A genre-bending work similar to Edgar Lee Mastersâ A Spoon River Anthology, this miscellany is a portrait of a fictional New England small town over the past several hundred years, celebratory and insightful, its stories recounted by more than a hundred voices, those of the living â white, Black, Native American, male, female, gay â and of the dead, and also of inanimate objects â a neglected upright piano, a bench along a nature trail â in poems, dialogues, roadside markers, tombstones, business brochures, newspaper articles, a playlet, diary entries, oral history transcripts, a stitched sampler and even a nursery rhyme. Some tales are of quiet happiness, others of roiling passions, moral quandaries, tragedy and comedy; above all, they speak to the centrality of community and continuity in our lives.
A genre-bending work similar to Edgar Lee Mastersâ A Spoon River Anthology, this miscellany is a portrait of a fictional New England small town over the past several hundred years, celebratory and insightful, its stories recounted by more than a hundred voices, those of the living â white, Black, Native American, male, female, gay â and of the dead, and also of inanimate objects â a neglected upright piano, a bench along a nature trail â in poems, dialogues, roadside markers, tombstones, business brochures, newspaper articles, a playlet, diary entries, oral history transcripts, a stitched sampler and even a nursery rhyme. Some tales are of quiet happiness, others of roiling passions, moral quandaries, tragedy and comedy; above all, they speak to the centrality of community and continuity in our lives.
Prologue:
Labor Day Weekend, 2003
This Accident Victim Is Aware
(thoughts of Sam Newington)
This aging accident victim is aware,
although he knows he shouldnât be,
brimming with sweet sedation
and splayed on the carving board
of a steel-and-plastic operating table;
aware of mouthless-masked medics
rescuing what of him can be retrieved
from deathâs enveloping arms,
into which a speeding van hurled him,
right there in the crosswalk
of Jerichoâs Cobbleâs Main Street!
aware of âhereâ an eye-blink from âgone;â
unwilling to give up the ghost
yet curious about becoming one;
unable to cease playing with words,
conjuring a âbox seatâ in the cemetery
to view the Cobbleâs soothing vista,
with its backdrop, the eponymous knoll,
a stage across which the seasons strut;
insensate yet sensing everything,
the right now, the near past, and the far,
the living, the dead, and the beyond,
becoming permeable to them all
whilst searching them all for answers,
urgent and essential, to questions
one never finds the time to ask.
Jousting with the Space Invaders
(Grace Newington, thoughts and dialogue)
Waiting in this limbo of a hospital âfamily loungeâ as Labor Day Monday becomes work-a-day Tuesday, I am overwhelmed, both with the hope that my husband will recover from his terrible accident, and with the fear that even if he does he might never again be the man he was. Adding to my perplexity is the absurdity that next door in the operating room, surgeon Glenda Trainor is trying to save Samâs life, while in this bland anteroom her husband Vernon, our Congregational Churchâs pastor, is praying for Samâs well-being -- as though Samâs body and soul are the current rope of the Trainorsâ marriage-long tug-of-war.
Vern and I have long since exhausted our reservoirs of small talk and now pass the time reading materials placed here for that purpose, mine the new issue of The Country Caller. I skim the lead article -- about the demand by critics to rename the Whitbred Elementary School because, it is charged, the Whitbreds, the original European settlers, stole the land from the natives â to re-read my gardening column, which I e-mailed to the paper ten days ago. âJousting With The Space Invadersâ relates my late-summer gardening battles with such âalien-to-the-Americasâ plants as Japanese Knotweed, Oriental Bittersweet, and Purple Loose-strife, whose exotic beauty disguises their aggressive displacement of native species. How petty that jousting now sounds to me when measured against my husbandâs being slammed by a force so destructive that it nearly killed him.
Doc Glenda enters the lounge in her street clothes; I appreciate that she has changed out of her no doubt bloodied operating gown so that I wonât have to see my husbandâs gore. We two know each other a bit from singing together in Congoâs choir.
GLENDA: Samâs in the ICU now, Grace. Stable. We put a cast on his arm, taped his damaged ribs, reflated his collapsed lungs.Later today Iâll take out one of the tubes we inserted for the reflation, and tomorrow the other. Heâll be on oxygen for a week or so after that.
GRACE: Is he still in grave danger?
GLENDA: Yes, but less so than when the ambulance brought him here. Grace, his insults are severe; this is going to take time.
GRACE: Thereâs a rehabilitation facility near our apartment in the city âŠ
GLENDA: No! He should not be moved! Iâll call Moorehead Rehab to see if they have a bed available in a few days -- more peaceful there than in the city.
GRACE: Can I see him now?
GLENDA: You could, yes, but I donât advise it -- heâs too sedated for interaction. Better off waiting twelve hours. Try this afternoon; heâll be more alert by then.
I believe Glenda is informing me that Sam will make it but that the degree of his recovery, and its pace, are still question marks. Only somewhat relieved, I am suddenly acutely ashamed of our recent marital difficulties -- after thirty-two years, feeling pulled in separate directions, although still fond of each other. Now all I want is for him to return to good health. But a part of me cannot help worrying about what will happen to us if he doesnât. Will he be able to walk, talk, and think well enough to resume work as a financial analyst?Thatâs our main income.
Our two children need to hear the positive news. I phone them. Each picks up on the first ring. My message: Your father is out of immediate danger and by this afternoon may be able to speak to you, and we can then figure out the timing for visits, sans grandchildren â the little ones, we agree, mustnât see a banged-up Poppa Sam.
In the parking lot, our Volvo is almost the only car left. I drive slowly towards our house through the darkness. Whenever Sam and I drive up from Manhattan, Sam likes to note and to salute as the first real sign of being âin the countryâ the Bald Knoll itself, visible a mile ahead. To see it makes him happy. Right now, since the sun is not yet up, I canât make it out. Too keyed up to even cook for myself, Iâll stop at GetânGo and pick up something for breakfast.
The Bald Knoll
Five hundred million years ago,
as the Iapetus Ocean shrank
in its clash with the land,
shells and skeletons and sand
began to cluster, forming us;
four hundred million years ago,
the Taconic Orogeny in a torturous spasm
thrust us and all around up and up and up;
ever since, our cradle has been diminishing,
chiseled by water and wind and downflows,
condensing, amalgamating, shifting,
the sedimentary grinding the allocthonous,
what of us had been molten congealing
under the surface, soon to extrude again
in a ground teeming with green,
but not us, for as we weathered
we protruded unrestrained,
a bald spot in the foliage,
resistant to the progression of beeches and birches,
pines and spruces, chestnuts and hornbeams,
hemlocks and oaks, and that of the beasts,
from mastodon to mammoth to moose,
spurring mankind,
upon its late emergence,
to render us reverence.
Sorority of the Brown Bags
(thoughts of Jeannie Johnson)
Whichever of us gals arrives earliest at GetânGo starts in on the prep: thereâs eggs to bake, bacon to sizzle, tomatoes to slice, breads to arrange, butter to soften, coffee to brew -- the whole nine yards. I crayon the lunch specials on the board; Bonnie seeds the register with singles, fives, tens, and coins (twenties go underneath); Hope lays out the muffins, donuts, scones, and coffee cups. An hour âtil our 5:30 A.M. opening is barely enough time, but we work hard, because, donât ya know, hard work is what we rube dames do, we who werenât born lucky or married lucky, we of the sorority of the brown bags.
We sneak glances at one another, checking how we weathered the night, as we been doing since we met as biker gals. Hope and Bonnie and Jeannie been toiling ass-to-ass six days a week like forever, and we still take vacations together! Without our guys.
Work is work -- not uplifting, not demeaning, just whatâs there to be done.Sure we take pride in doing it well but mainly weâre here to make money for the fourteen hours a day that weâre not here. Everything on the shop walls shouts that: the sassy-motto plaques, the baby pictures, the Christmas cards on the pin-board.
Moment we open, thereâs a line at the counter -- brothers, sons, cousins, neighbors, former boyfriends -- come to collect their sausage melts and corn muffins, josh us a bit, leave us nice tips. These big lugs in company-logo shirts, driving pick-ups and tool vans, they got roads to clear, tanks to fill, machinery to mend, and lawns to tend, so they need food for warmth, and our knowing smiles at the worldâs making them as well as us wake up every day at a very doggoned early hour.
Hereâs Vinny Djere (bacon-egg-ân-cheese), still baby-faced though heâs been through hell in Iraq and is now back home and working with the grounds-and-maintenance crew at The Chancellery. Hereâs Chad Stucnowicz (cheese and tomato on a roll), going in early to Valley Hardware so heâll be there when the contractors need him. Hereâs Andy Borska (buttered toasted sesame bagel), handsomest plumber in town.
One early gal customer (buttered blueberry muffin, nuked) I sorta recognize --- a weekender â husband plays in the pick-up ball game on Sundays -- but I donât really know her. Appears like she canât stop thinking about something awful as just happened. Well, ambulance crew did say theyâd had a bad one on Main Street, late. Bet it was her husband.
Iâm slipping an extra treat into her bag.Probably stopped here because Jim isnât open yet.
Jim the Bakerâs our competition â one of us, really, a hard-working Vietnam vet --in his tiny cafĂ© the other end of Main Street. This hour heâs definitely at it, ovens going a mile a minute. He opens a bit later and mostly gets a different type customer: the Gobblers â the weekenders, the retirees, the people up from the city -- we call âem Gobblers because theyâre so different from us born-and-raised Cobblers. Our customers are usually grads of Stillwater Mountain High, like me (class of â73), who canât spend moreân a few minutes or a few dollars at GetânGo âcause, donât ya know, theyâre on the clock!
Our Cobbler-customers make it possible for Jimâs Gobbler-clients to spend nice weekends in their country houses. Yeah, yeah; but I gotta admit itâs also the other way âround: Wouldnât be lots of service-type jobs in these parts without enough weekenders to pay good dollar for those services. If this townâs going to survive in the 21st century as a great place to live and work, Cobblers and Gobblers are going to have to figure out how to make a go of it together.
Jimâs made-from-scratch pastries and designer coffees are fancier and tastier than ours, so he can charge more for them. But he canât match our bold tattoos and our purple-and-green hair and our tight sweaters.
Jonathan Menaker Nash (1923-2003)
I am the most recent of those entombed in Jerichoâs Cobbleâs Cemetery,
and had hoped in death to be reunited with my left foot.
Just kidding!
That left foot, ankle, and adjoining section of lower left leg,
damaged by a landmine as our division took Mount Belvedere,
were cut off at Bagni di Lucca so as to save the rest of me.
Ever since, Iâve felt the footâs loss, even though my substitute one
enabled me to walk and even to cross-country ski,
my poles giving me adequate balance.
In death, though, I am now gratifying my other yearning,
to lie forever in Jerichoâs Cobble --
not in Fort Myers, where I spent my last days,
or in Burlington, where I spent my earliest ones.
Vitti, the nurse in that Italian hospital,
whom I persuaded to come to America with me,
promising her a nicer life
than seemed possible in ruined Italy,
did not immediately take to the Cobble,
where Iâd bought a small-animals practice.
Enduring tough winters and the raising of two children
she yearned for a much warmer place,
a sunny beach to walk, a sea to swim in.
So we took annual winter vacations to Florida
and in the Cobble applied ourselves to enjoying the wondrous springs,
mellow summers, and glorious autumns.
The Cobble had it all: enough work for us to make a decent living,
good schools for our children, friends for me, some for Vitti,
churches that didnât harangue us, a congenial pub at the inn,
good fishing, good hunting, good skiing,
fresh corn and tomatoes.
In return, we strove to be of service to its people and domestic animals.
Does God ask more of us than that?
I was good old trustworthy Doc Nash, best vet in the Valley â
even treated a man wounded by arrows, once --
sang lead basso for Congoâs choir,
drove my 1938 Alfa Romeo on sunny days and in parades,
and was the perennial winner of the handicapped division
of the cross-country ski races.
After fifty years of being âDoc Reliable,â
since my hands would no longer obey,
I gave up my veterinary practice,
sold my wonderful car,
and bought Vitti that place in the Florida sun,
so she could walk barefoot on the beach.
I walked with her on those sands as long as I could.
Donât know if sheâll join me here, but I do know that Iâve come home.
Alice on her Morning Jog
(Alice Hadley Morely, diary entry
for Thursday, Sep. 4, 2003)
Schools R opening again today after the summer -- and w/o me! Yay!
Iâm on my now-regâlar early A.M. jog -- nature path (X-country ski trail) â 2Âœ mi. of mild ups ân downs â 2 earn my reward 4 exercise: a Morning-Glory muffin + a lattĂ© @ Jimâs, & a chat or 2 w/neighbors. All-ways a pleasure! Nice ppl.By then the P Office will B open so I can fetch my mail. After that, a more leisurely return; a 5-mile RT, perfect 4 a recently retired schoolmarm.(74 days, but whoâs counting?)The best thing @ being in the Cobble is 2 get outdoors all the time! So B-U-TEE-full! So alive!
From this trail U can C a lot @ the town. I jog (slowly) from west to east along the edges of 4 of the largest tracts, each 1 w/plenty oâ history.[1] U wouldnât know it from their serene appearance, but awful things happened @ ea., long ago, & the reverberations R still being felt today: the Renwick State Forest, where the Pequabogue tribe met their doom -- & more recently, just 20 yrs ago, where 1 of the arsonists that burned down R old Town Hall was shot 2 death; the stately fiefdom of the rapacious Whitbreds, now the home of the snobbish Chancellery prep school; the Eastlund Cottage estate, w/its generations of sexual scandals; & last but not least, the site of the former Dawson House + tannery, now razed, once the setting for poor Celia Dawsonâs madness, a place whose future is still B-ing fought over. Thank goodness we have a calmer, gentler town now than in the past!
Some trees R already showing a bit of fall plumage (thanx 2 an unusually hot Aug.), vivid in the slanting early sunlight â which is great for me, b/c these morns R among the more difficult 4 me 2 bear, since 4 the last 37 yrs. such A.M.s were when I was busy readying my classroom at Whitb. Elem. 4 the new 3rd -graders. Those 8-yr.-olds, so adorable & needy, @ a juncture on which all future academic + emotional development depends, in the early daze of the school yr. were so new 2 me-- & 2 themselves! â that Iâd be so engrossed in prepping that I wouldnât realize I was humming a Bâway show-tune!
âMISS-us MORE-lee,â my kids called me. 500-600 over the yrs, in a town of 4,000! Some, now grown up & still nearby, still greet me as MISS-us MORE-lee even tho theyâre old enuf 2 call me Alice -- such as @ my retirement party, where a few announced, 2 my astonishment, that theyâre grandparents!
No 1 tells U how tough retirement is when U R alone. Or how best 2 put yr energy into leisure, as our weekenders do.Arthur ran off long ago w/his secây; I didnât miss him then & certainly donât now! Nor, truth B told, do I miss Mother â she made us both miserable during the 4 yrs she lived w/me before she passed. What I do miss, & terribly, is the 3rd gradersâ love, & even more, the oppor2nity 2 give them my own. We are on earth 2 love others, not just 2 B loved.
Glancing around a bend in the trail as I lope, I C, not 50 ft. ahead, a huge, multi-antlered moose â he is EEE-NOR-MUSS! -- his sopping, shaggy, dark-brown coat shimmering from a recent dip in the waters, moss draped from 1 antler.
I stop.Never before seen a moose. He turns his head -- looks calmly & directly @ me. We gaze at 1 another in mutual appraisal. And suddenly I know this moose! He is the magnificent, legendary Pequabogue guardian @ the Bald Knoll; & somehow he is also the spirit of Skanaska, the tribeâs murdered sachem!
I hold my breath, hoping my stillness will prolong the moment.
What does the moose want of me? Something; but I canât figure what âŠ
After a brief lowering of his massive head in my direction -- an indication that we share such questions? â the moose strides in an unhurried way off the path & into the adjoining brush. By the time I reach the spot on the trail where the moose was, I find no trace of him anywhere.
[1] Compilerâs Note: The four properties along the jogging trail (in ski season, the cross-country loop) were once owned, respectively, by the Renwicks, the Whitbreds, the Eastlunds, and the Dawsons, although each property has since changed owners more than once. RBM.
On Labor Day weekend, 2003, a van strikes Sam Newington, an elderly Manhattan stockbroker, heaving him into Jerichoâs Cobbleâs Main Street. He is a Gobbler, and during surgery, he reflects on his brush with death, as does his wife, Grace, in the waiting room. Samâs surgeon, Glenda Trainor, suggests Sam rehab in Jerichoâs Cobble, a quieter place than New York City. Suddenly, everything changes. In A Jerichoâs Cobble Miscellany, by Tom Shachtman, past and present lives unknowingly overlap, acting in isolated unison.
Jeanne Johnson and her crew at GetânGo know their clients and preferences long before they line up at the counter. Like them, they graduated from Stillwater Mountain and work service jobs, catering to Gobblers. Jeanne recognizes Grace as a Gobbler and senses a connection to the early morning accident but respects her privacy.
The small, New England community confronts big city problems that cannot be handled in metropolitan fashion. At the weekly ball game, âWe have no umpire, no roster card, / no dugout, no announcer, no organ, / but plenty of gimmes and do-overs, / and the score is a matter of opinionâ (23).
Without policemen, firemen, EMTs and trash pickup, âIt gets by on volunteers [. . .] Stacy Borska, who has her hands full running her husbandâs plumbing-and-heating office, serves on the board for Meals For Allâ (26). Chip Garuzelski faces allegations of abusing female, Chancellery students. â[I]tâs not only The Chancelleryâs problem, itâs the Cobbleâsâand oursâ (28). Also, the Whitbreds may have âstole land from the nativesâ and prospered âfrom slave laborâ (36), making Whitbred Elementary Schoolâs name controversial. Meanwhile, the Birdsong House Museum faces closure. The love notes between E and S may stop it.
Adults and young adults will enjoy reading A Jerichoâs Cobble Miscellany. Through poems, plays, diary entries, newspaper articles, dialogues, and narratives, the book reveals a rural communityâs history and peopleâalive and dead, and their gossip, activities, successes, and struggles. The short chapters allow readings in one sitting and beg readersâ reflections on their own lives. Along the way, there are also life lessons. âIt is not [. . .] having had significant achievements [. . .] it is existing in a manner that touches others in positive ways and imparts to them an indelible sense of having had direct interaction with a unique and very interesting specimen of humanity who has enriched their livesâ (344).