11,499. RUDIMENTS, pt. 579

RUDIMENTS, pt. 579

(getting to vermont)

One time in Vermont, I was all

the way up north. Bennington,

you see, is lower, southwest 

Vermont, and the drive north

up towards Burlington and 

the rest, begins differentiating 

itself because of its looming

neighbor, Canada. In fact,

at one of the northern gas 

stations, the attendant, a

young local, farm type of kid,

while passing the time with

me while the car gassed, 

began going on, for some

reason I forget, about people

from Canada always paying

in Canadian money and that

was the reason the change he

was handling, and handing

over to me, was Canadian

coins. It was all the same, he

said, and usable up there, even

the paper money, and no one

gave it a second thought and

whatever the denomination said

it was that was what everyone

took it for  -  meaning there was

no exchange rate mathematics or

any hesitancy in the commerce.

You could buy shoes or food or

whatever, in the same way all

along up there. He made it as

their little secret and, as well,

their small way of thumping

the finger to the rest of America.

I certainly thought that was

cool  -  a sort of rabid 1970's

revolt in the most quiet of ways.

I knew I was in the land of giants.

-

There was nothing I'd come across

like what I found in Vermont; it

being almost the classic opposite

of New York City. I'd been told,

then, that half-wit hippies, on 

their ways north, stop at the 

Woodstock area and never leave, 

but the  real ardent, back to the

land, and serious ones  -  the ones

you'd want to listen to  -  kept

on going, all the way up into the

upper reaches of Vermont and

New Hampshire, and never came

back nor were seldom heard from

again. I wasn't so sure about that

except as hyperbole, but even

then it was OK. I wasn't on any

mission myself, just wanting

to see what I'd see, in my usual

loose and sloppy way  -  no real

itinerary and no intention NOT

to stop anywhere I damned-well

pleased, to see and savor anything

I cared to. I'm still like that now,

and if a cow's face or some 

oddball corn-stalk, ruin, barn or

wreck of a car gets my eye, I

stop. Property lines and whether

or not I should be there, never

enter my mind. I either make

friends of some sort, or get 

chased away. I've traipsed

through weeds, sticker bushes,

fences, streams, side-roads, and

deep into infested dead-ends

just to get a photo. 

-

Ardent fans of protectionism

have never liked me. Or my

camera; which pretty much has

a take-no-prisoners view of the 

world. 'I go, though the way

be wild' would be a good motto,

yeah. (I think that's from Charles

Schultz, or Charlie Brown, or

something). When you get up 

there, Vermont way, up above

Rutland and all, a road is just

a road, and things get pretty 

wild. Strange. I'm not speaking

for today, because that's not

in my recent experience, but

in the early 1970's, etc., out in

the super-sticks of rural Vermont

all that was underway was the

crazy, speeding, bullet of the

outlandish rule-breaker(s) holed

up in some shack/farm set-up.

A raging commune, a totally

hippie farm-tribe, little kids

and dogs everywhere, kitchen

mamas clanging pots and pans,

gnarly guys trashing things

around, shouting at sheep 

and punching cows (I've seen

it, it happens, and a cow can

take a beating, though I never

knew why anyone would want 

to do that. I guess there really

always were 'cowpunchers').

A lot of those hippie guys 

anyway, you had to watch. They

were really pretty fey, weak

and lady-like in outlook and

approach. There were certainly

two sides to all that male-hippie

power-drive stuff. At one extreme

was the power-hungry dominant,

stringing up people and women,

for his own purposes  -  tribal,

sexual, and organizational. All
the controlling and over-weening
attention covered by wails of only
good intentions  (like politicians 
today); ask Peter Coyote, ask Hugh
Romney, Charles Manson, or, for
that matter, ask Jim Jones. If
you can, hint - you can't). That

was the almost cult-like side of

the movement. On the other side

were the hippie guys who were

so weak and mangled that they'd

cry over a dandelion or a butterfly,

while wearing flowered pants,

a suede vest over a bare chest,

and some (yep) flowers in their

hair. They just eventually got

pushed around and pushed aside 

too. There wasn't much hope

for them. In the middle 

somewhere were the majority, 

male and female, together,

sort of living in consort and

making it all work, from the 

middle out, leaving the fringe

extremes, at either end, to

work themselves out. There

was, about this time, or sometime

around this, record albums out

by two different groups, each

pretty much, if you see the

albums and album photos, etc.,

personifying and showing the

sort of fey-guy thing that was

becoming prevalent. One was

The Incredible String Band,'

and the other was three guys

who called themselves, as 

a band, 'America.' It seemed,

to me anyway, as if the

muscle was slowly draining

out of the American physique.
-
It was all something written in the
cards of destiny  -  the transformation
of a once-dreamed of paradise named
'America,' into the degenerated and
soiled forest of deceit and lies. In
Vermont they sometimes had it
in their heads to take the old
'forest primeval' routine and
make it work all over again  -  
even  though that old era was 
long gone and all the land was
already into its second cuttings
and farmland-uses. There wasn't
that much of anything really ancient 
left. New England itself, actually,
was a pretty terrible farmland; rock
and boulder-strewn lands needing
de-rocking  -  farmers would spend
huge amounts of off-time hours
pulling boulders and stones from
their arable lands so as to make
a clearer sailing for plows and
tractors. There'd be piles of rocks
all dumped in one place along
otherwise well-planted fields.  The
lines of planting, etc., would just go
around them  -  in addition, what 
other result could there have been
for the wonderful craft of rock-fence
building that took off like lightning
through the land  -  when God gives
you lemons, you make lemonade.
Most roadside homes were an
afterthought  -  you'd see them
hugging, or crammed into corners,
of the roads. Things developed in
haphazard fashions : leaning sheds,
barns on little hillocks, houses 
a'kimbo. Nature, in its eventual grace, 
covers all those things, all those
errors and squeeze-ins, with its
own form of forgiveness, growing
crazily up and down walls and
cuttings, trees taking root on
or between things, shrubbery, 
weeds and other growth in
abundance. A wise man doesn't
cut and crop and channel. That
person just lets Nature
rule its own day.