{"id":224,"date":"2019-02-08T12:29:59","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T17:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/?p=224"},"modified":"2019-02-08T23:18:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T04:18:02","slug":"wormwood-hill-on-a-fine-spring-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wormwood-hill-on-a-fine-spring-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Wormwood Hill on a Fine Spring Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My first encounter with Wormwood Hill was on a brilliant spring day in\n1981.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I immediately fell in\nlove with the rolling green hills of that rocky farm which was laced with\nstonewalls. The barn listed a little too heavily toward the road and the hay\nspilled out like water through the cracks of a tired old river dam. It all\nlooked as though it would topple over in a breath.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without a camera, I carried home images that flashed back to my own\nchildhood -the crowing of roosters, the soft put-put-put of a Farm-all Tractor,\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

and the bellowing of\nthose beautiful lined-back cows dotting the field.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was visiting Claude McDaniels to buy some eggs. Claude was an old\nfarmer who lived up the road from me. He was a neighborhood novelty who\nattracted poets, artists and remnant hippies who would follow him from house to\nbarn while he recounted a yearned for past. Claude\u2019s booming voice with his\nYankee vernacular, reminded me of Fred D. Whittier, who owned the small market\nfarm that I grew up on in Massachusetts. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon our first\nmeeting I was instantly transported to Grange suppers, and the peculiar smell\nof kerosene and wood stoves, and those long-voweled, long joweled and\napron-clad women of my childhood who so proudly knew how to bake a pie just\nright, and who kept the world \u201cjust-so\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me, Wormwood Hill was a wormhole into my own past – that rural\nchildhood caked with dust-between-the\u2013toes from cow paths and tractor lanes, and\nplaces rich in local history, name, and place. I recognized Mr. Claude\nMcDaniels immediately as a keeper of place. \nLike the old folk of my childhood, he had recorded every detail of the\nneighborhood past and present, and he could recall the memories of those who\ncame before him. The ones who came from other places that have long forgotten\nnames. I took it upon myself to tap that mind-spring and draw water from the\ndeep well that binds us to the land and the places on this earth that shape who\nwe are.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claude McDaniels had lived on Wormwood Hill in Storrs, Connecticut most\nof his life. He was born on a farm about three miles away on Upton Road, in\nAshford, and his father bought the present farm on Wormwood Hill in 1915 when\nClaude was five years old.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A famed icon in his rural\nneighborhood, Claude was known for his long memory and local history. He was\ncertainly a throwback from the past. In his later years, he still farmed his\nland with the help of some younger cousins, raising the same strain of\nlined-back cattle that were introduced to the region a hundred years ago.\nChickens and scrawny tuxedo cats would collect toll on the road, defying cars\nthat refused to slow down in the dip. Claude relied upon that dip so he could\nmake a mental note of the color, make and owner of each vehicle that passed by.\nHe once helped to solve a murder mystery that way. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in the early nineteen-eighties, and I happened to stop by for a\nvisit the day after the murder happened. Claude told me all about it before it\neven hit the papers. It seems there was a gal living in the old schoolhouse on\nWormwood Hill Road, who was discovered strangled in her car in the neighbor\u2019s\ncornfield. The detectives had stopped by that morning to see if Claude had\nnoticed anything strange the night before. Of course, he did. He knew\neveryone\u2019s car by the sound of their motors and how fast they drove past his\nhouse. It had rained that night, and there was always a seep of water that\ncollected in the dip of the road after a heavy rain.  Sometime around the middle of the night, as\nClaude lay awake on his sagging, ancient mattress, he heard the girl\u2019s car\nspeed by and hit the puddle at full speed. Another car splashed through\nimmediately after, leading Claude to believe that it was traveling in hot\npursuit of the first car.  It turned out\nhe was right. The second car was driven by her jealous and irate husband who\nwas furious that she had been out late with friends that night. Eventually, he\ncaught up with her in the cornfield and strangled her. There she was found the\nnext morning, dead as a doornail in her car. An arrest was made, and the\nhusband confessed to the murder.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most remarkable thing about Claude was his memory and his attention\nto detail. He carried the torch of stories from his own family that went back\nas far as two hundred years or more. A natural raconteur, he told tales as\nfresh as the day they were passed on to him by his parents and grandparents,\nwith a perspicacity for detail right down to the weather and what was eaten for\nsupper that day. His stories shed light on a rural New England culture that has\nslipped away. As a budding historian, I supped on the manna of Claude\u2019s\nstories, absorbing local folk-lore and historical details that helped me to\nunderstand my own people and find my own sense of place in this world.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first encounter with Wormwood Hill was on a brilliant spring day in 1981. I immediately fell in love with the rolling green hills of that rocky farm which was laced with stonewalls. The barn listed a little too heavily toward the road and the hay spilled out like water through the cracks of a … <\/p>\n

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