Buzzings in the Berkshires
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union BUZZINGS IN THE BERKSHIRES BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Otis, Mass. I am sitting in a field of classical daisies—spongy gold centers, silken white perimeters—that fronts the...
...Followed by an aging cocker spaniel and a couple of cats, Minnery led us through woods and bogs, talking all the time, telling us about his land and his life...
...He had been reckless enough to send her the manuscript...
...Where there are shortages, even felons must make do...
...like petal pluckers of old, we have no pressing engagements...
...It was said to have been worth $19,000...
...I should say it had 46 petals before I removed them, one by one, while probing that ancient mystery: She loves me, she loves me not...
...I called to him from the front gate...
...The American substitute for trust is technology—a state-of-the-art machine in the garden...
...It was really scary," Diane said...
...No one around here, not even the teenage girls, seems to know the horses' names...
...Behind me and the daisies run an old stone wall and a wired fence, which border a miniature pasture full of clover and thistles...
...it's all done by hand...
...All I want is my Social Security and some rest...
...The daisy under my nose has 46 petals...
...She is getting ready for our afternoon outing, whatever that turns out to be—a swim, perhaps, in Upper Spectacle Pond...
...Mutual trust, the virtual warp and woof of village life, is rapidly unraveling in the Berkshires...
...As is usual in these matters, the reactions can be as ugly as the crimes...
...Keep your eyes peeled...
...So much for technology...
...An outdoor laborer by day, he remains a farmer at dawn and dusk...
...She is holding a rolled-up Geodetic Survey of Otis in one hand and a bottle of insect repellent in the other...
...That is because on occasion Diane and I have been known to eye real estate from a consumer's perspective...
...Could've gotten it for five," he said regretfully...
...If you let this be published," she wrote back," you will do great injury to yourself...
...When that happens, according to the lyrics, it's time to "notice Otis, and soon your aches will mend...
...The problem is not Otis' alone...
...The answer is written on the petals of literary history...
...The reason I have been meditating in this machineless garden is that I am waiting for Diane to come out of the house...
...The other day at the P.O...
...Now I don't milk 'em and I don't sell 'em...
...a tramp through someone's purchasable woods...
...The other day, Diane tells me, while I was in the village, the filly went slightly bats...
...It was Gandhi who said, "Everything you do will be insignificant, but you must do it anyway...
...We get in the car and buzz off...
...Real estate prices in the Berkshires have doubled in just two years...
...It occurs to me (buzz buzz) that daisies do not have a uniform number of petals...
...A wistful craft, petal plucking flourished in a more deliberate age, when the turning of the earth was as good a measure of time as a clock or a calendar...
...A few days ago we were slowly cruising down Nash Road—a byway that took us past two nifty lakes and a 200-year-old picturebook cemetery— when we spotted a tiny "For Sale" sign on a gray birch deep in the woods...
...The count seems to vary with the circumference...
...Whose woods these are we always think we ought to know...
...There are fancy towns and bigger towns But they're just all the same...
...no more helpless cows to care for...
...I am sitting in a field of classical daisies—spongy gold centers, silken white perimeters—that fronts the little house we have rented for a few weeks of respite up in the Berkshires...
...His face was that of a clown—sad and friendly...
...I want to keep 'em as long as I don't need the cash...
...Hemust have seen himself as a pioneer or an entrepreneur, or maybe as a future farmer of America...
...At last Diane emerges from the house...
...EasternStandard Time...
...This man seemed to have one foot in wealth and the other in penury...
...If they catch the guy," he said, "they ought to do with him what the Indians did—burn him at the stake...
...The epidemic of larcenies has people around here taking uncharacteristically urban-like precautions: They are locking their doors at night...
...buzz buzz buzz buzz...
...the people get so mean you keep your eyes right on the ground...
...This song is an unabashed come-on to prospective fugitives from New York and Boston...
...He came loping our way, a hunched, muscular man of medium build...
...When he was 18 (he's 56 now) he bought 300 acres of farm and forest for $10 an acre...
...Well, that's how she looked...
...That same morning an elderly man named Buell was sipping coffee at his parlor window when he saw two men stroll onto the front lawn, get into his new Buick and drive away...
...One of them suspected arson...
...To me there's nothing fancy Where no one knows your name...
...Buzz buzz buzz...
...He has no phone and no electricity...
...Not once, however, have wedone more thanlook...
...These afternoon sorties of ours are generally hit-or-miss...
...We are a terrible waste of their time...
...Diane talks to them sometimes and feeds them carrots...
...Minnery proved to be a bachelor farmer who lives across the road in a long, low house with lots of tiny windows looking out on his woods, his birds, his swamps, and his dreams...
...Evennumbered daisies being what they are, the answer was "not...
...He must have had a vision of sorts, back there at the crest of hisyouth...
...When we arrived, at sunset, he was in the barn providing for his cows...
...That is very odd in a village where names are considered part of the civic mystique...
...She loved him—she loved him not...
...The remarkable boom—all the fancy condos, all the sixfigure, tax-deductible vacation hideaways—has conspired to make Minnery rich in real estatebutpoorinmostother respects, including his health and his bank account...
...what they might do instead is pick up their telephone and dial an 800 number: "It's 10:37 A.M...
...Snorting and shaking off the shock, she scrambled to her feet and galloped headlong down our road, whereupon three teenage girls materialized out of the rural ether and succeeded in luring her through a gate and back to her mother's side...
...Iusedtohave 20," he told us the next evening, "and I used to milk 'em twice a day...
...To buy anything, we seem to be saying, would spoil the sport...
...My thoughts at this moment (I may as well own up) are like the buzz of insects in one'sear—random, pesky and without discernible weight...
...There are no shortcuts...
...A general might say the same to his troops: Duty calls in many guises...
...The mare is brown and has sharp shoulder blades...
...I nodded knowingly, not caring to betray my total lack of knowledge regarding lunatic horses...
...Nowadays, lovers looking for reciprocity are unlikely to pick daisies...
...Insouciance was not his strong suit...
...It's mainly Millay, though, to whom I'm free associating, recalling her aversion to Edmund Wilson's only novel, / Thought of Daisy...
...Behind the house is a barn and a small pasture where Minnery grazes his lOcows...
...two men were talking about a house that had recently burned down...
...This particular way of acquiring knowledge (petal plucking) can use up a lot of one's time...
...Tenderly I place a daisy between her teeth...
...Shedoesn'tloveyou...
...Not to put too fine an edge on it, we have been lazily shopping for rural land since before the election of John F. Kennedy...
...Strong language...
...Herman Melville lived around here, as did Edith Wharton, William Cullen Bryant, Edna St...
...Glory be to God for occasionally dappled things, and for Diane...
...Crimes and their victims have become a favorite topic for discussion...
...When an alarm goes off, the local police are supposed to rush to the scene...
...Havea good day...
...no more dreaming...
...I have spOKEN of the woods as "purchasable...
...No more wild turkeys to watch...
...But the town has only two policemen, and most of the time they're busy with highway accidents—or else they're home in bed...
...On Otis Reservoir last weekend somebody stole a man's pleasure boat, toodled around the lake a few hours, then pulled the plug and watched the boat sink...
...I like these woods...
...If I want a more affectionate response, I shall either have to ask another daisy or else cheat, as in solitaire...
...I've worked hard for 40 years and I'm tired...
...Eventually, in order to get cash he may have to sell portions of his beloved farm and forest to developers...
...I got beavers here and wild turkey...
...We had to climb over barbed wire to get close enough to read the owner's name, written in pencil: "Robert Minnery...
...I just provide for 'em...
...Car thefts suddenly soaring in county," yesterday's Berkshire Eagle proclaimed...
...one stolen twice...
...You know that wild look that horses get sometimes, their eyes rolled way up in their sockets...
...The composer, of course, remains nameless...
...Vincent Millay, and Daniel Chester French, who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial...
...It begins with the customary critique of urban life: "The city's hot and dirty when the summer rolls around...
...She jumped over the electrified fence...
...Two horses, a mare and her filly, seem to be renting the pasture...
...the filly is an occasionally dappled gray...
...or maybe a tour of some Literary Site...
...But Gandhi, one suspects, never took a summer vacation, an indolent interlude in which not having to do anything is the only significant point...
...Was Wilson's Daisy modeled on Millay...
...Some Otis citizens have installed sophisticated alarm systems with flashing lights and hidden electric eyes...
...Now he's trying to sell off a few acres at about $3,000 per...
...The doc says I got two hernias...
...One upshot has been that realtors from Maine to North Carolina flee whenever they see us approaching...
...But apparently there are mean people in Otis, too...
...People seem bewildered...
...I collected this information not by yanking daisies but by eavesdropping at the local post office...
...So goes a verse in the town's unofficial anthem, entitled "Notice Otis...
...Still not satisfied, she did it once more, this time touching the wire as she performed an equine barrel roll...
...then she jumped back...
Vol. 71 • August 1988 • No. 14
