When I was growing up in Brattleboro, in early ‘60s, it was very much like other rust belt mill towns-- staid, careful, a little suspicious of anything new. It was made up mostly of people of northern European extraction. There were four churches downtown: Catholic, Methodist, Baptist and Congregational. A few blocks north were the Unitarians and the Episcopalians. Bratt was pretty white, and very buttoned down. If you didn’t get your spaghetti from a can, you were just odd.
Somehow, a few brave newcomers fell in love with the countryside, moved in, and managed to take their neighbors’ world views with an amused grain of salt. The Laines, gifted French chefs, started a lovely little French restaurant out on Putney Road call “Le Chanticlair”. I was about eight, and was once brought out to dinner there by my parents, who enjoyed a long and delicious meal. I tried to stay busy, but finally went outside and wept in frustration and boredom, quite sure that we’d never leave, ever.
The restaurant lasted maybe five years. It was too far ahead of local New England Boiled Dinner taste. Finally the Laines returned to Paris. But maybe their spirit lived on somehow, when the next ambitious restaurant came in, it didn’t meet so much resistance.
Some credit for crowbarring open local minds is due to The Experiment in International Living, founded in 1932 up on Black Mountain Road. It started out as an exchange program, in which students travel to foreign countries and stay with families for three weeks. The cultural and linguistic immersion is invaluable to broadening horizons, and in return the area welcomed more than a few visitors in homestays as well. There was also the influx of cultured tourists coming up for Marlboro Music, the chamber music festival started in 1951 at Marlboro College, bringing artists like Rudolf Serkin and Pablo Casals.
By the mid 1960’s things had begun to change. My junior high art class was taught by one of the best teachers I’ve had in my life, Hugh Corbin, an African American who not only listened to FM radio, scandalous enough to us teeny boppers, but unimaginably, ate raw eggs. His art history classes got me through high school and college courses that were considerably less inspiring. He taught sculpture, allowed a toothy employee from my father’s bookstore to stage a “happening”, (which, honestly, I don’t remember at all, beyond some vague discomfort and resistance on the part of the squirming student body). But Mr. Corbin’s example stayed with me, backward though I probably was: if he could do what he did here, I could attempt a few things wherever I was.
Then I went away to high school and college. When I came back, it was only to pass through. It wasn’t until the end of college and into my adult life (and the temptation to put adult in quotes is almost overwhelming) that I noticed my hometown had become much cooler than I was. I couldn’t come home and regard my roots with the sort of condescending pity one finds in coming of age memoirs--the desks in one’s old school are so tiny, the once immense distances but a block, etc.
Brattleboro was now home to the Free Raoul Wallenberg Committee, well regarded writing groups, scads of massage therapists, even an Indian restaurant!
It continues: we have at least five yoga studios, three books stores, two record stores...well, I’m bragging. At a recent Gallery walk, on a beautiful evening in May, Main street was closed off to traffic. There were singers, belly dancers, circus performers, and from Circus Arts, based in Brattleboro. We had dinner at an authentic Mayan restaurant, Three Stones. It was scrumptious.
Yes, there is crime, and there are drugs. But they are everywhere. At least Bratt has drugs and bookstores; most small towns are not so lucky.
Someday I’ll understand how the diverse population of Brattleboro can work together so well. I don’t dare announce everyone works toward a shared vision. It may be something as basic as working toward visions that are more or less complementary.
I’m just trying to become as cool as my once very un-hip home town.
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