Down Memory Lane, and More

I have sad news this morning - Virginia "Ginny" Johnson (North Shore Rd.) passed away on Sunday, August 13. She was 95. Ginny was married to long-time JPA secretary, the late Ray Johnson, and they spent many wonderful years together coming to Joe's Pond every summer. Ginny had a great personality - I always enjoyed her energy and her wonderful smile. She was always welcoming and gracious, and she always seemed to have just baked something delicious whenever anyone visited, either at home in St. Johnsbury or at camp. I will always think of her as blonde, tan and trim in a white tennis outfit. She dearly loved Joe's Pond and had many friends here. Ginny was an active member of the Joe's Pond Association for many years and she will be missed.  Condolences for the family may be sent to her daughter Kim and David Kidney's address, 4 McKinley St., Montpelier, VT 05602.

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Nicole Begin has asked me to post this notice:

Invasive Species Discovered in Joe's Pond

As mentioned at the summer meeting, a population of Chinese Mystery Snails has been discovered in the middle pond. Efforts have been ongoing to collect and remove as many of the snails as possible, but it is labor intensive and requires SCUBA divers and equipment to do so. Jim Bernotas has removed many pounds of the snails in the area in front of his camp and along the northern shore of the middle pond. He reports that there are none to be found below eight feet, but there are quite a few in the shallows. We are hopeful at this time that the population is localized, but we are asking residents to check their shoreline shallow water for any snail-like creatures and to notify the JPA, so we can check it out.

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On a personal note, the foundation for my garage is being poured as I write this. It's been quite a project but now it's rapidly coming to completion and it will be exciting to have a nice new, rodent-proof (maybe) garage after all these years. The old foundation was cracked and has needed help for years, but it's one of those projects that was easy to put off - until last fall when I thought it would be nice to have a set of conventional stairs to reach the storage loft over the garage instead of having to climb a ladder. However, like many of these "simple fix" ideas, this ballooned into a major project when in making room for the stairs I discovered the floor, previously hidden by a woodpile that had been in one corner for many years, had dropped about eight inches. Then I knew it was time to get it fixed. Fred would be proud that I dove in. 

Fred never enjoyed this sort of thing, and while I can't say I really enjoy having things torn up, I have always been interested in the process. I suppose that comes from growing up on the farm and being my dad's "go-fer" on all sorts of carpentering, excavation, or mechanical "fixes" and some other ideas that sometimes turned into unexpected learning experiences -- like building a canoe in our shed one year or fashioning a sail out of feed bags for our home-built sailboat one other year. I found out many years later that our "colorful" sail earned some not very complimentary comments from "real" sailboat owners on the pond at the time. That was in the late 30s or very early 1940s. We weren't aware and wouldn't have cared anyway. We had great fun and my parents and I had a special bond over these endeavors. This photo of my parents (Aaron Jr. and Arletta "Lettie" Bolton) and me was taken in about 1943 - I'm not sure why, something my mother wanted, I suppose.

I have always been impressed with how my dad could navigate through almost any problem with some  careful thought and whatever tools were available, which he usually had to cobble to adapt. And then he learned blacksmithing from my Scotch grandfather so he could make his own tools and fashion more permanent "fixes" for just about anything on the farm. Good memories and hopefully a little of his interest, if not his ingenuity, made it to my DNA. 

No sunshine yet today - but at least it isn't raining buckets.