My wife and I started out in Vermont as renters but we wanted to buy. So a couple of months after we got here, a neighbor who was in the real estate business kindly took us around to look at a few places he thought might work. The floors in the first house we visited were built from boards that were 36 inches wide, at least, and beautifully worn. The ceilings were low and the rooms were small. There was an overall feeling about the place that touched something in me and I wanted to own it even though I was pretty sure we couldn't afford it.
"When was it built," my wife asked.
"I believe in the 1760s," our real estate friend said.
Well, that explained those wide, handsome boards. They'd been cut from virgin timber. From the sort of white pines that were once known as "king's trees," because they went for masts in the Royal Navy's warships.
It turned out that I was right about not being able to afford that house and I still whisper little prayers of thanks for my Deliverance. Owning any house in Vermont is a challenge. Owning one that is nearly 300 years old is a quasi-religious calling. You give your life-all of your time, money, and love-to that house. People who own an old house get this look when they start telling you about all that they and their house have gone through together. Nobody gets that way about a new house.
In Vermont, old is cool and there is a whole aesthetic based on the age of the work in question. Old barns, covered bridges, crumbling stone walls, cemeteries whose marble markers bear dates that go back three centuries ... these are iconic Vermont images. It is hard to think of anything of recent construction that you would consider symbolic of Vermont. Nobody ever sets an easel up on the side of the road in order to paint a picture of one of our lovely new steel and concrete bridges. We don't do new very well, but we are superb at old. When you live here, you find yourself craving old things.
If you would rather have a life than an old house, you may still be able to get into the game with some old furniture. As we all know, when it reaches a certain age, a well-made piece of furniture becomes an "antique." And expensive.
And, after all, it is just furniture. Chairs are not extinct. They aren't even on the endangered list. There are craftsmen today building furniture that is technically better than anything the old masters could turn out. They, after all, did not have access to CNC lathes. But the old stuff is what people desire so there is a reverse depreciation phenomenon at work so at the high end where buying in can be rudely expensive. But Vermont is democratic and egalitarian at its roots and if you want to get into the game, what you do is ... aim a little lower and buy new and then hang on and let time do its magic.
I bought a Stihl chain saw not long after we moved here. Every male of the species starts kicking the tires on chain saws about two months after moving to Vermont. Within six months, he owns one and won't shut up about it. I was no different.
But for the first ten years I owned the saw, I was embarrassed to show up at a friend's woodlot for a little joint firewood work. The paint on the saw's cowling still gleamed and you could read the writing on the bar and it just generally looked ... new. But with time and use, my saw accumulated some dents and nicks and the paint got worn and dull and the exhaust stains became permanent. And I got to the point where I felt like I could take the saw anywhere.
Same with my truck. When it was new, people would say, "Nice truck," in the way they'd say, "Nice day." But then, I started to notice some of my friends would lean up against the truck and ask, "How many miles you got on it."
And I'd say, "Oh, a hundred and sixty thousand. Maybe a little more." And I'd try to sound like I wasn't bragging. But of course I was. The way the aesthetics of "old" work, just about anyone can buy a big new shiny truck, but keeping an old truck running shows you have some familiarity with the old Vermont virtues:
Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without.
In Vermont, you learn, that's how we roll.
Geoffrey Norman is a Dorset author and editor of Vermonttiger.com
