In the early 1960's, a young couple with two small children, tired of the Long Island rat-race, leave New York in search of a new life in Vermont. Disillusioned with the tourist industry they purchase a General Store in the rural village of Bridport in the Champlain Valley. For seven years, as their children grow up, they learn to love life in the country. He learns to cut meat, what goes into a stew and a cake, how to grind hamburger and cut up chickens, she learns how to pump gas, the difference between 10-penny nails and wood screws and what pickled tripe looks like. He learns which beers sell best, how to store dry goods and how to order insulin for special customers. She flounders in distress over bookkeeping, stocks shelves, dislikes cutting liver and gives a coat of paint to the entire inside of the store, shelf by shelf, over a year's time. The children go to school, join 4-H Clubs and learn about animal husbandry from their peers.
There is the garden, canning and freezing veggies, making jam, acquiring pets and other assorted animals from rabbits and chickens, squirrels and pigeons to a "rented" pony, while continuing to be involved with her life-long love, photography, when she could find time.
I wouldn't have had to work for a living if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, "But, what do you DO in the country?
At Christmas time it was traditional for the shopkeeper to treat his best customers and buddies to a swig of something stronger. This jug was usually hidden in the nail bin in the back room. Sold a lot of nails over the holidays, we did.
I was asked to fix a big dish of baked beans for the coming church supper. When I explained that my only acquaintance with baked beans came through a can opener, the local lady almost crowed with satisfaction. 'Told them you wouldn't know how!
Another Vermont-ism by which I found the locals lived was, "If you can't eat it, don't grow it." The word "garden" in Vermont means a vegetable plot. Anything else immediately surrounding one's abode is just "yard".
The big difference between our having bought this General Store and a local Vermont couple buying it is that we viewed it all with totally fresh (sometimes bewildered, often amazed) eyes. Had the guy across the street bought the place, there would have been no story and no book. It would not all have been new, exciting, fascinating and sometimes humorous.
And, what started out to be a story about a store morphed, as it was being written, into a memoir of a period in the life of the storekeeper's wife.
Many of us have lived different "lives" in different periods of our stay here on Earth. Lucky are the ones who can look back on each separate "life," or chapter, as an exciting adventure and regard it later with appreciation for what it was. I learned a lot, not only about myself but about life in general, from experiencing the "store days" of my personal journey through the years allotted to me, and also from the remembering of it later -- and isn't that what life is all about?
Another Vermont-ism by which I found the locals lived was, "If you can't eat it, don't grow it." The word "garden" in Vermont means a vegetable plot. Anything else immediately surrounding one's abode is just "yard".
