If your introduction to our state was one of its many quintessential and often baffling institutions, you were probably getting mixed messages — come hither, get lost! Vermonters by choice, be it old or new, from “Shlot” (Charlotte) to Callous (Calais) to “Snallbans” (St. Albans) have all at some time gone Birkenstock to Birkenstock with an array of quaint customs, creatures, topographical features, practices, or organizations that are uniquely Vermont and definitely eccentric.
For example, as a former flatlander, if you thought that “deer camp” was where The Buck-Doe family sent Bambi on a sleep-away to learn the manly arts of archery and gun safety, you’d be wrong. Or perhaps “game suppers” sounded like weekly family dinners where the cook was inept and the main course was mystery meat with a chaser of Pepto. And “Ice-Out,” you speculated, would’ve got you a martini straight-up at that quaint watering hole Joe’s Pond.
Now Vermont institutions — the real thing, not the flights of fantasy–are easily categorized. You have your seasons — mud, moose-rutting and hunting; your suppers (game, chicken pie and church); your creatures (Champ, catamounts and cluster flies); and your unique topographical features — gorges, gores (just what is a gore and who the heck was Buell?), ponds (Ticklenaked and Joe’s), and your rocks, both plain and fancy (Barre granite and Proctor marble). In Vermont, all God’s children got rocks!
Which reminds us of the apocryphal story about the farmer in his field and the lost tourist who stops to get directions.
“What are you doing?” the tourist asks, unable to contain his curiosity about the natives.
“Picking up rocks,” replies the farmer.
Where’d they all come from?” asks the stranger.
“Glacier!” offers the farmer.
“And where’s the glacier now?” counters the tourist.
“Gone back for more rocks.”
In the interest of communal digging, Vtdigger.org invites you to unearth your tales of first encounters of the Vermont kind, the kind that may’ve left you feeling like the Groucho Marx song: “Hello, I must be going.”
Barbara Ann Curcio of Charlotte is a former reporter and columnist for The Washington Post.
