Hilltown Postcards

Following a Mislead about Mastodon Bones

After being the Worthington correspondent for years, I took on two more hilltowns: Chesterfield and Cummington. These days predated the social media we have now, so that required bona fide legwork. Fridays was my day to call sources in each town, which included officials, school secretaries, and people generally plugged in to their community. I also drove around, making a couple of stops at town halls and such. I called it “checking the traps.” When I became an editor that’s what I advised the reporters to do. It’s also the title for one of my Isabel Long Mysteries.

One of favorite sources was Ron Berenson, who used to co-own the Old Creamery Grocery in Cummington, population less than 800. Ron, who was a transplant from New Jersey, was a lawyer and had worked in PR, so he had a keen interest in news. He knew how to chat up the customers. He tipped me to so many stories and only misled me once, but it would have been a great one if it’d been true.

Ron called to say two archeologists from MIT had stopped at the store to say mastodon bones had been found in the Swift River section of Cummington, a discovery of immense proportions. “I wanted you to get the story before the New York Times and the Globe,” my loyal source told me.

So I drove to Swift River, following Ron’s directions. I parked the car at the end of a dirt road just as a state wildlife truck was pulling out, which I took as a good clue.

But as I hiked in the snowy woods to a clearing, I didn’t find a crew of scientists or equipment or even footprints. All I saw was the paw prints of bear, massive ones, but I kept searching for an hour or so, trying different roads until I returned to the store.

Ron was incredulous that I didn’t find anything, the men had been so serious, but then a customer overhearing our conversation started laughing. The night before on the TV show, “Northern Exposure,” two characters played the same trick on the locals. Now the laugh was on us.

I used to tease Ron about the story, but I didn’t hold it against him. He and I had been duped together.

But too bad, it would have been a great story it were true.

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Hilltown Postcards

Ernie Nugent — One of the Good Guys

I wrote this piece about Ernie Nugent after he left us eight years ago. Here it is slightly revised for this Hilltown Postcard.

We knew Ernie and his large, extended family when we lived in Worthington, a hilltown in Western Massachusetts. He worked on the town’s three-man highway crew for over three decades, including as its road boss before he retired.

Ernie and his wife, Deen, who have two daughters, lived a short distance from us and across the road from a brother named Bert. Brothers with those two names has always been a source of amusement.

Our son, Nate, knew him best. Ernie hayed the farm across the road in the Ringville section, where we lived first in that town. He also raised pigs there. They were good buddies.

Through Ernie, Nate got to know the part of country living that was close to the earth — and all about machinery. When he was a teenager, Nate was Ernie’s extra hand, driving a tractor or farm truck. I recall looking out the kitchen window when I was washing dishes to see Ernie take down a hog with one shot, and then Nate helping him get it ready for butchering.

Nate and Ernie had a special bond. He often joined Ernie when he plowed the roads, riding for hours in the cab of the truck. Ernie would stop the truck at the end of our driveway for Nate to join him.

One year, Ernie rigged up a plow to an old rider mower so Nate could clear our driveway. (I guess it stuck. Nate works as a union heavy equipment operator.)

I knew Ernie from when I was a reporter, covering the hilltowns. I’d call the highway departments for an update whenever we had a bad winter storm, or in the midst of mud season or a road project.

Ernie wasn’t a talkative guy. I recall covering one Worthington Town Meeting, where residents were voting on the budget and other items. On the agenda was the purchase of a new dump truck for the highway department.

A smart-alecky newcomer got up and wanted a justification for the purchase. So the moderator asked Ernie, who was road boss, whether the town needed to buy a new highway truck. Ernie stood, said “yup” and sat down. And, after a good laugh, the voters passed it.

Here’s to Ernie Nugent who lived and worked well. He was the salt of the earth.

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Hilltown Postcards

Nigel the Hermit

Here’s the next Hilltown Postcard — stories I wrote years ago about our life in rural Western Massachusetts. My agent at the time wanted me to write a tell-all book with lots of dirt, but I didn’t have it in me to do that. Rereading those stories has inspired me to write more. In some instances, I have changed people’s names. That’s true for this story.

I used to see Nigel pushing his bicycle up Mason’s Hill toward the general store in Worthington. He wore a porkpie hat and tinted aviator glasses, stopping at times on the steepest part to rest. It was an old-style bike, one speed, fat tires, and a metal basket on the front.

If there was a hermit in our town, he was it. He lived on Dingle Road, in a house that hadn’t had a coat of paint in years, one of those New England stringer homes, where buildings get added on in a row like blocks. The grass grew tall and dried. The place looked unwelcoming, and that’s probably the way he liked it.

Nigel may have shunned people, but many years ago he stirred up his neighborhood. It was a quiet Sunday summer afternoon when Nigel dressed in winter clothes took shots at his own house from the outside.

Neighbors called the town police, but the chief realized this was beyond him and called in the state police. Things were quiet when the cops came, but Nigel had barricaded himself in his house with several loaded guns and ammo.

The police moved the neighbors out of their homes and used a loudspeaker to get him out, but he wouldn’t budge. A Special Tactics Operation Team surrounded the house. Finally after seven hours, police launched a canister of tear gas into the home, which finally drove him out. He was taken to a ward at the VA hospital, where he stayed for a couple of years.

Turns out Nigel, then nearly 60, used to teach math and physics, but he got fired when he hit a fellow teacher. He didn’t deny doing it nor did he explain why. He sued successfully for back pay. He also wanted to be reinstated but that didn’t happen. 

After the incident, neighbors said Nigel was quiet and kept to himself although one got to know him when they repaired a water line they shared. She said he was intelligent and well read. He was profoundly hard of hearing so she made sure she faced him when she talked. An elderly brother dropped off groceries.

Nigel once asked Hank if he worked in Northampton because he needed a ride, but he didn’t. He told him of another man in town who did and that arrangement lasted a while until he moved.

Another man inherited Nigel. Bruce said Nigel would call him from the pay phone at the store to arrange a ride. He’d be waiting outside his home, and Bruce didn’t mind going out of his way to drop him off at the law library. He didn’t explain what he was researching or much about himself. They rarely talked.

One fall afternoon, I was stacking wood and lost in thought until I looked up to see Nigel staring at me. (We had moved across town to a house we built near Mason’s Hill.) He held his bike so quietly he could have been an apparition.

Nigel didn’t introduce himself, but, of course, I knew who he was. I don’t know if he knew my name, because he didn’t use it. He wanted a ride back and forth from Northampton.

His hearing aids weren’t working, so I couldn’t explain how we could arrange that. I found paper and a pen. I would be leaving at 6:15 a.m. and I would come by his house.

I went the next morning. It was before the change in time so it was still dark that morning. It had rained that night, so everything was black and shiny in the headlights. I stopped in front of his house. No light was on inside. No sign of movement.

I thought to sound the horn or knock on the door, but I didn’t think he would hear either. I wouldn’t even know which door to knock. I waited fifteen minutes, and then drove off.  

I didn’t see Nigel again. Two years later, in the middle of February, he died alone in his house. The medical examiner ruled it was from natural causes, likely a heart attack. He was 72.

The police found him locked inside his home after the person who delivered him meals felt something was amiss. Nigel had lived in town for 20 years and the police chief noted he was a man who didn’t want any outside help.

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Hilltown Postcards

Two Stories: Lester and Mary

In this postcard, I jump ahead a few years to write about two very interesting people I met in Worthington when we lived there. One story leads to another.

My Worthington neighbor, Maura, and I once had a very good idea. We wanted to start a radio station just for the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. We had it all planned except for the money. Maura, who worked in television news, said we needed about a million dollars. Too bad. Of course, this was before podcasts.

What would we broadcast? We’d ask the road bosses to call in reports on road conditions during winter storms. They’d tell us when the sand trucks were heading down Mason or West Chesterfield hills, and whether they were keeping up with the ice on the roads. They could warn which roads were impassable during mud season and save people a lot of trouble.

The maple sugarers could talk about how strong the sap is running. The man in town who kept track of the weather could keep us in the know.

We’d cover school events, ball games, and town meetings, where everything in the hilltowns is settled. We would record local concerts and “man on the road” interviews about local politics and other hot issues.

We’d inform anyone who listened about which residents had died and which ones were just born. We’d brag about the kids who were graduating from high school.

If there were a Fourth of July Parade, a truck pull, or a pig roast at the Rod and Gun Club, we’d be there as well.

And every day we’d have a program called “Fifteen Minutes with Lester.”

When my family moved to Worthington, Lester Champion had lived there for over 40 years. He had a kind, round face, and an old-fashioned way of putting things. He and his wife, Mary, lived in a humble home of stone on the edge of a potato field at Old Post Road.

I did a story about his truck farm when I was a reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. He told me the earth was so hard he could bend a crowbar beating on it.

And Lester, who was in his 70s, could talk, talk, and talk about most everything — gardening, weather, nature, Cape Cod where he grew up, or being a glider pilot in World War II — in his slow, deliberate way. If I ran into him, usually outside the town’s general store, I counted on losing at least 15 minutes that day but he always had something worth listening to. Others were not so patient and went out of their way to avoid him.

So here was our idea. Maura and I would give Lester free choice on any topic. He’d get 15 minutes to say it. Only 15 minutes. And, we’d all get to listen on the radio.

Lester Champion was the one who told me about Mary Kartashevich and her pet porcupine. Call her, he told me over the phone. You’ll get a good story.

I was a reporter then covering three small towns and more. I had a biweekly column in which I wrote about people and things unique to the hill towns of western Massachusetts. Mary’s porcupine sounded like a good fit.

I drove to the outer fringes of Worthington where Mary lived alone in a farmhouse built when the center of this town was much farther west.

Mary was friendly and happy to see me. And, there was the small porcupine hanging out with some of her cats. Before I got close, it waddled off to hide between some rusted farm equipment and boards near a shed.

Mary begged the animal to stay, but gave up. “He senses there is someone strange,” she says.

She told me it showed up mid-winter, an orphan she believed of the porcupines that took over a nearby orchard. Mary cut up apples to feed the baby, and eventually it would take a piece from her hand. When spring came, the porcupine turned to grass shoots and buds on maple trees.

The animal stuck around and even napped in the sun with her black and white cats. Skunk cats, she told me they’re called. She had a dozen.

Mary said the porcupine followed her around the yard and would go inside her house if she let it. She said it came when she called, “where’s my little baby porcy?”

But like so many stories, you go to the scene expecting one and come back with more.

We walked around the farm, and I marveled when Mary, who was 71, leaped over a stone wall like a young girl. She told me she moved here from Connecticut nearly five decades ago with her father and two brothers. They bought the farm for $4,400.

Her father always wanted a farm but he wasn’t successful with it, He tried cows for milk and then chickens for meat and eggs, but neither panned out. So the family found work off the farm.

Mary said after they got through another winter, the family would vow to sell the farm, but then summer came and they forgot about it.

She and her brothers never married. She was the last one left in her family.

I saw Mary a couple of weeks later in the general store. She was pleased I said hello. Many people don’t, she told me. And, she said, one day the porcupine went away and didn’t come back.

Last I heard Mary sold the house and acreage to a neighbor. I hope she got a good price and went some place where life was a little easier.

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Hilltown Postcards

Ralph Knows What’s What

I am skipping ahead to one of the profiles I wrote about people who lived in Worthington. After publishing my last two posts, I decided there is a lot more I could write concerning those early years when Hank and I moved our family to that hilltown in Western Massachusetts. I plan to post one a week but first I have to write them. So, I dug this profile from my computer’s files about the late Ralph Moran, who was 95 when he passed in 2007. A real character, I interviewed him and wrote this piece two years earlier.

Born in 1912, Ralph Moran has seen, did, and heard a lot, and he doesn’t mind sharing it. I told him I wanted to interview him for a book and now he’s ready. He’s sitting in his living room, snacking on cheddar crackers and taking a peek at the financial news on the Bloomberg network. He’s got an inquisitive face, smooth soft lines, and earlobes as long as Buddha’s.

Just checking, Ralph assures me in his buzz-saw voice.

I’ve known Ralph since we moved to Worthington in Western Massachusetts and his bus company drove our kids to school. Sometimes he did the kindergarten run and drop off our oldest son. One day my boy came home with a trilobite fossil and a science magazine. They were gifts from Ralph. Later Ralph and I served together on the library board.

Whenever we run into each other, I greet him as “the dangerous conservative.” He calls me the “dangerous liberal” because I am a newspaper editor. It’s all in good fun, and now as he relaxes in his easy chair, he talks about how he and his family moved here in 1951 and why he is still here. I ask: When did you feel it was your home? He chuckles. “I never gave it any thought,” and then, “People were cheerful, gregarious, and good-natured. I could make money. Living conditions were satisfactory.” 

Ralph’s a busy man. Mornings, he hangs out in the back room of the general store where the real news in town, who’s doing what and who’s seeing whom, gets swapped over coffee and doughnuts. Tuesday nights, he might swing by Town Hall next door to his home to keep tabs on local politics. He serves on the Finance Committee, drawing up the town’s budget and keeping an eye on how Worthington spends its money. He claims to handpick those who serve with him although they are elected positions. At Town Meetings, Ralph, a former moderator, will give his two cents and more about how business is progressing. Then, he hosts his weekly think tanks, a gathering of 60-plus men who like to talk over what is happening well beyond this town’s borders. Ralph puts it this way: “I still have my nose in it.” 

People might think Ralph is a native, but he’s one of those near natives, moving here with wife, Marge, to the hunting lodge he calls Toad Hall. Ralph has sold the house and the eight acres to the town for $80,000, an offer he made. He remains tenant for life.

Ralph came for a business opportunity with Henry Snyder, one of the town’s super-capitalists. He wanted to be a college history professor, but when he graduated from Dartmouth in ’35, it wasn’t a wise career choice. So, as Ralph puts it, he reinvented himself as an industrial engineer and worked for petroleum companies. After doing that for years, Ralph, another super-capitalist, went to work for himself, first building service stations, then getting involved in construction and busing schoolchildren, who he calls “kiddlies.” The transportation business suited him. He let the drivers, his ladies, take care of the buses while he and Marge got to travel and play golf. Ralph played golf for 78 years, but gave it up finally because of a bum shoulder. He says he used to be an above-average golfer, adequately competitive, but not outstanding.

Ralph says the town wasn’t significantly different then it is now although he once had a clear 150-degree view from his house to the hills in other towns. “I was disappointed that the trees grew,” he says. 

His daughter, Catherine, who lives in New Jersey, visited this weekend. Not much of Ralph’s family is left. Marge died several years ago, and their son, Allen, earlier. In his practical way, Ralph say life goes on, people do die. His son’s death was a particularly hard one, however. He used to read something in the paper, and then pick up the phone to tell his son this story proves a point.

Ralph acknowledges winters in Worthington are hard on the elderly. But it suits him. The town has a health center. He has numerous friends and acquaintances. “People feed me, pat me on the head, and say nice things. Why go somewhere else just because it’s warmer? I’ve lived long enough anyway. I’m not anxious to die off, but on the other hand I’m not particularly anxious to live much longer.”

Here’s one more thing about Ralph. He’s not really the oldest person in Worthington although he holds the cane the town gives to mark that honor. In 1901 the Boston Post newspaper gave every town and city in the state in Massachusetts a cane with a 14-karat solid gold handle and a shaft of African ebony, to bestow on their eldest as a gimmick to sell more newspapers. The paper no longer exists, by the way. Over the years some places have managed to hold onto their canes, but many got lost when the family didn’t give it back after the oldest-timer died. That’s what happened in Worthington, and sometime in the ’80s a cabinetmaker in town made a new one.

It’s supposed to be a great honor being the oldest. This town and others typically have a ceremony and the newspaper always does a story. Some people are in sad shape, not really knowing they’re the most senior of citizens. Some spry folk accept the cane with gusto. But sometimes people don’t want any part of the cane. It carries a hex: you get it, and then you die. Several years ago, the cane went to the third-oldest resident because the first and second, two women, turned it down. Harry, an old rascal who lived in the town’s senior housing, proclaimed in his acceptance speech, “Maybe this cane will get rusty before you get it back.” The same happened with Ralph. The oldest man wanted nothing to do with it, but Ralph being the good sport he is went along with it. 

Now about his think tank. There are about seven regulars, all men, although a couple of Ralph’s women friends will stop by. The living room with its long couches can accommodate ten nicely but any more, people just sit back and let others do the talking and that’s not the purpose of these gatherings. Ralph says the night begins with the group hanging onto something that transpired during the past week, and then it runs its own course. A discussion about the Balkan Peninsular leads to the Byzantine Empire, pleasing the inner history professor in Ralph. The hurricanes in the Gulf Coast bring up global warming. Every now and then he shouts when the discussion degenerates into old men discussing their ailments. There’ll be none of that, he says.

The night starts at 7:30 and occasionally he has to boot them out at 11. People get wound up. Sometimes discussion gets a little more raucous than it needs to be.

“It often swings around to the wretched Democrats and the wretched Republicans,” he quips.

One fellow, a devout Republican and a good friend, will stomp out when the liberals in the group start bad-mouthing the Bushes and their war policies. Ralph laughs gleefully at the thought.

HILLTOWN POSTCARDS: Interested in reading earlier posts? Just search for Hilltown Postcards on my website.

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