When you're in high school, you meet people who make an impression on you for the rest of your life. For some people, it's a coach or a teacher.
For me, it was it was someone on the fringes of society.
Stan the Can Man worked the edges of the high school ball field on the prowl for returnable cans and bottles, an insurgent in an undeclared war on poverty and mental illness.
Nobody knew where he lived. He could have been homeless, not that anybody cared. He would show up around the high school at random times carrying a huge trash bag filled with his treasure.
When I was a kid, I would watch the sun sink into the mountains at twilight. As the shadows came out of the woods, a horrible dread would fill my soul. Bigfoot was out there. I just knew it. He was lurking outside our cabin waiting for it to...
If you drive long enough, it will happen to you. Something small darts into the road in front of you. You slam on the brakes, but it's too late. There's a sickening thud, and in the rearview mirror you see a flattened chipmunk. Every year thousands of animals, from...
As the economy continues to crumble, more people are committing property crimes. Burglaries are on the rise. With the space program out of the way, it looks as if crime has become the last frontier of American society. Being a criminal in Vermont isn't easy. The pickings are slim, for one thing. Most burglars make off with a mixed bag of odds and ends that they would be lucky to get a few bucks for at a flea market: a...
You see them in backyards, their hoods propped open. Sometimes you'll catch one sitting in a field up on blocks surrounded by high grass, sunning its rusty body. When you least expect it, you'll find one in the woods, its axles sunk into the forest floor, the bed that once held cinder blocks or lumber filled with dead leaves. There's a smell of used motor oil and rain. You look at the odometer and wonder where the truck has been...
Once it was part of a vast and ancient forest that spanned the continent. Enormous trees grew, died, and fell in the silence of this eternal forest. The arrival of the first Europeans changed everything. Steel tools cut through trees, transforming woods into pasture. By the end of the Civil War, most of Vermont had been cleared for grazing land. Veterans who had seen the rich flat land of Virginia, Ohio, and Maryland left the state in droves in search...
Spring brings warm days and clear roads. For many of us, this means one thing: motorcycle weather. In April, the dream of running down a long stretch of smooth road on a new motorcycle is contagious. When I was in high school, I had a friend who was obsessed with owning a motorcycle. Dylan didn't want just any motorcycle. He wanted an '86 Ninja. At that time, the Ninja was different from other bikes. It was the hottest new motorcycle...
I've always been fascinated by smokers. There is a ritualistic quality to the whole thing: the way they tamp the pack, the way they hold the cigarette, or the way they flick ashes away with a quick snap of the thumb. Then there is the smoke itself, the way it forms moving Rorschach blots in the air, gray dragons that float toward the ceiling. Smokers have their own tribal identity. When I went to high school, the smokers all hung...