It has been pretty exciting yesterday and today - I located a nephew of the Seaveys, the West Danville couple that was tied up back by a couple of escaped convicts and robbed of money and their car. We had a few accounts by folks who vaguely remembered the incident when it happened in 1982, but most were more than just vague. I hunted for newspaper clippings, but nobody had any, and the best bet seemed to be to try to find something by going through old Caledonian Record issues at the library - a tedious job at best, and not something I really wanted to do with the Covid-19 stuff going on. 

As a last resort, with the final edit of that chapter, "Crimes, Mistakes and Misdemeanors" already done, in order to satisfy some doubts both Dot Larrabee and I had about what we had been told about the escapee incident, I took one more stab at finding some facts. The Seaveys were elderly when this happened to them, so I looked for death notices and found Ronald's. One of his descendants was Richard Platt, in Milford, Connecticut. I searched on line for Richard and found him with no trouble at all, along with a phone number. The chances of it being the right Richard Platt was doubtful, and I was totally surprised when the phone number appeared to be in service. My call went to his answering machine, and as I began to explain my mission, starting with "This is Jane Brown from Joe's Pond in Vermont . . . " he came on the line. It was, indeed, the Seavey's nephew and he said immediately, "I think I know what you are calling about."

We had a wonderful chat - Richard's wife is Jane, so we laughed about them being living "Dick and Jane" - probably a joke lost on anyone under 80, but he is 83, so had experienced the same first readers in school as I did, that taught us to read with simple stories about "Dick and Jane." He told me a few things I wasn't aware of, and in closing he told me he would search for newspaper clippings but wasn't confident they had any. However, he promised to call me if any were found.

I was pretty sure nothing would turn up, so I called the library in St. Johnsbury and a very helpful lady, Adelle, agreed to search for information in their massive collection of newspapers. I told her I thought it happened in August, 1983, gave what few names I had that might help in the search, and hung up.

Only a few minutes later the phone rang and it was Richard Platt. His son had arrived soon after my call and he not only remembered the date of the event, he remembered the names of the convicts!! The best news is that they found newspaper articles in scrapbooks and scanned them for me. I now have verifiable information and can rewrite that short segment about the fugitives. The biggest discovery aside from knowing the names of the convicts, was finding out it happened in July of 1982, not August, 1983! I rushed to leave a message at the library - it had closed by the time I got this new information - and today I will do the rewrite.

Today's excitement is that Washington Electric Cooperative came to take down a very old, dying maple tree on our next-door neighbor's lawn. It was threatening the power line and needed to be cut. We watched some of the process - sorry to see the old tree go, but we know it was time.

 This is the tree that needed to come down. We didn't stay tosee the final cut. Too sad. It has been the first tree to turn color each fall for years, and was always gorgeous. However, it had rapidly declined in the past five years or so, and it was becoming dangerous. Every wind storm it lost a limb or two, and it was only a matter of time before it toppled onto the power lines.