My wife and I were married in the fall of 1997 in Durham, North Carolina. Durham was experiencing rapid growth at the time, and it proved impossible to find a house or condo that was within our price range unless we were willing to go over forty miles from the city, out into the surrounding rural counties. We were living in an apartment and didn’t much enjoy it as our neighbors were loud and kind of obnoxious, but we couldn’t think of a plan B.
Then, one week in November of 1997, I was asked to travel up to Chelmsford, Massachusetts to train some employees at a digital communications technology company on, of all things, Adobe Framemaker — a large-scale publishing program. I was, apparently, one of the few people around certified to train on it.
Unusually, the training manager said he only wanted each day’s training to go from 8:00 am to noon, leaving the staff the afternoon to do their regular jobs. So there I was, on my own, nothing else to do really, each afternoon and evening.
Fortunately, I had a rental car, so I started exploring. I drove up into Maine and looked around. I got as far as Kennebunkport, looked out over a cove at George Bush’s oceanfront house, said, “Huh,” and headed back. I drove down to Rhode Island and had coffee milk and some of their “New York System” hot dogs. And I called up an aunt on my mother’s side that I couldn’t recall ever meeting in person, the “black sheep” of that side of the family, who lived in extreme southern Vermont. One thing led to another, and we wound up agreeing to meet up and get dinner the next evening.
Aunt Eva lived in Putney, Vermont, and worked as a masseuse, Reiki healer, spiritual counselor, and any number of other New Age-y things of the kind that were and are very popular in Vermont. All you needed to do to find the way to her house was look for the sign by the side of the road just showing a pair of hands; turn there, and you were at her house.
As I drove from the interstate to her house, I was quite taken by the picture-postcard surroundings — rural, clean, quaint, and unspoiled, with no shopping malls anywhere in sight and essentially no traffic.
Eva turned out to be a very nice lady but about as far to the left as one could get, which is why she was the black sheep. Most of the rest of my mom’s family were very conservative; her own brother had reported her to the FBI in the 1960s when she went to Cuba for the sugar cane harvest. We went out to a local restaurant for dinner and had a nice time, enjoying the simple local diner food and some conversation.
But then, at the end, when a waitress brought us the hand-written bill, Eva slapped herself on the forehead.
Eva: “I forgot my purse!”
Before I could say, “Er, I was planning on paying anyway,” several people at surrounding tables turned around and said they’d be happy to cover us, no problem. I thanked them and said, “Wow! That’s so nice. I’ve got it, though,” and so on.
Once we were back in the car, I looked at Eva.
Me: “I assume you’re a regular there and they all know you?”
Eva: “No, actually, I’ve never been in there before and didn’t know any of them.”
Me: “I guess that’s just Vermont for you.”
That night, back in my hotel room in Chelmsford, I called my wife.
Me: “[Wife], we’re moving to Vermont.”
[Wife] had lived in Massachusetts while matriculating at Harvard, and she cheerfully replied, “Okay!”
And magically, somehow, we were both able to find job offers and were living in Vermont four and a half months later. We’ve never looked back. Best decision we ever made.
