The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT The Spirit Of Vermont By William E. Bohn More than forty years have passed since I spent my first summer in Vermont. My home during those three months was in a quaint and very...
...The second notable fact was the record made by the migrants who had ventured into the wide world and left those homes to decay...
...When I made my plans, I had vaguely thought of calling on him...
...It is not large...
...The spirit of Ethan Allen still walks those hills...
...In Asia and Africa, they had served as missionaries, teachers, physicians, diplomats...
...Dorothy records in her book that, when the excitement was at its height, a Vermont editor had written: '"Anybody who tries to bore from within in Vermont is going to strike granite...
...Their distinction lies not in mere height, but in their beauty...
...You expect that of your Senator...
...No one could loaf on the job...
...When I had completed my examination, the head marble man gave me as a memento of my visit a copy of Dorothy Canfield Fisher's fine book, Vermont Tradition...
...You would think that his supporters in his little home state would be bursting with pride...
...That is all I got out of these people...
...They think that in pushing his resolution on McCarthy he did the right thing...
...To me, straight from the West, there were three things about this town which were remarkable...
...A part of their distinction is that they are quietly content to be themselves...
...He said to me: "We don't talk much, but Dorothy has put it all down in this book...
...Along all the roads, you could come upon the old cellar holes surrounded by lilac bushes run wild which marked the location of deserted houses that had once sheltered the large families of former days...
...But it was decreed by the gods of national politics that he should be kept at his desk in the nation's capital, and I did not see him...
...I went up there a couple of weeks ago with Senator Flanders very much on my mind...
...But they are not verbally violent about anything—whether they like it or hate it...
...In the American West, they had become Governors, Senators, college presidents...
...The village pastor took me into his church and showed me the books...
...In the first place, its population was only half as great as it had been a century earlier...
...But there is something about these Green Mountain folks, about the way they think and act and talk, that gives them a special quality...
...While I was there, the project was finished and $3,000 was relumed to the treasury by the selectmen...
...Its population would not make more than a moderate-sized city in some other part of the country...
...We had learned that the teachers of Vermont had adopted a resolution against any sort of censorship in the schools...
...For a too-short while, we sat before her fireplace and talked of Flanders and McCarthy and the threat to the world's freedom...
...And when the jury had completed its labors, it reported: "No evidence was presented which seemed to require further investigation by us...
...Not at all...
...The place was ruled, of course, by the annual town meeting...
...At the last session of this parochial parliament, $10,000 had been approprilled for the building of sidewalks...
...My home during those three months was in a quaint and very Vermonty little town named Thetford...
...The third point which gave the town distinction in my Western eyes was a mere matter of municipal government...
...10,000 had been appropriated and $7,000 had been spent...
...If Flanders has done the right thing, well, so what...
...Since Dorothy's charming old house lay spang on the road which we planned to take on our homeward journey, I naturally decided to visit her...
...But the citizens explained in a matter-of-fact way that no one could cheat because everyone knew exactly what was going on...
...Every voter made it his business to serve as an unofficial inspector...
...Naturally, I expressed my surprise...
...Wherever McCarthy is known...
...Nevertheless, I had plenty of opportunity to canvass the opinions of his constituents...
...Flanders is a close second...
...In a state like Vermont, the citizens know their Governors...
...And when a grand jury was convened to look into signs of Communism, the judge had charged the jurymen to recall that grand juries were originally set up to protect citizens against oppression by the Government...
...Since then, I have spent many summers and autumns winding in and out and up and down among these appropriately named Green Mountains...
...They like their junior Senator...
...After this interlude, we went on our way feeling more secure...
...The young men and women of Thetford had gone both east and west...
...Senators and Congressmen...
...It seemed amazing that one small quadrangle of not overly fruitful soil could produce such a crop...
...And so it is with the state...
...And this man Flanders has made a name for himself...
...And then one day I went to look into the marble industry, the only thing in the state which the Vermonters boast about as being "the biggest in the world...
...They disapprove of McCarthy and his way of talking and acting...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 35
