The Farm in the Green Mountains

by Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer

  When the next pans had been filled with cold sap and set on the stove, I said casually, “But Mrs. Roosevelt would still be my guest, and you have to stand up for guests.” That satisfied him.

  Because of his occupation with historical questions and current problems he fell behind in mathematics and told us one fine day that he would have to stay away for months so that he wouldn’t be kept back in school. For similar reasons he had often disappeared for weeks in the past.

  Before his departure he rearranged the stone cellar of our house and transformed it into a magnificent bar for guests who might want to take refuge in our cool cellar on hot summer days. He found an enormous wooden table and two benches in the barn. He put stone jugs on barrels with candles in the jug necks, and he stuck the one sad little electric light bulb into a barn lantern. As a final touch he hung a gun from the Civil War like the sword of Damocles over the table. I didn’t want to interfere with this romantic project.

  Then he went to his mathematics and we didn’t see him again for six months. One day I met him on the street in front of a store.

  He helped me to put the packages I was carrying into the car. Then he climbed into the front seat and said, “I can come to you for only four months. Then I’ll be eighteen and must sign up.”

  In these last months he didn’t talk or ask questions so much because he was playing the phonograph day and night and had spent all his extra money before he came to us on Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky records.

  “It doesn’t make sense to spend more money for suits and shirts,” he explained to me, “when I am going to have to wear a uniform. But this is something for the future. The records will be here when I come home again.”

  With these words he put on the “Kleine Nachtmusik” for the 150th time and stretched himself out comfortably in Zuck’s wing chair, which stood next to the phonograph in the living room.

  “Beautiful music,” he said. “I like it. I suppose you know it all already from over there?”

  By the time he had to go into the army, the war was fortunately over. After a long time I received a letter from him from Alaska.

  “The winter is milder here than in Vermont,” he wrote. “I am sitting here with seven other fellows on a little island. It is very boring, but I have eight Shakespeare plays with me and am learning the roles by heart. Perhaps I will be an actor, or do you think I should be an architect instead? We are all bad cooks, but we have lots of meat and chicken. Please send me the recipe for chicken paprika as soon as you can.”

  That was our first boy.

  He was not the rule, nor were many of our hired boys typical of the hired boys you could get.

  The hard-working and dependable ones, who had the makings of excellent future farmers, were mostly going to agricultural colleges or working on big farms and unavailable to us. So all year we had to do all the work ourselves with only a very little help, work that was made up of endless little tasks, all spelled out on the “frightful lists” in the kitchen.

  When we saw Henndorf again for the first time and spent two days there in our old house, I wrote to Michi,

  Everything is changed and quite different from what we had imagined.

  But Ederin is here and keeps the house clean, and Anna has come for a visit and does the cooking, and another maid is here who has been hired by our landlady.

  The house itself is practically unchanged, even though all the silver, clothing, and linens were stolen from it. The main room is the same: we eat from handpainted china and drink from beautiful Tyrolean glasses. The kitchen stove is filled by Ederin, Anna cooks, and the new maid serves.

  The table is cleared—we hear the rattle of dishes in the kitchen—the wood crackles in the stove. We sit here and don’t lift a finger. We carry on conversations with the guests, but we catch ourselves listening to the noises in the kitchen with one ear. Suddenly we realize that we no longer have the innocence of the upper class, that with every sound the individual links in the chain of the work pass before our eyes.

  The next day I went up to the attic with Ederin. She opened up chests, boxes, and trunks, and I found books, pictures, letters, and your playthings.

  It was as if we had lived in the house a hundred years ago, and I was poking around in my own inheritance.

  Henndorf was not destroyed, and Salzburg suffered little damage. It doesn’t look like most of the German cities . . .

  But, just think, even in the destroyed cities there is still a good supply of Maries, Rosas, and Friedas. There it is uncanny to see how they put together tablecloths with a thousand mends, wash dishes with rags, use the ragged remains of underwear for dust cloths, how they cook the porridge sullenly and serve the pea soup in a friendly way. If you could see how they set out the chipped china just like the finest Meissen ware, and bring on something that looks like shoe polish as if it were crêpes suzette, if you could see how they listen and nod, carry on and off, go back and forth, if you could hear them complain about the bad times, as unchanged as if they were still living in the good old days, you would think you had been spirited away into a ghostly land.

  And if you watched the upper class, the upper class with whom you are sitting at the table, who often live in greater wretchedness and more bitter poverty than their servant girls because these may have farming relatives somewhere in the country, if you saw how they no longer have any of the attributes of the upper class, you would feel the icy wind of death even as you sit here alive.

  I am happy about every Marie that is still here, even when I know that she is only a symbol. I am thankful for every Rosa who still serves me.

  But I know that the era of Maries is past. Perhaps they will in my lifetime go to the factories or find other work, as in America, and even when they stay in housework they will no longer be the Maries they were.

  But I can’t be afraid of that because we learned in America to turn our attention to everyday matters, and we could see that a time would come when imagination and technology would make the way easy, the time short, and the effort small that one has to spend on the work of daily living.

  THE STANDARD

  In this book nothing is made up.

  For that reason I have told a lot about our animals, but only a little about our neighbors, friends, and other people. This did not occur by accident, but on purpose.

  I am reminded of a story that I once read a long time ago in the book Three Men in a Boat by Jerome Jerome.

  As the three friends are bathing one morning on their boat, it happens that a shirt falls in the water. All three break out laughing, and their hilarity knows no bounds. But suddenly one of the three notices that it is his shirt that is floating on the water, stops laughing, and becomes angry and abusive. That is it exactly . . .

  In this book then nothing is made up, and it will go hard with me if anyone finds his own shirt floating in it. . . . However, since I want to tell something of those with whom we lived and might live again, I have looked for a way and found the best means in the weekly newspaper that played such a significant role in our farm life.

  The newspaper is an establishment that belongs to rural life, like Sears and Roebuck and the USDA. One can learn from it what is happening in our community and in neighboring communities, who is visiting whom, who is getting married, when people are sick or die or recover, what they buy and sell, how they celebrate their holidays, what destruction the weather has caused, how things are going in school, in the woods, on the streets, in prison, and in politics.

  It is not a family paper. It is not an agricultural newspaper. It is a unique phenomenon, a community newspaper in which the members of the community are the actors and purely personal contact is established.

  In the United States there are 4,127 community newspapers of this sort.

  Our weekly newspaper has its office in the town of Woodstock, which has 1,325 inhabitants, seven churches, fifty businesses, three doctors, two dentists, five lawyers, and no factories.

 
Seventeen communities from the surrounding area send in their village news weekly to the newspaper; five communities send it in only occasionally.

  The newspaper has 1,750 subscribers who pay the yearly subscription price of $2.50. All of these precise figures I took from a letter from the publisher of our community newspaper. I wrote to him from Switzerland and asked him to give me a few facts about the paper, and he answered by return mail.

  “Our weekly newspaper,” he wrote, “was founded in 1853 as a temperance paper and battled against the production, sale, and use of alcoholic beverages. In those times many newspapers were established as a means of battling or crusading against something. Newspapers first appeared in America in the cities. In the rural communities the newspapers appeared first as by-products of the book publishers. They contained domestic and foreign political news, because rural political activity was carried on through discussions in the store, after church, and at times when people were working together. However, it often happened that the newspapers from the cities arrived too late or not at all, and so the rural population began to turn more and more to local papers to give them desired information.

  “From this you can see,” the publisher wrote further, “that our community newspaper has changed greatly in the course of time, and that it is a product of the evolution caused by the changing needs of the local population.” He closed his letter with the news that they had had and were still having a hard winter, and that they hoped that I would enjoy my Swiss stay and come home soon.

  Our weekly newspaper is called the Vermont Standard. The word “Standard”—many newspapers have that name in America—includes many meanings: plumbline, steadiness, measure, model, value, example, perfection, emblem.

  Every week the following explanation appears under the name of the publisher:

  “The Standard aims to serve the best interests of Woodstock and Windsor County, to present unprejudiced each week’s news in a clean, conservative manner, ever respecting the rights of the citizens in the territory it covers. This, we believe, will make it worthy of its readers’ confidence.”

  The paper appears every Thursday, and the local reports in it often affected our lives directly.

  We read, for example:

  “Mr. and Mrs. Huron Huntoon have returned from Montpelier, where they attended the wedding of Miss Ramona Nelson to Wayne Peltier. Mrs. Huron Huntoon is the sister of the bride. The groom returned from Japan two months ago, where he was stationed with the Marines. They will live in Montpelier.”

  There went my hope of getting Ramona Nelson as household help, and I had to congratulate them on their marriage with a few bittersweet lines.

  A truly frightening announcement was the short notice:

  “Bob Russel and Merlin Kennefik have the measles.”

  I had scarcely read this when I rushed to the drug store to acquire a fever thermometer, gargle, and aspirin for our hired boy. Then I watched him the entire evening after his return to us for signs of a red face and glazed eyes, because he was the best friend of Merlin Kennefik.

  Zuck’s forehead wrinkled into deep worry lines when he found this item:

  “Otis Totmann lost his big toe while cutting wood and had to go to the hospital.”

  What will happen to the wood that is still lying in the woods and must be brought in before winter? How long would the hospitalization be for a big toe? Will he still be able to bring in the wood on time?

  That will be a big piece of work. Zuck will help with piling the wood, and it is disquieting to watch the men at it. When the firewood has reached a height of sixteen feet, the men piling it balance like rope dancers on the pieces of wood. You know that a mislaid piece can bring everything tumbling down. And still they pile on more, higher and higher—no, I was not happy to have Zuck take part in that work.

  Once, when they were stacking wood, and I was watching resignedly with clenched teeth, a lumberjack stopped—after he had handed up a large birch log to Zuck—shrugged his shoulders, and remarked to me without taking his pipe out of his mouth:

  “One makes it, the other doesn’t.”

  This item looked harmless: “Supper in the community house for the members of the Grange. Clam chowder, frankfurters, salad, cake, and cocoa will be served. Please be there Friday evening promptly at eight o’clock.” However, it reminded me that I was on this time and had to bring the salad.

  In the same issue I read: “The party which was to take place last Saturday in W. had to be cancelled because of frozen pipes in the house where it was to be held. We hope that the damage will be repaired by next Saturday.”

  “That doesn’t look good,” I thought. “First it is so cold that the pipes freeze. Then the great snowfall comes on top of that. And then the Grange evening comes, and I see myself tramping through the woods with the huge salad bowl in my arms and have to watch out so that the heavy snow doesn’t fall off the trees into my salad bowl. And then I can stand and wait on the street corner until the post-mistress comes and takes the salad bowl. I would like to go to the Grange. It can often be very cheerful with the farmers, and I could see people again. It is already the third week that we have been besieged by snow and ice and marooned as if we were in a mountain hut.”

  And, after dwelling on these dismal thoughts, I am comforted by finding my negative feelings about winter expressed in print.

  The days of melancholy are back again. We are always melancholy after the first real snowfall, and the more it snows, just so much more do we succumb to a peevish resignation. Every fall, when Thanksgiving draws near and the ground still lies brown and green before us, the wild, senseless hope comes over us that the climate could have changed, and in this year no snow, no snow at all, will fall.

  And then the snow comes.

  And then these amazing creatures, the tourists and skiers, come storming into our office and exclaim with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks how wonderful the snow is. We don’t understand them, because we only go outside when we absolutely must. To avoid wet feet and inflammation of the lungs we are forced to add twenty to thirty extra pounds of clothing on our feet, and tramp with this weight, panting and wheezing, through the snow without so much as a glance at our surroundings. If we don’t go on foot, we have a struggle with the car. If we leave the chains off, the car won’t even come out of the garage, but if we have carefully put on the chains, the main streets are suddenly free of snow, and we rattle along like a reaping machine. . . . So much for snow.

  After such an outburst one feels easier, and one turns gladly to the mild report of a girl from the community of Prosper, who writes:

  “Today is Sunday, the 20th of April, and it snowed all day long. In addition, this is the third snowstorm which we have had to endure in the last five days. One could lose hope, and it is hard for the birds, whom hopefully no one forgets to feed.”

  The wise people fled before winter:

  “And our readers who are basking in Florida’s sunshine or live in comfortable winter quarters in Boston or New York, and are in pleasant temperatures, pleased that they have run away from the less pleasant season in Vermont, demand of us that we print more weather reports. We have the understandable impression that these shirkers only want to read our weather reports so that they can write to us: Ha, ha, wouldn’t you rather be here with us?”

  Among those fleeing the winter was once even our excellent Mrs. Perkins. We read:

  “Mrs. Dwaine Perkins has gone by car to Texas with her friend Miss Marjorie Patenaude to celebrate her eightieth birthday there.”

  By another newspaper notice that ran, “Mrs. Ralph Potter and Mrs. Glenn Benedict visited Mrs. Elie Titcomb on Sunday . . . ,” I learned that Mrs. Titcomb had returned home. I called her up and heard from her that Mrs. Perkins did not care for Texas because the turkeys there were disappointing—the Vermont turkeys were much tastier.

  Mrs. Perkins doubtless left right after the big lumberjacks’ celebration, which takes place every year in late fall at the town ha
ll. It can storm, blow, and rain then, but we have never missed this event.

  Great tree trunks stand in front of the town hall, driven a yard deep in the earth, and powerful lumberjacks stand by the trees and wait for the signal to compete in felling the trees with their axes. Blow follows blow until one tree after another falls. Roger wins, and his nine children who are sitting on the huge lumber wagon add their voices proudly to the murmur of applause. His wife waves to him and then disappears into the darkness with her tenth child to nurse it. Meanwhile the competition continues as the giant logs are sawed through, and this time young Campbell is the winner.

  Then it is the women’s turn. A piece of tree trunk too big to fit in the highest and widest fireplace must be cut through with a two-person saw.

  Now our Mrs. Perkins walks onto the scene, seventy-nine years old, and saws with Miss Patenaude, who is only seventy-six years old. And while they are sawing, precisely and powerfully, you catch a vision of the age of the pioneers. When they win and receive the first prize, you realize why women in America are not inferior to men. What wonderful things are the American celebrations!

  In the beginning we paid no attention to the celebrations because they had nothing of the lively peasant quality we knew. They portrayed life directly, truthfully, not in symbols.

  I am not speaking here of the occasions that you can find described in the big newspapers that are celebrated by so-called society and are as frivolous, embarrassing, and hazardous as the “parties” of Queen Marie Antoinette, which led in a straight line to her execution. In America they have only the difference that they are carried on by the sturdy strain of parvenues, who can survive almost anything.

  No, I am talking here about festivals in the country, which are celebrated solemnly or with childlike enjoyment.

  The most important holiday of the year is Independence Day, July 4. That day we preferred to stay at home so that we heard the shooting and explosions only from a distance, and could watch the rockets rise above everything at night from our pasture hill.