Good News!

 I heard from Marti Talbot yesterday. Here's what she wrote:

Carolyn will come home today from the rehab center.
She has worked hard to gain her strength, though she has still a ways to go.  She has a few obstacles she has to overcome come but she is much better. We see her surgeon today for more information for her next step.
Through all the pain and hurdles she still has her smile and optimism.

There are no immediate plans to come to VT yet.  Ned of course would like to leave today ! 

That is really good news. We certainly hope Carolyn makes a really speedy recovery and can come to Joe's Pond soon. 

As many of you know, there are new regulations in effect for Wake Boats this year. There will be new signage and information at state boating access areas to help boaters and the public to understand and manage the new regulations. Here is a  LINK to some of the changes we can expect. 

Today is much cooler and more comfortable than it has been. I started the morning off with the house opened up as I normally do on nice days, but very soon I was grabbing my sweater and realized that while the sun is nice and it looks gorgeous outside, that air is fresh and cool - great for working outside, but definitely on the cool side!

I was recently corresponding with a friend who lives on Bolton Road, near where I grew up, and she told me she hears bob-o-links in the big field in back of the house where I lived. I hope to get up there some early morning to hear them. I haven't head one in a long time, although when Fred and I used to walk on West Shore Road, we sometimes heard them in the big field beyond my house going towards Brickett's Crossing Road. Sadly, I no long walk that far, but perhaps they still nest there.

I was thinking that the Cabot Plain community has changed enormously since I lived there. The Bolton farm (where the twin silos are) was the last place on that road. The road ended sort of in our farm's barnyard, but now there is a large house at the top of the hill. There was a lane that served to get cattle to our "night pasture" and the much larger Roy Lot pasture. That lane was once a well-settled road past farms all the way to what is now Chatot Road. It wasn't the original Bayley-Hazen Military Road route, but ran parallel to it. It was built by early settlers who wisely followed the higher contour of the land to avoid the steep hills and marshy areas that was the original military road. The two routes join briefly and from the Cabot Plain Cemetery to Route 215, there is a nice stretch of the original road - mostly untouched except for necessary repairs to keep it open for the many homes it now serves. That short section is still a Class 4 road, I believe, so residents have to do most of the work needed to keep it open year around.

When I was growing up on the Plain, all the land was being farmed. Ours was the largest farm with some 50 head of Holstein cattle; but Fred and Julia Maynard had a small herd of Jerseys and a productive farm where they raised their large family. Their eldest son, Ernest, was the first Cabot boy  killed in WWII. His younger brother, Martin, joined the Marines as soon as he was old enough, and later worked many years as a lineman on the St. J. & L. C. R.R.

The Desmaris family had a nice farm next to the school house. It was originally the Cate Farm, and was later owned by Fred Badger. The big barn and beautiful old stone house was a landmark in town until it burned in July, 1953. I remember the date because it was the eve of my wedding to Ray Dimick.

Further on the road to Cabot was Howard and Freda (Maynard) Stone's farm; and on the road that joins West Shore Road, the Gambles were about the only family that didn't have a farm. Ed Gamble was a carpenter and woodworker and supported his family working for others. Around the corner from him, Ashley Barnett had a small farm, and on what is now Deeper Ruts road, there was the McCormick farm where the Helfands are now, and across the brook, Harris Harrington's farm. That road connected to Harrington Hill Road until the bridge washed out one spring. By that time, the Harrington farm had burned and John McCormick had died, and the place was sold.

Past the Ashley Barnett place, my grandfather had a good-sized pasture he bought from someone named Fisher - I don't know if there had been a farm there or not, but I expect there once was. It is now part pasture and partly owned by John & Liz Randall. The next farm, where Morgan's camp is now and the land where Pupinos, Chatots, and Helen Morrison live, was all part of Wilbur Ewen's farm. (Photo, about 1935.)

Milk and feed trucks were common traffic on our roads, but there was very little traffic. The few cars hat came by were usually someone we knew. Not so these days. And all of us kids walked wherever they needed to go - always to school, sometimes to visit our neighbors or to swim in Joe's Pond in the summer (after chores) if we had the energy - we all had duties on the farms where we lived, so our time was well filled with a balance of work and fun, and we generally had an "early to bed, early to rise" schedule. Only kids in town played baseball, had clubs, or attended Sunday School.

It's amazing how things change over the years - forest has taken over much of the open land that were once pastures and fields. Small "homesteads" are scattered along these roads, recovering at least small bits of the once expansive fields of hay, corn, potatoes or strawberries. All these memories - and I was just meaning to mention the bob-o-links!