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The Red Brick PantryWhat would induce a perfectly sane family with all the perks of a New York lifestyle to pack up and move from Long Island to Bridport, Vermont?
"At Christmas time it was traditional for the shopkeeper to treat his best customers and buddies to a swig of something stronger. This jug was usually hidden in the nail bin in the back room. Sold a lot of nails over the holidays, we did." Adventure? Boredom? Change of Pace? "I was asked to fix a big dish of baked beans for the coming church supper. When I explained that my only acquaintance with baked beans came through a can opener, the local lady almost crowed with satisfaction. 'Told them you wouldn't know how!'" Come along for the ride - as Maggie and her clan make their way to Vermont and end up not with the dream of an "easy-to-manage ski lodge" they thought they wanted, but the reality of the store they got- and loved. I wouldn't have had to work for a living if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, "But, what do you DO in the country?" Country living! It's a wild ride - one with new friends, old problems, and learning an entire new way to live - where less is more of everything important... Another Vermont-ism by which I found the locals lived was, "If you can't eat it, don't grow it." The word "garden" in Vermont means a vegetable plot. Anything else immediately surrounding one's abode is just "yard." |
A Note From The Author:I kept journals and copies of letters to family and friends during the store years, from which came most of the manuscript. I wrote most of the story in notebook form years ago and shared it occasionally with family and friends. In the 2000s I gave talks to the Bridport Historical Society about the house we lived in for ten years and the local general store we operated for seven years, and it was suggestd that I publish the stories as a book, so I did!
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ForewordThe big difference between our having bought Kenneth Myrick's General Store and a local Vermont couple buying it is that we viewed it all with totally fresh (sometimes bewildered, often amazed) eyes. Had the guy across the street bought the place, there would have been no story and no book. It would not all have been new, exciting, fascinating and sometimes humorous.
And, what started out to be a story about a store morphed, as it was being written, into a memoir of a period in the life of the storekeeper's wife. Many of us have lived different "lives" in different periods of our stay here on Earth. Lucky are the ones who can look back on each separate "life," or chapter, as an exciting adventure and regard it later with apprecitation for what it was. I learned a lot, not only about myself but about life in general, from experiencing the "store days" of my personal journey through the yeras allotted to me, and also from the remembering of it later - and isn't that what life is all about? - Margaret Nocca |