The Times Argus/Rutland Herald

Living Section Features

Hobnobbing with hobos
Whatever you do, don’t call them bums

The deep laugh lines in King Tuck’s leathery face remain long after he’s stopped laughing. Twenty-five years of riding the rails have left their mark.
”I left home at 15. We’s a poor family, I always felt I was always just another mouth to feed, you know. I just left home to take the burden off of my parents kind of,” says the 46-year-old Texan.
As he exhales a thick cloud of smoke from a hand-rolled Bugler cigarette, it’s sucked out the caboose’s open door, floats across the makeshift hobo jungle, and mixes in with the smoldering campfire. The fire was lit when the ‘bos arrived late on Thursday and kept burning until they broke camp on Monday.
The caboose is a permanent fixture at the Railroad Museum of Long Island. The hobos aren’t; they’re here just for the Sept. 27-30 hobo gathering. (Click link below for complete article.)
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Death takes a holiday

It’s quiet today at Rutland’s Aldous Funeral Home.
Dead quiet.
Funeral director George Hopp Jr., 28, holds open the door at the white clapboard home’s main rear entrance.
If this were a funeral he’d be pulling greeter duty, welcoming the friends and family of the deceased, the loved one, the dearly departed or any other euphemism visitors are wont to call the guest of honor.
At this funeral home, staff members are respectful of the “client” and refer to him or her by name when the body is being prepared and placed in the casket. They also use the word “dead” to describe that person. Not passed away. Not expired. Dead. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071028/FEATURES07/71029003/1016/FEATURES07

A job that soots them

Top-hatted and tuxedoed they’re not.
But by day’s end, and it’s been a busy one, their blue jeans and shirts are streaked with plenty of soot, and their overwhelming smoky scent leaves little doubt that Morrisville’s Dave and Pam Earley are chimney sweeps.
Forget that Mary Poppins image of rooftop-dancing sweeps or the darker Dickensian portrait of guttersnipes being lowered into bottomless chimneys to scour away aristocratic soot. This is 21st-century chimney sweeping, and Pam refers to herself as a chimney technician.
However, “I’m a chimney sweep,” amends her husband, Dave. “Not a tech.” (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071118/FEATURES07/71116007/1016/FEATURES07

To nail the look

Some Vermont women go to real lengths  

Toenails brought Cindy Tran and her fiancé together. His toenails, not hers.
"He had nice feet," she says matter-of-factly from her Berlin nail salon, Cindy’s Nails. After receiving several pedicures, this regular customer asked her out. A few pedicures later, he proposed.
Such is the power of the nail.
Bobbie Pilette, a 70-year-old retired nurse who lives in Barre, is enjoying listening to this quirky tale of romance from high atop one of Tran’s pedicure chairs.
She’s in the final stages of getting her toenails painted, red as usual, to match her fingernails. Pilette comes in once a month for her foot treatment.
"It’s relatively inexpensive. If you can’t afford a cruise, get a pedicure," she says with a wry smile. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080406/FEATURES07/804060349/1016/FEATURES07

It’s all in your mind
Vermont storytellers put their spin on ancient tradition

Once upon a time, there was a woman who came from New Mexico and man who came from Philadelphia. Each had an eye, ear and tongue for language and a love of its magic. Then one day, many years ago, they met ...
When Tim Jennings was a child, his mother used to sing him to sleep every night with the English ballad “Barbara Allen.”
His grandmother, meanwhile, told him folktales and stories from the Brothers Grimm. There was no book, no illustrations. Just her voice and his imagination. The stories she told came alive in his mind. (Click link below for complete article.)
http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080113/FEATURES07/303865199/1016/FEATURES07

Drop out, drop in

Vermont communes died out, but their spirit is part of the state

On the July 18, 1969, cover of Life magazine, a group of scruffy young communards and their children stands before a log cabin somewhere in the foothills.
Half are smiling. Half aren’t.
The cover proclaims, or warns: "The Youth Communes: new way of living confronts the U.S."
"Confronts" is an interesting choice of words, and it’s easy to imagine middle-class couples scurrying to their windows to look for signs of the hippie invasion.
Truth is that it had been under way across the country for a few years – usually attributed to the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, a disdain of 1950s values, the abundance of recreational drugs and a new desire to head back to the land.
No one kept a tally of communes, but the 2004 book "Freedom and Unity: A History of Vermont" estimated that at least 100 reigned in this state in the decade after 1967.
"I would have to say the whole phenomenon burned itself out by the late ’70s," says Ray Mungo, 61, who co-founded a commune called Total Loss Farm in Guilford. "By 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, it was all over. We were defeated!"

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007709300326

It was 40 years ago today (well, yesterday)

Can it really be 40 years since Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play? Just read the news today, oh boy.
”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was THE album of 1967; some say it was the album of all time.
Its 13 tracks fit together in symbiotic splendor, segueing effortlessly and brilliantly from one musical style to another, framed as one performance by the fictional band.
Visually it was also a masterpiece - a vividly theatrical presentation nothing like a typical album.
Of course it didn’t hurt that it was the music of The Beatles, who in just three years’ time had evolved from nice boys in matching suits who wanted to hold your hand to psychedelic pop icons in day-glo who’d love to turn you on. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070603/FEATURES07/70604006/1016/FEATURES07

Fears of a clown
Joey Purvis soothes phobias and wins the crowd as a professional merry-maker

It’s a little after 9 this overcast morning as participants in the Burlington Kids Day parade gather for their annual trek down Main Street. It’s a surreal scene – Homer Simpson, Scooby-Doo, SpongeBob SquarePants and the Subway sandwich mascot are mingling with fez-topped Shriners and marching bands.
Joey the Clown, one of the parade’s mainstays, is supposed to be here, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
Aha! Down at the corner, a clown.
”Are you Joey the Clown?”
”No, he’s not here yet. I’m Bongo. Joey should be here in a while.”
Bongo, it turns out, is a member of a Shriners clown troupe, along with Waldo, Tyne (pronounced “Tiny”) and Geezer. And while the group’s fifth member, Joey, is a clown too, he’s not Joey THE Clown. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070527/FEATURES07/705270330/1016/FEATURES07

Turning back time

collectors of 78s like the old sound

A 4-1/2-inch, half-ounce CD can hold up to 80 minutes of crystal-clear sound. A 10-inch, half-pound 78-rpm record, on the other hand, holds about 2-1/2 minutes of music that is accompanied by pops, skips and grinding surface noise that sounds as if bacon is frying in the background.
What kind of person would be drawn to collecting these relics? (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070408/FEATURES07/704080323/1016/FEATURES07

Buying and selling

If you’re interested in collecting 78s, a good place to start is by contacting the New England Society for the Preservation of Recorded Sound (http://nesprs.tripod.com), founded in 1968. This group’s main interest is the shellac period in recorded sound (that is, 78s); it meets quarterly.
Old 78s — and the turntables to play them on — can be found in antiques stores, thrift shops, at rummage sales and yard sales and, naturally, on eBay. Some used record stores sell them for a couple of bucks apiece. A few actually buy them.
But many record stores do not accept 78s, even for free. Call ahead before lugging your late grandmother’s entire big-band collection to a store to sell. Most 78s have no rarity and thus no value. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070408/FEATURES07/704080324/1016/FEATURES07

Thinking outside the litter box

Vermont’s animal communicators are a different breed
Author Hugh Lofting was on to something back in 1922 when he wrote his second book in the series about the doctor who talked to the animals. He would doubtless find it fascinating that today, hundreds of people get paid to do just that.
They call themselves animal communicators, and Vermont has several who offer their services professionally. Nationally they number some 350, according to Penelope Smith, 60, of Prescott, Ariz., a driving force in the field since 1971. Of course, most pet owners (a word that animal communicators dislike) talk to their dogs or cats regularly, usually in silly baby talk. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070304/FEATURES07/703040339/1016/FEATURES07

Good to Go

No rush, but gravestone owners think ahead

Looking back, U.S. Navy veteran Carl Hooker says he did the right thing some 10 years ago. His actions, he says, were “responsible and important. But it was kind of creepy.”
Hooker, then 36, reserved a plot in the Vermont Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Randolph in a section set aside for married couples, right in front of his father-in-law’s plot. He also purchased a granite upright memorial to go with it.

(Click link below for complete article.)

http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070114/FEATURES07/701140332/1016/FEATURES07

Christmas trees by the thousands for only $5

Charlie Brown would be beside himself with this offer. This year, as it has done since 1932, the Green Mountain National Forest is offering frugal and/or adventurous Vermonters fresh-cut evergreens — up to 20 feet tall — for only $5. Sound too good to be true? Chances are this won’t be the most symmetrical or lushest Christmas tree, but consider the experience — and the price. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061210/FEATURES07/612100418/1016/FEATURES07

Cemeteries aren’t just for the dead

The children who attend Rutland’s northwestern neighborhood school aren’t spooked in the least.

But should a ball fly over the chain link fence and land in the tiny cemetery that lies within their grassy playground, a grown-up has to retrieve it. The pupils have known since their kindergarten indoctrination that the graveyard is hallowed ground. This is what Rob Bliss, the principal at Northwest Primary School and Pierpoint Primary Learning Center, tells them in his simple, straightforward manner: “There used to be a women’s prison nearby, so there are some people buried in there, and we want to respect them.” (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061029/NEWS/610290309/1016/FEATURES07

Eureka!
The light comes on for Vermont inventors

David Albright, inventor of a “wood splitter with multiple wood splitting wedges on a rotating member,” is the first of the night’s seven presenters. He’s a little nervous, but moderator Danielle O’Hallisay, also an inventor, puts him at ease with a quip. “What could be more Vermontish than splitting wood?” she asks an audience of about 40 people – fellow inventors and curiosity-seekers – who’ve come to Thursday’s third annual meeting of the nonprofit group InventVermont at Vermont College in Montpelier. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061015/NEWS/61014002/1016/FEATURES07

The private I’s have it

A peek at Vermont’s door-knocking cyber-gumshoes

Maybe it’s best if we start at the beginning. Clear up a few things. Care for a shot of bourbon? Me neither. Not these days. There are plenty of misconceptions about who I am and what I do. I’m strictly on the up and up. No busting down doors. No packing a concealed roscoe. That’s pure fiction, sweetheart. Search for a missing person or tail an unfaithful spouse? Occasionally. Excuse me, doll, while I take this call on my cell phone. Oh, sorry. It was just the fax, ma’am. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060730/NEWS/60728005/1016/FEATURES07

This spot is hot
When ‘free’ Internet falls into your laptop, the ethics police go on alert

Let's call him Daniel. He's ordinarily a law-abiding Vermonter. But a few months ago, shortly after discontinuing his high-speed Internet service, he opened his laptop one evening in his apartment. "It said I was connected.." (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060604/NEWS/606040327/1016/EDUCATION05

You mean, like the song?
Some lyrically named Vermonters just can’t stanza it anymore

So, just what is it about Leila Cosgrove, 22, of Burlington, and Cecilia Talamantes, 40, of Medford, Mass., that would make a man get down, begging, on his knees?

First, follow the bouncing ball back to the year 1970 when Eric Clapton, masquerading as "Derek" of Derek and The Dominos, wailed: "Layla, you've got me on my knees. Layla, I'm begging darling, please," and Simon and Garfunkel harmonized: "Oh, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees; I'm begging you please to come home." (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060423/NEWS/604230325/1016/EDUCATION05

To belong or not to belong?
Vermont’s social and fraternal clubs struggle to find new members

Groucho Marx is credited with saying, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.”
In his day, had Groucho deigned to join the Masons — a group with a current worldwide membership of some 5 million — he would have agreed to “. . .promise and swear, without any hesitation. . . under no less a penalty than that of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out, and with my body buried in the sands of the sea at low-water mark, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours, should I ever knowingly or willfully violate this, my solemn Obligation of an Entered Apprentice.” 

That’s a lot to swallow — for anyone. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060305/NEWS/60306017/1016/FEATURES07

Rock on ...
You might be surprised what people want played at their funerals

That great journey into the afterlife might be made to the strains of Led Zeppelin’s 1971 hit “Stairway to Heaven” — or AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” — if a national trend continues.
Try this at a formal gathering, and hear the conversation die: Ask how many people have considered what type of music will be played for their own funeral or if they’ve prepared their own playlist. (Click link below for complete article.)

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060115/NEWS/60115001/1016/FEATURES07