Howard Frank Mosher’s The Great Northern Express: A Writer’s Journey Home was among the “withdrawn” books offered at a book sale at the Minot-Sleeper Library in Bristol this past summer. Mosher is the author of such books as Where the Rivers Flow North (the basis for the film of the same title starring Rip Torn, Tantoo Cardinal, Michael J. Fox, and Bill Raymond) and A Stranger in the Kingdom (also made into a film starring Ernie Hudson, David Lansbury, Martin Sheen, and Jean Louisa Kelly) — stories that draw upon Mosher’s experiences living in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.
In the present book, Mosher describes what he liked about country music: “[I]t occurred to me that all of the country songs I loved best told a story. Many of these stories celebrated the lives and homes of people nobody else cared about. Long-distance truckers. Barroom singers. Coal miners and dirt farmers. Down-and-out rodeo riders and hoboes and death-row prisoners.
“Like those country music singers in the fall of 1964, I wanted to tell the stories of the loggers and hill farmers and whiskey-runners and moonshiners of the Northeast Kingdom.”
His reminder of the adage, “Write about what you know,” made me think about the colorful “characters” of my childhood, from the “Patten boys” to John and Helen Tracy to Harlan Lamos to Arthur Woods to Freddie Robinson to “Blackie” the hermit to (in later years) another “hermit” — Almon Bucklin. They were interesting people who embodied eccentricity, uniqueness, humor — perhaps a little of each. They were a rare breed that I’m not sure still exist, but they make interesting stories.
My earliest memory is of riding in the back of a pickup truck as we moved a quarter-mile up the road from “the house on the corner” to our new home on what then was known as the Borough Road (today’s Smith River Road, having been cut off from the remainder of the Borough Road in Hill). Another early memory is walking down “the junkyard road” to the camp where my grandparents always had a tin of Saltine crackers waiting for me — the four-up variety that disappeared when the packaging went from tin to cardboard. The third early memory I have is the fire across the river when Blackie’s shack burned down.
Blackie (I never heard his real name — can anyone reading this help me?) had a reputation as an irascible hermit with violent tendencies who was to be avoided at all costs. However, on that particular night, when we saw Bristol fire trucks rushing past our house, we followed along as they crossed the High Bridge into Hill to see what the commotion was all about. A steep roadway that shot up from the Borough Road, leading to Blackie’s shack, was lined with fire trucks. We pulled over beside the road and walked up to the site of the fire. I recall seeing Blackie up close for the first time as he watched the flames destroy his home, hopelessness in his eyes.
I must have been only three or four years old at the time and, fascinated by the destructive fire in front of me, I wandered closer, until a firefighter yelled at me to step aside while they brought hoses to bear on what little remained of the hermit’s home.
A family we knew that lived farther up the Borough Road allowed Blackie to take up residence in a shack on their property where, as far as I know, he lived out his life. We were told not to bother him when we visited them, as we often did in those days when neighbors were neighbors.
Living in a glen off the Borough Road were the Patten boys — Fred and Frank — who had an inelegant rustic cabin near a running brook. Fred was a genial white-haired man who always seemed to be wearing a frock coat. His brother, Frank, similarly attired in a frock coat and a battered cap, was not as likable and had the reputation of being “the lazy one” who avoided work as much as possible. My memories of visiting them was sitting at a table next to a window with flies buzzing around. (I always think of that visit when I hear the line “There’s flies in the kitchen/I can hear them buzzing” in Bonnie Raitt’s rendition of “Angel From Montgomery”.)
Each spring around Easter, Fred would give us a baby rabbit or two to raise over the summer. My sister and I loved to cuddle the soft little creatures and enjoyed bringing them their food pellets — unlike my dislike of feeding grain to the chickens who seemed always ready to chase me away. Every fall, Fred would take the rabbits back, to our great disappointment, and shortly after that my mother would prepare a rabbit stew. Kathi and I never made the connection.
When he brought the baby rabbits to us in the spring, Fred Patten also would sit for a haircut. He always let his hair grow long during the winter, which was unusual for anyone at the time, but in the spring, he would submit to my mother’s clippers, leaving a large pile of white hair on the kitchen floor which my mother would burn in the wood stove after he left.
Frank eventually moved into the Merrimack County Nursing Home, which my parents used to say was not because he needed nursing care but because he would then be assured of good food and a warm place to stay.
We had a hard time picturing the Patten boys living on the property on our side of the river that we knew as the D’Arcy residence: a beautiful home near the Low Bridge on Smith River Road (which at that time began at the High Bridge where the Borough Road veered into Hill and ran on the Bristol side of the river to Route 104). The Patten boys owned that extensive property before selling it to the family that erected the current house, and we always wondered what it had been like when the Pattens lived there.
Another family that we knew was John and Helen Tracy, who lived farther away, on Pattee Hill Road in a house next to Helen’s mother, Carrie, in South Alexandria. Two memories stand out: The time John walked from his home to ours with the tale of having me a raccoon on the road and proceeding to stomp it to death in case it had rabies; and the time Helen and Carrie told of the wonderful time they had visiting Disneyland in California — something we children thought was hilarious, picturing our elderly neighbors on a roller-coaster or visiting Cinderella’s castle.
I can imagine including these personalities — as well as the four I haven’t yet discussed — in a future novel, just as I used episodes from my mother’s family history in my still-in-progress novel, Lunar Processions, which I have tinkered with for the past 45 years. I just need a little more time.
I’d love to hear from any readers who have further anecdotes or information about Blackie, Fred and Frank, John, Helen, and Carrie, Harlan Lamos, Arthur Woods, Freddie Robinson, Almon Bucklin, or any other “characters” you may recall. These are stories worth telling before the memories are gone.
National Gratitude Month
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