When I moved to my small town in the late 1980’s I was befriended by a co-worker, the Matriarch of a large extended family. One Summer she invited me to a large extended family gathering and at one point I was in the farmhouse living room when one of my friend’s grandsons, aged perhaps five, was expelled from the kitchen. The conversation went like this:
Grandson: “Nana’s making a boysenberry pie for dessert.”
Richard: “Poison berry!? I don’t want to eat a poison berry pie!”
GS: “Not poison berry, boysenberry!”
R: “Oh! I get it now. Gotcha!”
(Grabs the startled GS, carries him back into the kitchen where my friend is tending the oven, and plops him down on a chair.)
R: “I understand you’re making a boys-and-berries pie. Here’s one boy. I’ll go catch another boy and then see if I can find some berries.”
GS: “Not boys and berries, boysenberry!”
The mighty Missisquoi River bisects my small town’s central village. In days of yore the river powered riverside sawing and milling operations. There used to be a dam but when electrical power came into town the dam was removed because the Spring thaw ice jams it caused were more trouble than they were worth.
So now the ice jams farther down the river where it forks forming an island. The jam backs up the water so much the layer of broken ice floes, which extends about a quarter mile back, rises about 20 feet getting disconcertingly close to the level of the Bridge to the person seeing it for the first time. When it was my first time I got out my camera and took some pictures. This became an annual tradition and when the Internet came into town I started posting the pictures on my web site.
One Summer the State decided my town’s Bridge, which was built after the Flood of 1927, needed a renovation. Since the Bridge couldn’t be used during the work a rickety temporary bridge was put in a short ways upriver. The span there is longer than at the Bridge location so a rickety temporary pylon was erected in the middle of the river for support. The renovation was scheduled to take a year.
When I saw this I went to my office, composed a single page composite of ice jam pictures, printed it out, and went out to find the guy with the hi-viz vest, hard hat, and clipboard. I found him, gave him the printout, and said, “You know this happens every Spring, right?”
His face turned white.
I forget which outfit the State hired to do the Bridge project but they must have had pull with Someone because for the first time in years there wasn’t an ice jam that Spring. I was very disappointed.
Here’s a picture of this year’s ice jam:
I am not a Native Vermonter. Only two of my grandparents were born in Vermont so the best I can claim is half-blood. And I wasn’t born and raised in Vermont which means by the standards of my friends and neighbors I’m no better than a child concerning Things That Really Matter like Hunting.
One of the reasons I have friends and neighbors is, unbeknownst to me at the time, my property purchases were some the best deer hunting territory in town. In exchange for hunting rights I was adopted into another large extended family and even invited come up to Deer Camp despite the fact I’d never fired a rifle before. That changed when an Uncle bequeathed unto me his father’s, my grandfather’s, hunting rifle a sportsterized Mauser in .30-06 he purchased in 1931. Luckily the Patriarch of my new family used to own a Mauser and was able to instruct me in its use.
In Vermont you don’t need a hunting license to hunt on your own property so I didn’t get one. I did get a ladder stand and the Patriarch recommended I set it up near the Canadian border where he said the deer had an established trail. In retrospect I think he suggested that location because it was far away from his and his family’s traditional hunting spots.
So one fine early Winter morning, AKA “still nighttime,” I donned the warmest combination of clothes I could assemble, shouldered the Mauser and a backpack full of ammo, and hiked up to my ladder stand. I got my equipment and myself up and commenced hunting which in this case meant sitting quietly while waiting for my prey to innocently wander by.
I actually saw a deer! Based on its appearance I designated Target #1 “Bambi” but it wasn’t a legal shot even if I’d been inclined to take it. I don’t mind being the butt of good-natured jokes but going to Deer Camp hauling a deer that weighed less than I did would have been too much.
My first hunting expedition was cut short when the sun rose over the other side of the river valley. I was sitting facing southeast and realized I’d not even considered bringing that essential hunting garment the baseball cap. The sun was in my eyes and I couldn’t see a damn thing. Entire herds of legal bucks could have been passing below me and I’d never know. I decided I wasn’t going wait until the sun was high enough to stop being a bother so I went back to my cabin.
A few days later I tried again. That time halfway up the adjacent lot’s trail up into the woods I encountered the largest porcupine I’ve ever seen. It must have been two and a half feet long and I don’t know who was more surprised. When I surmounted the crest to the main trail I startled a trophy-worthy buck. It saw me before I saw it so all I saw was its white tail as it ran up the hill. A minute later I heard a bang. My adopted family’s Patriarch’s son shot it and the trophy is now hanging up at Deer Camp. I keep telling them this story and they keep not giving me credit for the assist.
Other than the porcupine and the assist deer I didn’t see a single thing the second and last time I went hunting but I did nearly get frostbite.
The Flood of 1927 was obviously not the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927
but the far more significant Great Vermont Flood of 1927:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vermont_Flood_of_1927
The span there is longer than at the Bridge location so a rickety temporary pylon was erected in the middle of the river for support.
What could possibly go wrong?
The rickety temporary pylon collapses, the rickety temporary bridge collapses, and the components are carried by the ice into the Bridge being renovated and it collapses.
Think of all the broken windows!
Job security!
One of my first Glibs articles was about the two firearms my Uncle sent me: the Mauser and a real-genuine Colt Single Action Army revolver owned by my great-grandfather. The Colt had my g’g-father’s leather holster with an elaborate embossing that no-one could figure out. It may have had something to do with the Illinois militia but even the historian of the Illinois militia couldn’t make heads-or-tail of it.
I probably told this story in the long-lost article but when I got the Colt I contacted the Colt historical department to see if they any records about it. I was told it cost $50 for a report or $100 for an expedited report. There was no urgency so I let them bill me for $50. A few weeks later I got in the mail a letter saying all the records of that time were destroyed in a fire and the best they could say was they did produce a Colt SAA with the serial number I gave them.
I love me some boysenberries. Huckleberries and marrionberries, and I’m happy.
Getting to be shoulder season but made a fire tonight to take the edge off of the dampness.
I made a fire too to take the chill off but I’m still in Winter mode. Too much wood. It’s 85F in here.
Bitchsetmeupberries.
When typing up that anecdote I looked into boysenberries and was surprised to discover they’re not grown in Vermont:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boysenberry
My friend was cooking with foreign berries!
I think I was confusing them with elderberries which grow wild around here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambucus
In Vermont there’s a sure-fire technique to know when your elderberries are ripe: You wake one morning and discover the birds ate them all overnight.
Ex-wife and I rented a farm house for a bit, and it had a beautiful grape arbor. I started having plans for all the concord grapes- wine, jelly, wine-jelly, etc.
1 week out of town I came back to it picked clean by either deer or birds. Perhaps both.
“They have all sorts of pies!”
“Like what?”
“Blueberry, blackberry, blackberry-boysenberry, boysenberry-huckleberry, huckleberry-raspberry, raspberry-strawberry, strawberry-cranberry…
Peach.”
Why didn’t you shoot the porcupine?
(Only mostly joking. A magical head shot and that could be a fun pelt. Or doormat.)
The only two animals I’ve shot were porcupines. One was eating the plywood of my woodshed and the other was eating the logs of my cabin. Neither was deterred with loud noises and bright flashlights so I got out my S&W .38 revolver and demonstrated some extreme prejudice.
The cabin eating porcupine was immortalized in the last part of this:
https://www.glibertarians.com/2023/03/the-secret-history-of-vermont-part-8/
In retrospect shooting the surprise porcupine and bringing it to Deer Camp would have been really funny.
In the late 80s, the Ohio River froze over and Dad took my older bro and they walked across it. I was far too young and they had a good time. I’m sure if I were taken, I’d have somehow wandered us through the ice.
A few days ago I passed one of the Town cemeteries and encountered the neighbor who made the maple sugar candies I sent you. He has permission to tap the trees there. It’s a perfect site with big old trees and a huge elevation down to the driveway gate. He has two clean trash cans into which his two sap lines drip.
If you think I’m a Town Lore Bore you should meet him. He said back in the day people didn’t tap the cemetery because they thought formaldehyde from the bodies would contaminate the sap.
A somewhat more famous crossing of the ice:
https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/cruikshank/33.jpg
Note: in the book she was not pursued by bloodhounds or any dogs.
I’m going to borrow that boysenberry pie joke to tell to a lady I know that works in a bakery.
Do you know how the State cleared the ice jams? I’m hoping they broke out some civil war era cannons and started blasting away.
That Spring warmed up so slowly and mildly the ice just melted. No jams at all. When the dam was in place the Town used to send out men with dynamite to break up the jams, or so I’m told.
I remember seeing a video of Soviet troops in the winter of 1944 using hand grenades to try and blow up a massive ice jam that was threatening a bridge on the Vistula River. They might as well thrown rocks for all the effect the grenades had on the grinding pile. The bridge was eventually swept away.
“We did the best we could, boss!”
The Winter War terrifies me. (For example. I know that ain’t 1944.) All of that is waaay up there in the list of “Places I Don’t Want to Be.” (Sniping officers like the White Death dude would be cool. But I ain’t him. I like fire.)
These are a delight, Richard.
Thank you.
You’re welcome! I keep a list of VV topics on a raggedy set of Post-Its. When the TPTB indicate they’re despairing for content I get them out, try to decipher what I scribbled, and type up a few of them. I consider it keeping up the structure for the more significant content of the comments.
Kevin, at my deer camp, is reminded every year about the little bambi he shot years ago. He’s gotten to be a good sport about it.
I see Bambis wandering around my town of ~30K once in a while. I wonder where they took a wrong turn but they’re prolly safer here than anywhere else nearby (college town surrounded by rednecks).