We live in a red house on a small road in Northern Vermont. We have lived in the house since before kids. It is an old, small Cape -- 1840's. A farm house. Just next to it is a beat up barn settling in the dirt. It was a farm until 1978 when 'Cedric' -- I don't know his last name -- sold the house to a man named Bump, who moved the house and put it on a funky foundation. Bump sold the house, and then a few years later another family bought it, and then along came we. We lived in it for a year before we took title. It is humble and sweet.
It is Beatrix Potter; all angles and clapboard and wildly unmanaged perennials with chickens running all around. (You'll read about them from time to time.) There are mice and bigger pests, including variously a skunk under the porch, porcupine, red squirrel, a fisher (you'll read about him too). In addition to the chickens we have a dog, Dexter. We had a rabbit years ago who just showed up one day. (And yes, I'll write about the rabbit. In fact, over time, you'll read more about most everyone and everything mentioned in this post.)
To the front, to the east, the house is separated from the road by a big lawn. The lawn is peppered with old apple trees and lilac and swamp maples. Between the lawn and the road is 'the wilderness.' It is some 100 feet of old berry bushes and grasses and brush as well as thick young hardwoods. The birds love it and once Jackie saw a bear bolt from the wilderness across the meadow to the river.
To the west and south we are wrapped by hay field and beyond the hay field we are bounded by another scrubby forest and finally a hard stop at our stream. After all this time I still do not know its name. We swim in the stream and over the years have cut wide, cool paths through the forest to a few deep swimming holes.
To the north we have our only nearby neighbors, are blessed with nearby neighbors, and never want them to leave. They too have a hay field -- bigger -- and so behind both of our houses is meadow, then woods, then river. The boundary between our two lands is guarded not - it is to neighbors what Canada is to America.
The barn is trouble. It is settled to the point of one day falling. It is long and old and gorgeous. The carrying beams are a foot thick and sixty feet long. The narrow barn clapboards are worn a deep gray and peeling off the barn like skin off a snake. The tin roof is rusted perfectly.
When the local paper, the Stowe Reporter, asked me to write a column, about nine years ago, they asked me what I wanted to call it. I thought of our house, stained red with white trim, and Red House Report was the first thing to come to my head. I didn't have to think about what to call the column. It just is.
Thinking about it, it makes great sense. I write -- report -- about what I see right in front of me. I do most of the writing sat in the kitchen of our small old house. There you go.
When I started the column our son was still a baby, eighteen months old at most. He's now eleven and soon to head to middle school. Back then it was 'we three.' Now we are four and the dog. We are busting out. I've never been more comfortable.
So: For the past nine years or so I've written stories about living here, based in our little red house, and what happens at the house, in the town, all around. I love writing the column; it's habit now. Over the next year I am going to write more and put it all up here -- some will be from the paper and some won't; some will be essays, some fiction; some will be written, some visual -- moving and still -- and some voice. Why do I do it? I believe it is the life right in front of us that matters most but we notice least. I'm good at writing down what I see and bringing light to it. It's fun. I'm up early. Who knows. In any event, see what you think, say what you think, and enjoy the posts.
Now, for being patient, a story about Cedric, as told to me by my old neighbor Gaylord:
* * * * *
Cedric, the last man to farm from our little red house, was a bit of a character and somewhat reclusive but kind (I only can aspire). He farmed vegetables and chicken and had some milk cows. The house was all clutter -- including a dining room set never taken out of the boxes it came in. The chickens were allowed in the house. The upstairs, where some roosted, was knee deep in chicken manure. The kitchen was full of newspapers. You get the idea.
One day Cedric's neighbor, Gaylord, came by to visit and walked into the kitchen, which smelled to high heaven of skunk. The smell made Gaylord's eyes water.
"Cedric," Gaylord asked, "what happened? Did a skunk get under the house?" Gaylord could barely breath.
"No," said Cedric. "It got in the kitchen."
"How'd you get it out?"
"Well," Cedric said, as though it should be obvious, "I shot it."
It seems Cedric saw the skunk come into his kitchen so he shot it right there under the kitchen table with a .22 pistol. On a warm night I think I can still smell it.
David Rocchio works, writes and lives in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio
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