The Farmer's Daughter, and Other Adventures with My Mom

Grand opening this weekend!! What a great new life for a terrific place.

My mother wanted to get lost, every time she drove the car out onto a back road. The five of us kids would play games with license plates we saw, or letters on signs, or anything else we could see through the windows -- we all got desperately carsick if we tried to read in the car, or else we would have opened our books. At least for the three older siblings, books were the magical escape into our own private adventures (my two youngest brothers did some things differently).

But on Mom's adventures, the idea was to discover unusual places (like the store on Route 23 in northern New Jersey that sold only buttons -- gallon JARS of buttons for sale!), special waterfalls (hidden ones are best), and places that connected with George Washington, General Lafayette, and "Mad" Anthony Wayne, all easy enough to find in north Jersey, crammed with Revolutionary War battlegrounds. And, incidentally, one "should" get lost.

Unfortunately, Mom's "direction bump," as she called it, kept her from ever getting truly lost. I think that was the biggest regret that she ever expressed around the group of us! Of course, it was also a source of pride and cheerful enjoyment.

When I first drove a car myself through St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and saw the Maple Grove syrup plant and the gift shop called the Farmer's Daughter -- sometime in 1978 -- I had a moment of déja vu. Surely I had been here before? And entered those doors?

I had indeed. Perhaps in 1956 or 1957! I recall the scent of small pillows of balsam needles, and tiny pillars of pine incense one could burn at a campsite to (hopefully) keep away bugs. I remember being barely tall enough to see what was on the shelves.

For a while last year, it looked as though the lifetime of the Farmer's Daughter had ended, and I mourned. Even with that crazy sign out front (the one that makes my Inner Feminist cringe -- I'm not showing it here), I love the place. My mom wouldn't have wanted to see it pass away.

But this spring, oh glorious news, the Cushman family has leased the building and the gift shop business, provided a fresh version of the "fresh" sign outside, added ice cream and homemade fudge (really, they are making it themselves!), and brought back the happy site with fresh paint, baskets of flowers, even a young goat in a neat little barn outside. I am SO happy!

I can feel my mother peeking over my shoulder. She says, "See, we came here when you were little. I love you, honey. Let's get ice cream cones and buy one of those postcards and maybe that jigsaw puzzle in case it rains later. And then we'll get back into the car and get lost. When we've had enough, we'll go back to the campsite and write a poem about this place."

Love you, Mom. Happy Mother's Day of the heart.

(Joan Lancy Palmer Minden, 1927-1981; a New Englander forever, even as she raised us on a mountain in New Jersey.)

The Great Gatsby Goes to the Screen: That 1922 Glamour and Risk

Baz Lurhmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby opens on May 10, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio (as Jay Gatsby), Carey Mulligan (as Daisy Buchanan), and Tobey Maguire (as Nick Carraway). For many moviegoers, there'll be some justified wondering about whether the film's version of the Roaring Twenties is exaggerated -- was there really such a gap between rich and poor, wealthy and hard-scrabble?

The short answer is: Yes. Although today's wealth gap is wider in terms of dollars, the 1920s showed Americans what that famous American Dream could look like in terms of costly clothing, money enough to eat and drink what and where you wanted, glamour and glitz. Fitzgerald's book is now a researcher's treasure trove, containing not only telling details about life, but also emotional levels that can be explored and used for measuring some points of view as we construct historical fiction dating back to the 1920s.

I kept Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and many newspaper articles on hand while crafting COLD MIDNIGHT. If I could have slept with them under my pillow, I would have! (But the print makes me sneeze.) It especially mattered in terms of the relationship Ben has in the novel with Colonel Bateman, as well as Claire's restricted grasp of her own town -- which had its "high life" way outside her own working-class experience.

I plan to see the film sometime in the next week or so, to enjoy Luhrmann's take on "what it was all like." I can hardly wait!

Recovery from the Christmas Fire: More Photos (St. Johnsbury, Vermont)

Fires continue to ravage the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, to the point where we need our own version of the Three Little Pigs story ... because the buildings have wood frames, even when the outsides are brick or stone, and we continue to be vulnerable. Saturday night a home in Concord, Vermont, was lost; Sunday, oddly, one of the commuter buses burned.

Today Philip C. Marshall (http://www.panoramio.com/photo/18438727?tag=US_VT_St_Johnsbury) generously gave permission for use of his St. Johnsbury photos, and here is one of the 1879 building -- Bruno Ravel's building, where his parents long operated the Landry Drug Store -- before the Christmas 2012 fire struck.

photo by Philip C. Marshall

And here are some pix that the construction crew allowed me to snap last week: reconstructing the brick frame for the shop windows; the room where the drugstore used to be (see the tin ceiling?); and the back exterior.

Progress indeed ...

Readers of COLD MIDNIGHT: Claire and Ben did not climb this structure (although the author has, from the inside); the Saturday night activities on Railroad Street in 1921 made it far too risky. But it will reappear in the 2014 book I'll be writing, The Fire Curse.

African Americans in 19th-Century Vermont: Fresh Resources

Rokeby's new and exciting exhibit opens May 19, 2013.

Rokeby, Vermont's principal verified "Underground Railroad" historic site, will open its new exhibits on May 19, inaugurating the freshly constructed building that the site's team will use for group visits, teaching, and especially making history accessible to young students (say, fourth grade). I'm a fan -- and here's a news interview with director Jane Williamson as the space gets its finishing touches: http://www.wcax.com/story/21390215/a-new-exhibit-at-rokeby-museum

Williamson has quipped that the Vermont version of the decades just before the Civil War should be called the "above-ground" railroad years instead, and her exhibit title is "Free & Safe" -- a good description for Black Americans who arrived in the Green Mountains in the 1830s through 1850s. Elise Guyette's book "Discovering Black Vermont: African-American Farmers in Hinesburgh, Vermont 1790 - 1890" won a 2010 Award of Excellence from the Vermont Historical Society and offers an extensive exploration.

I just realized that there's a phenomenal hour-long presentation by Guyette available on the Net, thanks to Marlboro College: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GCGu0AsDgk -- a great way to catch up on her work and catch some of the flavor of this lively presenter.

If you're teaching or gathering in Vermont and want to check whether a site near you with an Underground Railroad reputation is historically significant, I recommend the State of Vermont report "Friends of Freedom: The Vermont Underground Railroad Survey Report." This 1996 document peels open the evidence for (and against) 174 of the 19th-century individuals and sites that have been mentioned in this context. I still have a few copies available at $15 each (postage included); let me know if you'd like one.

This year Vermont provides a heritage trail to explore the lives and impact of Black Vermonters of the 19th century, too -- as noted in this Burlington Free Press article (I contributed information on the Coventry location). With this comes fresh attention to Alexander Twilight, probably the first mixed-race Vermonter to graduate (in a remarkably short time) from Middlebury College in 1822. There's a good VPR interview on Twilight and his "race" in Vermont's Census records: http://www.vpr.net/episode/55438/groundbreaking-history-alexander-twilight

These are great resources for classroom use and for a break from books and paper, as spring makes the classroom -- or home office! -- seem a bit confined.

PS -- If you're new to this blog: One reason my writing-room reference shelves keep filling with more materials about Vermont's Black residents is my 2011 novel, THE SECRET ROOM. Signed copies are at several Vermont bookstores or you can order them at www.BethKanell.com; video support on this history-mystery set in North Danville, Vermont, can be found here: http://www.thesecretroombook.com/the-author.html

Research Bookmark: Matching the Photo and the News Report

I've had this photo (blurry though it is) on the Pinterest site for COLD MIDNIGHT for a while now -- it's the result of the 1909 fire in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, which retired firefighter Dave Brown told me was the disaster that moved the town to purchase up-to-date firefighting gear; the ladders then in use were simply not long enough and fatalities resulted. Now, thanks to Researcher Extraordinaire Dave Kanell (yes, I'm married to him), here's a news report of the fire. Thanks also to Stu Beitler, who posted the piece online in 2007.

***
NINE PERSONS DIE AT FIRE

St. Johnsbury, Vt., Suffers Great Loss of Life.

Four-Story Block Burned so Rapidly That Firemen Were Helpless to Save Imprisoned Victims.

St. Johnsbury, Vt. -- Nine lives were lost in the fire which destroyed the principal business building of this town. Two other persons were fatally burned, and two were taken to a hospital suffering from severe but not dangerous burns. The property loss is estimated at $50,000, partly covered by insurance. Of the nine persons killed, two fell from the upper stories of the building in an attempt to reach safety by means of ropes, while seven were burned to death, their bodies not being recovered until several hours later.
The list of dead follows:
S. D. CUSHMAN and MRS. S. D. CUSHMAN and their child;
L. E. DARLING, forty years old, a laborer;
MISS MAY SLEEPER;
CHARLES TANNER, a painter;
MRS. CHARLES TANNER.

MRS. JEANNETTE DAVIS and LOUIS POPE, thirteen years old, son of MR. And MRS. WILLIAM POPE, were those fatally burned. The others injured are WILLIAM POPE and ROY SMITH, who will recover.

The block, a four-story brick building, was a combination of stores, offices, tenements and assembly halls. It was owned by the Citizens' Savings Bank. The fire is believed to have originated in a restaurant in the basement.

Though the alarm was given on the instant and the firemen came in with all speed, the inside of the four-story building was a furnace before help arrived, an elevator well having furnished a flue through which the flames swept to all of the floors.

When it was seen that the ladders would not reach, ropes, which were evidently in the building for such an emergency, were brought into use. Women apparently feared the attempt at descent and RANLETT attempted to come down, hand over hand, to reach he top of the ladder. He lost his balance and fell to the sidewalk. His skull was fractured and he died instantly. DARLING, the other man, lost his grip and fell in attempting to grasp the swinging rope from a windowsill. He lived only a few minutes.

The Cranbury Press New Jersey 1909-11-05

Critical Thinking: Images and History, and Historical Fiction

When I visit groups to discuss COLD MIDNIGHT, I often point out the photo of the Chinese man that nearly led me astray when I was working out the plot of the book and its careful pinnings to the history of Chinese arrivals in northern New England in the 1880s. Here's another pair of items, located by my husband Dave, that could be deceptive. They seem to show a touring vehicle, with people on board to look around the town of St. Johnsbury, Vermont. You can see the date 1907 on the card -- the year when the noted postcard company Tichnor Bros. applied for a copyright on the clever pair of images.

However, although St. Johnsbury did indeed have plenty of tourism in 1907, these images doesn't show the "real thing." (The top one, though, has some real photo images attached to it with an accordion fold.) The cards are among many that were created where town names could be set into the card, and orders placed for "anywhere." Often the cards like this are amusing, and some are romantic, but ... they are stock images, made by the card company without ever visiting the town named on them! That also leads to another entertaining side of the cards as we collect them today: On quite a few that we've seen, the town name has been misspelled!

But it's all in fun, and it was a classic of a hundred years ago.

Just don't count on these for "pictures that show the real thing." They show effect of the tourist trade, instead!

Book Club Bounty: The Best Reason to Get Together!

Last Friday evening, eight women from my extended neighborhood (the closest lives a few houses away; at least one had an hour-long drive) gathered for their monthly book discussion, and I was honored by an invitation -- they had (all but one) just read my newest novel, COLD MIDNIGHT, so I brought a display of photos and old postcards that were part of the research for the 1921 setting, and told the tale of the historically read murder of Sam Wah, a Chinese laundry owner who was 75 years old in 1921, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. (I keep an even larger collection of related images at the book's Pinterest site, here: http://pinterest.com/bethkanell/cold-midnight-climbing-on-roofs-at-night-solving-c.)

Like another book gathering that I attended a few weeks earlier, this one glowed with the seasoned experience of the women at the table, who brought their complex lives and wisdom to share. It also included a marvelous supper, and I took a moment to photograph my plate, so I could savor the meal in memory! The slice of meat pie at the center of the plate was a special treat for me -- it's the French Canadian "tourtiere," a dish I always enjoy. The crust was flaky, the meat and seasonings savory. And, as you can see, there were many other delights to go with it! But tourtiere was especially significant because of its origin; both COLD MIDNIGHT and my 2008 novel The Darkness Under the Water dip into French Canadian culture and traditions as they've arrived in this northeastern part of Vermont.

Do you meet with a book club? If your club selects Cold Midnight or The Secret Room, I can provide books at a 20% discount; for The Darkness Under the Water, which I have to order differently, I can give 10% off. Just let me know. (Books, prices, etc. here: www.BethKanell.com.) Talking about a book with others who've enjoyed it -- "priceless."