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.

I’ve been poking around lately in the western Franklin County hill towns of Conway and Ashfield, walking old roads, investigating cellar holes, town histories, old maps, genealogies, deeds, probate records, talking to landowners … trying to connect the dots. It’s never easy, this world of discovery, but always rewarding, even invigorating. Great fun. Cheap entertainment.

Along the way, all kinds of peripheral stuff turns up, things like stone Seven-Mile Line bounds buried deep in the forest, long-lost landmarks like Balanced Rock, no longer visible even in aerial photos because it’s buried deep under a lush hardwood canopy. And, strange as it may seem, when I traipse around this general area that’s so rich in history, be it with gun in hand, walking the dogs, or just horsing around, exploring long-ago discontinued roads in my Tacoma pickup, it always seems to come back to my Sanderson chest of six graduated drawers, pine, distinctive and a bit mysterious because of the six fishtail drops descending from its straight bracket base, not the typical location of such a furniture embellishment, in fact no one seems to have ever seen such a thing descending from a chest-of-drawers’ base.

The chest has a documented history through a series of brides recorded on a yellowed piece of paper taped to a backboard; invaluable information, rare, too, on furniture. When able to document such a provenance, trace it from first owner to last, the homes it graced, the alterations, repairs, refinishing (ouch!), it just brings it to life, casts a warm glow upon it. Such a glow has graced this piece of family history lately, a direct result of my whimsical exploration of woodlands long familiar to my Whately ancestors.

I first thought this tall chest was the handiwork of William Mather, who came to Whately from Lyme, Ct., in 1787 with father Benjamin, a retired, somewhat quirky, sea captain. Mather, a cousin of iconic cabinetmaker Samuel Loomis of Colchester, Ct., through maternal lines, was himself a joiner, Whately’s finest, and he had a documented account with Deacon Thomas Sanderson, my fifth great grandfather, whose daughter-in-law, Mehitable Wing of Conway, wife of son Silas, is the first recipient of the chest as a wedding gift. Because fishtail drops are associated with Mather’s 18th century New London County, Ct. — typically centered on the skirts of highboys and lowboys, along the crest rails of chairs, or crowning pillar-and-scroll and banjo clocks — it seemed like a no-brainer that Mather was the maker. The attribution became even more likely because of the lobster-tail drop on a well-known early 19th-century Chippendale highboy made by Mather for Dea. Thos. Sanderson.

But wait a minute. Wouldn’t the wedding gift have come from the bride’s family, not the Sandersons? Yes, more likely indeed. And guess what? The Wing family came to Conway during the last quarter of the 18th century from Harwich/Cape Cod/Mass., another likely source for maritime furniture embellishments. Not only that, but there were joiners in the Wing family, one of them right in Ashfield. Elisha — son of sea Capt. Edward Wing of Goshen, cousin of Mehitable’s grandfather, John of Conway — also may have had something to do with it; or perhaps another Cape Cod joiner who had made it for the Wings before they departed for WMass, maybe the property of Mehitable’s grandmother, Abigail Snow. Hmmmm? Isn’t that the more likely origin of the Sanderson chest? Somewhere in the Wing family of the bride? Matrilineal descent? Seems to make more sense.

We’ll see. More research needed. Maybe I’ll never get to the bottom of this riddle. Maybe I will. That’s the fun of it.