peter miller's

colbyville chronicles

Essays, stories, thoughts, reflections, criticism, let's just call it a blog by author, photographer and writer Peter Miller. Here you will find excerpts from his new book, Nothing Whatever Happens in Colbyville, Vermont (Where's that???), and anything else he has written and edited into shape. 

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Remembering Fred Tuttle

Fred Tuttle—dairy farmer, actor, politician and Vermont’s most beloved citizen—died of a heart attack on October 4, 2003 in Tunbridge, Vermont. He was 84.

    Fred starred in the 1996 film Man with a Plan, written and
directed by his neighbor, John O’Brien. It was a spoof on politics;
how a Vermont dairy farmer, played by Fred, ran for Congress with the
slogan “I’ve spent my whole life in the barn, now I just want to
spend a little time in the House.” With a budget of $16, the
film’s hero went on to defeat the incumbent congressman by one vote.
    Two years later Fred ran for real against Jack McMullen in
the US Senate Republican Primary and, after a series of hilarious
debates, defeated McMullen. Fred then endorsed the Democratic
candidate, Senator Patrick Leahy, and retired to his hillside home.

This story is in Peter Miller's forthcoming book, Nothing Whatever Happens in Colbyville, Vermont . It originally appeared in several Vermont newspapers.

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It was one of those soft Indian summer days. The early morning fog
lifted to bare blue-hazed mountains under a sky unblemished with
clouds. The temperature climbed slowly into the high seventies but
the shade was fresh as spring water. It was Thursday, the ninth day
of October, Vermont’s most benevolent and beautiful month, a day to
live easy. But it was also the day of Fred Tuttle’s funeral.
    I had put on my only suit, which I hadn’t worn for a decade, my
black shoes, a pale pink shirt and a muted paisley tie left over from
a time past. Tunbridge, Fred’s hometown, is about 40 miles from
Waterbury, where I live. I drove to Randolph and took the short cut,
over the mountain, past some rolling fields of corn stalks being
chopped into silage, then into the woods and down past a landscape of
farms into Tunbridge.  
    The Tunbridge Congregational Church is typical of the places of
worship in most small villages that were never wealthy. A simple
steeple punctuates the center of town. The interior is plain with
graceful discipline. Judy Lewis—it’s always a woman at these
funerals—was playing the organ, which had a deep voice that was
constant, solemn, and respectful, as attendants ushered in the
mourners. On the left aisle were seated friends of Fred. Among them
was Senator Patrick Leahy, who defeated Fred in the 1987 Senatorial
campaign (Well, Fred, after he won the primary, deferred to the
Senator, on the advice of his wife Dottie. “THERE IS NO WAY YOU ARE
GOING TO WASHINGTON!” she once screamed at him when he was toying
with the idea as we sat at the dining room table. He gave me a sly
smile and I could see he liked, in his own way, to have Dottie
lecture him.)
    Also seated in the church, in the pew in front of Senator Leahy, was
John O’Brien, who had the brilliance to recognize that his neighbor
down the road was just the right person to star in his film The Man
With the Plan. Next to him was Jack Rowell, associate producer of The
Man With the Plan, woodchuck photographer and fly fisherman, whose
photographs sparkle with warmth and humor, and who traveled and
documented Fred’s years as a performance artist.
    Filling the right side of the aisle were members of the family. There
were more elderly women then men, as many of their husbands had
already died. A few men had the bronzed healthy look of farmers who
had spent the last month on their tractors, haying and chopping.
Others were white-faced, their bodies crumpled, waiting out their
time, and they walked with difficulty. A few wore open-collar shirts
with suspenders, as Fred had dressed. One elderly man had on high
patent-leather shoes, with wrinkles in the toes coated with dust that
had collected during years in a closet. Two wore mismatched coats
and trousers. Seated in the front row were Fred’s wife, Dottie, and
Fred’s children, some of them adopted, some direct descendents, but
all part of the fabric of the Tuttle family, which is thick in these
parts. The first Tuttles settled in Tunbridge in 1798. In 1872 Fred
Herman Tuttle, Fred’s grandfather, bought the Tuttle hillside farm,
which still remains in the family, so the Tuttle roots have been
spreading for. 205 years.
    Fred had two great moments in his 84-year life. The first
was as a soldier in World War II. Attached to a combat engineering
company, he landed in Normandy on D Day plus 7 and was sent to LeMans
when the Germans were just vacating it; Fred could still smell
cabbage soup. His unit constructed a bridge in 36 hours. (“How long
does it take them in Vermont to put up a bridge? A year?”) But he
found time and the directions to visit a house of pleasure. He left
his helmet, cartridge belt, and rifle downstairs (“I shouldn’t had
done that.”), walked upstairs, and made love for the first time.
    “Guess what, Peter?” He leaned forward, the glint gleamed in his
eyes, the famous Tuttle smile began to crease his face, as he held up
his hand with the thumb and forefinger about three inches apart.
“For one cigarette! That’s all! One cigarette!” He sat back and
his face expanded into a huge Cheshire-Cat smile.
    Fred first visited Paris the day after its liberation and was
overwhelmed by his reception, so much so that he volunteered to
patrol a section of pipeline that lay north of the city and through
which flowed fuel for the tanks and trucks on the front line. He was
there until the war ended, and his trips to the City of Light were
numerous.
    “Peter, The Paris women. They were … beautiful. Beautiful! There
was red carpet on the floor, long bars, they served us drinks, we sat
in sofas…” He was referring to his hangouts on Boulevard Clichy,
which he knew as Pigalle.
    Fred returned from France not being shot at, and not shooting at
others, but seeing too many dead bodies and almost drowning while
returning to the States on a troop ship that was caught in a storm.
The hold was full of water but Fred was able to kept his head, and
that of a stow-away dog, above water. He always liked animals.
    When he was discharged Fred rode the train to Randolph, the nearest
train station to Tunbridge. “There were two pretty women in the
station when I got off” remembered Fred, “and they didn’t even
look at me.” That night, Fred milked the cows, as he would continue
to do daily for the next 40 years.
    David Wolfe, the church’s minister, climbed the pulpit
and gave a humorous but compassionate portrait of Fred as “perhaps
my most reluctant parishioner…” Fred’s son recalled his younger
years and how he liked to hunt without killing anything and the
importance of Fred as a father to his natural and adopted children.
John O’Brien described Fred’s natural talent as an actor and
mentioned some of the funnier moments he spent with Fred. After years
of anonymity, with nights and mornings looking at the hind ends of
cows, days of reaping and sowing and the never-ending job of cutting
and splitting firewood, Fred savored stardom as he did ice cream.
    Sales of the video The Man With the Plan, about a farmer who decided
to run for Congress on the slogan, “I’ve spent my whole life in
the barn, now I just want to spend a little time in the House,”
exceeded 45,000. Fred’s character won by one vote and stole the
hearts of all who saw the movie. The movie was whimsical, gently
satirical, and very, very true to the culture of Vermont. Fred became
the icon of a Vermont farmer—he had an accent that almost needed
translation for people not used to it, an honest mind, an ability to
express himself with as few words as possible, and sweetness in his
affability. There was no pretense in Fred and he said what he
thought. He was just…Fred.
    At the service Maria Lamson sang Simple Gifts in a sweet voice, and
Priscilla Farnham gave a stirring rendition of Amazing Grace. Fred
lay in an open casket at the front of the church. His glasses were
in place and he looked peaceful, with his eyes closed as if he were
remembering something from the past and would suddenly open them and
start telling a story. His hands were clasped together and on his
belly lay his cap with FRED spelled on it (As he said in the movie,
it is an acronym: F for friendly, R for renewable, E for
extraterrestrial, D for dinky.)
    At the end of the service I walked up the aisle to say good-bye
to Fred, and I thought of the last time I’d seen him, a few weeks
before. I was camped on his property as I attended the Tunbridge
Fair. I brought him a copy of a revised edition of Vermont People
with photos and stories about him and his father, Joe. When I left
Fred he was standing in the doorway in his striped pajamas, with a
hand on the half-opened door, peering out at me through his thick
glasses like an owl. He flipped his hand up and waggled it in a short
wave. It was one of those photographs I never took, but an image that
will stay with me all my life.
    I’d first met Fred in 1989, when I came over to photograph Joe, who
was then 93. At the same time I photographed Fred as he leaned on his
cane and gave me a penetrating glance through his big glasses. We
didn’t talk much but he reminded me of a Mr. Magoo. His father’s
photograph and story appeared next year in the book. Every so often I
would visit Tunbridge and drop in to see Fred and Joe and, after Joe
died, I visited with Fred and Dottie.
    When I was updating Vermont People in 1998, I photographed Fred in
the same pose as I’d photographed his father, holding the
photograph of his father, who was holding his father’s photograph.
The photograph was taken in front of the Tuttle barn that was about
to fall down in the movie Man with the Plan. It really did fall down
and needed to be reconstructed.
A backhoe sat idle in the cemetery as two men shoveled dirt into
Fred’s grave. Dottie was then at the reception, seated at a long
table with friends and relatives. Daughter Debra was just beginning
to retain her tears. I wondered, as I drove slowly past the cemetery
and up the mountain, on this clear, beautiful Indian summer day, if
we were not only burying Fred but also the character that made
Vermont what it was, what we have cherished and loved. 

26 February 2007

“I just might be in trouble.”...

Deep Snow on a Beaver Pond.

 

Sunday, 25 February, 2007. A crisp, beautiful morning with a cobalt sky stuck overhead, no clouds, and temperature rising into the teens. It was 11 days since the Valentine blizzard dropped 36 inches of snow on our village. It could have been a snow grave for me.

     The snow that fell in this blizzard was finely milled into miniature hard seeds. The temperature was 10 degrees, which is unusual; most sustained snowstorms seem to prefer temperatures around the twenties. I shoveled off my second story deck four times during the storm and the snow I dumped over the sides covered my garage windows and was even with my deck. I had never seen it this deep. I measured a 36-inch depth in one portion of the deck I did not shovel.

     After the storm I strapped on my large wooden snowshoes and waddled behind the house to make sure the gas vent was not blocked. Even with these clunkers on my feet I sank over a foot into the snow. There was so little moisture in this snow; a handful of it sifted through my gloves like mercury. For the first time ever the national weather report issued an avalanche warning for back woods skiers and I heard of one person who was buried briefly when he was raking off his roof and the snow on the entire side let go with a whoosh. We should consider our selves lucky; if the snow was wet there would have been many collapsed roofs and decks and the power would have been out for a long spell.

     In the week following the storm the temperature went above freezing just once and at night tried damned hard to go below zero. The effect was that the dry and cold temperature kept the snow light and desiccated. Even so I noticed the snow banks around my deck had dropped a couple of feet.

................................ 

  On this beautiful Sunday I decided to postpone banging the ice off my roof and go cross country skiing. I chose not to use my telemark skis or snowshoes as I thought the snow had settled enough and stuck my cross-country touring skis in the car. There is a beaver pond about two miles from my house off a back road, near what we call the waterworks and I wanted to explore its perimeter.

     I found a place to park and stubbed my ski boots into the bindings. I climbed over the snowplow bank and angled across a flat mowing. The snow glistened rather that sparkled, as there were no large snowflakes. My skis sunk down about 8 inches and I figured it was okay and skied down to the beaver pond. I tested the ice and it was hard under about a foot of snow. I figured the wind had blown most of it off the ice and I skied onto the pond and kept a wary eye on  fingers of  depressions in the snow, which marked moving water.  I skied around the circumference. Near a beaver dam I saw that animal tracks appeared out of the snow, as if the animal was coming up for air—a rabbit or squirrel, I supposed. This rabbit made a trail of about six feet and then there was a gash in the snow and spread out on either side for about two and a half feet, were long knife-like incisions in the snow, precision placed by spread wings. The wing sets imprinted in the snow subsumed the rabbit tracks and for about 10 yards I could see spaced out eight feet where the wings kept striking the snow fainter and fainter as the bird, carrying a prey heavier than it figured, tried to gain altitude. It did and I assume flew over the center of the pond with its pristine unmarked snow only savaged where I stood, a symbol of sudden, terrifying death. Later I heard an owl hoot from the flanks of the mountain that rises to the east of the beaver pond.

     I followed the dam for 35 yards and then angled across the center of the pond towards a trail that is about 400 yards away. It is an unplowed road and used in the winter by snowshoers and skiers. Between the trail and where I stood on my skis was a stretch of snow with the tops of cattails sticking out like burned down candlesticks. To the right was a beaver home and I wanted to see if there was a breathing hole there.

 When I skied into the cattails the snow suddenly softened and my skis dropped down about four feet. I stood there buried in the snow up to my belly and looked at the brilliant blueness of the sky.

    “Well!” I said to myself. Behind me a ring was growing around the sun; there was about three more hours of sunlight. I slid my skis back and forth to free the tips and tails and packed down the snow. With the poles I leveraged myself out of the hole. I changed direction to a small ridge that marked a long curving beaver dam about three feet high where the wind would have lessened the snow depth. The cattails seem to trap the snow between the stalks, keeping the snow contained, loose and light and deep as quick sand.

     The dam was only 30 feet away. I made two strides and sunk again into this snow, this time a bit deeper.

     “I just might, just might, be in trouble,” I said to myself. Again I worked my skis back and forth and made a platform, skied to the surface and after two strides repeated the process of dropping through this trap hole of sifting snow only this time I fell backwards. Looking up all I could see was the freedom of blue sky. I knew what it felt like to be trapped in an open grave.

     I remained motionless and took several deep breaths. I thought of my Scuba dive training. Never panic! I was sort of prepared. I carried a small backpack with a canteen of water, an extra pair of gloves, a neck warmer, a knife and a camera. “That’s handy,” I thought, “I could take my last self-portrait.”

     I worked my skis free—thank God the snow was soft for this activity, and poked the tips up so they were perpendicular to the snow. I decided to remove my skis. This is not a good idea in deep snow but I had thought it out. There was about 25 feet separating me and the snow covered beaver dam. My ski poles are 57 inches high and I estimated the snow depth at four feet and an air space of maybe half a foot at the bottom. The marsh, thankfully, was frozen.

      It is not easy to release cross-country skis when they are pointing in the air and you are prone and buried in soft snow; there is little leverage. I poked at the binding with my ski pole tips and off they came. Thank God again! If I couldn’t use my pole tips I wouldn’t have been able to release them. I scrunched around so I was on my belly and held the skis and my poles laterally in front of me and used them to tamp down the snow. Then, using the skis and poles for leverage I stood up reached out an arm’s length, sunk them into the snow to give me a purchase to pull myself along. I thought of my days in the Army, crawling on my elbows under barbed wire, a rifle cradled in my arms, machine gun fire streaking overhead.

 I stopped regularly to take deep breaths and to relax. After all, the sun was bright, I had on a water and wind proof parka, a down vest, a polyester turtleneck and T shirt, there was no wind and the temperature was about 28. If there was wind and the temperature was in the single digits, I would have been very perturbed; frostbite and hypothermia are old enemies. I crawled up the side of the dam, using my skis and poles as a come-along and found I was right— the snow was about a foot deep. I packed it down, laid down my skis, and stepped into the bindings and stood up. A sigh of relief. I held my face towards the sun and shut my eyes, as the warmth sunk into me. At this moment I thought of my predicament. A snowmobile would have been useless here for it would have sunk to the bottom. The only way to navigate was on long snowshoes and a rescue would involve a toboggan. Well now, a helicopter could have blown away the snow!

      I skied 50 yards across the pond into some more clumps of cattails with open snow. I stayed away from the clumps, where the snow, I now knew, was shifty and soft. I kept my skis as wide apart as possible and glided as lightly as possible through the marsh to the road and the path. I had taken the long way around and my car was less than half a mile away but then again,,. I always take the path less traveled.

     On the trail I met a couple that were using short metal snowshoes,

     “I got into a bit of trouble,” I said, pointing at the beaver pond. “I don’t think you could cross there with those snowshoes.”

      The woman answered that she stepped off the trail and sunk armpit deep into the snow. Her husband helped her out.

     Well, I should have used my snowshoes but I thought the snow was well packed. I could have used the telemarks but didn’t want to put on the heavy boots. But I did have a premonition about this trip. The snow was too fine and the cold temperature had kept it from congealing. I knew this type of snow is prone to avalanche but I hadn’t considered its danger as it lay so innocently over this beaver pond and marsh. 

      If I hadn’t gotten out by sunset, I would have used my cell phone that a little voice told me to bring along. But would it have picked up a signal in the middle of this marsh when I am buried up to my armpits? If it didn’t, would I have panicked? And for that reason, I never did try it.