After Walter Ruf asked yesterday about the cell tower at the Sousa farm on Cabot Plain, we tried to learn the status of the situation. We found out a settlement has been reached and the case in Environmental Court has been dismissed. We went up to the farm and found workers there. They were sub-contractors doing the wireless installation for AT&T, so had no specific information. We could see the small shed that will house the equipment and the security fence required by the courts were in place. Originally, there was to be a hole cut in one of the silos, but that idea was later scrapped. We took a few pictures (see slide show) and left. Cell Tower Work Begins

Back home, we made a couple of phone calls, and found out work could be completed within 4 to 8 weeks. Once operational, cell service should be available from Hardwick east and from Danville west to complete coverage in this area. There is a similar installation that has been in operation since about the fall of 2006 on West Hill in Cabot, on the Bothfeld farm.

*****

Every time we go up onto the hill, whether walking from our woods or by the road past the old school house, we are saddened when we see how the Maynard farm has deteriorated. Today we took yet another picture of the falling-down shed and now main house. The farm hasn't been in use for many years, but was a productive small farm in its day, and supported a large family well under the management of Fred and Julia Maynard. They both worked hard, but that was how it was in those years. They had two sons in WWII. Ernest, who was a tail gunner in the Air Force, was killed in 1943 in Europe. He was the first young man from Cabot to die in the war. His younger brother, Martin, was a Marine serving in the South Pacific, and came home safely. The Maynards were our neighbors and I grew up knowing all of them - at one time there were perhaps five or six who were in school the same time I was. The age span was great, but in one-room schools it was almost like a second family, so when something bad happened to anyone, we all felt it. Ernest was missing in action for a some time, and we all worried. Then word came he had been declared killed in action. The school, our small community on the Plain, and the whole town felt the awfulness of it.

We collected scrap iron and milk weed pods for the war effort. We all wanted to do our part as best we could. Most of us had someone in the war or knew someone serving. We learned to identify every plane flying, and some of us manned observation posts and phoned in reports of planes passing overhead. Looking back, I wonder at the sense of it all. I don't think anyone expected enemy planes would be flying over Vermont, but it was all part of what we did, along with buying defense stamps and $18.75 war bonds - for the war effort.