Calais Historical Society

Indoor plumbing was being installed when we first drove into the dooryard of our house in Kents Corner, which is now a designated historic district of Calais, Vermont. Strad Gray and his helper, taking a breather, were listening to their car radio reporting the fall of France. It was June 6, 1940.

The house we were renting (and later bought) had belonged to Blanche Hollister Kent. She had also owned Pioneer Cottage across the road and lived alternately in both, moving when the urge to travel came upon her. Electricity had come through just the year before – a revolution for the backbreaking work on the farms. Some had to be persuaded to its advantages. One woman, I was told, after agreeing to let the wires into her house said, "I suppose it will be a help in lighting my lamps."

John Graham ran a farm at Kents Corner. He worked it with a team of horses and assorted unreliable mechanical devices. He also had a hired man with an extremely salty vocabulary, who had been released from the penitentiary on parole. Alice Graham provided us with eggs and homemade bread, and she also baked my son's 7th birthday cake. Her son Robert brought us ice for refrigeration from the ice house.

Floyde Fitch carried the mail. Each household had its own bag (handmade with choice of fabric) for both outgoing and incoming mail. Floyde also drove the Calais Stage. For a nominal fee one could ride "back and to" – "to" in the morning to Montpelier with time for shopping, and "back" with the afternoon mail.

Esther and James Aldrich lived in the house by the Mill Pond. James ran a sort of "Outward Bound" camp for a group of boys from the Boston area. They slept in cabins which they had helped build behind his house, swam in Curtis Pond, went on canoe trips to Canada, and even sailed on the Mill Pond.

Esther Tarbell Aldrich, self-styled "Duchess of Roachcroft," was a delightful and very amusing woman. She turned ordinary incidents into something hilarious. Her welcome into their newly renovated kitchen was, "It makes the men turn white and the women turn green." Before the renovation took place, Mattie Fitch and the Duchess turned out splendid meals for the visiting boys in a kitchen so small you could scarcely turn a pancake.

Louise Andrews Kent, a well known Vermont writer, and her family lived in the white house, and there social life flourished: visitors came and went; teas were held; croquet played; dances took place on the lawn and in the carriage house with Mrs. Kent playing the accordion. Mrs. Kent wrote books in the morning; then she was free to make miniature furniture, visit with the Duchess, or perhaps paint a newly seen bird on the living room wall. Pearl Bullock, skilled in culinary arts, was also a valued assistant in these endeavors and experiments.

We were introduced early to potluck suppers and to square and contra dancing at the Community Hall. On warm summer nights with the windows open, the air was redolent of Elgin Mann's mink farm and his other animals. The Fitches, Grahams, Morses and other town folk were superb dancers (how smoothly they glided across the floor!), and with Rome Van Ornham's fiddling, every toe would be tapping. I remember the night "Little Floyde" (aged maybe 4) was fussing a bit, and Beatrice [Fitch] said, "You'll have to excuse him. It's his first dance."

Changes came with the war and the years, but Calais remains an endlessly interesting, caring and beautiful place to live. For sinking roots, you can't beat the famous "Calais loam."