tire sank up to its axel in the mud . We found our garden shovels , dug it out , moved it four feet up the road and it sank again . So we spent the day hauling things seventy-five feet from tailgate to front door .
We were lying in bed early on the second morning when we heard a terrible din coming up the road .
“ What ’ s that ?” I asked .
“ That ’ s just the road grader ,” hubby informed me . “ It chops up the road and then flattens it out .” I didn ’ t quite understand , ( we flatlanders usually leave our roads alone unless we need to fill a pothole ) but I knew from the sound that the machine must be huge .
“ Get up , get up !” I commanded . I slipped on a pair of shorts and a pretty blouse , not my usual truck-unloading costume . I ran down to the truck , pushed up the rear door and grabbed something too large for me to carry alone . I struggled with it until Russel Bedor the grader operator came up the hill across from our house .
He eyed the truck , me , the house , me , the truck again and then said , “ Stuck .”
“ Yeah ,” I said , with embarrassment . “ I guess we are .”
His next words , verbatim I swear , were , “ Want me to snick you out of there ?” Like that Queen-Mary-sized U-Haul was an Easter Basket that had blown into a thicket of burdock . “ Yes , please .” Russel got down and began dragging an uncommonly heavy length of chain off the back of the grader and started hooking up the truck . By this time , hubby was out and humbly following directions . Russel
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