Sporting the white, cotton, “Old Hawley Common” T-shirt with red letters that I bought Sunday at the common’s unveiling—hint of bear scent wafting through cool, clear mountain air—inspired inquiries from some folks I bumped into this week in my travels.

“Oh, you went to that?” was a question by some who had seen the event publicized; then, “What, pray tell, is your interest in Hawley?” that seldom-visited hilltown nestled into Franklin County’s southwestern corner, population 337. Well, as is often true in my case, it all comes down to history, place and blood, often intertwined in a geographical setting where one’s roots run deep.

Although I am the direct descendant of no original Hawley settler I know of, a Sanderson great-grandfather of mine was among the original proprietors; not only that, but peripheral genealogical lines run through that landscape like its shaded brooks and streams. Throw in a direct link to the historic building I call home, and my interest heightens. So, I guess you could say that my fascination with Hawley is all about personal connections.

Hawley, it seems, was one of many “frontier” destinations for those defeated rabble-rousers who publicly supported Capt. Daniel Shays of Shays’ Rebellion fame (1786-87). After Shays fled Massachusetts in February 1787, he and his soldiers dispersed to the hinterlands, many touching down in Vermont and New York State, some settling much closer, in places like Hawley, which seemed to hold preferred status for Whately/Conway rebels, possibly because they knew or were related to speculative landowners who did not intend to live there.

Adonijah Taylor and son John were two such men, the elder an early Deerfield miller who established the first Roaring Brook grist and sawmills on a rise overlooking the Mill River section of Deerfield. Today, that site is located in Whately, below the lower Whately Glen dam. Fifth great-grandfather Deacon Thomas Sanderson, the aforementioned Hawley landowner, purchased the home and mill sites from the Taylors in 1803, and they were likely longtime friends. Taylor’s wife, Rachel Sawtelle, and my Sanderson branch grew up in Groton, arrived here at about the same time and were connected by marriage to the Parker family of that town. That Middlesex County Parker family produced Lt. Isaac Parker, second in command at Fort No. 4 in Charlestown, N.H., New England’s northernmost French and Indian War outpost and the probable reason why the Parkers, then my Sandersons chose Deerfield and the Canterbury section of Hatfield (now River Road, Whately) for homes sites. Which brings us to another Hawley connection.

Abraham Parker (1726-1757), son of Lt. Isaac, was probably introduced to the peaceful intervale below Sugarloaf while patrolling on military detail out of Fort No. 4. What was there not to love about that idyllic, fertile plain? By 1748, Parker had built a dwelling there, and four years later, brother-in-law Joseph Sanderson, progenitor of my Franklin County line, was squatting next door. Tragedy struck the Parker family five years later when, on Saturday, March 12, 1757, Parker drowned crossing the Connecticut River ice on his way to or from Sunderland (tavern hopping perhaps?), leaving behind five children, one unborn. I have never found Parker’s grave, but it is probably in Sunderland if his body was recovered, because that’s where he attended church.

Parker’s first son and second child, Abraham Jr. (1752-1837), was one of Hawley’s first settlers; his cellar hole is the outermost of nine identified sites along the Hawley-Common route unveiled Sunday. I met three or four Parker descendants, distant cousins of mine, at Sunday’s dedication. Their family had lived in the original Parker homestead for nearly 120 years, until 1891, when the dwelling and outbuildings were abandoned, soon to be cratered memories. And yes, all that remains today are dark, damp, stone-clad holes. I feel a certain attachment to those Parker ruins because more than likely Abraham Jr., fatherless before his fifth birthday, viewed Uncle Joseph Sanderson (my sixth ggf) as a surrogate father, spending many a day roaming the woods and fields and swamps below Sugarloaf with Joseph’s eight sons, some older, others younger than him. Uncle Joseph, his gravestone the oldest in East Whately Cemetery, died in 1772. Four years later, when Parker Jr. was 24, he set out for Hawley, where his cousins — brothers Nathaniel, Abel and David Parker — were also staking claims, plus, first-cousin and boyhood neighbor Thomas Sanderson, six years older, owned a couple parcels there.

Ah-ha, all about family ties, it is.

Now, as for the link between my Greenfield home and Hawley, well, that was a more recent discovery. The journey began following a brief telephone conversation with Colrain artist Hale Johnson, whose mother, Louise Hale Johnson, published “The History of the Town of Hawley” in 1953, the year I was born. When Mr. Johnson asked about the history of my tavern, I told him the last major “improvements” were made by Ebenezer Thayer, who sold the Charlemont Inn before buying my place in 1836. When I informed him that Thayer had lived in Hawley, it piqued his interest, said he knew all the Hawley cemeteries after visiting them as a boy with his mother. Then, after later finding Louise Hale Johnson’s book in Google Books and reading her Thayer genealogy, I discovered what I believed to be an error. Her profile of Thayer as a good businessman who owned a hotel in Charlemont before purchasing “the expensive Arms Farm in Greenfield Meadows in 1835” differed from what I knew. Because I had done the deed research to document Thayer’s purchase of my Upper Meadows tavern in 1836, I thought Ms. Johnson was mistaken. A trip to the Registry of Deeds proved me wrong.

Thayer did indeed purchase what was known as the Ebenezer Arms Farm in 1835, a little more than a year before buying my place. Then, three years later, in 1839, he purchased the Moses Arms Farm, contiguous with the first Arms farm he had purchased four years earlier. The cost of the three Meadows properties that consumed nearly 1,000 acres was the enormous sum of $30,000, which would compute to millions today. All three homesteads are extant, with the two Arms farms situated in the Lower Meadows. The so-called Ebenezer Arms place stands on Thayer Road, overlooking the long Greenfield Community College driveway and, across it, the so-called Moses Arms Farm, later Myers Farm, today Four Rivers Charter School. My property is named Old Tavern Farm; Thayer bought it from Samuel Hinsdale III and soon added a porch and upstairs ballroom for tavern-keeping son Hollister Baker Thayer, whose name came straight from Hawley; it was there after 1810 that his uncle, Hollister Baker, built a stately, brick, Federal mansion-house that still stands proudly in Pudding Meadow and was recently sold to an “outsider” for a tidy fee.

So, there you have it: a few of the subjects that lured me to the Hawley woods on Sunday and will surely draw me back. A new discovery in the Doane Cemetery caught my interest during a brief stop with a friend and neighbor on the way home. Isolated under a hardwood shade tree just inside the eastern stonewall border of the burial ground stood the lonely, flagged gravestone of Capt. Oliver Shattuck, who died in 1797, age 46. His Shattuck family has an interesting history, one that also weaves through Groton and Fort No. 4 to our slice of paradise known as the upper Pioneer Valley. I think I’ll see what I can find about the man. Who knows? He may even have been a displaced Shaysite, rarely easy to document these days. But even if it can’t be proven, you can usually make connections, ones that provide a pretty good idea of where he stood on the conflict.

Mystery fuels discovery, uncertainty revs the motor, spins the wheels, mine already awhirl and shrill. Before a man can truly understand the little world around him, he must first discover who he is. It’s complex. I’m getting there.

Editor’s note: This piece was written during a fragile moment on the crunchy-cold day before the deluge.

I have just returned from the brisk, sun-baked driveway in front of the carriage shed, where, for the umpteenth time this winter, I brushed cordwood debris from my dingy Polarfleece shell. Dirty business, lugging armloads from the woodshed, but you can’t beat the dry, radiant heat of a wood stove, I don’t care how many times the wood warms you before it’s finally ignited.

My cats, three of them, heartily agree. You can’t get them in during summer, out in winter. They just lay there, totally decadent, by the stove, preferably in front or behind it, where heat’s most intense, and watch suspiciously whenever I pass through, thinking it may, dreadfully, be time to go out. They know the routine well. When it’s time for them to, for lack of a better term, get out of my face, I grab the plastic Iams container from the iron setkettle hearth, hold it chest-high and rattle the pellets on my way to the Griswold skillet in which I feed them. When I reach the porch door and loudly pour the pellets into the frying pan, I hope they’ll come running, which seldom happens. Once in a while Big Tom, if hungry, will come willingly, a bounce in his step; sometimes even Baby, the gray tabby; but not old Blackie, born in the woodshed loft, no penthouse to be sure, but I had nothing to do with that, just gave her a home, reluctantly. Sensing what’s about the happen, she heads for cover, maybe under the kitchen table or, worse still, beneath the cannonball bed, which really heats me to a furious boil. But I have it all down by now, a simple solution.

What I do is stamp my feet hard enough to jiggle the heavy stoneware vessels on the kitchen shelf and, sure enough, old Black-Black flees to the dining room, peeling out, leaving audible and visible scratches on the red-painted floor. She invariably winds up under the harvest table, leafs hanging, wearing a most indignant scowl. But with the doors to the front parlor and taproom closed, she can go no farther. Then, once I close the two kitchen doors flanking the wood stove, she’s at my mercy and knows it. So I reopen the porch door and again stamp my feet with feigned fury, more than enough to send her scurrying out to the flagstone walk, where, objecting to the turn of events, she pathetically shakes fresh snow from her paws each step of the way.

Yeah, right, I feel the most profound pity for the poor Satan-black, tuxedoed beast.

Once outside, old Black-Black will immediately head for the barn, walking under the roofed sheds to a small square hole at the lower right corner of an interior barn door. Inside, she walks the runway to the dark, rickety north stairs, which she descends to the dirt-floored cellar and pokes around a bit before exiting the building and cutting across the backyard alcove created by the barn and woodshed ells. She loops the back of the house and returns to the front porch, where she sits in the sun with her two feline friends, waiting for re-entry.

Exciting life, huh? these winter doldrums; just can’t get enough.

If you haven’t already guessed, I must confess I’ve spiked a raging fever of the cabin variety. I’ve fought it for weeks, but it’s really starting to get to me now. Seems nothing — not aspirin, not fluids, not succulent Florida citrus — seems to touch it. Just can’t fight it off. They must make some sort of a pill these days to soothe it, but I choose not to cure my ills with pills. The only remedy for me is the backyard brook’s roar, bluebirds in the multiflora rosebush, and crocuses along the southern foundations. But it looks like we’ve got a ways to go for that stuff after Punxsutawney Phil surfaced recently, cast a shadow and scurried back to his subterranean den for six more annoying weeks of winter. Had I been in Pennsylvania for that annual event, I would have drilled that rodent right in the gourd with a copper-plated, .222 hollow-point, I can assure you of that. Who the hell is he to make my life miserable till mid-March?

Ooops. There I go again with my insensitivity. I should be more careful not to stir up my anti-hunting critics. You know the profile of the loudest: Pantagonia jacket, Brooks Brothers khakis, candle-lit table at a local eatery enjoying veal scallopini and calling me immoral for personally killing some of the meat I eat. Go figure. What a world; hypocrites pouring out of the woodwork like ladybugs on a sunny November afternoon, preaching, pontificating, drooling venom. But let’s not digress, back to the fever that’s pushing me to delirium.

It used to be that this time of year here in this space I’d preview the outdoor shows, plugging them as cure-alls for what ails you. They’re still happening, one coming up soon, but I’m afraid I’m done promoting them. Been there, done that. Can’t continue; gets boring after a while. So here I sit, closed in my study, space-heater blowing a soft August breeze on my back as I vent through my keyboard. You know the routine, especially during these, the glory days of gluttonous big oil: close yourself into a room with a space heater and keep what money you can out of those euphoric Bush cronies’ pockets. Why contribute to filling the trough for generations of idle rich, in Texas of all places. What did the Texans ever do for me? What will they ever do?

So here I sit, toasty warm, bitter cold outside, treacherous icy driveway, another snowstorm on the way. The snow’s piled so high under the woodshed eaves that I may run out before the dump truck can get back there for my final load. You look at the snow heaped under the rooflines out back and wonder when they’ll be gone from the darkest corners. Memorial Day, perhaps? Later? By then it’ll be time for the roofer to stop for his annual maintenance, replacing the slates scattered below the buildings, victims of icy avalanches, none worse than along the carriage sheds out front, leaving me back-breaking removal issues. The chore may someday buckle my knees, drop me flat on my face. But let’s hope not. Can think of better ways to go, many unprintable in a family paper. Whisper stuff; always the best.

In the meantime, I think I’ll go out to the barn to get my roof rake in order. Snow, sleet, rain; a freakin’ mess predicted. Looks like I’ll need all three extensions out back for this storm to clear the roof around the sewer-vent pipe. Either that or lose the whole shootin’ match, flashing and all, again, necessitating a quick fix. Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, that’s what winter’s all about, that and work and cold and breaking through crusty snow carrying ash buckets to the pile out back. Oh, how I hate crusty snow, and so do my dogs; the deer, too.

So please excuse me as I depart for my barn chore, which will lead me straight through the dining room, where I’ll load up the soapstone stove. Undoubtedly, that project will coax me to the woodshed for a fresh armload of wood, then outside to brush off the debris, and back to the stove to sweep the floor by the cradle. The cats will be there, probably all three, and they’ll object to the broom and long-handled, pivoting dustpan. At the sound of it creaking, they’ll scramble to their feet, spewing terror, and I’ll have sarcastic words before chasing them outside. Time for a little air — frosty, healthy stuff — whether they like it or not.

It’s time to understand it’s mid-February and we’re all in it together, suffering required.

Pagan penance.

The sad news was fresh, the morning gray. I was backed up to a bluff overlooking the Green River, sitting on my tailgate, sipping coffee, watching my dogs romp up and down the bank, swimming after mallards, flushing them, returning to the plateau, shaking off, bounding through the shin-high hayfield … pure joy. My imagination soared with their enthusiasm, evaporating to another realm, surreal.

It was cool, audible north wind blustery, cherry tree bowed, leaning toward the river, bobbing like the stroke of a careful painter. Yes, exactly, a painter, ”John the Painter,” at least that’s how he always identified himself to me on the phone. His name was John McAulay, a gentle, honest man who became part of my family for five summers, van parked out front, paint-splattered portable radio, coat-hanger antenna, tuned to oldies as he applied paint, three coats, to every inch of my dwelling and outbuildings, 76 shutters — a daunting task for a crew, never mind one man, even overwhelming if you let it consume you. But John never got discouraged, just kept a steady pace, watched the weather reports and kept at it, avoiding rain and humidity like the swine flu.

Five years later, he stood back and admired his work, done the right way, his way: conscientious to a fault, ethical to the core, a rare bird in the world of painting. John was a transient who just tried to blend in, be it in your backyard or at the local coffee shop, a quiet, even dignified presence, almost Native American in disposition; pensive, reserved. And now the man, a dying breed, is dead. His heart gave out at a Greenfield laundromat; evening, took him by surprise, quick, the way he would have scripted it.

The news arrived by phone, his cell, around 9 a.m. last Thursday. On my way out the door to run the dogs, my phone rang, caller ID reading ”Greenfield 775-2385.” The number looked familiar so I picked it up. It was John’s nephew, hesitation in his voice, delivering the news that John had passed to a member of his thin speed-dial directory. We spoke for 10 or 15 minutes, me offering my sympathies, telling him how much I liked John, reminiscing, but I guess it really didn’t hit me until I released my dogs in that spring-green hayfield and sat on the tailgate, right-wing WEEI garbage on the radio, peaceful, bucolic setting, precisely how John liked it. In fact, he often ”camped” a few miles upstream.

Maybe it was his spirit, traveling with the wind, the water, but it all started coming to me: his voice, his little gray mustache, his diffident, unassuming manner, healthy distrust of the government, society, religion. I never shared this with anyone, but I have fantasized that if ever I write a novel he would be a character, sort of an itinerant hired hand, akin to an 18th-century cabin boy who returns to the mainland and drifts from town to town, farm to farm, picking up odd jobs along the way, curling up in a hayloft for the night, saying little about his past or present, mysterious; more profound than expected once he opens the window into his past, shares his perspectives on life, the world.

There was a lot more to John than met the eye. I know. He trusted me, I him. I recommended him as a painter many times, always saying that I knew if I left $100 in change on my table and took off for the week, giving him free reign of my home, not a nickel would disappear. He had no religion, just country morals, Vermont ethics, a lonely piece of existential flotsam in the turbulent sea of life, floating, content.

Over the years, nearly 56 of them, many interesting characters have dropped in and out of my life. John the Painter was one. I often described him as an old-fashioned Vermont painter, hand-scraper and brush, a Springfield boy, good way about him. Married, two kids and a home, working the General Motors assembly line in Framingham into the 1970s, he decided it wasn’t for him and withdrew, selling out, settling-up with his wife, buying a full-sized van, and making it his mobile home, interior styled as a sea captain’s quarters. From that point on, he was the captain, did his own thing, totally; no one to tell him where to go or what to do; traveling the countryside, picking up odd jobs along the way, just enough to get by, didn’t need much to keep him happy. He called the day he sold his home and bought the van the best of his life, brought peace and freedom to his conflicted soul, broke the heavy chains trying to moor him to the mainstream. I guess it took him a while, but he finally figured out that he’d rather flee the Joneses than keep up with them. And escape he did, free as the Baltimore Oriole serenading from the river’s edge, aimless, a drifter, no itinerary, no maps, no directions, no time card or punch clock; blissful autonomy. Maybe he had it all figured out, a better way; just got sick of playing the game and softly threw his cards on the table. You have to respect a man for that; at least I do.

I will miss John’s visits, his calm manner, his wry wit, sly grin, a peculiar paranoia that the government was about to reel him into a place of no return. It was he who introduced me to rabble-rouser Alex Jones, the Illuminati and other demons from the conspiratorial fringe. I enjoyed listening to his rap, molded in Scott Nearing’s ’60s, Upton Sinclair’s ’20s. He was plenty different, counter-culture, bohemian, some would say crazy. But John was not insane, just eccentric. He was genuine as the Skitchewaug Mt. bedrock he once trudged with his Vermont-bear-hunting dad — a loner, non-conformist, always well-kempt, a speck of paint here and there; dumb like a fox, a gray fox.

I will not forget John, an interesting character who dropped out, stopped in and touched me like few others have.

He taught me something.

Discovery is exciting, precisely what keeps people hunting through moldy cellars, dusty attics and decaying barns, yard sales and crack-of-dawn flea markets. Collecting’s a disease, one that can be highly contagious, a fever that grips you … which reminds me of a recent visit at my Greenfield, Ma., home, one that bore sweet, salubrious fruit, far from forbidden.

Historic Deerfield President Phil Zea, renowned furniture expert, stopped by to poke around a bit, check out a few things I’ve been trying to pin down around Old Tavern Farm. I’m talking about remnants: things like a peculiar, weathered bench, unpainted, crevaced grain; a flaky-red butter box; an amazing early board, 3×8, one piece, breadboard ends, prostrate on the filthy haymow; also other interesting boards stacked above, 16-feet long, two inches thick, cleated together, their original use a mystery. These items of interest have been on-site for a century or two. I find them captivating and figured Phil would, too. Plus, of course, such brainstorming sessions stimulate tavern talk, always welcome. Public houses were fascinating places, bustling with activity, and living in one has a spiritual texture.

It’s funny the way things evolve, how you often wind up on an unintended subject or tangent, which leads to something else and totally consumes you like a deep, black, greasy mud hole. This promised to be just such an occasion, and was when our focus turned to a cherry, Queen Anne, flat-top, high chest of drawers in the dining room. I call it the Chapman/Pierson highboy, with a full provenance dating back before the Revolution in Saybrook/Killingworth, Ct. A dignified and graceful piece with a strong vertical thrust, it can stand on its own as an important piece of 18th century Americana. What enhances its value, though, is a hand-written chalk inscription on the inside of its backboard, above the waist and behind the bottom two drawers of the top section. There, a rare maker’s mark in large white script reads: “Killingworth October the 15th 1772, A Case of Drawers Made By John Chapman A Joinor [sic].” At some point, someone even attempted to trace over it with chalk, splicing in the word “when” above and between the words Drawers and Made, all part of its history now. Who knows when that was done? Who cares?

Chapman built the piece for the wedding of Rebecca Parmalee of Killingworth. She married, Jan. 7, 1773 in Killingworth, Samuel Pierson of the same town, he the grandson of Yale founder Abraham Pierson. Upon purchasing the piece a few years back, I immediately embarked on a discovery mission. I wanted to know more about the original owners, the maker and the provenance, all of which came together nicely thanks to a circa 1955 western New York newspaper article. But I wanted more, even what these people ate for breakfast if I could find it.

When I contacted Connecticut Valley furniture scholar and author Thomas P. Kugelman (“Connecticut Valley Furniture: Eliphalet Chapin and His Contemporaries, 1750-100″), he had no knowledge of the joiner John Chapman. My inquiry and accompanying digital photos piqued his interest, though, and he promised he’d look into it when he got a chance. His follow-up arrived sooner than expected. Having researched state archives at the Connecticut Historical Society, he wrote that he was able to prove Chapman was a woodworker through his probate records. Chapman’s 1782 estate inventory listed “a sett of Joinours Tools” valued at 5 pounds, 3 shillings, no meager expense at the time.

Chapman (1731-82) was born and raised in Saybrook, Ct., which borders Killingworth and once spilled into it. Whether he ever lived in Killingworth itself, as the inscription seems to suggest, is unimportant, but son John did. Chapman descended from original Saybrook settler Robert Chapman, whose bloodlines ran throughout that region on both sides of the Connecticut River (Middlesex County on the west side, New London County on the east). Because Saybrook vital records place John Chapman there for his birth and death, it’s safe to say he was a Saybrook man. Also, Chapman is identified in deeds as a joiner from Saybrook’s “Ferry District.” The record of Chapman’s land transactions show several in Killingworth, including one with the Samuel Pierson associated with the high chest.

During the Zea visit, my final request, on a whim, was that he evaluate a blind dovetail centered on the back side of the highboy’s curvilinear skirt, where a drop once descended between two accentuated scallops. I wondered if he was familiar with drops attached separately by a long, vertical dovetail instead of cut out in the template. Yes, he had seen the design detail but said it was uncommon because of the precision required. Given the degree of difficulty, he leaned toward a fancy drop, perhaps a maritime motif like a fish, lobster or whale’s tail, instead of the common, simple turned drop. I welcomed this opinion because I too figured it had likely been a fish or lobster tail, all three being embellishments associated with New London County furniture of the period. Kugelman hadn’t agreed. He assumed it had been a simple turned drop. We may never know for certain, but it’ll surely remain a topic of conversation for years to come at our B&B.

During general discussion, Zea and I touched on where and how I found the piece and why I chose it over others. The answer was simple. I had searched 10 years for a high chest similar in style to the one that had stood in my home from 1772-1836. That piece, made of maple and today painted black, has been in Deerfield’s PVMA furniture collection since 1876 and is known as the Mary Stebbins Hinsdale high chest. Stebbins, from Belchertown, was married Jan. 8, 1772 to the second Samuel Hinsdale to own my home. The high chest was part of her wedding outfit. It is strikingly similar to the Chapman/Pierson chest I discovered marooned in an upstart western New York shop, with the same “Wethersfield style” and nearly identical dimensions, a tall, slender, vertical thrust that was not easy to find in today’s market. I know. I tried.

My reason for choosing the piece transported our conversation to a different realm, infinitely more interesting, really got Phil’s wheels spinning. The reason was that he said he was very familiar with the Hinsdale high chest. In fact, he probably knows more about it than anyone, because he did much of the research. He knew it had a Greenfield provenance but never connected it to Old Tavern Farm, which seemed to intrigue him. Even more significant was the fact that he had attributed a Saybrook origin to the Stebbins/Hinsdale high chest. In his opinion, my piece and the one that once stood here were, “from the same bolt of cloth.”

Imagine that! Talk about coincidence. An arduous search for an elusive highboy resembling another that once stood in the same building turns up an example that may have been the handiwork of the same man, or at least influenced by the same coastal Connecticut shop. Although more research is obviously needed, it isn’t unlikely that the chalk information on my piece could lead to a cabinetmaker attribution for the PVMA chest.

What an exciting development; amazing, in fact. It all speaks to the importance of signed furniture to research. Is it not discoveries like this that make collecting fun, keep devotees aching for more? Yes, without a doubt.

Discovery can be mind-blowing when lucky. I can’ wait to roll the dice on this one.

The man from whom we bought this place, Lute Nims, then 82, now deceased, took me on a special trip to the barn, where he pointed out a faded, chalky-white, wooden flagpole laying along the three-foot wall overlooking the hay pit. The pole was impressive, something I was barely familiar with – a straight tapered tree, small branches stripped off, leaving pimples – extending nearly the full length of the wall, some 30 feet, perhaps eight inches thick at the broken-off base. “This is the flagpole,” he said, pointing under a pile of old wooden ladders resting in a 45-degree angle against the thigh-high wall. “I want to show you where it stood before it broke some years ago.”

We walked out of the barn and to the flagpole’s former place along the southern periphery of the yard, in a shallow depression behind two massive Japanese maples that shield the colonial home from the road, lending privacy from passersby when foliaged. Mr. Nims began walking around in baby steps, probing with his toes and looking down before stopping, pressing the toe of his right shoe down and saying, ‘”Here it is! See? Put your foot here and feel the hole. The base is still in there.”

I pressed down with my toes and felt it, perhaps an inch or two deep, jagged wooden base at the bottom. I knew Mr. Nims had brought me there to, in his dignified, gentle manner, encourage me to someday re-erect the proud old ship’s-mast of a flagpole, a survivor from the distant past, dating back to who knows when, definitely 19th century, perhaps earlier. A rare find gracing anyone’s property today. There are few authentic, old wooden flagpoles left. Very few. The only other one I know of is in Deerfield.

From that moment, probably in March of 1997, I knew I would someday put that flagpole back up and hang a flag from it, but I was never satisfied with the location. It made no sense that it should go there, in a depression that morphs into a deep puddle during winter melts and summer storms. I questioned that it “belonged” there. There had to be a more appropriate place, one that was obvious. There was. I found it. “Documented.”

Thankfully, Mr. Nims left behind many old photos of this place and its people after transferring the deed to my family. He said he had relatives who’d like the pictures but he thought they belonged with the place, its rich history, and should not be removed, forever separated, legacy lost. Because of those pictures, the ones he intentionally left behind, I soon discovered that my suspicions were valid about the flagpole site he had shown me. That was not its original place. It had likely been placed there sometime during the 20th century, before the handsome, ornamental Japanese maples were planted, probably after the first time it had rotted and snapped off, leaving the base in the ground. Whoever planted the trees, probably Helen Gerrett, had left the proud flagpole in place, likely unaware that two of the prettiest trees in Greenfield would someday grow as tall as they now stand.

Over the years, hidden behind those trees in the damp depression where water frequently pools deep enough to sail a toy boat, the buried base of that pimpled wooden pole had rotted and snapped off in the wind, dropping to the turf like a felled fir. From there, the prostrate pole had been lugged to the barn and lain in the runway, where it was pointed out to me by pastkeeper Nims, aware of its importance, hopeful I would rehabilitate it.

A 19th century photo of my buildings, the words Old Tavern Farm painted in bold white letters across the carriage sheds, shows the flagpole right in front of the sheds, gracing the crest of the island inside the horseshoe driveway. It was an ideal site, semi-centered, large wooden globe overextending the ridge cap by perhaps 10 feet, framed by a 2 1/2-story barn on the left, dwelling on the right. When we inquired about the best way to re-install the pole to its proper, showy place, we were advised to keep the base above ground in a pinned, cast-iron sleeve set in a frame four feet below ground in a concrete boot. That way it would regain its original standing height. We did so just in time for the Fourth of July 2000, when we celebrated the occasion with a cookout for my family and that of steeplejack Mike Mastrototara, who had advised us, ordered the sleeve from Steel Shed in Bernardston and gold-leafed the antique wooden globe, now split in two and lying on a shelf for posterity. In retrospect, we should have known better. How could we expect an ancient wooden artifact like that to survive more harsh weather? When it split and fell to the ground, we replaced it from a catalog with a contemporary, hollow brass globe, which is, to be honest, a sorry replacement. The original is always better.

But, still, it is comforting to know that our historic flagpole, a venerable wooden monument, is  standing where it was meant to be, where it originally stood, all because of a 19th century photo. I have twice painted it, first before the proper, patriotic raising, again a few years later. The sleeve simplifies the project, eliminating the need for a ladder. By removing the bottom of two pins in the base, you can slowly walk the pole down to a horizontal position, temporarily resting the top third across a carpenter’s horse standing in the driveway. Soon, it’ll need another coat of brilliant-white Benjamin Moore – formal high-gloss, of course, for emphasis.

It’s a treasure, standing tall sentry over our historic Greenfield Meadows landmark, once a public house on the post road to Bennington.

One rare relic fronting another.