Thirty-two years ago, my girlfriend Liz had an interview for a job teaching at St. Johnsbury Academy on the northern edge of Vermont. I accompanied her on the 3-1/2 hour drive up the twisty White River through the rolling hills of the Green Mountains. While Liz was in meetings, I roamed the campus and tried to image what it would be like to move from Boston to this rural valley. We would have so many choices ahead of us. If she was hired at St. Johnsbury, and I found a job in the Boston area, would we revert to a long-distance relationship? Would our love survive such a separation? Or maybe Liz hesitantly would turn down the job offer to stay with me and slowly her resentment would sour our relationship?
Or perhaps, I would follow her north and buy a little house in the nearby town of Concord, Vermont? If we had started living together in Vermont would we ever have moved back to Massachusetts? Perhaps I would have raised goats and made artisan cheese like Roberta Gillott. Perhaps I would have become a writer of novels and short stories like Helen Pike?
Perhaps I would have opened a restaurant like the Mooselook Inn.
I always wanted to be a mailman growing up. Perhaps Concord, Vermont would have been the perfect place.
Certainly, Concord, Vermont, would have been a lovely place to settle. Our weekend getaway was timed so that we'd arrive the evening before the Concord Historical Society held its annual fall festival.
We booked an old schoolhouse for our bed and breakfast, and schools and education became the theme of the weekend. Concord once had nine one-room schools, and it was the site of the first teacher-training (or "Normal") school in America. Concord Vermont also claims Robert Frost was a one-time resident. He owned a house here, but he rarely visited it.
We had a wonderful time meeting the folks of Vermont. They all had the same basic answer to our standard questions: they loved Concord because this was their home and "Yes" Concord has changed over the years; there are fewer businesses in town, but the spirit of the place remains. Beth Quimby (left) had a poetic answer: "I love the quiet Concord roads." Her mom, Connie, is the president of the Historical Society, a state representative, and a driving force in town.
Wikipedia says that Concord Vermont was founded in 1780 by two men Rueben Jones and Simon Willard, and that the town was named directly after Concord MA. This sounds probable. 145 years earlier, Rev. John Jones and another Simon Willard were founders of Concord in Massachusetts. Simon Willard was a prolific chap – he had 17 children, and the genealogy is complicated by multiple marriages and equally prolific offspring . I heard an estimate that there are over 100,000 decedents of the original Simon Willard. I visited the Concord Vermont Historical Society to try to confirm this direct link between the towns.
Maybe we would both become teachers. They had some friendly middle schoolers who were researching the history of the old one-room schoolhouses in town.
It was the perfect weekend to visit the Northeast Kingdom. The leaves were on the turn, but it was still warm and breezy. Concord Vermont is a remarkably picturesque place, and the townspeople couldn't have been more welcoming. Lizzy and I only had a weekend, but it seemed like more. I think if Lizzy had been hired at St. Johnsbury, and we had made Concord Vermont our home, we would have been quite happy.
