Word: mud
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Brookfield, the chairman of the board of selectmen is Dairy Farmer Charles Keeler. His phone is still listed. Standing in his barnyard, a seasonal bog, he says, "You can plow snow, but not mud. There's not much you can do about mud except wait for it to go away. The only thing to do is add gravel-18 inches is a pretty good surface-but mud season occurs before the town gravel pit melts...
...Mud season is an unpredictable phenomenon, different every year. Explains Earl Bassett, who is visiting the Keeler farm on business: "There are always spots you don't anticipate. You just drop in, and the wheels aren't touching bottom any more, and you sit there until someone pulls you out." Bassett qualifies as an expert since he drives 42,000 miles a year. His business is artificially inseminating cows. Even the cows must be able to spot his license plate: TORO...
...sound a vehicle makes as it drops into the mud is a kind of ominous smush. Some people find it so depressing that they try to avoid mud season altogether. Jackie and Al Wilder, who run the Fork Shop Restaurant in Brookfield, closed up in March and went all the way to Europe. "Nobody can get to us over the mud anyway," says Al. They came home expecting tulips and sunshine and found instead all the pipes in their house frozen. It's not nice to avoid Mother Nature...
...last of the maple sap. He pauses to bulldoze a passer-by out of the bottomless depths across from his house. The Browns have farmed these 175 acres for almost 70 years. His daughter Theresa, 19, and son Willis, 20, are the fourth generation of Browns on the place. "Mud season's not so bad as it used to be," says Brown. "We used to have to hitch up the horses to the wagon and draw out the milk in cans to the nearest hard road to be collected. That would go on for six weeks every year. Roads...
From an office in Montpelier, Ray Burke, the Vermont state highway dispatcher, is relaying news of mud and disaster to state road crews. "Mud is part of Vermont living," he says, "you try to organize your life around it. Pretty soon it dries out and then, pretty soon it comes again." On particularly bad nights, he gets out his guitar and sings something to cheer the boys up. The Vermont highway department is noted for its esprit de corps, and Burke's songs cover the traditional themes so comforting to men who must battle not only raging storms...