Chapter 16 … Beyond Yonder

[In an impressive display of professional incompetence, I managed to screw up my own life story by publishing Chapter 16 (Tales and More Tales of Beyonder) BEFORE Chapter 15 (Beyond Yonder.) My apologies, Dear Reader. Thank you for sharing the mis-adventures of this sometimes-not-too extra-ordinary life. SM]

From “Autobio-grafitti,” the rap version of “Extra-Ordinary:”

 “That’s when it all came together

writing, woodstoves, Vermont’s crappy weather”

In the summer of 1979, the Morris family of three, the same three (albeit one “in utero”) that a year earlier had travelled across the country on a quest for beer, bought a house in West Brookfield, a small hamlet located on a dirt crossroads. It’s a cluster of less than a dozen houses, including a church, a one-room schoolhouse, and a dairy farm. It’s a place unlike any other place.

We didn’t know it when we bought the house, a circa 1850s cape, but it was a place of unique personalities, as well. And the statement holds true no matter who moves in or out.

We didn’t know it when we moved, but there were also a number of young families of our same vintage in the village and the surrounding area. We were now firing on all cylinders— the family front, the professional front, and the community front. To say I was a happy guy is to underestimate the all-encompassing power of the word “happy.”

Soon thereafter, Laura became pregnant with our son, Patrick. “Happy” became “happier.” But, you ask, what about your ambition to become a famous writer? That piece, dear reader, was soon to fall into place as well.

Life was chaotic, but happily so. I re-established my home brewery and formed a group called the Cram Hill Brewers, named for a nearby landmark. It was Vermont’s first homebrewing club. One of the earliest photos I have of Patrick is of him pulling himself to his feet using a 5-gallon carboy as a prop. It was published in the national magazine, “Zymurgy.”

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On a frigid New Year’s Eve gathering at a neighbor’s, a few of us having recently crossed the threshold of 30 were lamenting the fact that we were no longer the young studs of our recollection. Our New Year’s resolution was that we would get ourselves into such good physical shape that we would be able to run, without stopping!, the entire 8-mile loop that defined the Valley of West Brookfield. On Labor Day of that year we held the first Classic, a road race that would be held, officially for the next ten years and, unofficially, for another 10.

In 1981, Patrick was born, and the second annual, modestly titled “Classic” was held in conjunction with the first-ever Vermont State Homebrew Competition, an event of such newsworthiness that it was covered on the front page of The Boston Globe, New England’s largest newspaper. (I still scratch my head over this one!)

But, you persist, Dear Reader, what about the famous writer part of your life?  Hold on, I’m getting to it.

Vermont Castings continued its rocket ride. The company was presented with a myriad of business opportunities of debatable merit. One such opportunity was from a book packager named Bob Entwhistle who suggested that the company write a book on the burgeoning practice of heating with wood. Duncan and Murray thought it was a good idea, but … who’s got time to write a book?

As with establishment of the dealer network, I had firmly established established myself as, in the words of Duncan Syme, “Vice President of Projects That No One Else Wants To Do.” Four months later “The Book of Heat” written by the staff of Vermont Castings and edited by Stephen Morris and Bill Busha was published.

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Back to Baseball … Opening Day in West Brookfield

(Here’s a reminder of how life is a game … baseball is serious.)

The Morris family of my youth moved four times in eight years. My dad was moving up the professional ladder at the American Red Cross. Our lives were exceptionally white, middle class, and average, establishing the tone for my life. Not just ordinary … extra-ordinary. For our family the constants were not the apartments where we lived, but rather the things that did not change–Post Island, baseball, and our family friends, the Lukeharts. Howard “Luke” Lukehart held a similar position to my Dad’s at the Red Cross, my sister Jan and Nancy Lukehart were best friends, youngest daughter Betty and I were besties, and older sister Sue was engaged to a Yalie, giving me a role model for later life.

Perfect Game

The story begins on October 8, 1956. World Series time. Autumn in the air. Leaves turning. Lots of commercials for Gillette razors on television. (The Gillette company always shot its advertising wad by offering premiums during World Series time.) The school bell rang at Bellevue Elementary School. I took off running across the schoolyard, across the foot bridge crossing the creek, onto West Wakefield Drive and to the Lukehart’s apartment where I knew my mother would be playing bridge with her lady friends.

Not only was this the shortest route to my Mom, but I knew that Viola “Vi” Lukehart was a real baseball fan, and would certainly have the game on the TV in the background, making this also the shortest route to the World Series.

I burst into the room. No locked doors in those days. Four ladies are fanning their cards and take little notice. Finally, Vi, not looking up from her cards, addresses me. “The Yankees are leading, but something else is going on. I think maybe the pitcher hasn’t given up any hits.”

The “something else” turns out to be the final inning of the only perfect game ever thrown in World Series history. Turning up the volume is not an option, so I get within a foot of the small black and white television. This is exactly what I saw:

Dale Mitchell is sent up to pinch hit. Three quick strikes later (yes, the last pitch was six inches off the plate) Mitchell is arguing futilely with the ump while Yogi has flung himself into Larsen’s arms. I have witnessed baseball history and I have no one with whom to share the moment.

“Two no trump,” one of the ladies says.

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It’s a long winter. All winters are long. But finally, daylight savings time. For the first time in many months you can go outside to play AFTER dinner. Then, at long last, opening day.

The Opening Day ritual is an annual indulgence. I am allowed to skip school. I drag chairs from around the house and drape hats over them to simulate the ballpark crowd. I open all the windows and turn the television volume way too loud. My mom serves up boiled hot dogs in soggy buns with bright yellow mustard, just like at the game. I’m allowed to throw peanut shells on the floor. Just not on the rug, Buster!

Living in the metro-DC area gives Opening Day a little added spice. The home town team is the Washington Senators–First in War, First in Peace, and Last in the American League. The Senators give the home town fans little to cheer for, although as the seat of government, the team does have the distinction of playing the very first game of the season, with the President throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.

One year my father arranges for me to attend Opening Day in person. I prefer the home routine.

Play ball!

(Footnote on the Lukeharts. Our families separate a few years later when my father is transferred to Providence, Rhode Island to be manager of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Red Cross. A few months I receive a package from middle daughter, Nancy, who has a babysitting job with the rookie third baseman for the Senators who moved in to our old apartment with his young family— Harmon Killebrew! Even more amazingly, he signed a baseball for me! Happy Boy!)

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Flash forward a full generation. Many, many opening days have passed since Don Larson threw his no-hitter. The Young Lad is now fully grown. He now lives in a Brigadoon village in rural Vermont in a hundred year old farmhouse with his pretty wife and two young sons, both of whom are afflicted with the dreaded “Red Sox Disease.” He even went to Yale like Sue Lukehart’s beau.

It’s Opening Day, even though in Vermont that likely means there’s still two feet of snow on the ground, the sap is flowing, and the roads have turned to mud.  Younger son, Patrick, is feeling under the weather with a sore throat and lobbies to stay home from school. Hard-ass Dad knows the ruse, but soft-touch Mom over-reacts and wants to keep him home so that she can administer to his whims and needs. To demonstrate her sense of motherly responsibility, she has also procured an appointment with our local pediatrician. Of course, she had also indulged Patrick in allowing him to set up chairs with hats between the couch and the television, and has stocked up with all his favorite snacks.

I say. “Go Sox! Who’s pitching today?” I ask Patrick–wink, wink, nudge, nudge, knowing it is a trick question. Who else is it going to be except Roger “Rocket” Clemens? Mid-morning, the phone rings at the office. It is Laura. There is tension in her voice. “We’re just getting into the ambulance, heading to Dartmouth (meaning the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center). The doctor thinks Patrick might have epiglottitis.”  Stunned, I barely have time to ask “What’s epiglottitis?” before she says, “Gotta go.”

“Epiglottitis is a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the epiglottis — a small cartilage “lid” that covers your windpipe — swells, blocking the flow of air into your lungs.

Epiglottitis – Mayo Clinic”

The medical center is an hour away. I catch up to the ambulance mid-way, and, siren blaring, follow them in. Patrick is confused; I am confused; Laura is confused.

Laura and Patrick had gone to his appointment with Dr. Louis DiNicola, who looked in Patrick’s throat, then quietly went to the telephone and ordered up an ambulance before saying anything to patient or mother.

There is no room for Patrick at the hospital, so he is set up temporarily on a bed in the corridor until a room opens up. By now the game has started, but our lives have been overturned by a drama more serious than … baseball. Eventually we are shuttled into a room and a nurse comes by with some medications. “We can’t have you swallow these,” she says cheerily to Patrick, “so we’re going to give them to you … through your back.”

Patrick nods obediently. We Morris Men are like that. Slowly, however, a thought bubble rises over his head …

“What exactly does she mean? Through my back? … YEOW!” (This is now the stuff of Morris-Boy legend, and is re-told at every family gathering.)

Eventually we actually watch an inning or two of the game on some TV in a waiting lounge, but the game is now a footnote in a different drama. Patrick, thankfully, turns out to not have epiglottitis and is released after a night in the hospital. Did Dr. DiNicola overreact? When it comes to health of my children, I WANT him to overreact, so thank you, Doctor!

When we come home, the chairs are still set up between the couch and the TV. I can’t remember if the Red Sox won on this opening day, but another season of baseball has begun.

Chapter 16 Tales and more Tails of Beyonder

Remember “The Book of Heat?” The ink was barely dry on that project when the publisher approached me, asking “What are you going to do next for us, Stephen?”

What’s this? Rather than me groveling before publishers whey were asking me what I was going to do next? The shoe, I realized, was now on the other foot. “Would you be interested in a book on beer?” And that’s how “The Great Beer Trek” finally saw the light of day.

Even though five years had passed since the manuscript was completed, the book created a modest stir and the publisher was back again … now what? Still nurturing thoughts of being a great novelist I proposed a book of fictional stories set in a rural Vermont hamlet, not unlike West Brookfield. And thus, “Beyond Yonder.”

Soon thereafter I began writing a bi-weekly humor column for the Vermont Sunday Magazine called “Tales of Beyonder.” I was the Dave Barry of the Northwoods, the Garrison Keillor of the Green Mountains. I was a Vice-President of the hottest woodstove company on the planet, originator of the Classic, head brewer of the Cram Hill Brewers, husband, father … in short I was The King of Vermont (the title of my next novel).

Here are the types of vignettes that I published:

LAMSON’S BUS, A Christmas Story

The yellow school bus is as much a part of the rural landscape as the red barn or the hay silo. Sometimes we forget about the precious cargo.

I’ve never met Lamson. I don’t even know his first name (or is “Lamson” his first name?), but for the past eight years I have entrusted him, twice a day, with the safety of my children. Lamson is the bus driver who has the route that extends to the far reaches of our hamlet. Although less than ten miles between here and the school, it is a forty-five minute bus route that takes place almost entirely on unpaved, hilly back roads. The route passes dairy farms, rushing brooks, sugarbushes-the best of Beyonder. But to experience it, one must brave the nether side of Vermont’s scenic roads-mud, washboard, and ice. 

Lamson spends little time sightseeing. The challenge of maneuvering a yellow steel box jammed with kids from five to thirteen does not permit the luxury of leaf-peeping. Although I’ve never met him, he’s like one of the family. He takes care of nosebleeds and other unexpected emergencies. The children tease him, and he gives it right back. At Christmas he provides candy, and on the last day of school, sodas. 

I hear about it at the dinner table. It is the highest form of compliment when I say that Lamson is a Beyonder kind of guy. 

Last year, on the Friday just before Christmas, a drizzle, so fine as to be almost imperceptible, began around noon. I realized there was a problem when I fishtailed on the Interstate. It was one of those situations that the veteran Beyonderite recognizes as Trouble-moisture meets frigid pavement, resulting in ice. Conditions get even worse on the back roads. 

The mist became a light rain. In offices around the state holiday revelry was curtailed in favor of driving home while there was still daylight. Even with last minute shopping and errands, these were conditions to grind Vermont to a standstill, with residents content to make it to the comfort of the hearth, and no further. 

The real extent of this particular Trouble became evident when I saw seven cars awaiting the sand truck at the bottom of the hill leading to Upper Granville. 

“The hill’s an ice ball,” said one of the stranded seven, a native Beyonder, and no foreigner to Trouble. 

“Any word on the school bus?”

“It’s late, but that’s all I know.”

The school bus is late. These four words bring many elements of life in Vermont into sharper focus. This is a world where the elements must not be taken for granted. A small slip, an error in timing, an unseeable patch of ice and our entire lives can instantly be inverted in a ditch. 

Because I am not too bright (and because I felt emboldened by my four wheel drive vehicle), I charged up the hill, taking with me two neighbors who balanced my chances of making it positively against the time it would take for the sand truck to reach our neck of the woods. Piece of cake (well, maybe not for the ordinary guy, but for someone with my driving abilities, no problem, ma’am). 

There was tension apparent in the village, settling in as visibly as the fog and the darkness. The reports were grim. Yes, the bus was stuck, caught between two hills too steep and icy to climb. The sand trucks (both of them) were shuttling back and forth to help, but the rate of icing was too great for them to keep up. 

Maybe we should have voted for that third truck at town meeting. It had not seemed necessary at the time, but the kids-our children-had not been stuck in the cold, dark, middle of nowhere then, with no one to comfort them and keep them safe. 

Except Lamson. That’s when we all began appreciating the guy. We gathered in the kitchen, warmed by the stove and cups of coffee, and the mood lightened as the ice worsened. ཁPoor kids,ཁ we thought, then, upon reflection, “Poor Lamson!”

The phone network kept us informed. After the obligatory Christmas parties at school, the kids had been put on the bus early, where Lamson provided them with even more candy. Now the guy was captive in his steel box with forty-five sugar-juiced, hyper-banshees looking forward to Santa. The man was probably tied to his seat, the wheel commandeered by a ten-year-old. 

It was pitch black, nearly three hours late, when we heard the sand truck grinding up the hill. The schoolbus was inches behind. The kids poured out, bubbling tales of adventure, none the worse except for one common woe-everyone had to pee. As the children ran to bathrooms, Lamson barely had time for a wave, let alone the formal acceptance of accolades. Like another man who delivers precious gifts at Christmas, he had more promises to keep. All was well once again in the land of Beyonder, and I swear, as Lamson and his yellow sleigh clattered down the hill, the chains on his tires sounded like jingle bells.

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Did I let my success go to my head. You bet I did. The one capacity that I possess in limitless supply is self-delusion. There is almost no success that I cannot imagine for myself. Since we’ve had a Christmas story, let’s balance it with an Easter story in which I seemingly bring the puppy back from the dead.

The Resurrection of Cimarron, an Easter Story

Easter is the spring holiday, a time of resurrection and redemption. But Easter in Vermont is often a time of despair and suicidal thoughts. The rest of the world is awash in daffodils, forsythia, and cherry blossoms. We are awash in ruts and mud. The local road crew has never been so important. Their loads of gravel sink into the ooze, turning it into lumpy, barely passable porridge that provides a lifeline to the civilized world.

It’s not pretty in Vermont at Easter.

According to the English Book of Common Prayer, “Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon, or next after the 21st day of March (the vernal equinox); and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after.” Translated, Easter can fall on dates between March 22 and April 25.

While the rest of the world celebrates Easter with parades, new clothes, bonnets, and colorfully-dyed eggs, these seem inappropriate in a state where the only thing pushing up through the snow are the winter’s accumulation of frozen dog turds.

Photo by Alexey Demidov on Pexels.com

But it came to pass this one Easter, and a particularly early one, that fortune smiled on the state of Vermont. Even though it was still March, a warm sun poured down on a budless state, swamped in mud, with maple sap coursing through its veins.

In our hamlet of West Brookfield, populated by a potpourri of flatlanders and natives, we celebrated with a community brunch. It was an odd sight to see people clad in Easter finery still wearing Sorels, arriving with their covered dishes.. The menu was cholesterol laden– cheesy quiches, bacon, popovers, and omelets made to order–but indulgence was permissible, at least this one day a year.

The conversation was predictable. The first subject is always the weather. The same people who are the sour complainers (“Can you believe this is Spring?”) become the state’s biggest boosters when the weather gods smile (“Can you believe this is Spring?”). After brunch, we resolved to don our boots and do the unthinkable, take an Easter stroll in the warm sunlight.

Counting kids and dogs, we were at least twenty strong. The dirt road was flaccid, but not unwalkable. It had a springy feel, like a water balloon. An intrepid few shed their boots and walked barefoot.

It was that warm.

Photo by Carolina Basi on Pexels.com

The town had never witnessed such a spectacle. We walked past the church and one-room schoolhouse where Stella, who still lives in town, taught and where, Lynn, who runs the all-encompassing dairy farm, learned. We walked up to the cow barn, but when the cow plops became unavoidable we retraced our steps to the village green which abuts the small mill pond, now pregnant with the melting snow from the hillsides, and brimming to the top of its dam.

The pond and dam date from the settlement’s earliest days, when water power was used for a variety of purposes, but primarily for sawing lumber. According to the town history West Brookfield and Thereabouts by Alice Wakefield (self-published, 1985) “Two separate sets of mills were built to provide lumber, shingles, flour, cider, and other necessities for the entire region.” Although the mills have long since disappeared, the dam that created the pond was maintained by a Wakefield family member for fire safety purposes and simply as a monument to the past. (To some, the town of West Brookfield is itself a monument to the past.)

The crowd gravitated to the adjoining green. Someone found a Frisbee, someone else a tennis ball, someone else a stick. Before long the village green was alive by flying objects, running children, and ecstatic dogs chasing sticks thrown into the pond, newly liberated from its icy surface by the surging spring snowmelt. One of those dogs was Cimarron, a Golden Retriever with a disposition so relentlessly friendly that she was often referred to as the community dog.

Photo by Garfield Besa on Pexels.com

To describe Cimarron as beloved would not be an exaggeration. To say that her face bore a constant smile of beatific grace would be accurate. To say that she had an aura of the divine … well, sure, in a doggy kind of way.

The way a simple dam works is that there is an underwater opening which may or may not be closable that permits a flow though of water that is slightly less than the normal flow of the stream. The underwater opening of the dam in West Brookfield is fixed and cannot be opened or closed. The surplus water backs up to fill the cavity upstream of the dam, creating a pond. If an excess of water enters the pond, such as on warm spring days when the snow melt in the surrounding hills is prodigious, the pond level rises until the excess spills over the top.

On this Easter Day, the pond in West Brookfield was at its brim. The underwater opening was gushing a noisy torrent. The surface of the pond was placid, serene, giving no clue as to the monster beneath.

Photo by Leticia  Azevedo on Pexels.com

As the adults surveyed the scene, their bellies full and basking in sunlight, tragedy unfolded. Someone threw a stick a little too close to the dam. Cimarron, obliging as ever, splashed after it, but as she turned to swim back (she’s a retriever, remember?), she was caught in the under current from the opening in the bottom of the dam.

In Hollywood a drama unfolds over two hours. The progression is: “things are good, things get bad, things get worse, things get better.” But this wasn’t Hollywood. This was bedrock Vermont, on an unusually warm Easter Sunday. The progression from good to worse took only a few seconds. Cimarron swam harder, still obediently holding the stick in her mouth. For a moment she held her own, then she started to be pulled under. She swam harder, but moved in the opposite direction. She disappeared.

We watched silently and helplessly. A child spoke “Will she come out the other side?” The menfolk studied the tops of the shoes. The dam had been rebuilt only the previous summer, a community project where we had cheerfully pushed wheelbarrows of dirt and concrete. We put into place the heavy iron grate designed to prevent the lower opening from being jammed with logs, or golden retrievers. Now, as a community, we shared the vision of a motionless dog, pinned against this same grate by the unrelenting force of the melting snow.

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The children began to wail.

But this is an Easter story, remember? And Hollywood has nothing on Vermont. Our anguish was disturbed by movement to the right. We turned in unison. It was a creature. It was coming our way. It moved unsteadily. It was a Golden Retriever. … a very wet, very bedraggled Cimarron wobbling towards us from downstream.

The cries of the children are replaced by hugs of a still quivering dog. The Easter clothes are getting wet and doggy, but there is no parental admonishment. Clothes, after all, can be washed and even hung out to dry on this lovely, wonderful, warm, sunny Easter day.

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Things get better. The spectrum of human drama takes place in less than a minute in a small community on a warm Easter day in a tiny hamlet on a dirt crossroads in Vermont. With order restored, it is left to the menfolk to create the narrative to explain the myth. How did Cimarron get through the dam? Perhaps the force of the water was so great that it created a passage under the dam. Perhaps the bones of a dog are flexible enough to be compressed enough to fit between the bars of the grate.

Perhaps there is no explanation, other than that it was Easter.

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