What a Life! a Different Kind of Biography: A Collection of Short Stories, Poems, Musings and Letters

By Nelson Herbert LaFountain

Herein are printed stories and poems I have written over the years in my own way of telling my story. Rather than an autobiography I thought this may be a better way of presenting one’s life rather than in one mundane book. I began with a book and then I found I like to present my life this way. These are truthful works and not fiction. Some had memory “holes” that needed filling, who said what, or who I gave credit to but nothing that would take away from the story. It’s just the way I tell my life. After all, my life has been a series of short stories and poems not one continuous biography or even one long story. I tried to keep them truthful at all times.
My poetry is not the deep thinking style but happenings in poetry form. I hope you enjoy it. The Chapter numbers are assigned to the places I lived when the stories happened, not necessarily in the order that they happened. You will find the stories and poems are not numbered. I began writing short stories and poems before I started my book. Then after a few stories, I figured it would be a good way to write a book. So this is it, for good or ill and I am not an author with an extensive vocabulary by any stretch of the imagination, I hope you’ll forgive that. They, so I’m told, are quite interesting and easy reading. Take them like vitamins, one or two a day. I hope you will laugh and cry and enjoy!
The stories, poems, musings and thoughts in this book, are the product of but not limited to, a lifetime of memories, love, life, pain and laughter. It is a labor of love in an effort to sing the praises of those that deserve it the most, and not for the writer. For it was the people that this work was dedicated to that I have to thank for almost all the memories. If it weren’t for the people, there would be absolutely no need for writing this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664141445

Book preview

RIVER STREET, BARRE, VERMONT

For the first few years of my life, we lived on River Street in Barre, Vermont. It was a two-story house with slab siding. Our entrance, so I was told, was in the center, up the stairs to the second floor with our front door located at the top of the stairs, and that’s all I remember being told about it. Our apartment took up the 2nd floor from one end to the other. The house set behind other buildings on River Street. I really remember none of it.

One story my mother told me about was, when I was only about a year old. She had gone outside to hang up the laundry. She heard my voice behind her hollering, Ma! Ma! She looked around and couldn’t see me anywhere. Not seeing me, she turned around and continued hanging up the clothes. She then heard my voice again hollering the same as before, Ma! Ma! Turning around once again, her eyes went to the second floor window of our house. There in the second floor window, I was hanging by my fingers from the windowsill. She told me that the only thing she could think to say was, Nelson Herbert LaFountain, get back in that window! At that point she dropped the laundry, and ran toward the house. Before she got to the house, a neighbor’s son, Frankie Keene, ran up the stairs and into the bedroom, only to find me sitting on the windowsill. Mom says she didn’t know how I did it, but I had gotten back into that window without any help. She said that Frankie told her that he didn’t do it, and that I was sitting there when he came in.

Fast Freddy

She also loved to tell about the time my uncle (her Brother), Freddie came to the door and knocked. My mother said, Who’s there? My uncle then said, Bob. My mother asked, Bob who? Bob down and kiss my ass, Came the answer. My uncle thought it was funny and started laughing. My mother then asked, Freddie Fisher, who told you that? To which my uncle replied, Ben. Opening the door, my mother then asked, Ben who? Then my uncle replied, Ben down and kiss it again. With that, I’m told, my uncle wheeled and went down the stairs, 3 at a time, as my mother threw the frying pan that was in her hand at him. She missed, but only because he was fast enough to take a right turn as he went through the downstairs door. I guess she was in no mood for it at the time.

Me and My Shadow

The last story I was told by Mom was as follows. Now that she is long gone, I can tell it without getting into trouble. Mind you, Mom was not prejudice in any way, shape or form. We lived next door to Jane. She was involved with a Black man and had a child, a little boy also named Herbie. I can only assume that the reason that Herbie’s dad did not stay around, was not only because in Vermont, around 1942, Blacks and Whites did not inter-mingle, but more likely because of Jane’s caustic and unceasing remarks to my mother. One day, Mom had had enough and flew off a little, saying that when she called her Herbie, he ran one way and his shadow ran the other. I guess the remarks stopped after that, and they were still friends. Gospel according to MY MOM!

Life in a Child’s Mind

I began my life as a small child. Hard to believe, isn’t it? I assure you it’s true. My mother may have had people believing that I was born full grown with a PHD. However being I am such a truthful person, I would never perpetrate such a hoax on the readers. (Grin)! Now that I have printed my disclaimer, I can get on with the story. Oh, FYI. Full disclosure required, I never had a PHD.

Every child has daydreams and fantasizes, I was no different. After all, it was my right as a child. I was alone a lot, so I would do these things. Mine began at an early age. I seem to recall a time, it was mid-summer. We lived in a house situated behind a small neighborhood grocery store. When I would have nothing to do, (just about every day), I would go out in front of the store, sit on their steps and daydream. One day I was daydreaming about being a store keeper.

I saw the man in the store when my mom would take me there and she would buy things. The man would put the stuff in a bag and my mom would give him money. He took the money and pushed some buttons on a machine where the money lives and gave her back some money and we went home. I wasn’t allowed to go into the store by myself, because I was too small. In my dream I was helping a lady get stuff she wanted. Some of it was on high shelves, so I got to climb the ladder that the man had. I put the stuff in a bag and took the money and punched some buttons and put the money where the money lives and she went out of the store. After she left, the store was quiet, really quiet, except for a small murmur outside. The murmuring got louder, but I still couldn’t hear what it was. It got louder and louder. I began to hear what it was. That was about the time that I woke up from my daydream to the tune of a voice shouting loudly,

Mrs. LaFountain, HERBIE HASN’T GOT ANY PANTS ON!!!

Around the corner came my mother with my pants in her hand, yelling, "Nelson Herbert LaFountain, you get your rear end back in that yard before I take the cribbage board to you!" I didn’t understand what the problem was. I was only trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I guess the problem was that I would take off my pants and throw them on the ground in the yard and go sit in front of the store. HEY!!! What the hell!!! I was only 3 for crying out loud! Is the story true? It was Gospel according to my mom. I don’t know about the whole daydreaming thing.

OSBORNE RD. BARRE, VT

Snippits of life in the Country

I don’t know how old I was when we moved from River Street to Trow Hill in Barre. However, I’m sure that I was at least three, possibly four years old at the time, which would make the year about 1946. At that time it was only my mother (Margaret), my father (Howard), my older brother (Eddie), my two sisters (Betty, Peggy) and me. My father drove a granite truck in Vermont for my Uncle Lawrence, who owned The Barre Granite Transfer Company. He would drive throughout the New England States to deliver granite to different stone sheds and monument companies specializing in Head Stones for cemeteries, building supplies, curbing, etc. My mother was a stay-at-home mom; after all, taking care of four kids was a full-time job itself. It’s taking me longer to do this than I thought it would. At 70 years old, the tears start running sooner than they used to.

Being a child with ADD, did not help my memory, so consequently, I will have to put in the snippets as I can remember them. As I recall, we lived in a Cape Cod house that had an attached barn. There was a front porch on the barn with small windows in large window casings. When going onto the porch from the driveway, we turned right and went to the house and entered through the side door. There was a door in the front of the house also, but there was no pathway to it, we just entered from the lawn. I don’t really remember raising any animals, aside from some ducks and chickens, which I remember very well. We had a couple of roosters that used to chase me right back to the house every time I would go into the chicken area. My mother used to beat them off with a broom just to save my life from those vicious monsters. That, I remember! Weasels, as I recall, killed the ducks.

There was a large maple tree setting alongside the driveway. As I recall it had a 2 to 4 foot diameter trunk. Our house was situated about a mile and a half outside of Barre City. The roads were dirt, of course, and we lived about a mile from our school. We had about a 1-acre lot. Our, next door neighbors, were the Pratt family, and like most rural families, were farmers and had a number of children. My big brother Ed and Ray Pratt were friends. They were about the same age and I thought Raymond and Eddie were my big heroes. I used to love to wear Raymond’s barn boots and flop around the house in them. Of course, they came up to my crotch. I don’t recall that but the story has been told enough times so it seems like a vivid memory. I must admit that most of my enjoyable memories of my childhood happened while we lived on the Hill. I guess that’s because my brother, both my sisters and I were all together. I miss that. The sad part is, we only lived there about four or five years. However, those that read this will realize that they were happy times. I must admit, we did pack a lot of memories in those few years that we lived on Trow Hill. I would try to put stories of life on Trow Hill in chronological order, but I can’t, so I won’t. Life on the Hill, for us kids, was a good time. We had miles of country to wander around and play in. The woods and fields were our playground.

Just for clarification, the area that we used to roam was only bounded by roads. That way we knew when we came to the end of our rope, so to speak. Every Halloween we would set out walking. It was about a 6 to 7 mile walk around the loop. That’s when we would realize just how much room we had to roam around in. Before this writing, I didn’t even know the real names of these roads. I must admit that thinking about these things and talking about them is a lot different than trying to write them down on paper. Why didn’t I spend more time paying attention in English class?

Being the smallest of four kids does have its perks. Namely, your brother and sisters keep track of you, and they protect you. However the reverse is true also. You can find yourself having your older siblings pulling sucker jokes on you. Of course that’s not to say that your father wouldn’t do the same thing every time he’d get a chance. He had a sadistic way of making me feel included with the other kids. He would tell me he had a present for me, and it was in his back pocket. When I would look into his back pocket, the odor that came out would make a Billy Goat puke. That was my first encounter with tear gas. It didn’t take too many of those to make me understand what was happening. And all the time I thought he loved me.

Peggy and I are only a year and a half apart, and there were times that she and I would swap clothes just to mess with my mother’s mind. Of course, for a few years we did look a lot alike. Even though Peggy and I were close in age, the big kids, (Betty and Eddie), would include us in most things. Whether we were having fun, or just getting into trouble. And I assure you we had plenty of both. I can also assure you that neither my mother nor father had immunity from us. We showed absolutely no partiality in our tormenting of them. However, some things happen to them due to their own words. A few cases in point are required here.

My Mother was the disciplinarian at our house. Her weapon of choice was the Cribbage board. Even so, understand that my mother didn’t get away unscathed. My father was on the road a lot more than he was home. So, needless to say, we had more time to practice on my mother and just absolutely drive her bonkers. And I assure you we worked hard at it.

We had a chestnut tree near our house that used to drop chestnuts all over the ground. We used to gather up the chestnuts, take off the husks and play with them. We used anything for toys. One day my mother was sweeping the floor, and she inadvertently swept up some chestnuts. Out of habit, she lifted up the griddle on our wood-burning stove and threw the sweepings into the fire. A few minutes later it sounded like a war zone. Some of those chestnuts exploded in the fire, lifting the griddle off and splitting it in two. After we got mom off the ceiling, we made sure she was okay, and then we ran. From that time on there was a new law. No chestnuts in the house. We were cured…. for the time being.

Young Medics

We found a mouse that our cat was playing with and had managed to kill it in the process of playing. We decided that we’re going to find out what makes a mouse tick. So we went into the house, and got my mother’s best butcher knife, went out back of the house and commenced to do our own autopsy. I use that word because we were small, but Eddie was the smart one and had a great vocabulary for a 12 or 14 year old kid. We all looked on it in amazement. There wasn’t any blood. We couldn’t figure out why there was no blood. So we put the butcher knife back in the sink and threw the mouse away. I really hope that my mother washed that butcher knife really well or that my sister or brother did before it was used again. That thought never dawned on me until just now.

My half-brother Richard, from my father’s first marriage, came and stayed with us for a while. I don’t remember the dates that he stayed with us, only that he was just as big an instigator, if not more so, as was Eddie and Betty. And then there were five. With Richard we learned a whole new bag of tricks. It’s not as if we didn’t have enough that we learned from Ma and Pa Kettle movies.

At some point in time my father removed the barn from the house. He used the tractor of his tractor-trailer, tied a chain around one pillar of the barn and pulled it out. The barn dropped like a wet rag. It came off the house as slick as could be. Of course, at my age, he didn’t tell me what preparations he made for raising the barn. All I know, is it was quite a show. It made me happy that the barn was gone, because so were those damn roosters. It also opened up more play area on our lot. We kept the chickens but ate the roosters.

Early Powered Projectile

Richard was the one that had the idea to make a gun, using a pipe, a marble and a firecracker. We had a three-inch firecracker left over from the Fourth of July. That’s the way it is, Fourth of July. The grown-ups all have the good toys. Richard managed to snag one. As I said before, we had a large maple tree growing next to the driveway. Richard took a rather large stone, propped up a pipe on it, and took aim at the tree. He put the firecracker in one end of the pipe, and rolled the marble down the front end of the pipe. When he lit the fuse, we all ran. Needless to say the racket was deafening. The pressure had split the pipe back about 8 inches and peeled it back like a banana. The marble was driven about 3 inches into that maple tree. The marble was also crystallized from the impact. That was cool!

Peppers, Just Good Medicine

It was also Richard that got up early one morning, and saw jar of cherry peppers sitting on the table. Not knowing what they were, he opened them up, smelled them, and said, they smell just like olives. Needless to say, Richard was an olive freak. He took one out of the jar, and took a big bite out of it. While we were all asking him how it tasted, we didn’t realize he was just trying to breathe. When he finally got his breath, we knew something was wrong because his face was red and he was sweating profusely and he was running toward the kitchen sink. He didn’t even look for glass, he just turned on the water and stuck his face under the faucet and drank straight from the faucet and still could not stop the burn. It took him a couple hours to get over that one. My father thought it was great that he got himself punished for his own misdeed. New law: If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it. Cured again.

Richard and Eddie were always planning something. I don’t know about Peggy, but whenever I followed them around, they used to turn around and say to me, Scram kid, you draw flies. It took me a few years before I was old enough to be indignant about it. But at least they talked to me, and that was all I wanted.

Drinking is serious but sometimes funny

I believe the time has come, to declare that we children come by our pain-in-the-ass-iocity honestly. We learned from our father. My father would come in off the road and he would stop at a bar downtown and have a few drinks. When he came home he was rather tipsy. But I really must say he was a very good-natured drunk. If he got drunk, he would seem to sober up the minute he got behind the wheel. I think it was passed on to me. I don’t know how he did it but he did. Here are just a few cases in point. However, drunk or sober he was a real fun dad and a good man.

One night, when my father came in off the road, he was feeling pretty good. He told my mother he was going up to say good night to the kids. My mother told him no, that us kids were sleeping and so leave us alone. Dad said, I’m going to go upstairs and see my kids. To which my mother replied, Howard, you’re drunk! Leave the kids alone. With that my father headed toward the stairs, saying, I’m going to go see them. He put one foot on the bottom step, did a perfect pirouette, and fell flat on his back on the stairs. That is where my mother let him stay all night, and where we found him in the morning.

I remember one time, it was late evening when he came home and he had had a few drinks, but we kids were still up. My mother was in the kitchen ironing and dad was sitting there and they were talking. Dad said, you’re mad aren’t you Peggy? My mother answered by saying, No, I’m not. Dad said, Yes you are, you’re mad. I can tell when you’re mad, so you’re mad. My mother said, Howard, I am not mad. To which my dad replied, I know you’re mad because I’m drunk. This banter went on for about 15 min. Finally my mother set the iron down with some power behind it and said, All right, dammit! Yes, I am mad! My father got his sheepish grin on his face, looked her straight in the eye and said, See, I told you that you were mad. With that my father got up, went into the bedroom and went to bed. At that point my mother was really mad. But she just shook her head and said, God damned thick headed Frenchman. That wasn’t the first time that we heard that saying out of her, and it certainly was not going to be the last time. (Sidebar) She started out a lot of sentences with, Well now you know, B’God. My mother had a lot of interesting sayings that we heard but didn’t understand. Such as: When we would ask what she had in a bag, she would answer, White mice. We would ask, Why? about something, and she would answer, Why is a mouse when it spins its tail. When asked, What’s that? She would answer, It’s a loodle-laddle to wind up the sun. Her all-time favorite to use when she was over-the-top pissed off was, By the sweet love of peel-heeled, bald-headed, all American Christ!" That was the signal to scatter. After a few times of seeing mom explode, we finally learned how to fade into a wall.

I must explain the drawing below. As the drawing shows, there was a ledge that went around the staircase on the second floor. We kids used to go out on that ledge; it was probably about 12 inches wide. We would basically hide from each other on that ledge. One time, Eddie and Betty were on that ledge hiding from Peggy and me. Kids will be kids, and they started pushing each other. Betty pushed Eddie and he went through the wall. Inside the area that Eddie fell into, was an old oil lamp on a table, and an old bed. There was a huge amount of dust on everything. That room ran from one end of the house to the other through the eaves. We played in there every now and then. When and if it was ever fixed, I don’t know. The drawing also shows the layout of the upstairs. In the bedroom to the right, we found that a few of the boards on the floor were loose. We lifted the boards up and found an old staircase there. We went down the stairs and found that they led down into the pantry. There was a small hole in the wall that you could see through into the pantry. Needless to say we had a lot of fun with that staircase also. I’ve also made notations on the drawing explaining where we enjoyed ourselves. My mother never knew about half of the things that we did. Thank you Lord. We were always told that our house was the first one built up on the Hill. We were also told that it was possibly part of the Underground Railroad. After doing some checking, the UR came up through the area. The house had a dirt cellar with flat rocks for a foundation. My mother never knew about half of the things that we did. Thank you Lord.

57135.png

As I said before, Mom was the disciplinarian in the house. One time Dad spanked one of us kids, I don’t know if it was Eddie or Betty, but he/she cried all night. He swore he would never spank one of us kids again. This was an affliction my mother did not suffer from. We use to think that if we got her laughing, she wouldn’t be able to spank us. Boy, Were we wrong! Dad held true to his promise. However, he didn’t promise not to boot us in the ass when we needed it. A case in point: We enjoyed Stair Sliding. For those of you who never did any stair sliding I’ll explain. First take a blanket, fold it in half width-wise and set it at the top of the stairs. Set a pillow on that, sit on the pillow, wrap the blanket around you and slide down the stairs. I was the one who went down after Dad said to knock it off. As I was picking up my sled for the next ride, Dad was there with a foot against my ass, which raised me up a little. Cured again, (When Dad was home.) We always knew when Dad was on his way home, because the dog (Jackie) would squeal on him. She could hear his truck coming up Hill Street a little over a mile away. When she started dancing around, it was time to clean up our mess and pick up our stair sleds.

Being small does have its perks. Such as, I was small enough to lie on the floor underneath the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. It was quite warm there and comfortable, especially during the cold winter. However, there was a time that I regretted it. I was under the stove, and my mother told me to get out from under there, which I didn’t want to do. The second time she told me to get out from under there, she used my name, Nelson. That’s when I knew she was serious. I came crawling out from underneath the stove, but the oven door was open. I hit my head on the door. I danced around, and saying something like, Oh, my goodness, I’m going to have to learn to be more careful. Yeah, that’s what I said. Upon finishing my dance, my mother said, You see, God punishes little boys who don’t mind. I said to her, Yeah, but He didn’t have to do it so hard.

Speaking of small, and the stove, Peggy and I used to be able to sit behind the stove, which wasn’t that far from the wall. We would sit behind the stove, side-by-side with an apple in our hand and hold them to the back of the hot stove. That’s where we learned to appreciate the taste of a good fried apple. My mother didn’t mind it too much, but my dad hated it. He complained that we would wreck the finish of the stove and that it left marks on the back of the stove. When you’re small, you don’t worry about such things.

We would stack wood down in the cellar, and there was a closet in the living room where we stacked wood. The closet was the place that we would pack full. We also put kindling wood in there. Back in the 40s, wood was the main fuel that was burned in rural houses. People in the cities usually used coal or kerosene, but we, like most, burned wood. Being a truck driver, my father was always able to find wood from inexpensive suppliers, usually from lumber mills where he could get Slab wood. Slab wood is the first cut by a saw when cutting lumber. I was great for burning and also, it was easy cutting into kindling for starting the fire in the morning. That was one of the few times that we would hate to see dad come home with the truck, mainly because, we had to unload it and stack it. Although Peggy and I were small, we still had to do our part. We would carry a few pieces at a time into the house. The load, I’m guessing, usually contained 2-3 cords of wood. A cord was 4’ x 4’ x 8’. We would finish the job a filthy mess especially if it was pine.

Necessity being the Mother of Invention

One thing about living in the country, back then, you’re always looking for things to do. There was no TV, or electronic games of any sort. We had radio but you could only listen to just so much radio. Summertime you can always find things to do, but during the winter there weren’t as many things. However, with the inventive minds that we had around our house, we never ran out of things to do. We had an old pair of skis that Richard and Eddie made jumpers out of. For those of you who don’t know what a jumper is, it is a ski with a seat built onto it. You balance yourself on it, and they go like a bat out of hell. I was a little too small to ride the jumpers. However, the one thing I did have was a single Sled Runner. When I say a single runner, that’s exactly what it was. It was a runner off on old flexible Flyer sled. There was just the runner and two points that came up from the runner where the wood attached to it. I would lie down on those two points, hold onto the front of the runner and I would slide that way. It worked out rather well. The beauty of it was that no one else could ride it no matter how hard they tried.

I remember one time waking up; it was in the winter. I went down stairs; I only had my underwear on. As I got to the bottom of the stairs, I noticed it had snowed the night before. So with great anticipation I hollered, Hurray! It snowed last night. With that, I opened the door and ran outside. Unfortunately the snow had drifted up against the front of the house right up to the roof. I was outside, 3 feet deep the snowdrift, shivering everything I owned off.

I went back into the house and it took me 10 minutes to warm up a little bit. My teeth still chatter when I think about it.

Fourth of July Winter

by Herb LaFountain

The story you are about to read is true. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent because none of the idiots in the story were innocent. Besides, with a memory like mine, I sometime have to fill in the blanks. Does that make it false? Does that make it fiction? Does that make it untrue? I think not. Hell, it’s my story I can tell it however I want. Besides, it happened about 1948, and the people involved with this story have either passed away or are too old to really care. However, It is true.

Question: Have you ever gone sliding during winter? No, really sliding. No, what I mean is, have you ever been sliding on a multi-person sled? No, it’s not a toboggan; it’s a Travis, or a Traverse. A Travis,(Used in this story) is a large, homemade sled, much like a bobsled, however, it was narrow and you set on it, not in it. It was homemade and it was about 8 feet long, and was capable of steering with a steering mechanism attached to the runners in the front, with a brake lever attached to one side of the body in the back. As I recall, this Travis set approximately 12-16 inches high and about 12 inches wide overall. It was built out of wood, with strips of steel on the face of the runners. Needless to say, it also had a rope for pulling. Just exactly the piece of equipment that kids would need to get into trouble. Now hold that thought.

Tr%20Hill%2c%20Travers%20w%20Pegs.JPG

When you live in the country, with dirt roads for its thoroughfare, you always look for the fastest way to shorten the distance from point A to point B. Point A being our house, point B being the school. The distance from our house to the school was approximately 1 mile to a mile and a quarter. During the winter, any way we could shorten that distance was a plus. However, to make this story a little more understandable, you need to know the basic topographical layout of our area. Our school, as I said, was about a mile from our house. About a half a mile from the school, there was the first hill. We lived on the second hill; we had neighbors living on the third hill, and at the top of the fourth hill lived another family. The fourth hill family was about a quarter of a mile from our house. The neighbors that lived at the top of the first hill had a Travis. I don’t know how many times we did it, because I was quite small and I have a crummy memory. However, during the winter we managed to ride to school. The neighbors who lived on top of the first hill would pull the Travis up to our house, which was only a matter of a few hundred feet. When they reached our house we would pull it to the top of the third hill. Then we would all take turns pulling it up to the top of the fourth hill. The next thing you have to understand is that by the time we got to the top of the fourth hill, there were a total of about six or seven kids