Another grand day with warmer than normal temperatures, lots of sunshine, no rain, just darned near perfect weather for enjoying being outside.  I feel sorry for people who have to stay inside for whatever reason - it's really too bad to have to miss this stretch of great weather.  I remember what it was like, going to work when the sun was barely up and arriving home as it was disappearing in back of the hilltops; and then having rain on the weekends a lot of times.  What a bummer.

Work is progressing on the eastern shore of the pond on the Nicholson cottage.  I just learned today that the old Wakefield cottage - now known as the Rustad/Ferriera cottage, has already  been leveled, too.  On this, the west shore, foundation work is on-going at Layton's Landing, the Decker cottage, but as far as I know, no other building or renovations taking place.  There is of course a rush by contractors to get as much as possible done during the nice weather, so crews are busy.

In Cabot Village, the road crew has been working on Clough Lane, a short dead-end road that runs from Elm Street south, parallel to the Winooski River.  The river bank in that area has been eroding over the years, slowly swallowing precious land with every hard rain when the brook swells to river size, so residents are delighted that the town has come to their rescue and lined the bank with good big rocks that will hopefully contain the rushing water.  Bonnie and Peter Dannenberg live at the head of Clough Lane and sent me some photos today of the work being done.  I made a short slide show.

Speaking of pictures, I received some very nice picture postcards from Homer Fitts yesterday.  They were of Danville and West Danville, printed for the Danville Bicentennial in 1986 - all postmarked on August 13, 1986, and each has a special Bicentennial image on the back.  This photo is an old time snow roller.  That must have been a cold ride, perched up on that thing with no protection from the wind and blowing snow.  I don't know where the  picture was taken - it could have been in Danville Village or on almost any road in town.  Main roads were rolled in the winter well into the 1900s, and even after automobiles came on the scene, roads were so poor that the only way to travel was with horses and sleighs or on foot.  It was a hard job to get to all the roads, and often people had to walk or go by horseback to get into town after a big storm. The rolled roads were a nice path for sleighs if they could be kept free of drifts.

The picture below of the Bert U. Wells store was also in the group that Homer sent.  Mr. Wells owned the store before Gilbert and Jenny Hastings bought it in 1913.  That probably was Mr. and Mrs. Wells in the picture, along with perhaps one of the clerks from the store. The store carried a full line of groceries and dry goods.  We found a January sale ad dated 1913.  I believe the store was sold to the Hastings in the fall of 1913, so this ad was probably not due to his selling.  Another large store up the street from the Wells store, was G. V. Frasier's Department Store. That store burned in February of 1908, taking with it the home of  Thomas Founier, next door to it.  The post office was in Frasier's building at that time, and a large bag of mail was lost in the fire as well as most of the merchandise in the store and personal belongings in the apartment upstairs.  The fire was said to have started by the explosion of a kerosene lamp in the back of the store.  The building was owned by D. C. Farrington, who lived next door, and in the newspaper account of the fire  it was reported it was "a hard fight" to keep the Farrington home from burning.  Even though the pond would normally have been an unlimited source of water to fight a fire, it was of course solidly frozen over in February when the Frasier fire happened.

In the bottom photo you can see Frasier's Department store at the far left and down the street the newly built Methodist church in the center of the picture.  The small building at the right of the photo was next to the railroad tracks and didn't burn.  This photo was probably taken about 1907, and the church was completed and the bell put in place in about 1899.  These Frasier store photos are from the collection of former West Danville resident, Phil Rogers.