Hullo again,
A 3 part special! Stay tuned, gripping stuff, perhaps.
Well I decided it was time to make a little trip away from Vermont and get away from the hassles and frustrations of things like immoral Russians and futile car hunting.
In the little green book my mother had given me were a list of names and addresses, friends and family from all over who I could potentially get in touch with and visit.
I didn’t want to go too far just yet and so perusing the little green book I settled on Michael Maxwell and his family in Montreal, Canada.
We corresponded by email a couple times and yes he would really like to have me over,
“If you can come up a week Friday then we shall drive you up to our Chalet with us”, gave me a target date to aim for.
The next issue to solve was method of transport. Not yet the proud owner of a set of wheels (and chassis, engine, gear stick, pedals, ooooh a steering wheel, fluffy dice maybe..) it wasn’t quite time to bring into effect the roadtripping and so instead I thought it’d be nice to go up by train. A leisurely pacing, see the landscape and whatnot.
Well that wasn’t to be either, since at a Jazz Jam, connected to a wi-fi hot-spot, I phoned up Amtrak using the TTY (text phone service provided by Nextalk) and was told that in order to get to Montreal from Vermont I would need to get a train down to New York Penn Station and then from there a direct line to Montreal….
WTF?
New York City is like almost exactly the same distance from Vermont as it is from here to Montreal but in entirely the opposite direction.
Fools!
I went to a travel agent the next day and the lady there rather vigorously lamented to me that the Vermonter Train service to Montreal had been dropped with some budget cuts and all the Vermont travel agents were frantically appealing Amtrak to get it back running, I could tell I had hit a touchy subject and I started to fear that this newly agitated lady agent would any moment clasp onto my arm and beg of me to solve the problems, have mercy and get the Vermonter Train back in action.
Well I got away in one piece.
So with the train out of the window, it was down to the faithful Greyhound coach to save me, don’t they spell ‘grey’ ‘gray’ here? Confusing.
I was lucky, I found out I was just in time to take advantage of the special ‘weeks advance’ offer for next Friday and save myself $15, woot. So, with Greyhound Coach ticket proudly in my hand, I ambled away from the Brattleboro office and was all set for Montreal. Interestingly the ticket was the same price if I left from Brattleboro or Bellows Falls, they are a good hours drive apart, I decided to leave from Bellows Falls as my father offered to have me stay the night and then I could catch the coach the following day.
Bellows Falls, this was a mini adventure in itself. Staying over at my fathers place? Howso? Wherefor? Why?
Questions, qwestions, b’huh thems’ imaginary voices sure keep me busy..
The adventure was setting down my packed bags and things, wondering what space I would be able to sleep on, for my fathers abode was a single room above a stationary shop on Bellows Falls high street. Piled high in many places were my fathers possessions and commiserated work places for his art. A tightly compacted maze of clutter in which you’re lucky to find a place to stand, let alone sit, oh and sleep(!), consarn it.
In a way the room and it’s artistic clutter was a direct contrast to the sparseness of Karl and Susans’ place, oh how we suffer.
Well it wasn’t that suffersome really, my father cleared a space on part of the floor by the back window and was able to set out a small air mattress and a borrowed sleeping bag. The evening, I spent delving onto a half hidden Fender Rhodes , caressing dusty keys, the electric piano chimed away in it’s mellow glory whilst I stared absent mindedly at a fuzzy TV public broadcast documentary, visually apparent to be concerned with the recent US voting and polling situation which I couldn’t understand for lack of subtitles. My father emerged from behind another pile and produced a vegetarian stir fry from seemingly nowhere, at a portable single-hob gas stove. Cunning stuff. It was tasty too. We chatted quite freely, a rarity, I forget about what.
Soon after, pretty shattered, I called it a night and got ready for bed whilst a freight train thundered by outside. It tooted a low note and haunted across a bridge of rusted metal that crossed over the rapids of a silver river that cut its parallel way in front of a barely seen, green mountain face.
The view from the window of my fathers home.