A Newsy Day!

Here is a reminder: 

 Here is the link to the hearing [which was held on Thursday, December 12]. This link will also allow you to submit written comments, which are due by December 23rd.   For anyone who did not speak at Thursday's hearing, please consider submitting a written comment.  The more comments we have supporting our petition the better.

 I am also pleased to announce that Cabot has now joined with the JPA and the Town of Danville as a co-petitioner.  Their Select Board voted unanimously to do so.  This gives us a lot of momentum.  Let's keep it going by submitting as many written comments as we can.

 Thanks,

David Kidney

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I was amused to find an article in today's Caledonian Record about our neighbor, Littleton, New Hampshire using the Joe's Pond Ice-Out Contest as a model for one of their own. I've lost count of the number of communities across the nation who have copied our contest - all with our blessings. I'm pretty sure most of them ran for a few years and then were abandoned for one reason or another. We are fortunate to have such dedicated groups over the years who do the hard work to keep the contest going. We wish the "Friends of Remich Park" all the best and that they have plenty of ice to work with. I copied a bit from the much longer and more detailed article:

LITTLETON — After no ice to speak of in the winter of 2024, Friends of Remich Park (FoRP) is hoping for enough ice in 2025 to support the first-ever planned ice-out contest on Dells Pond, modeled after the longstanding contest on Joe’s Pond in West Danville.

The money raised by the 501(c)(3) nonprofit FoRP, formed in the 1980s and revamped after the new playground project in 2020, will go toward programming and other needs.

“We have a new fund-raiser, it’s called the ice-out, from Joe’s Pond,” Jocelyn Nute Corell, president of FoRP, said during a presentation to the Select Board on Monday. “We’re trying to copy it because it’s such a good idea. We had a whole plan to do a run-through last year, and there was no ice. But we had everything all ready to go.”

By Robert Blechl, Caledonian Record, 12/13/24

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I have been watching four very large, healthy wild turkeys that apparently have taken up residence on my lawn. I have a couple of very old ornamental apple trees and one small crab apple tree there that provide lots of fruit for critters. One year I watched a mother bear browse under mu crab apple tree while her two bear cubs romping in the branches overhead. Squirrels also love nabbing the little apples that stay on the branches all winter, as have lots of partridges, deer, and turkeys over the years. It is pretty funny watching those big turkeys trying to balance on the smaller branches, but they manage. In fact, they roosted in one of the ornamental apple trees last night. When I raised the blind this morning, they became alarmed and a couple dropped to the ground and ran while the other two took flight from the tree, landing by the bushes along the roadside. 

They also feed under the large evergreens on my front lawn sometimes. I'm not sure if they are getting seeds from those trees or if they are picking up seeds that the chickadees and nuthatches have dropped.  Some years turkeys have enjoyed picking up seeds from under my window bird feeder, but yesterday I watched as one approach to about six feet of the area under the feeder and after several minutes of consideration she turned back to the apple trees. I try to be careful not to let them see me as that frightens them away. I'm happy to have them around. Sometimes they just stand on one leg in the sun, head tucked under a wing, I assume taking a nap. Their hearing and eyesight are very acute so even a small noise or movement will spook them. I know it's silly, but I have arranged on curtain to hide my chair so I won't disturb them as I sit in my recliner. I was glad that there was only a trace of snow to measure this morning so I didn't have to go onto the deck. Sometimes in the past I've gone out on the deck unaware the turkeys were around and the noise their wings make when they take flight has really startled me. Hard to tell who is more alarmed, them or me!

I have been doing a series of articles about Cabot history for the Cabot Chronicle. Over the years the town has had 15 school districts all numbered according to different sections of town that at one time or another had enough youngsters to warrant establishing a school. The first three, Cabot Plain, Cabot Center, and Lower Cabot have been published - Lower Cabot will be in the January issue. Now I'm working on District 4 which is the West Hill area.

The first school in that section of town was called the Kimball School District - because the Kimball family lived nearby and likely donated land for the school. I'm not certain what year that school was established, but probably very early 1800s. The population shifted and Kimball School closed in 1886 and a new school was built at the four corners where West Hill Pond is. That building is still standing and is owned by the Cabot Historical Society. At our meeting this past Monday, Vice President Brittany Butler told us she has taken several groups of young students to the West Hill School this year and they are in awe when they see what one-room schools were like. 

The building is a treasure trove of history with desks, books, maps, blackboards, water pail, and wood stove that were either part of that original school or some just like it. There is even an outhouse in the back - no longer functioning as it originally did, but it represents that era. 

I'm very familiar with West Hill School. We've had many meetings there in the past, and I've taken tour groups there during Fall Foliage. I went to a one-room school on Cabot Plain that was more "modern" than the restored West Hill School in many ways (it had electricity and plumbing!), but there were things in common, too. Especially I remember the roll-down map cases that hung over the blackboards. There were a variety of perhaps five or six maps - one of the United States, one of Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. and each could be pulled down like a rollup windowshade. Above the map cases there were large cards printed with the alphabet in cursive that displayed both capital letters and lower case. They were there as reference when we learned penmanship.

The schools all had an American flag in the classroom and we pledged allegiance every morning. The Plains school (photo at right) had a stage and a basement with a big old wood-fired furnace that belched smoke into the room, but little heat. The basement area was somewhat finished off and on really cold days when snow was sifting down on us from the big multi-paned, loose-fitting windows, our teacher would allow small groups to go to the basement to study. It was warm there, especially when the cook-stove had been used for hot lunch preparation. 

We all got a chance to help prepare those lunches and clean up - an early introduction to home economics. We had government "surplus commodities" to supplement what our parents contributed. Sometimes the government supplies sent to the schools were hard to work with, but the teacher and older girls figured it out. I recall that some items were pretty bad - powdered milk that could really only be used for cooking. I think some of that was probably sent home with students and was likely fed to the pigs or calves. Our taste buds were used to fresh farm products. We liked things like the raisins, prunes, and the concentrated orange juice wasn't too bad, but if it hadn't been for our PTA donations of canned vegetables, meat, fruit, and maple syrup, the hot lunches would have been pretty sad. In those years, the PTA (Parent Teachers Association) was very active on Cabot Plain. (Photo right shows the Plains School today.)

The older boys at school had to stoke the furnace and split wood sometimes if we were running low.  When the wind drifted snow against the front door and filled in the path from school, they had to shovel. We had a janitor who did those things in early mornings or after school in the afternoon, but most days he was busy attending to things on his farm so his sons, who were students, filled in for him. Our janitor was Fred Maynard who lived a short distance from the school. When I was in school, there were several Maynard kids going there, too. Frederick and Martin were 7th and 8th graders; Theresa and Kenneth were about my age, and younger kids, Virginia and Darcy were all in school at some point during the years I spent there. Their oldest brother, Ernest, was the first casualty of WWII, when the plane he was a gunner on was shot down in France.

Those years were farm years - all of Cabot Plain was under cultivation with every home a functioning, productive farm, and almost every family had lots of children. There were cows in pastures, horses pulling mowing machines in broad fields or sleds with wood or milk on board, roosters woke us up in the morning, and food scraps went to the pigs or chickens before we knew what "composting" was. After World War II, things changed. As happened after the Civil War - after WWII ended, young men either didn't or couldn't return to the farm. Aged and exhausted farmers gave up or died and their land went on the market. This photo was taken of the Maynard's farm in 2012, before it was finally taken down a few years later.