Allen is a multigenerational Vermonter. Well, in my eyes he is. His parents, grandparents, and great grandparents were born here and all lived in our small town. Well, in my eyes it's our town. He and my son met when they were both six-years old. By that time, my son had been born in Boston, lived in LA for five years, and had just arrived with his parents to the small Vermont village where Allen lived in a house his parents' built on family-owned land.
My son and Allen met the summer before they both entered 1st grade. We had heard the volunteer fire department had a fund-raising raffle. Wanting to be good citizens in our new home, we went to the fire house to buy a ticket. There was a boy my son's age climbing on the trucks. My son raced in to join him. They bonded over the shared culture of 6-year-olds and fire trucks. They are still friends 33 years later.
Two years later, I was in the driveway of the house we first rented when we moved to Vermont. That morning we had closed on buying it outright. My neighbor, Pete, had turned off the main road onto the dirt road we shared. Our children were similar in age, went to the same little village elementary school, and were in and out of each other's houses. I flagged him down to share the good news. I was gushing about how excited we were, and it was the opportunity to have them as such good neighbors that made staying here so attractive.
Pete nodded sagely, "Yes," he responded, "We're starting to get used to each other."
Allen' story offers more context. As noted, Allen is a multigenerational Vermonter -- in my eyes. There's a glitch though. Allen was to be born in our local hospital. However there was a complication during labor, and Allen's mother was taken by ambulance across the border into Massachusetts to the nearest major medical center there.
Allen has a Massachusetts birth certificate.
Multigenerational Vermonters make a strong distinction between people with roots, history, and family in Vermont, and 'flatlanders" Flatlanders are typically people from the coastal areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Southern New York, who use Vermont as a recreation area, often buy summer homes, and occasionally move here for a romantic vision of the rural way of life.
Allen and I share the burden of having been born outside of Vermont; therefore, flatlanders, and in our case, Massholes. This cultural identity is complicated. Allen's uncle went to college in Colorado. When he came back from Boulder with city-style clothing and ideas, he was teased for having "gone all flatlander." Nonetheless, neither Allen nor his uncle was sent into exile. Allen now manages a generational Christmas tree farm from a house built in 1792.
As an outsider with the dual identities of Flatlander and Masshole, I think nonetheless, I can include myself in the "our" of our town. It's not because anyone will stop recognizing me as having come from outside, but I've acknowledged myself as a weirdo from an early age and have integrated an outsider identity into my personality. It's that, like Clark and Allen who connected around the identity of six-year-olds and fire trucks, and now over the years have many shared identities, my neighbors and I have been able to find identities we share.
Pete and his family are a good example. He and I met over being parents of young children with a shared road and property line. Pete and his family, parents, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins are generational builders in our small town. If it involves a structure, there's nothing they can't do. They can clear a woodlot, build a road, dig a foundation, install a septic system, drill a well, put up a structure with all the plumbing, electricity, kitchens, bathrooms, perfectly done. His uncle Stanley is the only person I want on my slate roof. For another neighbor, Stanley restored, to the level of work of art, a stone wall that was built to contain a corral.
Because of their generational connections, they don't operate as a single business unit. They work as an autonomous collective, sometimes working independently, often work in and out of support for larger projects or weighing in with particular expertise, or maybe just another pair of hands: different generations, different degrees of relationship, different skills, shared culture. To all this, I'm an outsider. As is just about everyone who's not their family by birth or marriage.
We have different heuristics.
Next : Jesus and Robert Frost are flatlanders
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper
Title; Humanity Doesn't Have a Side quoted from Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Higher Learning podcast beginning minute 58.
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
heuristics: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/heuristics
Higher Learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl8_LxuD_DI&t=3508s