A WEEKEND IN VERMONT

For some years Memorial Day weekend has been Vermont's Open Studios for Art and Crafts.  Fewer artisans exhibited, it seemed to me, than in the past and I thought there were fewer attendees.  I'm assuming the economy has something to do with it overall.  Traditionally, friends who live in Vermont have taken me wherever they chose to go and, the rest of the time we fed our long-term friendship.

As a 'flatlander' (one who does not live in mountainous VT), I thoroughly enjoyed being a Subaru-front-seat passenger over the state on back roads. Road names are either after some obscure figure or are descriptive, like Upper Middle Hill Road, Middle Hill Road., and Lower Middle Hill Road.  Another I liked was Deeper Rut Road.  There was Pleasant Valley, Hidden Valley and River Road...pretty straight forward there, sort of 'wysiwyg'.  What looked like fog was brush fire smoke from Quebec, blown by the wind all the way to Cape Cod and beyond.

A few years ago, few streets actually had names other than Town Road 11, or such.  That seemed quite adequate to me but will 911 came the need to change all those to peoples' names.  I thought that took away a bit of the rural charm with the change.

A bit of trivia was given to me.  I wondered why Berlin is pronounce (in VT as well as the one in NH) with the accent on the first syllable not on the second as the Berlin in Germany is pronounced.  I was told that it was because there were a few WW II German prisoners who were housed there and cheered when they saw the sign of the town name.  Citizen's thereafter moved the accent.

Vermonters have long been known for the economy and venturesome thinking of their words, eg. Home Hill Inn and  Blow-Me-Down Grange.  Calvin Coolidge, known as a man of few words was said to have been accosted by a woman at a party who said she had made a bet that she could make him same more than two words.  His response, "You lose."