I pulled into the center parking lot at Miss Porter’s School to pick up my fourteen year old niece Sara for the annual family ski weekend at Killington, Vermont. I’d heard of Miss Porter’s School, and read about it. Jackie O. went there. It was supposed to be a wonderful place. But I‘d lost touch with Sara over the years, so I wasn’t expecting an outpouring of insight from her.
I saw well kept Victorians built close to tree lined streets, and natural stone buildings surrounding clay tennis courts, a hockey field and an outdoor amphitheater. There were plenty of other girls being picked up for the weekend, throwing themselves into the backseat of foreign SUVs, looking very sleek and polished. They were miniatures version of their mama’s upfront. Everyone looked healthy, robust, and so, so confident.
I‘d moved around the country with my first and second husbands for most of Sara’s life, and when I’d moved to Connecticut a few years ago I’d hoped Sara and I would somehow drift together, and I’d have a built in part time daughter. So far, it hadn’t happened.
After a few attempts at conversation on my part, we fell into silence. I didn’t know if Sara was sad, mad, depressed, or if this is just the way teenage girls are. When we crossed into Vermont, and still hadn’t exchanged more than a few words, I acted on an impulse and dove off the first exit into Rutland that led to the fast food row, just outside of town.
Sara asked, “Why are we stopping? Are you hungry?”
“No, I used to live here around here. I wanted to check it out. See how it’s changed.”
I was surprised I remembered the way to the gut off the highway. The highway was slightly built up, a few more signs, a few more businesses, mostly chain stores, but not as built up as you’d expect after 30 years. I followed my nose over the tracks, behind a new strip mall, and pulled up in front of what I thought was my old three flat.
“They called this part of town the gut. They called it the gut because it was hidden back off Main Street in the belly of the town and there were all these two and three flats for the quarry workers, and workers from the ski resorts.” I pointed to the corner. “That was my building.”
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“Don’t get caught on the tree stump!” I shouted out the bathroom window from the tub to Roy.
“You have to be at the Old Mill Inn by nine! The roads to Middlebury won’t be plowed yet!” I listened to the Toyota’s gears grind. “I don’t have time to push you off. I have a 9:30 at the Yankee Peddler in town. It’s a gift box deal!”
It was Valentine’s Day, 1978, the coldest winter in Vermont on record since 1912. Roy and I were twenty three, and married about a year. We’d lived in the gut, for about 6 months. Next to our building, in the middle of our parking area, there was a two foot wide, eighteen inch tall tree stump. In the winter, after a fresh snow, one of us would always get the undercarriage of our car hung up in it. That morning it was Roy’s 1968 red Toyota Wagon. Sometimes it was my pea green AMC Hornet. Whenever fresh snow fell, the stump was a torment, and fresh snow fell almost every day.
We’d come to Vermont to stake out a future together. Neither of us had a college degree. I had 2 years of college credits in this and that from various community colleges and undergrad programs in the Northeast. Roy had almost completed and paid for a Bell and Howell correspondence school program in something that had to do with restaurant management. We‘d dated for two years before we got married.
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Why did you get married if you were still so young?" Sara asked. "Why didn’t you just live together?"
I could see Sara felt she had to interrupt me at that point at ask what to her were probably very obvious questions. I could also see she was staring at the flat, noticing the lack of step, stoop or sidewalk.
“People got married earlier back then. We were both bright and ambitious, had good senses of humor and so it seemed the right thing to do.”
Sara gave me a solid glance, and waited for more.
“We teamed up, I guess, like when a bunch of strangers are in danger and a couple of them see each other as survivors and team up? The world was getting real tough for people starting out without a degree or much family backing.”
The people living in my old flat were coming home from work. I knew they’d notice a fancy SUV with a ski rack parked out front, so I put the car in gear and pulled off the side of the road and headed toward Center Street where all the shops used to be.
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After we moved to Rutland, we found the apartment in the gut. The landlord wanted 2 weeks rent for security and had to be paid every 2 weeks, in advance. We were both able to find jobs in sales, on straight commission. I found a job selling gift boxes, custom designed bags and wrapping paper to independent retail stores: Mom and Pop apparel and jewelry stores and gift shops. There were hundreds of independent gift shops in Vermont in 1978; they all gave away gift boxes with any purchase. Sometimes you could get the owners to buy fancy printed custom bags if you convinced them the bags were walking billboards and the expense should come out of their newspaper ad budget. But the real money was in gift boxes because the stores needed so many sizes and the minimums were high.
Roy found a job selling restaurant supplies to all the independent restaurant owners and innkeepers that went in and out of business in Vermont, in a predictable rhythm in the 60’s and 70’s. He liked to settle in for mornings or afternoons at the library and do “research” with local municipal and state business directories, looking for insight into his potential customers. He’d read Restaurant News front to back every week, along with every other local or national business publication the library had. He even researched the history of restaurant “tabletop” through the ages. Did you know the choice of plates and stemware is the one decision never left up to the restaurant manager? The owner is always involved. Therefore, a tabletop call is an important call.
Because it was so hard to make a living on straight commission; we worked out an unspoken agreement to give each other a break on some things. For example, we lied to each other about how hard, and how long, and how consistently we worked. When one of us stalled in the morning, shuffling papers or making lists (it was harder to stall in ‘78 with no computers, email, or blackberries), instead of heading out in to the cold, we never had the heart to call each other on it.
We developed a routine. Roy’s routine was to work long and consistently, but I suspected, especially when he began doing so much library research that winter, not very hard.
My routine was to work hard and consistently, day after day, but not for very long at one time. That morning was typical for me. I had an early morning appointment right in Rutland and planned to work hard the rest of the morning making cold calls. I remember thinking I must LASER my energy for today’s calls. Lasers were the big new thing then. I had to narrow my focus and energy to a point, to pursue the task at hand. Then, I’d sneak home around 2 o’clock and slip into the bath tub to watch TV. Since our apartment was basically a square with 3 smaller squares hanging off it, I could lie in the tub, drink pink zinfandel, read, and watch the TV in the living room all at the same time.
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“That’s different.” Sara said.
“Yeah, I guess it was. But I knew it meant where we lived was pretty funky. And I was sort of embarrassed about it in front of myself. You know?”
“Go on; tell me about your appointment at the Yankee Peddler.”
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