Back to Middlebury, Vermont. After Tegucigalpa.

 On the day I was born, my great-aunt, Charlotte, an astrologer and the wife of a Navy General told my mother that I was born under an unlucky star.As a brand new mother, she just loved that one and to this day, she is still a fragile and very active lady who some would deem as old, but whom everyone absolutely adores.She is featherlight,90 pounds,her strong personality such a stark contrast.
Somehow in between wars, Charlotte travelled the world with Walter to mostly  far away beaches where I imagine, as I have the collection that the shark's teeth left behind, only for her on those unknown beaches, along with  seashells from all over the world.
 Once with all the degrees that I have when I could only get a job as an aide for two kids with Asperger's, I  gave the whole sixth grade a shark's tooth from Charlotte before they took the MCAS for good luck. My all of a something 26 year old boss forbade me to do do it after the first one. I  continued to do what I wanted to do.
In the five -hundred acre woods on a pond leading to a lake that my grandfather bought for 500 dollars in the early 1900's, Charlotte, then husbandless, ( Walter having survived two World War Wars on a navy ship as a General was killed by a drunk driver in New Hampshire),took me out for tiny excursions. On those old  railroad track  dirt roads, on Lake Massapoag, one could still find Indian arrowheads. I cannot find the name of the tribe who named this lake in any history book. It does not surprise me.
I will always remember having the luck with her to see foxes and other wild animals on our way. She attracted them, just as she did the sharks' teeth. I gave away hundreds, but I still have thousands.The first place we went was the PX at Fort Devens where she was saluted. I cannot remember how old I was,but it is funny that years later I taught soldiers there getting college credits. I was so young, like 25. I got saluted too and did not know if I did it back right, never mind not knowing why I was being saluted.It was because I was an officer, but did not know it.
I loved the summers spent in that  tiny cottage with a toilet closet that one could hardly fit into. Bats flew over the walls near the TV sometimes at night when my younger brothers were sleeping and my parents were next door. My Dad always came home and caught them with a net and then let them go out into the night.  There were brand new pink baby mice in a drawer one spring when we arrived We swam with fish of all kinds, sun-turtles and snapping turtles. My mother hated the snapping turtles.She would catch them and then stand outside with an axe, in the hot sun for hours, waiting for their heads to come out, so she could chop them off. She was always worried that they would bite off our tiny toes and fingers.
My grandfather took care of the Granddaddy Snappers by lowering huge traps filled with hamburger to the bottom of the lake. Once caught, he would make turtle soup. At night he would help us lay out hooks in the mud to catch catfish in the dawn.
My grandmother spent her days walking and looking at all of the rare wildflowers like, Lady Slippers,picking wild strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries and showing us where the Momma snakes hid their eggs. A little later, we would get to see all of the baby snakes. She would also pick wild ferns for us ( I have to find their name.) They were natural mosquito repellants if you fanned them.
My mother even though her maiden name was not Baker was exactly that. She made all of the pies from that fruit, just like her Aunt Hazel who raised her in the Berkshires in Ma; and used to win first prize in every baking contest even when her cakes slid off the truck and she frosted the dirt right back into the frosting.Between baking and waiting for turtle heads to appear, it was she who met the milkman's truck and that other truck which carried flour and sugar and other stuff out into the boondocks.
Before that tiny closet with a toilet, we had outhouses.I recently read that old outhouses are a great place to dig up antique coke, whiskey and other rare bottles. So I am planning a trip with a shovel packed in my car.
My father commuted each summer to work leaving early in the morning and coming home very late. My parents would share dinner together and as they thought we were asleep go skinny dipping. The lake was  their bathtub.
In between swimming, and hiking through the woods my brothers and I would be out in our wooden rowboats all day fishing. At the end of every summer there was a fishing derby for kids. The grown-ups wanted to get the "trash fish," out of the lake so the trout, the perch and the bass would have more to eat. We would go out at dawn and fill our rowboats up with sunfish and bluefish which began to stink as the heat of that summer sun wore down on us.At exactly five we would row across the lake which comprised four towns to the dam where a man would count our fish and throw them into the dam.Then he would write our numbers down next to our names. This went on for five days. The boy or girl who caught the most fish would always get a prize.
I was never in that contest to win. I had more fun doing my own things. I loved Bullfrogs and still do. I loved the way they hid themselves so cleverly along the shore and unfortuneately, I loved finding them and catching them to pet them just for a moment. They all became smart and very difficult to catch. Years later, I guess, no one was fascinated with frogs. They were all so easy to catch with 2 toddlers in a boat, no bucket for the frog, just the net, screams, boat tipping. Frog bailing. I should have been the one for whom Mommy Dearest was written for.
When it got really hot, I would jump out of my rowboat to swim and make friends and play games with water muskrats. "Whose head will bob up first and where?"
Late afternoons would find me planting notes for my baby brother who could read leading him on treasure hunts the next day to find treats at least a mile away. I never would have done that with my own children. I did, but in a backyard, not a mile away. The treats were never from me, but some magical
childhood something.
On the way back, I would breeze past the poison sumac, down a hill, through a wildflower filled meadow, then up a hill to an open deserted, creepy log cabin that I sometimes dared to explore only inch by inch. A bed with a bare mattress, rainwatered old books, pots left on the stove....
That was in the 60's and 70's.
It is now 2010. My father kind of got lost last night. We put out an "all points bulletin," for him. I called the town hall in Groton to see if there was any kind of a meeting concerning the property left that my father and siblings want to sell. There was. The police in Groton looked for him He never arrived. I called the dispatcher back at midnight and told her that if he was lost he might end up somewhere familiar. I did not remember the name of the road leading to Lake Massapoag, but I told her that at the first left there used to be a huge stone with Baker's Cove written on it. This led to the railroad track and you could either take your first right or your second right to go down to the lake where there used to be two cottages built by my grandfather and his sons. They have since been destroyed and there is a huge house way up on a hill. She told me that that railroad track has since been paved all the way to the town of Westford. I hope they did not pave over the Lady Slippers.Young boys will no longer find delight in digging up ancient arrowheadsfrom Indians who owned this land by birth.
When most of this property was bought, the owner did not like coming out of the pond  covered with silt from mud. So he excavated all of the mud, tore out the lily pads and replaced two ponds with white sand. I wonder where the sunturtles sunbathe left, without lily pads. Where do the catfish sleep during the day without mud? Where do the frogs hide?


Back in Vermont, living in a basement dorm, I received a letter under my door on old-fashioned yellow legal paper which I was familar with because my father is a lawyer. It was from the peeping Tom I did not know I had.
Middlebury, in 1979 had this bright idea. They moved me to an all male dorm. I was flanked on my left by four, on my right by four and across the hall by four.Never mind the rest of the hall.
My first problem was where  to take a shower. I went up one floor , then two, then three, then four only to find a long line of girls waiting. Gave up. The solution became clear. Take your shower at high noon when all the guys are stuffing their faces in the male shower- 2 steps away.
Oh, the things I learned that I never would have known. You guys woke me up with your comings and goings and your male banter every Friday and Saturday night. Or should we say every early Saturday and Sunday morning? I stuffed a pillow into my mouth so you would not hear me dying of laughter.
P.S.
I have kept your secrets for more than 30 years and always will.