Main Sections

Recollecting with Art Grant

photo provided Art & Helen Grant celebrated their 44th Wedding Anniversary on July 25th

Tuesday August 5, 2008

By Cookie Steponaitis

    There are people you meet in your journeys that you know instantly contain more stories than your paper and pen can capture. Sitting down with Art Grant of Addison is not a one time affair, because his stories span two sides of the state's Green Mountains and are delivered in an original Vermont dialect and tone, containing words, phrasings and accents only retained by a few Vermonters. While his accent can not be captured on the printed page, the words of his memories paint a vibrant image of a Vermont few people are left to remember and some can only imagine.

    Art Grant was born in Chelsea, Vermont in 1931 and grew up as a young person in rural Vermont just before the beginning of World War II. His memories of his family and childhood transport the listener to a time in Vermont history where commodities were few and people lived at a different pace and focus. “Farming was certainly a different ball game, I guess you could say,” he remarked. “We tunneled the hay, pitched it on the wagons and again into the barn. It was all done with a dump rake. We had a few cows and 20-25 acres of meadowland.” Art was raised by his grandparents for part of his childhood and he recounted over fifteen different memories he had of them and their way of life. “Grandpa was a mailman for thirty-four years. He used a horse and buggy and a sleigh in the winter. Everyday, six days a week, he drove twenty-two miles over those hills in Chelsea, and I recollect him pulling into the yard most nights after dark. He wore a bearskin coat and in the winter was covered up with heavy robes. Grandma used to heat a stone in the wood stove and put in the wagon by his feet. He stopped each day half ways through the route at his father's house to change horses. He had one Morgan Horse that he was special fond of. That horse sure could pull the mail wagon, the hay wagon or work in the fields. I lived with Grammy and Grandpa during the war years and toward the end Grandpa got sick. He suffered from what they called “Dropsy” back then. The doctor told my grandma that if he got real bad during that winter of 1943-1944, he probably would die before they could get to him. That winter we had a hell of a bunch of storms. There are 93 miles of back roads in Chelsea and in 1943 only one tractor, Caterpillar D-6 to clear the roads. Sometimes we were days if not a week before they got to us.”

      While he lived with his grandparents, Art walked the three quarters of a mile each day to the one room school that educated all the local children. Chelsea School # 9 was one room with a wood shed and an old wood stove.  Art pointed out that school days then, “…made no difference to the weather. Never heard of snow days,” he recalled. “It made no difference if it was 90 degrees or -30 below zero, cause you went to school. I remember one family that had several girls and two of them come to school with bran sacks over their boots to cover up the holes. No one said nothing, cause that was just the way it was with many people. You made do with what you had.”

    “You have to understand,” he continued, “there won't no money then. You made your own fun. We used to have sliding parties all the time and coming down some of those Chelsea hills, well, let's just say that you get a whipping. If we could get a hold of a piece of tin roofing, we could get a hell of a ride out of those on the crusted meadows and roads. One piece of equipment that brought a lot of fun was a Flexible Slyer sled that my uncle left behind for us to use when he went in the army. Bout three of us could get on that thing and we sure could get to going.” Art paused a minute and commented, “I have come to believe that we were all born for a different purpose. Some were made for book learning, but not me. I was made to get out there and get moving. By the time I was fifteen I was over six feet tall and could out work most of the men in the area, so I left school to work.”

      Working with their hands started young for all the youth in those days. By the time Art left Chelsea at the age of seventeen to find his place in the world, he had already worked several difficult jobs that required knowledge and skills not found in textbooks but only in work. One of his jobs involved cutting logs and wood for sale and timber. He worked along side some men who in their eighties and were quick to point out that in their day, they didn't have saws and that they went into the woods with an axe. “Now those fellers knew how to use an axe and take down a tree”, Art remembered. “You learned an awful lot by standing still and watching. They taught you plenty.”
At this point in the interview Art began to chuckle and told me with a grin, “You got to remember; I was fifteen and just pleased to be earning a wage. I took whatever job was available, and for a boy my size there was a plenty. I worked on the bridges that they were building around Chelsea one winter. A whole bunch of us kids signed on and we run blow torches where the cement piers were poured. We walked around all night with kerosene torches, walking back and forth at twenty below zero so that the concrete didn't freeze. We was glad to do it, because it was work.”

   Other jobs for Art included working in the quarries of Barre, three hundred feet down. “It sure was hot, down there,” he recounted. “They used to have a plug drill and I drilled holes on a blue chalk line hanging off the side of the quarry on a hook and cable. Sometimes to come up to the top I would grab a hook and just ride up to the opening, but then I was full of it in those days. My boss, Andy Moore, I remember him so well just looked at me and shook him head and said, 'Young fella, I don't know about you'.”

   At seventeen, Art left Chelsea and went looking for his place in Vermont. He lived in Tunbridge for awhile and began working on farms. He came to the Champlain Valley when he was 18 and planned on staying for good.  “In September, 1952, I hadn't turned 21 yet,” he recounted. “Went up there with “$ 15.00 in my pocket and nothing else. My father told my brothers, 'He won't be there more than six months.' ” This September will be fifty-six years, he chuckled, and so I'm still here.” Art purchased a one hundred ten acre farm with twenty-four cows and an old milking machine that he farmed until 1977.

   When I asked him about the changes in farming in his lifetime, he was quick to point out that more change has happened since he sold the farm than in his years in agriculture. “Ever since I can remember, if you had a tractor with 25-30 horse power, it was good. May and June's milk sold for $ 3.35 a hundred and sometimes if you were lucky you got $ 5.00 a hundred in November.” He paused and added with a serious tone, “One big change today is the huge number of people who don't understand how farming and milk prices change the local economy.  I have an awful lot of respect for the people in farming today. They distribute an awful lot of money through this valley, but the more you talk with people outside of farming, it is clear real quick that they don't have a clue about the cost, the effort and the way it is all linked together.”

   Art and his family added to the farm during the 1960's when he built a barn for sixty five cows. “I thought I had the world by the shirt,” he smiled. “The barn had a cleaner. Push a button and it cleaned the whole barn in twenty minutes. Sure beat a shovel.” When Art sold the farm in 1987 he had expanded it to 350 acres with 300 of it consisting of meadow. He still stays close to the business of farming and admits he misses the machinery and being outdoors. One particular interest of his is watching the cost of Diesel Tractors that were manufactured in the 1960's and 1970's that, if they are in good shape, are still selling today for a good price.

   Since the 1970's until just recently, Art worked at his next career, which was cutting timber, skidding logs and cutting firewood. “People would think I was crazy,” he said, “because on a nice winter day I would be stripped to my t-shirt and working happily in the cold, crisp air. I sure cut a lot of wood for people. Mostly we cut logs and skidded out a lot of lumber. I recollect one winter we took almost 400,000 feet of lumber out of one site in Monkton.  Wherever Art was, he took time to meet and get to know the people he came in contact with. “I really enjoyed visitin with folks,” he remembered. “Everyone was different and had a story to tell.”

    Looking at my watch, I was not astonished to see that over three hours had passed and that I had filled over fifteen pages of comments and notes. Art looked at me, grinned and said, “Can you make sense out of all of that. I jump back and forth all over the place. I may not remember what I had dinner last night, but fifty years ago is as clear as a bell.” While it was easy to make sense out of the notes, it was not easy to choose which memories to incorporate into this article, because it only scratches the surface of the archive of Vermont recollections stored in this one special person. Shaking his hand gives you further proof of the strength and work ability of this man as his one hand could easily swallow up two of mine. His wedding ring is a size sixteen, he told me, but it was a little tight. Huge hands, a huge heart, and a devotion to his wife, family and grandchildren as well as the Champlain Valley he still calls home.

     Do you have an Art Grant in your life? If you do, take the time to sit, listen and record these incredible memories of a time that most of us can only imagine. As Art would be quick to point out, “You learn a lot about life and people, just visitin.”

Printer Friendly

Top

Advertisements

Search our Archives