Today was not one of the most productive days I've had in a while. Planning for the sort of functions that are coming up this weekend is always a bit dicey, but since I'm not directly involved with anything except the bus tour, it shouldn't impact me at all - or so I thought. Turns out, Murphy's Law took over and made my day, actually starting yesterday, go from confident and serene to what-the-heck-just-happened?

I think I brought it on myself, though. Sometime yesterday I uttered those fateful words, "everything's under control" and then, naturally, old Murphy couldn't resist throwing me a test crisis or two - or three. Now, problems apparently solved, I'm not saying it, but I'm definitely thinking "everything is NOW under control."

I'd only met with a couple of problems yesterday, so this morning when I headed to Cabot to tie up loose ends, I took time to visit and enjoy one of my favorite spots, the Center of Town. It's at the crossroads where Menard Road and Old Center Road meet Danville Hill Road. It's really a lovely spot and I like to imagine what it was like when the town fathers picked up their meeting house on Shepard's Hill (where the Cabot Plain Cemetery is now) and moved, lock, stock and whiskey barrels, off the wind-swept hill to the geographic center of the town to set up shop. Of course, the hardy settlers who had struggled for 20 years or so on the Plain were unhappy about the move and talked about setting up their own town government, but they had more serious concerns such as hanging onto the land they had worked hard to clear to build homes and plant crops on, so they went along with the change, but the folks on the Plain kept as much of their independence as possible, many of them taking their business to West Danville instead of Cabot Village.

The settlement at the Center of Town moved again after about 50 years, down to the present location. One old timer grumbled they had moved to the swamp.

Today when I was at the Center, the sun was filtering through the big maples and it was very pleasant as I walked to the brow of the hill where the first Congregational Church had been. In pictures dated 1901, that hill is barren - not a tree in sight. Today I could barely see the big boulder that marks the spot where the church once stood. In the photo above, that white spot under the lower left corner of the sign is the boulder. The picture on the right is the ceremony when the boulder was put in place and a capsule with documents buried near it. They dug it up 50 years later, and again in 2001. I was there for that one. It was all part of Old Home Week, which is coming up this weekend. The Alumni Association meets then, too. This year it's "Old Home Weekend" with festivities on the common on Saturday and a special church service on Sunday, but that is it. The capsule won't be dug up again until 2051.

Since 1901, Old Home Week in Cabot has been a week of parties, picnics and plays. Sugar on snow, picnics at the Center of Town, 3-act plays, teas at the Judith Lyford Woman's Club, and people dressed up for church - in later years wearing costumes from the early 1900's. We have lots of those pictures. And people came from all over to spend that week, and probably longer, visiting friends and family in town. They came literally by the hundreds.

This photo is of the small cemetery at the Center. The flags are for soldiers who died in the Revolutionary War. I think there are eight or maybe nine. The cemetery was closed in 1846, when the population shifted to the present location of the village, near the Winooski.

I went from the Center of Town to the West Hill School, the first stop on our tour on Saturday. It, too, is a very pleasant place to visit. The school may be a bit nicer than it actually was when there were students going there. Or perhaps it just seems that way because the weather was nice today. I expect in the middle of winter it would be drafty and gloomy, missing only the smell of wet wool and leather drying by the big iron wood stove.