Rockwell modelsBy Nancy Boardman
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
The town of Arlington is hosting a special event to showcase the close tie between the town and its most famous resident, Norman Rockwell.
They could have called it Ethan's Attic, or Ira's Attic, or Dorothy's Attic. Instead, the organizers of the first Arlington Craft Fair and Town-Wide Tag Sale, which kicked off 16 years ago, chose the overall moniker Norman's Attic. That's because, of all the notable historical figures, artists and writers who have lived in Arlington-the Allen brothers, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Rockwell Kent, Carl Ruggles, and even Grandma Moses, who spent a lot of time in town even though her home was over the New York border-it was Norman Rockwell who has become Arlington's most famous resident.
Norman's Attic takes place on August 7th. As in the past, its main focus is Arlington's Main Street, otherwise known as Historic Route 7A. Lining the road will be vendors showcasing a panoply of handmade crafts, jewelry, pottery, photographs, artwork, antique textiles and woodware, along with woolen hats, scarves and mittens, goat's milk soap, fresh vegetables and other offerings from local farms. On Arlington's side roads, townspeople will hold their individual tag, barn, yard, garage, lawn and moving sales. For a nominal fee they have had their homes listed on a map that bargain-hunters can use to find them.
Although the Arlington Chamber of Commerce used to sponsor this annual event, a few years ago it turned over the reins to St. James' Church, notable in itself as the cradle of the Episcopal Church in Vermont, founded in 1764. Parishioners of St. James' run the coffee and doughnut concession that greets visitors at 8 a.m., followed by the immensely popular lunch grill that starts sending out its irresistible aromas about 11 a.m. and cooks strong until the end of the event, around 3 in the afternoon. Is it a coincidence that, since the church took over, Norman's Attic has never been rained out?
This year, Norman's Attic is hosting a special event to showcase the close tie between Norman Rockwell and the town of Arlington, where he arrived from New Rochelle, NY in 1939 and dwelled until 1953. On moving into the first of the two houses he owned here, both on the famed Battenkill trout stream, he exclaimed that he had "fallen into Utopia." It was in Arlington that Rockwell painted most of the Saturday Evening Post covers that have morphed from popular to beloved to iconic in the past 50 years.
Arlington has boasted many artistic and literary luminaries in its history, both locally born and "from away." But the arrival of Rockwell turned Arlington into a magnet for other magazine illustrators, including John Atherton, Gene Pelham, George Hughes and Meade Schaeffer...
