Author Archives: Joan

Hilltown Postcards

Road Bosses

Here’s another Hilltown Postcard I found in my computer’s files. This one was written a while back in recognition of the men, yes, they were all men, in charge of their town’s roads. It is fitting I publish this after two back-to-back winter storms.

Whenever I see a plow truck, no matter the town, I give my car’s horn a friendly toot, grateful to have passed over that town’s line to find the road cleared or sanded. If I can remember, I send a card at the end of winter thanking them.

But not everyone in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts appreciates the work of the highway crews. Years ago, Worthington’s road boss and a man went at it, exchanging blows, although the courts later cleared both. The man, new to town kept parking his truck on the road where he lived so the snowplow would have to back up 900 feet during a storm. The other highway workers complained they were getting hassled so the Selectboard — that’s the name of the top board in a Massachusetts town — cut service to that section of the road until it stopped.

The town of Goshen got a worker with a solid reputation when it hired a road boss in 1999. A few years before, he had a fine write-up in Yankee Magazine, which dubbed him the Peerless Ploughman, because when he was another town’s highway chief, he slept on a cot in the DPW garage whenever a winter storm was forecast.

But the man encountered a tougher storm in Goshen when he came against its good-old-boy network. He got a glimpse when a private plowing contractor drove into the highway yard, then used a piece of town equipment to load sand and salt into his dump truck so he could spread them on residents’ driveways. For pay. That’s the way it was always done.

The Goshen Selectmen fired the Peerless Ploughman because they said he was insubordinate at a meeting, but everyone knew it was more than that and some town officials quit in protest. It stirred things up for a while. Someone else is in charge of the roads now.

When I was a reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the road bosses, if they were around, were willing to take my questions about their work.

One road boss in Cummington drove me around to give me a lesson on what makes a good gravel road. By his assessment they didn’t exist in his town. There were times in spring, during the thaw, when people could only drive on their roads when the mud was frozen early in the morning or late at night. Even so, the mud could get so tire-sucking, axle-breaking bad they had to park at the end of the road, then hike in with bags of groceries and kids. 

I liked the way these men talk. They get right to the end of an answer fast. I once asked a road boss which roads were bad during mud season. He answered, “Pick one.”

At one Worthington Town Meeting, we were supposed to decide whether to buy a dump truck for the Highway Department. There was no discussion on the floor, and that got to one man, a smart-aleck newcomer I recall, who rose to ask, “$110,000 for a truck?”

Ernie Nugent, the road boss then, was handed the microphone. He said, “Yup,” then sat down.

That was enough for everyone. They voted to give him the truck.

The hilltowns of Western Massachusetts is the inspired setting for much of my fiction, including Missing the Deadline, the latest in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. Interestingly, a highway worker’s poetry is part of this story.

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Hilltown Postcards

Stupid City Folk

Years before we moved to Worthington, a hilltown in Western Massachusetts, we lived in another hilltown in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire. We learned a lot from that experience, which helped significantly during our next adventure in the country, one that has lasted a lot longer. 

We left Boston for Wilmot, New Hampshire, where we had to drive thirty minutes to get to a Laundromat and sixty for something more interesting than washing our clothes. We had two kids then, a daughter who was four, and a baby son. Our home was a one-room cabin on a dirt road, twelve-by-twenty feet, with no electricity, phone, running water or indoor plumbing. A portable toilet was in the attic and we hauled the slop bucket to the outhouse. The rent was $35 a month.

We were awfully stupid and lucky that first time in the country. We drew water from a stream beside the cabin. A hand pump was inside the house and when the line to the river froze, we used buckets, breaking first through the ice. We started the fire in our wood stove with kerosene, managing somehow not to blow up the place.

Hank sold our ’55 Mercedes, one of those a nickel-and-dime vintage vehicles that seemed awfully cool at the start, then bought an old pickup truck from a local for a few hundred bucks. Hank was getting into country living, a little carried away as usual, this time about fitting in with the local folk. Certainly an old beater would help, but on our first long ride, the brakes failed, and Hank, pumping the pedal to squeeze some life from them, had to steer the pickup into a field so we wouldn’t crash. Eventually it stopped.

A man, who stopped, crawled beneath the truck. He shook his head when he stood up. The chassis was so rusted it was ready to disintegrate. This truck wasn’t safe to drive. I cursed the man who sold us this piece of junk and Hank’s gullibility that he expected all old Yankees to be honest. We took off the plates, abandoned the truck, and then hitchhiked with the two kids to the cabin. 

Hank searched but couldn’t find a job locally except as a laborer for a man who put in foundations. He lasted one day working a wheelbarrow and shovel. So, he hitched back and forth to Boston, where he drove tractor-trailer, long distance, for a natural foods company until we had enough money saved to buy a VW Bug. During the week, I stayed at the cabin with the two kids.

The neighbors on that hill in Wilmot were exceptionally friendly. One bachelor farmer, Clayton, plowed the top of our driveway for free because he claimed it was a good spot to pull over when two vehicles met on the narrow road.

I also heard that I won Clayton’s approval when I turned away one of the men on the hill who paid me a surprise visit while Hank was away. The guy was one of those doomsday-types who was building a bunker-like home deep in the woods, and I was definitely not interested. Clayton watched the man’s truck pass his house, twice, within the span of several minutes, a detail he reported with amusement to Pat, my fast friend on our hill. Pat invited us to share meals with her family and to raid her library. Sometimes I used her washer. The snow piled up that winter, and I towed the kids on a sled along the road to her home.

The battery-operated radio pulled in a public station after I rigged its antenna to touch the iron skillet hanging on one wall, and weeknights at eight my daughter and I listened to the serial reading of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. We liked The Long Winter the best. In that one, the Ingalls family survived a fierce prairie winter by braiding straw to burn for heat, rationing food, and listening to the music of Pa’s fiddle. We could relate to that story.

I cooked our meals on a two-burner propane stove: soup, and lots of oatmeal and pancakes with Clayton’s maple syrup. We had squash, apples, potatoes, and cabbage we bought at a farm. Stored in the cold attic they kept nearly through the winter.

One week Hank got caught in a snow storm on his truck route in Maine, so he couldn’t make it home. I honestly don’t remember how I found out since we didn’t have a phone. Maybe he relayed a message to my neighbor, Pat.

I was running out of split firewood, so Pat showed me how to use a maul to split the oak and maple logs length-wise to size: raising that heavy tool over my head, then using the strength of my belly and legs to make a good slice.

Chopping wood. Drawing water. Washing cloth diapers by hand. My day was spent immersed in the most basic of chores. Sometimes, it felt as if we were playing pioneer. Certainly, it was good training for the next time we attempted rural living. We would be smarter.

We lasted in Wilmot until the late spring. The two-and-a-half-hour commute one way was too much for Hank.

We did look at another house in Wilmot to rent, a rambling farmhouse with amenities like indoor plumbing and electricity. But I was wary of the rattraps and boxes of poison set around the house.

In the kitchen, the previous renter jotted a diary of sorts in pencil on the white kitchen cabinets. A woman, I guessed, wrote about the miserable weather and her wretched loneliness. She noted the dates of storms. “God, not more snow,” she wrote beside one. The entries stopped abruptly mid-winter and I wondered what became of her. 

We lived next in Boston, Seattle, and then Boston again before we moved to Worthington, and this time we did a better job with country living.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

When a Cat Becomes a Character

One of the amusing parts about being an author is having people ask if a character could be someone they know in real life. That happens a lot with my Isabel Long Mystery Series, which is inspired by the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts, where I live. I’d like to think that I’ve created such authentic characters, readers believe they could be living among them. But, no, I made them all up.

Missing the Deadline, no. 7 in the series, has an exception: the cat is based on a real being — our cat, Stella. They even have the same name. 

The fictional Stella is the pet of Gerald Danielson, a literary agent who was found shot in the head and left to die outside his Meadows Falls home. Gerald survived but is not the same hotshot agent who moved there from New York City. The cops ruled it an attempted suicide, but the person who hires Isabel feels differently.

Gerald lives with his devoted sister and has an aide who assists him. But his cat is the one who brings him comfort when he’s feeling agitated. Having witnessed how animal can do that in real life, I wanted to use that observation in this novel. (I also didn’t mind giving the real Stella a plug.) 

Gerald’s Stella is a stray that just showed up one day and took a liking to him. This Stella is also a Maine coon cat, who is particular about humans. She doesn’t pay any attention to Isabel when she comes for the first interview. Here’s an excerpt in which Gerald’s sister, Wendy, who has taken over the agency, talks about her brother. 

“Sometimes at night I read aloud from their manuscripts and he tells me in his way which ones we should consider. He appears to like that. And he has his cat, Stella. She’ll sit on his lap for hours. Inside. Outside. It doesn’t matter. That helps a lot. You can see her right over there. He calls her Stelzee.” 

Wendy points toward the window seat on the other side of the room. A cat, a Maine coon breed in multiple shades of brown, I believe, is curled, presumably asleep, on a mat in the sunlight. She shows no interest in meeting us.

My best guess is that non-fictional Stella lived on her own after being dumped by her owner during Covid. A good friend, who started feeding her outside her home, put a notice on Facebook looking for a home for the cat. And so she became ours. I named her Stella, so I could channel Marlon Brando when I call for her outside. We do call her Stelzee as well.

An amazing assassin, Stella spends time outdoors, killing any rodent that dares to come near our house, and indoors, often hours lying on Hank’s extended legs. All it takes is a light touch from a human and she purrs loudly. Stella has only sat on my lap twice and after three years has finally gotten used to me holding her in my arms but not for long. 

Eh, I don’t hold it against her, obviously not if I make her a character in my latest mystery.

Missing the Deadline was released Dec. 21 in Kindle. (Paperback readers will have to wait a couple of months, my publisher’s rule.) Thank you if you read my book.

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New Year

Smoky Bars and a Derailed Train

It was New Year’s Eve in our small hilltown’s only bar and everybody in the joint seemed to be planning to quit smoking at the stroke of midnight. So naturally, they were all smoking heavily until then. 

That was before Massachusetts officially banned smoking in bars and nightclubs in July 2004. I was a non-smoker, but that night I couldn’t stop inhaling the cigarette smoke that hung in a thick cloud over our heads.

The man in the next table chain-smoked. “Quitting for the new year?” I asked. Yup, he said, although as I recall he ended up sticking with the habit.

Here’s another memorable New Year’s Eve: getting stuck on a train from Boston to Philly to meet my future in-laws because another train had derailed. Most of the passengers on our train were headed to Times Square in New York City and keenly disappointed they weren’t going to make it. People got drunk. Really drunk. And pissed. A fight broke out and the cops had to come on board somewhere in Connecticut to remove them.

Over the years, we’ve gone to friends’ houses, First Nights, bars, and many years, when the kids were little, stayed home where it was quiet. As I write this on New Year’s Eve, our plans are to spend the evening at the taproom of Floodwater Brewing, owned by our son, Zack — a great gathering spot for people in our village and beyond who like handcrafted beer, conversation, and local music. I probably will raise a glass of Cyborg Joan, my namesake brew, to the new year. (Yes, there’s a story behind that name.) That’s it in a can in the photo above.

Resolutions? I make them year round when I’m inspired, so I won’t bother tonight. 

Reflections? Personally, it was a pretty good year. My family is thriving. I am grateful for the health care I’ve received. I relish the amount of time I get to spend writing creatively now that I no longer have a job. Two books were published — thank you to my new and loyal readers. I ran unopposed for the Select Board (similar to a town council) in my town of Buckland. Now I am immersed in local politics, certainly an educational experience. The only blight has been the loss of a person close to me. 

For the past few days, I’ve been saying “Happy New Year” to strangers such as grocery store cashiers and post office clerks. Everyone has been receptive. I wish the same for you. To a Happy New Year. I like the sound of it myself.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series, Uncategorized

Writing about Strong Women

When I began writing my mystery series, I aimed to create strong women characters who know what they want and go after it. Topping the list, of course, is Isabel Long, the protagonist of the series, including the latest, Missing the Deadline.

From the start, Isabel was going to be a woman with some good miles on her. A recent widow, she has grown kids and a granddaughter. As for looks, she’s attractive enough to gain the attention of older men, like Jack, the owner of the Rooster Bar where she works part-time.

Isabel had a long career as a journalist — starting as a reporter covering the dinky hilltown of Conwell where she lives to being the top editor of the newspaper until that ended after it went corporate. When the new owner told everybody they had to reapply for their job, Isabel said, “To hell with that.”

Yeah, Isabel is a bit on the sassy side. She’s also savvy, which made her a great journalist. Now, those qualities and other transferable skills come in handy as a private investigator.

For her ‘Watson,’ I chose a 93-year-old mother, who lives with her. Maria Ferreira, a big reader of mysteries and smutty romances, gives her daughter ideas to ponder and even goes on interviews with persons of interest when there isn’t danger. Ma, as Isabel calls her, says she’s bored when they don’t have a case.

I will admit there is a lot of me in Isabel, which makes sense since I write the series in first person. I was also a longtime journalist. Maria was inspired by my late mother. The rest of the characters are fabricated.

I carry many of my characters throughout the seven book, thus far, including a favorite, Annette Waters. Annette — aka the Tough Cookie, Isabel’s secret nickname for her —  runs a garage and junkyard that used to belong to her SOB of a father. In the second book, Redneck’s Revenge, she hires Isabel to investigate her father’s death.

I so enjoy Annette’s no-holds-barred personality the men in her life enjoy. Her latest venture is singing lead in a band, fittingly called The Junkyard Dogs. In Missing the Deadline, she develops an interesting and unexpected romance , but no spoilers here.

Also in Missing the Deadline, we encounter new female characters. Wendy Danielson is the devoted sister to Gerald Danielson, a literary agent who was shot and left to die. He survived but isn’t able to run the agency, so she does. There’s also a vindictive ex-wife and a jilted local writer. One of my favorites is Tammy, a tough local gal who cleans for the Danielsons. She happens to be the sister of Lisa, Jack’s pain-in-the-ass ex, who unfortunately for Isabel keeps appearing in these books.

Other interesting women in the series have included Jack’s sister, Annette’s cousin Marsha, Isabel’s daughter Ruth, a woman police chief, a hoarding grandmother, plus the fearless editor of a small town newspaper. So far, only two women have turned out to be criminals. My lips are sealed about that.

But back to Annette. Here’s a scene from Missing the Deadline. In this case Isabel is investigating the shooting of Gerald Danielson outside his home. Isabel and her mother have stopped at a country store after meeting with the man’s sister.

Annette shakes her head.

“You two crack me up. So, what is it? Murder or missing person? Those appear to be your specialties.”

“So far. This one may be an attempted murder, but we don’t know for sure. Right now, people think it was a failed attempted suicide. Poor guy’s a New Yorker who moved to Meadows Falls. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Does the name Gerald Danielson mean anything to you?”

“Ol’ Gerry?” She laughs. “Yeah, I remember him. He used to have my Pop work on his car since we were a lot cheaper than the garages in New York. I believe Pop met his match. A real piece of work that guy. Kind of an asshole. Sorry, Maria,” she says. “I heard he tried to off himself. Didn’t it happen at his home in Meadows Falls? Too bad. Pop got killed in that fire earlier that year. Gerry came to his funeral. He asked if I needed anythin’. I told him to just keep bringin’ his car for me to fix. Course, that changed in the fall.”

I smile while Annette takes a bite of her muffin.

“You have a good memory,” I say. “You said he was a piece of work. Tell me more.”

“Typical New Yorker. He came here with heavy pockets and let us know all about it. Lives on Gorman Road in Meadows Falls. Bought himself a big ol’ house and had it fixed up. Lots of land came with it. But he and Pop got along okay. I’d be workin’ on a car in the garage and hear them go back and forth like two barkin’ dogs. Pop called him Gerry just to get his goat. Gerry called him Waters. He was kind of a dirty old man. The things he’s say to me when Pop wasn’t around. One day I picked up a wrench and said if his dick needed an adjustment, I’d be glad to do it for free. He got the message.”

“I bet he did.”

“We actually got along just fine after that,” Annette says.

As Isabel would say, you don’t mess with the Tough Cookie.

Missing the Deadline, which was released Dec. 21, is available in Kindle. Paperback readers will have to be a little patient.

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