Winter Memories: Nostalgia or Analogy?

Covered bridge in Fairfax, VT near our house  (NMP)

Is it the curse of old men to dwell on the past? This winter has been so cold and snowy that it reminds me of when winter excited me. The 1970s were distressful: stagflation, gas shortages, high unemployment, appalling fashion and music, and inability to land a teaching job. Emily and I desperately wanted to leave Pennsylvania.

Lots of people like Pennsylvania, but it was too conservative, plus about all this working-class lad knew about the world was nearby Maryland, West Virginia, and Washington, DC. I got married in 1978; Emily and I wanted to live in New England, she because of relatives in the region and me because I was seduced by photos in National Geographic. Those are not the best reasons for pulling up stakes, but we vowed to move to move whenever one of us got a job up north. It happened eight months later. We’ve traveled a lot since then, but we always head back to our adopted homeland of New England.

We now reside in Massachusetts, but our first New England home was in northwestern Vermont where Emily got a job offer. That’s world-class irony, as Vermont and Rhode Island were the only New England states where none of Emily’s relatives lived. The only time either of us had ever seen Vermont was when we were driving to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, got turned around in its notorious traffic rotary, and accidentally drove across the border to Pownal, Vermont. It did not leave a good impression. Pownal was rundown and sported a tawdry greyhound betting track. Its parking lot was where we reversed direction and hightailed it back to Williamstown.

We moved to northwestern Vermont in early winter, before I drove back to Pennsylvania to finish my Masters degree courses. On my return trip, I stopped in Montpelier for a job interview. It was so cold I couldn’t feel my feet!  After all, I was armed with acrylic sweaters, light jackets, thin socks, and ankle-high footwear. I didn’t get that job, thus I was unemployed and, like many newlyweds, cash was tight. Burlington was out of our price range, so we rented a basement apartment in Milton, nearly 20 miles north. We froze our tushes off, but were sustained by the adrenaline of discovery before discovering wool, down parkas, tire chains, engine block heaters, and the wisdom of throwing a snow shovel in the trunk. 

 

We were once among the idiots walking across Button Bay! (NMP)

 

Somehow, it felt romantic to bundle up, dare to walk upon frozen Lake Champlain, hear the snow make a noise under our feet that was a cross between a crunch and a squeak, and watch the thermometer plunge below zero Fahrenheit. I took to calling Vermont “The Land of Right-Angle Smoke.” There were several weeks in which one degree would have constituted a thaw. The air was so heavy and laden with ice crystals that warmed air could not rise through it. River valleys were filled with homes where woodsmoke climbed 25-30 feet above the roofline, smacked into the cold air mass, and made an L-shaped turn. It couldn’t have been healthy to breathe that air, but I didn’t think about it back then.

I finally secured a teaching job, in Milton no less. The community was poor, but I adored teaching in the grades 7-12 high school. When I left after seven years, it had zilch to do with the kids. Oh, sure, I had occasional discipline problems, but nothing I couldn’t handle and I deeply empathized with those growing up without the resources that ought to be guaranteed every youngster. In a literal sense, Emily and I grew up in Vermont. Small wonder it holds a special place in our hearts and we seldom turn down a chance to venture across the border (near Brattleboro) and keep going until we make it to Burlington or beyond. 

Snow falling 1" per hour in our MA backyard

 

Maybe I’m remembering all this because right now, winter in Massachusetts feels like one in Vermont. We’ve had several large snowstorms that crunch-squeak beneath our now-appropriate footwear and numerous subzero nights. Is it geezer nostalgia? I’d plead guilty to miss being in my 20s when the cold didn’t make my joints throb or send me under a mountain of quilts. Maybe. Ask me again about nostalgia in June, when Vermont skies are blue, days are pleasantly warm, farmers’ markets are crowded, and small boats flash brightly-colored sails on Lake Champlain.

Rob Weir

NMP = Not My Photo. There were no consumer digital cameras until the 1990s.