There was a series of stories in the local Vermont paper "the Stowe Reporter" that kept the whole town stirring for quite some time. It featured a local guy who wanted to do whatever he wanted to with his land on the Mountain Road so he went about doing it. But because he met with such resistance from the town fathers,tourist bureau, and nearby merchants, an out and out war began.
They heard that he was going to chop up his several acres into one or two acre lots, sell them off and see what happened. He didn't really care what happened, as you can imagine. So he found a real estate agent without scruples (they are so hard to find!) and put up some signs.
Now, if you know anything about Vermont, and I know you do--even back in the '80s we were green. Stowe being a Currier and Ives ski village in the winter and a golfing, tennis, etc. "haven" for rich folks most of the rest of the year. Foliage season brings in as much if not more tourist dollars than ski season and it only lasts about a week. So to think that ( I'll call him Homer Shruggs) to even CONSIDER putting small HOMES up along a lovely meadow lined with red maple trees along the Mountain Road was unthinkable.
Homer was a true Vermonter--dyed in the wool, 6th or more generation, meat and potatoes man. Nobody had handed over anything to him; he had worked hard for his money and nobody was going to tell him what to do with it. Besides, he told the media, he needed the money for taxes.
The first thing he did was to haul a very old, ugly blue house trailer onto that lot the town told him he could not develop. A town meeting ensued and folks screamed and cried out that Homer was doing this on purpose, just to make the rest of the town suffer" and made other such accusations. Homer sat there in the front row, Blue Seal hat on straight, farmer jeans and muddy boots. Arms crossed, Smiling. Eventually after everyone had been heard, Homer strolled out of the Town Hall, hopped down the steps and into his beat up red and rusty pick up and smoked his way up Main Street, turning right without stopping at the blinking light.
This town outcry didn't stop old Homer. No sir. A few days went by and Homer added to his land a ramshackle fence, part chicken wire, part barbed wire, part orange snow fence and then around that a split rail fence that didn't so much encircle the wire fencing, as box it in on four or more sides.
Locals sat over coffee the next morning gabbing about the mess Homer was making of that lot. People drove up the road to see what was what gawking so that two or three almost had car accidents in the process. Someone finally called the cops.
Sargent Oliver Sargent came to the town folks' rescue and because he knew Homer since they were in short pants, they had a heart-to-heart with the result being that poor Olie shook his head, tipped his hat and walked away from the killing end of Homer's shot gun.
The very next day, a large shaky trailer full of full-grown hogs arrived on Homer's land and by gosh didn't 25 or more pigs run squealing with joy out of that thing and take up residence in that green open field? Now you may not know what pigs do when they find a place to root, but I do. Those great big hogs began nosing around in the soil, uprooting that entire field in about a week...and then it rained and was sunny and hot. Those pigs couldn't have had it any better off! They rolled around in that mud smiling and snorting, like...well, like pigs in shit.
Now, that makeshift pig pen of Homer's was only about 100 feet off the main winding road and when the wind changed, the smell of that place? Was worse than anything you've ever smelled dead or alive! Headlined in the Stowe Reporter was "PIGS IN STOWE" and in full view, black and white, there it was: a photo of a very gnarly muddy hog about the size of a pony smiling into the camera, proud to be a Vermonter. Well, didn't that story just get national attention and put Stowe, Vermont on national news.
You know what happened, of course, Homer finally either got bought off or something because a little while later, the hogs disappeared, the fence came down and the trailer got hauled off. And that field is greener today because of it. I wonder what did happen to Homer and those hogs sometimes. But every time I travel that Mountain Road and pass that lovely field bordered by those maples, I smile and smile remembering Homer and his pigs in Stowe.
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