We spent the morning in St. Johnsbury. Shopping on Mondays is different than towards the end of the week. There weren't many people in the stores or on the street downtown. It was busier in West Danville. Quite a few cars in the parking lot across from the post office. Fred took a few pictures. The brook and penstock, a dog waiting for his master.

By the way, Rt. 2 along the pond has been repaved. It's nice and smooth - and I thought they did it in a relatively short period of time. I'm sure the people who live along that stretch wouldn't agree. The work was going on during some of that really hot weather and cars were lined up waiting to go through, noisy, hot and smelly. But it sure is nice now.

In St. Johnsbury, while we didn't see many people we knew, we saw a couple people who seemed to know us but we don't have a clue who they were. Sure looked familiar, though. They didn't stop to talk, and that was good. I hate it when someone comes up to me and starts talking and I can't figure out who the heck they are. I sometimes try to fake it hoping I'll get a hint as the conversation unfolds, but I've learned that sometimes it's better to just admit I don't know them. Then there are the times I've spoken to someone I was sure I knew - called them by name, even, and it turned out it wasn't who I thought it was. Oh, well.

Fred mowed the lawn again today. He says the grass grows a lot faster this time of the year than a little later on, so he has to keep up with it. Reminds me of last winter when he was saying the snow was building up really fast and he wanted to keep ahead of it so he was snow blowing two or three times a day. I think it's good he had a few weeks to recoup from snow blowing before he had to tackle grass cutting. This is good grass growing weather when it's cool and rainy like it's going to be most of this week. Fred built a small fire in the wood stove tonight to take the chill off. We checked the temperature - 68 outside, 69 inside. And it's damp.

This afternoon we saw one of our neighbors riding her horse past our house. Graduation was this past week in Cabot, so school is out and the youngsters are settling into a summer routine. I used to get to ride horseback in the summers, too, but they were big sweaty work horses and I was usually on board just long enough to get them to whatever piece of machinery they were destined to drag that particular day. On weekends if there was no plowing or haying going on, I'd sometimes ride one and lead the others about half a mile to the horse pasture. We used horses quite a lot, even after we got a Farmall tractor. I had to lead the horse to plant corn with the one-row corn planter each spring. I had to keep the horse following the faint line in the dirt that marked each row, and my Uncle Bob would be following behind keeping the planter upright. My grandfather liked to see nice straight rows of corn. It made it easier to harvest. Later on each summer it was my job to lead the horse to unload the hay. We had a big grapple hay fork that grabbed the hay off the load and the horse would pull it up to the roof of the barn where the fork engaged in a track that went the length of the barn. The man on the hay load held a rope and when the fork full of hay was in the right spot he'd pull the rope to release the hay. A couple more men would be in the mow packing the hay away. Once released, the big fork had to be dragged back the length of the barn and lowered onto the load of hay, so I had to turn the old horse around quickly to let the rope loose and get turned around ready to pull up another fork full. It wasn't hard work, but on a hot day with chaff in the air from the hay, it wasn't always pleasant. If I didn't get the horse back up the drive fast enough, whoever was on the load of hay managing the fork would let me know about it. At the end of the day, my cousins and I would head down to the pond for a swim. We had to walk, and sometimes the climb back up the hill to the farm was a hard one. I was in bed sometimes before dark especially if it was my turn to get up by five in the morning to get the cows in the pasture. That was how I spent my summer vacations . . . happily.