The Blog Name

I owned a house in Brattleboro, Vermont, for almost 36 years. It was an old house - really old. One reference I found suggested it was built around 1788. It had been part of the Herrick Farm, a house built for the help, which explained a lot of things. The beams, for instance. Some were hewn, some were sawn with parallel marks from a pit saw, and some had mortises cut into them for no apparent reason, at least in this building. It was an assemblage of parts salvaged from other buildings.

There had been some attempts at cheap remodeling. the back half of the house had a "new" floor but it all but sat on the ground. The front half, over a shallow cellar with a laid up stone foundation, still had log joists. The rafters were logs, too. Very little in the house was level or plumb. In fact the back of the house was about six inches lower than the front which was quite handy if you spilled something. All you had to do is run to the back of the house and let whatever was spilled come to you. I got it for $7,600 in 1964. A house, a barn, a sugar house, and 8 acres. You could do that in those days.

It was a 36 year project. I fixed a lot of stuff and added a room and a garage. In the end it was quite comfortable.

One day in the late 1970s I happened to come across an old map of Brattleboro. As was the custom years ago, some residences had names like Meadowlawn or The Maples. And some sections of town had names, too, like Esteyville, Centerville, and Fort Dummer. The intersection of Guilford and Maple Streets where my house sat was called Elm Corners. The elms are long gone now, but that was too good to ignore. I made a sign to stand at the end of the driveway to restore the name and attach it to my place.

When Susan and I sold everything and moved to California I decided to take Elm Corners with me. Elm Corners, like Lake Wobegon or Grants Ferry, is a real place for me. I've long had my closure with the physical Elm Corners in Brattleboro, but the personal one is as strong as ever.

So that's what Elm Corners is about.

A few years ago I saw Gregory Peck tell a story about a time when he and James Mason were in Ireland filming a movie. Neither were young men, but Mason was older and had had a long career. One evening Mason had gone out for a walk in the village where they were staying. He heard footsteps behind him for some time before he finally stopped and turned around to see it was a woman from the village.

"Begging your pardon," she said. "but would you be James Mason in his later years?"

...his later years...

People have been after me for some time to start a blog but I never had a hook or a place to come from. The blog I created while we were in England was always about telling folks back here what we were up to and the interesting things we found there. My column in the Brattleboro Reformer and later in the Keene Sunday Sentinel always came from a local guy writing about his life. So I had been looking for that hook, the thing that would be non-specific but somehow tied to everything I might write.

Elm Corners - The Later Years

It's where I am now, probably a bit of where I've been, and maybe even some suggestions about what lies ahead.