Tag Archives: Worthington

Hilltown Postcards

My Teaching Experience

Suddenly, Hank couldn’t work due to a serious injury that was no fault of his own. That meant, I had to step up to support our family. What I made writing stories for the local newspaper would only fill a bag of groceries. Thank goodness, the certificate I earned 18 years earlier as a college senior meant I could teach in public schools, and it was our good fortune, I was hired to fill in for a teacher on sick leave who decided not to return.

At Gateway Regional Middle School in Huntington, I taught fifth and sixth graders, who needed extra help with reading, and seventh and eighth graders, who needed the same for writing. They came in groups to the oversized room I shared with two other teachers. The students sat at tables on my side. 

It had been many years since I took the courses required for my minor in education or did student teaching. So, I counted on what I had learned from my own inspiring teachers. I was lucky to have had many. Plus, as the mother of six, I was used to kids. Five were now school age, including our oldest daughter in high school. One son was among my reading students.

I wanted to make the time my students spent learning a comfortable experience. For instance, I let them chew gum in my class. I figured it helped them relax. But I had one rule: I couldn’t hear or smell it. They caught on fast.

Several had an I.E.P., that is, an Individualized Education Plan because they had been identified as special needs students. To me, it meant they learned in a different way than the larger pack. Two of my sons had I.E.P.s.

Fortunately, I worked with an aide who was a great teammate. I recall one fifth-grader, who I will call David, liked to stir things up instead of learn. So, my aide and I came up with a plan — she and David would trade places for a class. David would be my aide while the real one acted like him, being a disruptive pain in the you-know-what, even wearing his trademark suspenders. Was our idea a success? I believe so. At the end of the school year, I gave David an award for being one of my most improved students, which he accepted with gusto at a school assembly.

The curriculum was set for the reading students. My aide and I worked closely with them. However, it was up to me to come up with ways to inspire the writing students. So, I gave them writing prompts I felt would motivate them as they wrote on one of the classroom’s early model Apple computers. Here’s one prompt: “I am your worst nightmare” — the line from a Rambo movie. Yes, that was a hit.

In the spring, the school held a short story contest every year for the seventh and eighth graders, so my students worked on their entries during class. The contest was judged by people outside the school. Needless to say, I was thrilled when three of my students’ stories placed.

Meanwhile, Hank was healing from the torn tendons in his shoulder. He did what he was able to keep the home going. Our youngest was only a toddler. The next-to-youngest went half-day to kindergarten. Plus, we had moved Hank’s father, who could no longer live on his own, into a rest home in Northampton. 

We scraped by as best we could. Hank has always been a careful woodworker, but unfortunately someone on the contractor’s crew wasn’t, so he fell through a hole 18 feet onto his shoulder. The contractors declined to give him any money while he was unable to work because he was a subcontractor.

Yes, we contacted a lawyer, but any kind of settlement was at least three years off. Those who were treating Hank’s injuries agreed to wait for the money owed them. His goal was to get better, and he did finally, that summer when he returned to work. By the way, those contractors had the nerve to ask him back.

How did we manage on a starting teacher’s salary? Barely, but then household expenses were rather minimal. TV channels came free through an antenna on the roof. No cell phones or computers. (I wrote my stories for the paper on a funky laptop it supplied and transmitted the copy through the phone line.) No car payments and the vehicles had basic insurance. Water came from a spring in the cellar. We heated with wood. Our rent was $300.

I recall a few days before Christmas finding a box of food and an envelope containing $70 on our doorstep. When we asked around, no one would claim responsibility for this good deed.

My thoughtful mother sent boxes of quality clothes for the kids she found at rummage sales held in her town. She took them shopping at a jeans outlet in Fall River when we visited. One time she mailed me a box of clothing. My mother was a cafeteria worker, so she knew what would be suitable for a teacher to wear. I smile thinking of that.

The end of the school year was approaching. The district was having a tough time financially, so positions were being cut. I found out I wasn’t being hired back when a first-year teacher rushed into my room, saying joyfully her job was saved because “they were letting the reading teacher go.” I recalled saying, “That’s me.” Flustered, she left. Minutes later, the principal came rushing into my room to break the news in a more professional way.

For a while, I contemplated getting my master’s degree, soon to be a new requirement for a permanent teaching license, even taking night courses at a state college. I applied for an open position at Gateway, was a finalist, but didn’t get the job.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the classroom experience, I concentrated instead on finding opportunities in the field of journalism. Later, when I became an editor, then an editor-in-chief, I most often hired rookie reporters. I would tell those who were recent grads: welcome to grad school. Once again, I was a teacher.

Standard
Hilltown Postcards

Mud and Maple Syrup

We took the kids for pancakes at the Red Bucket Sugar Shack on the far end of a paved road in Worthington. It was a charmingly rustic place with long picnic benches and crushed stone on the floor. Red wooden buckets were hung from the maple trees along the road, for show only because no one serious about sugaring used them anymore.

The sugarer, Jeff, a tall, red-headed man who looked more like a cowboy than someone who boiled syrup, tapped the trees in his sugar bush and elsewhere, collecting the clear sap that ran through plastic tubing to a metal vat. He trucked the sap back to his sugarhouse to boil it down into syrup in a large, flat-panned evaporator that billowed steam, slightly sweet and pleasant. 

Sugaring meant early spring although, as we found, winter hadn’t given up. The days rose into the forties, but the nights fell below freezing. It was worrisome to us, because we were down to our last bit of firewood at our home. But that’s the temps the sugarers need so the maple trees don’t bud and end the season’s draw. It still snowed, but it was the wet kind that melted the next day. Poor man’s fertilizer, I heard it called. 

Now, feeling the change in the weather and a good breakfast out, we were ready for a drive around town. The trees were bare still. Snow lingered in the woods and in dirty drifts along the roads where the plow’s blade shoved it. But the light was stronger and the air had a different scent, something green and fresh.

Zack, Win’s father, promised to put us on his list of people who get fiddleheads later in the spring. The old man had his secret spot beside a river in Huntington. We ate fiddleheads before, but store-bought. The tightly coiled fronds were a little like asparagus although I parboiled them twice to cut the tonic taste.

Hank decided to take Indian Oven Road, named that because of a rock formation in the middle of this winding dirt way that must have looked like an oven to someone long ago. If any Indians were there, however, they were just passing through.

Not many houses were on this road, newer homes, of course, at either end, and a few hunting camps in the middle. Hank discovered it last fall and it saved a few miles getting from one main paved road to another so it was a bona fide shortcut except in the winter when the town did not plow.

The last big storm was a month ago so it should be clear, but as we rounded the first curve, the road’s surface ahead appeared wet and loose. Mud. The other early spring phenomena.

“This doesn’t look too good, Hank. Maybe we should turn back,” I told him.

But Hank kept going.

“We’ll be okay. Just relax.”

But we weren’t okay, because we only went a few yards before our VW bus sunk into mud. The tires spun but couldn’t catch anything hard enough to move forward or backward. Hank put the van in neutral. I closed my eyes.

We were stuck, really stuck.

I got the kids out of the VW as if four skinny kids would lessen its weight and asked them stay on the bank. They watched as I pushed the front.

Hank should be doing this, but I didn’t know how to drive stick. He had the VW in reverse, giving it a little gas, but it was useless. It was digging itself deeper.

I yelled for him to stop. No way was this going to work.

Hank lit a cigarette. He smoked then. His jaw was tight as he got out to check the van. Mud was halfway up the wheels. He shook his head and glanced at a log cabin a hundred yards back, built smartly where the road was firm.

A man came out. We didn’t know him, we were still new to town, and he scowled as he looked our way. Hank tossed the butt into the mud, then walked toward him.

The man Hank was talking with didn’t appear willing to give us a hand. But Dan came, reluctant, complaining about the people who didn’t have any common sense driving on a dirt road during mud season and how tired he was pulling them out.

Then, Dan saw our kids standing on the side of the road, looking a little scared about getting home, and his face softened. He had two daughters of his own. He wasn’t an unreasonable man, just an inconvenienced one.

He went to get a chain and his truck. He thought he could get us out, but Hank would have to be careful so he didn’t dent his truck’s grill when he towed us. The rescue was a success thanks to Dan, who I am glad to say later became a family friend.

And we rookie newcomers learned another lesson about country living that day.

Standard
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.

Standard
Hilltown Postcards

Horrible Hank the Hog Killer

That’s the nickname Hank was given by one of the locals in Worthington, but it’s probably not for what you think why. No, we’ve never raised hogs. And we don’t eat pork. But there is an interesting story behind the name.

When we lived in that rented house in the Ringville section of Worthington, the only vehicle we owned was a vintage VW Microbus we bought in Boston long ago during one of the times we lived in that city. The tan VW went cross-country twice when we lived in Seattle and then returned to Boston before we moved to the hilltowns. It had a spare tire mounted on the front. And there was plenty of room inside for our kids. 

Anyway, one winter night Hank was driving home from a job in a blinding snowstorm. An excellent driver, all was well until he drove very slowly down Mason’s Hill on Huntington Road not far from where we lived. Suddenly, the VW van stopped in its tracks. What the heck? When Hank got out, he found out why. The broadside of a 500-pound hog blocked the VW’s way. The animal was white so it wasn’t visible in the falling snow.

The hog, which had escaped from Bert Nugent’s yard, was dead but still standing.

As Hank surveyed the situation, the tire that had been mounted on the VW’s front came spinning down the hill. The tire had been thrown backwards when the hog had dislodged it and gravity sent it back.

Bert, who was also a town selectman in those days, was a good sport about it, offering to give us half the hog after it was butchered. No thanks, Hank said. So, instead Bert told him to bring the VW to the garage he owned then in town and he’d fix the tire, which he did. There wasn’t any other damage to the VW. If I recall correctly, Bert used a tow truck to retrieve the hog’s body.

Now about the name. Bert, unarguably a character, called him “Horrible Hank the Hog Killer.” He said it with a grin whenever he met Hank, which was a frequent occurrence in our small hilltown.

Just one of the fun stories about the place where we used to live and I fondly remember.

Standard
Hilltown Postcards

We Finally Get Married

Hank and I had been living together about eight years, when we decided to get married. Practical people that we are, we figured it would make things easier for our family. We had been living in Worthington almost a year when that happened. 

We decided to keep it simple by getting a marriage license from the town clerk and using the services of a justice of the peace. We’d have the wedding reception in the small front yard of the house we were renting. I would make the food.

We’d let only a few friends know about it. I decided to spare my parents from attending. Old-fashioned Catholics, they were likely mortified that we already had kids, had been living together so long, and this was a second marriage for the both of us. 

I made my own dress, using fabric from a remnant store Crystal Donovan took me to in Chester. It was also a place to buy material for quilts. I chose a navy blue with a small white print. The dress was actually a sleeveless top and blouse that gave the illusion of being a dress. I no longer have the pieces.

Hank gave me his mother’s wedding ring to wear.

A couple of days before the wedding on Aug. 28, two local guys, fellow carpenters, took Hank to Liston’s Bar as a sort of bachelor party, getting him good and drunk that night. He stumbled into the house when they dropped him at home afterwards.

The civil ceremony took place in the justice of the peace’s backyard in Goshen, a nearby hilltown. Win and Joan Donovan were our witnesses along with our four kids. In one of the photos, the youngest, who was two, squirms in my arms.

Then we went back to our house for the reception. I had made vegetarian fare, including seitan, a meat substitute from wheat gluten, and a decorated cake. We had beer, of course. Tables and chairs were arranged on the lawn. A blanket was on the ground for the kids. Win and Joan came, plus a few other friends who lived locally. Then we were surprised and touched when people we knew in Boston, who had heard about it through the grapevine, showed up. Some people even brought us gifts. (Hank’s Dad didn’t come from Philly but he gave us a vintage VW Beetle he somehow had as a gift.) We didn’t expect any. It was a friendly little party.

Our wedding was such a low-key event that often we forget our anniversary when Aug. 28 rolls around. This year was the 41st. I went up to Hank to remind him. I guess we’re not very sentimental, but what we do care deeply about matters a lot to us, like being there for each other no matter what, you know, that thick and thin thing.

Perhaps you wonder where we spent our honeymoon. We went to the Cummington Fair in the next hilltown over. The kids got to go on rides and eat fair food like French fries. We walked around looking at the exhibits and watched the vaudeville show. It was all good.

NOTE TO READERS: This was the next installment of Hilltown Postcards. You can search my website for more. The first stories were inspired after a former agent asked me to write a tell-all book about the hilltowns. The book went no further as he wanted real dirt and I couldn’t do that to the people I knew. I’ve decided to post them here along with other stories I am freshly creating like this one. Thanks for reading.

Standard