of Lake Champlain and who bring 
in the partridges. Occasionally, other 
birds — including bluejays, pigeons, 
crows — are taken illegally. The breasts 
are baked slowly in a sauce to make 
uccellini, an Italian dish served with 
polenta. Uccellini was prepared more 
frequently by the preceding genera- 
tion of Italians — the ones who also 
ran liquor down over the Canadian 
border during Prohibition, made wine, 
and distilled grappa (brandy) to sell 
in their kitchens. But neither the oc- 
casional private still nor the clandes- 
tine pigeon pie has vanished. 
The appearance on porches of 
stuffed figures with pumpkin heads at 
Halloween marks the close of the 
growing year. The side hills have burst 
into a riot of cinnamon and yellow, 
brilliant reds, oranges, golds. For a 
few brief weeks at the end of Sep- 
tember and beginning of October, the 
air, the very wind, is colored by the 
leaves’ display. This is the time for 
gathering, peeling, and drying apples, 
for vats of applesauce bubbling on 
the stove, for apple jelly and apple 
pie, for Walter Smith’s cider, and for 
don’t-drink-it-if-you’re-sitting-’cause- 
you-won’t-get-up hard cider. 
Already, while the leaves were still 
in color, there was a little snow. Now 
as November approaches — and deer 
season — the wind is sharp, and by 
Thanksgiving and the end of deer 
hunting, the ground will have gone 
white for the next five months. 
School’s been under way again for 
all the grandchildren for some weeks 
now, with the stepped-up activity it 
always requires. The days were far 
more intense for Lucille and Sil when 
their children were young. 
You got more into it when all the kids 
were home. Everybody was taking part 
in whatever we were doing. When we 
were kids, we almost never went out of 
the village, the way kids do today. I don’t 
remember going to the city, Montpelier 
or Barre, ten miles away. We didn’t have 
to go, you just never went. Our fun was 
wherever we were, we made our own, 
and we had a great time. If we went 
to North Montpelier, what we thought 
were the grown-up people used to come 
out and play hide-and-seek with us at 
night. And it was hide-and-seek all over 
town. 
Deer season brings that intensity 
back again: everyone comes to Lu- 
cille’s and stays, her children and their 
families. It’s deer camp right at home, 
with breakfast before dawn and look- 
ing all morning for the first deer to 
be brought in. Then there’s deer liver 
for breakfast the next morning. Each 
deer is hung out behind the house 
and in the evening the family takes 
to the cellar to cut up and package 
the meat. It’s a time for tall tales 
and for the remembered tales of other 
deer seasons. For two weeks this goes 
on, all the adults having saved va- 
cation time for it, kids staying home 
from school. There are always people 
having coffee in the kitchen, and Lu- 
cille’s parents come over for polenta 
and venison, for mushrooms and deer 
stew. Some years the family gets 
enough deer so that everyone gets a 
good winter’s supply. Some years are 
lean. But whatever deer are taken are 
shared, starting with Lucille’s parents, 
who no longer get their own. 
Lucille tells how one of her sons 
was so excited the first time he saw 
a deer that he emptied his whole bar- 
rel, six shots, right into a tree, and 
didn’t even know he’d missed. 
And once there was an albino deer turned 
up in the field at the far end of the 
pond. For a long time nobody shot it, 
it kept appearing, all white looking, and 
then you didn’t see it any more. But an 
animal like that could never make it for 
long. It’s a marked thing. 
Just as deer season is ending, 
Thanksgiving comes — a big, festive 
family time. Everyone is there for the 
dinner, which includes antipasto, tur- 
key, venison, squash, pickles, cranber- 
ries, and gorgonzola and cheddar 
cheeses. And there is butternut pie, 
lemon pie, apple pie, and pumpkin 
pie, all made from scratch. “There 
are so many of us now,” Lucille grins, 
that at Thanksgiving we draw names for 
Christmas. The kids draw kids’ names, 
the old folks do it too. It’s a great old 
time. We’ve been together a lot, we’ve 
been through a lot together, it keeps you 
together and it keeps you going. Our prob- 
lem sometimes is we do not know how 
to make the very best of all the riches 
we have, it’s all so simple. 
Winter sets in. Pages get turned 
down in the well-thumbed catalogs, 
and orders go off to Sears and L.L. 
Bean. The whole family goes to Grand- 
ma’s early Christmas morning for sau- 
sages and pancakes and waffles with 
hot maple syrup, and for the exchange 
of presents determined by the Thanks- 
giving drawing. And there is almost 
always new snow. Years ago the season 
included sleigh rides and skating on 
the pond. In those days they cut ice 
from the pond all winter: 
It must be that when they cut the ice, 
the water would come up over the top 
and flood it, because ’most all winter 
it would be just like one huge big skating 
rink from start to finish. Oh it was fun. 
People used to come from miles around. 
All Sunday would be like a big party. 
We’d have big bonfires right out on the 
ice and cook hot dogs. We had an old 
Model T Ford out there that we used 
to run up and down the pond with, play 
snap the whip with, we really had an 
awful good time. 
One winter when Lucille was a 
small child, her father got inflamma- 
tory rheumatism and nearly died. “So 
near that we kids were conditioned 
for it.” She remembers that 
he laid in the bed, they had to feed him. 
They’ll never know what old Doc Corson 
did to pull him through. Finally, when 
he started getting better so he could feed 
himself, it got to be Christmas time. Of 
course, without Dad working for so long, 
there was no money. So I remember Ma 
telling us that as we hadn’t been able 
to help with this Christmas, Santa Claus 
wouldn’t be able to bring us anything. 
At this time they were having a com- 
munity Christmas tree down at the town 
clerk’s office. We used to go on the night 
before Christmas, and there’d be a huge 
Christmas tree, with a present on it for 
everybody there, along with the usual can- 
dy box full of candy and stuff. Everybody 
in the town went, there were refresh- 
ments, we’d sing Christmas carols. I re- 
member Seth took us down ’cause Ma 
had to stay home with Dad. Seth was 
from around here, his whole family was, 
he was just a little old wizened-up friend, 
a gentle old guy that whatever he did 
he had patience with it. He taught you 
how to do whatever he was doing, ex- 
plained what he was doing and why, and 
you didn’t soon forget it. Well, Seth took 
us down to the community Christmas 
tree, and then brought us home and we 
all went to bed. But Seth had been a 
busy person while this was all going on 
with Dad being sick. When we got up 
the next morning there was a Christmas 
tree in the living room with a present 
for each one us kids under it. And I 
can see mine to this day — a sled, a sled! 
Pretty quickly it gets to be New 
Year’s. People do different things on 
New Year’s Eve, but for many years 
Lucille and Sil have played pinochle 
with friends. “That is when you begin 
to enjoy the winter.” Lucille folds her 
arms and smiles. “It’s feeding wood 
into the stove in the cellar and playing 
Scrabble at the kitchen table, making 
a pot of beans, and when the blizzards 
come, pulling shut the curtains and 
having some quiet and peace.” 
Richard W Brown 
83 
