It’s been a little while but here’s a Hilltown Postcard.

It can be a game of chance when you live close enough to people that you can see their house. That certainly was the case when we moved to Worthington. We had good neighbors, bad neighbors and those who kept to themselves, except for a wave of the hand and a hello. And, of course, people came and went. Today I will write about a few good neighbors, specifically the ones we had in the Ringville section of town.

This was our second attempt at country living. I wrote about the first, in the middle of nowhere in central New Hampshire. We lasted less than a year even with helpful neighbors who took pity on the city folk with two kids renting a cabin for $35 a month that had no running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing, and only a woodstove for heat.

But when we moved from Boston to Worthington, Hank and I were in it for the long haul. By luck and help from newfound friends, we rented a crappy little house on a curve along Route 112 in Ringville. 

The first neighbor we met was Charlie Baker, who lived across the road from us in a farmhouse that had an open barn, a very large field, and a river behind it. The house was very close to the road, which was likely widened when it became a state highway. Our mailboxes were side-by-side, and both easy victims of a snowplow’s blade each winter.

Charlie was a friendly man who lived there with his young son, Chuck. His first piece of advice: We should keep the shades down or curtains closed when we undressed in the front bedroom because he could see us from across the road. Thanks, Charlie.

Over the years, Charlie let others use his land, in particular its grass for hay and to raise hogs for slaughtering. (I recall looking out the window to see a freshly killed hog hanging upside down from a tractor’s raised plow.) The land was also a bit of a playground for our kids. That was okay with Charlie.

It was a happy day when the Lippert family moved next door because our kids had playmates their ages. Alex was a doctor at the town’s health center. Regina also worked in the medical field. When the Lipperts were away, our kids would make sure the chickens were in their coop at night so they weren’t slaughtered by raccoons — a lesson our neighbors learned — and then let out in the morning. I consider the Lipperts, who like us moved away, friends still.

On the other side of our house were the Stroms, who also had children the same age as ours. Hank ended up driving Pat to the hospital when she went into labor with her daughter and Steve hadn’t made it home from work by then. When work was being done on their house because of a fire, we ran an electric cord from our house to theirs. In exchange, Steve plowed our driveway. 

I fondly remember visits to Marian Sanderson, the oldest person in our village. I don’t recall how it started, but the kids who weren’t school age and I went together. They didn’t mind since she always served them something sweet. I enjoyed listening to her stories about the town. She was also a big Red Sox fan, if I recall correctly. Unfortunately, one night she was injured when she fell and had to live with her daughter. I treasure the needlepoint piece she created that I used for a pillow I still have. 

Those were a few of our good neighbors in Worthington. Stay tuned for the bad ones. 

For decades, the town of Worthington could set its calendar by what was happening at Albert Farms. In the spring, when the ground was warm and dry enough, seed potatoes were planted in its fields. The plants sprouted, grew, and blossomed. In summer the farmworkers cultivated the fields and later in the season, sprayed a chemical to kill the vines that left a stink in the air.

Then, in September, harvesters, large and ship-like, crisscrossed the fields for weeks. Women keeping mother’s hours, teenagers after school, and those working full-time hours did the dirty job separating rocks and potatoes aboard the shaking machines. I learned that firsthand because when I was a reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I went on one for a feature story.

Migrant workers brought up from the South used to do the work. Until the harvest got mechanized, they dug potatoes by hand. The workers lived in a camp with Quonset huts on Prentice Road, near the farm’s highest field called the Old Smith Farm.

According to news sources, one man died of pneumonia and dysentery from the unsanitary conditions, and the state closed the camp after a fire destroyed the quarters where the women and children lived, so the workers were located elsewhere. Health officials said the farm would have to put in flush toilets and make other improvements. Instead, the farm began hiring local people.

When we moved to town, Ben Albert, the second generation, ran the farm although several family members worked with him. His father Alberie Albert founded it in the twenties.

After the state, Ben was the town’s biggest landowner. He also owned acreage elsewhere in the hilltowns. That status carries a certain weight in a small town. I once heard an old-timer say at a hearing she trusted Ben to do what’s best for his land. We newcomers who had seen the places we once lived damaged by that sort of thinking were skeptical. Anyway that kind of influence was waning in the eighties. So was Ben Albert’s business.

A couple of years after we moved to town, Ben’s massive warehouse burned in an early morning blaze, so out of control by time the volunteer firefighters arrived, the flames could be seen in the next town. Faulty wiring was likely to blame, the state fire marshal said.

The damages amounted to about a half-million, including the loss of seed potatoes for that spring’s planting and farm equipment. Worse, the water used by firefighters to douse the flaming mess unknowingly released nearly a ton of pesticide, Temik, from its barrels. The chemical flowed downhill, contaminating the wells of several homes, but the state bailed out Ben and the town by paying to extend a town water line.

Ben tried making money off his land in another way. He wanted to put in a subdivision of luxury homes clustered in one of the farm’s prettiest fields, across the road from the warehouse, which he never rebuilt. People in town joked Ben should call it Temik Acres. But the town told him no.

He also tried, twice, to build homes near the old airstrip, the one he used to launch planes for crop-dusting. Each house would have a hangar and the road would double as a runway. The people living nearby weren’t crazy about small planes flying in and out of their neighborhood. The town said no, twice, to that idea, too.

One morning in 1990, around 6 a.m., I got a call from Ben. He didn’t identify himself, but I recognized his voice. He wanted me to know about his case in federal court against Frito-Lay. I was a reporter then, covering a bunch of small towns for the Gazette, working out of my home, which I called the Hilltown bureau.

Ben was always the source I couldn’t get on the phone. “Sorry, don’t know when he’ll be back,” the woman who answered the office phone would say although I suspected he was sitting in the same room. Once, to get his comment for a story, about Temik Acres, incidentally, I drove around town in the rain until I spotted him in a field, and he was surprised when I walked, notebook in hand, toward him.

But Ben wanted to talk now. He had done business for 20 years with Frito-Lay, but he said the chip giant reneged on a shipment of seed potatoes, 17,700-hundredweight bags, for the 1985 growing season and a contract to buy part of his harvest. By that time, it was too late for him to find other seed to plant. It was a blow to the farm, and Ben had to sell pieces of his land to pay his creditors.

I went to the federal courthouse in Springfield a couple of times for his case. Frito-Lay’s take was that it didn’t have to give Ben the seed or buy his potatoes. Its lawyers said the farm had already been losing money. Ben sued for $1.1 million, and after a month of tedious testimony about potato farming, he was awarded $248,000.

Also that year, the state bought the development rights to the Jones Lot, the largest of the farm’s fields, 286 acres in the Four Corners section. It meant the parcel would be preserved as farmland. He got a half-million from the state, but that wasn’t enough money to fix his problems.

Six years later, Ben filed for bankruptcy after racking up over four million in debt, about half of that owed to the federal government. Albert Farms owed the town more back taxes than anyone.

Ben Albert told me he would never plant potatoes again. “Let it all go to weeds,” he said, but he did try growing soybeans and sunflowers.

The following year, he lost the field on Prentice Road, the Old Smith Farm, to a fertilizer company he owed a half-million. That company sold it to a cattle farmer.

The roof on the potato storage barn caved in and the Environmental Protection Agency oversaw a cleanup of pesticides and asbestos found at the farm. A third generation would not be taking over. Ben died in 2011. His wife, Frances, passed before him.

The last year we lived in Worthington, that is 2006, someone grew squash at the Jones Lot and in September a team of migrant workers picked most of the crop by hand. Now, I hear other farmers are trying to make a living off the land once owned by Albert Farms.