Document text
',art Tomasi
ODL JOB NAN
lec
Writers' Section Files
AUG 20 1940
DATE:
The small lane house stood on one of those hilly, curving streets
that turn off the north end of Barre's main thoroughfare. On the crest
of the hill loomed the Washington County Sanatorium. trom the lower street
at night it was a sieve of pale lights, spilling down the dark hill. 4ery
and henry lane preferred to stay in evenings; they read, talked, and Mary
sewed. When the children, grown and married now, or a neighbor visited,
then they sat in the living rooms But they liked the kitchen.
*The teapot's always handy on the stove," old lary Said.
"I can
just reach out and have a cup any time the craving's in me. As r -r henry,
well, see for yourself, his feet in the oven even in jmy."
"It's the rheumatism," henry cut in, "Try working for fifteen years
with your feet planked on a damp floor, you'd
Mary said patiently, as if this had been
years, "It isn't only the shed work, henry.
hunt up an oven, too."
a topic of discussion for
You can't blame it all on
the sheds. he's had his feet in water most of his life," she explained.
*he VAS born on a fare near Greensboro, the swamliest piece of land I've
ever seen. He was the only one of four boys who had any interest in the
fare, he'd be out in those mucky fields most of the times That's where
it all started."
"Laybe," henry conceded half-heartedly. "The farm was pretty well
run down, but I was makinr a livine; or it. ;,..ary here is the one who wouldn't
stay puts She'd come over from Ireland when she was wine or ten-- she isn't
sure herself-- and they had the farm next to ours. We married and lived
with my folks. She stood it 'til the kids were of high school age, then
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she kept talking about moving somewhere where they wouldn't have to travel
a couple of miles to get to hijt school. In the fall I used to sell
1:etatoes in Barre and Llentpelier. :4ry'd told me to keep my eyes open
for a job in either place. Nell, I was delivering lotatoes to the
Delamieo family, and we got to talking, and pretty soon I was offered job
in his shed. It was a small shed. The father and eon worked, and they
employed a half dosen other men. I'd never had any experiences in granite
but they said they needed a man to do odd jobs. I took it. The kids got
their high school education. Two ;iris and a bey. They're married now.
I was with the Delamieo shod for three years. Business 1110A kind of bid,
they had to lot me go. Nino* than I've been over berlin Street in a larger
shed, and Tem still just a handy man. I help some with the machines, clean
stones, box them, pick up grout. Any of the odd work. I don't feel secure.
And it doesn't seem a worth -while work. Now if it was carving I vas doing,
it'd be different, something that would last, something you've done with
your own lands, like back on the farm making the crops grow. I can remember
forty years back, there 'wasn't any such tern as stcnecutter or granite
worker, not for that -erre crowd. The best of them were called statue
cutters. A good name, to-. The' others were callec stone masons.
"They still tell stories of some of the tou6h old fellows who got to
the top in granite. They were just beginning to be bio, shots then, it kind*
went to their heads. They liked to show off. Borse+racing on the river ice
was popular then. That was before machinery came in the sheds, how the
machine and stcne sheds drip so much oil in the river that the ice isn't
safe. Three fellows entered their horses in a race. An hnglishmen, a
Spaniard, and a Germans henry Lord Jesus hantios, and ham Exist. A
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tough old Irish stonecutter was yelling out the entries that day. He was
feeling good, and instead of announcing the comes of the: horses he yelled,
'The next participants will be Lord, Jesus KristIt
"You'll notice that the names that have one down in granite history
are mostly Italian and Sootch. We've thr,in to thank for the finest art.
They learned it in the old country, they were already &Med workers when
they came here. Low with the Irish iwigrent it's different. They didn't
have the experienee. Sure, there's granite in Ireland even though ivy
here seys no.
°I never heard the word granite the wholeten'years I was there Airy
interrupted. "And I never sae a granite monument in our oemetery. It we.
wooden crosses for us." her oluteks flushed with anger. "Wooden crosses
are Ford enough for anybody. Here a stonecutter spends hours 'working on a
memorial for the dead, and every one of those hours is shortening his own
life. I can't see that anyone's gaining from it, except that it's honeying
the pride of the folk* *lot,* bought the memorial."
Autrey eyes twinkled. *Well," I guess you lived in the Irish baokwoods,
Ai
Airy. There s a fellow in our shed from i;ounty 4yo„ Ireland. He says
there s plenty of granite there, but not of 'carving quality. It's too
soft. It's for plain cemetery narkers or for building. The workers don't
have much experience in carviLg. That's why you don't see Irish names head-
ing the list of our best carvers in the sheds over here. ihey do just plain
work, kost of the first Irish who came to work in the sheds settled in
Vabatervillo. iharF1 were so many they used to ()all it iiew Ireland.
"rhey tell me the first granAe around here came from :hailstone Hill.
The name s :cit a history. In colonial days saw mills and last mills dotted
ionv talglarld. In order to run the grist mills they had to L14.ort atones from
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France. folks notieed an outeropping of granite on these hills. The
granite was in thin slabs because thousands of years it had been exposed
to glaciers. They managed to crack rff large slabs with wooden. wedges. It
didn't take much work to make mill st'nes front this thin granite. People
from all over ID,ew Lngland began to come here for mill stones. That's hew
the hill -et its name. Soon they began to use the granite for steps, for
underpinLings or foundations for homes. As they dug deeper in the hill they
found a better grade of granite. The earliest use of this granite was for
the State house in Montpelier. around 1840. There wasn't any railroad then.
file granite had to be ;serried to Montpelier in ox teems.
°I never got to like barre so much. I'd always liked the farm. But
Airy here liked the tom, and so did the children. There was more excite-
ment for them. My oldest girl went in training after she left high School.
"She made a good nurses" miary said. *Would you believe it, she used
to tell us that .4rre had the hi.,hest rate of social diseases of any town
in Vermont. That was during the last years of prohibitions It certainly
was a pretty wild town then. It's better now. You knows it was a real
treat to find out I had to Ao just around the corner to get to churoh.
That's S. Monica's church."