[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 146 (Monday, October 3, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6041-S6043]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO HOWARD FRANK MOSHER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, one of the great treasures of Vermont is 
Howard Frank Mosher. Mr. Mosher is a writer who knows and understands 
Vermont, and in books like ``Where The Rivers Flow North,'' he makes 
any Vermonter know they are home.
  A recent article in The Burlington Free Press by Sally Pollak speaks 
to the man he is, and I would like to take this opportunity to share 
this with the Senate.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, 
the article to which I referred.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                    [From the Burlington Free Press]

                    All Roads Lead to Kingdom County

                           (By Sally Pollak)

       (Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher has lived in the 
     Northeast Kingdom since 1964 and the region is character-like 
     in his books. Free Press Staff Writer Sally Pollak and Free 
     Press photographer Glenn Russell spent a day traveling the 
     roads in the north country with Mosher, listening to his 
     stories and discovering his sense of place.)
       Irasburg--The tan Nissan rolling down the dirt road in 
     Brownington came to a slow stop, and the man behind the wheel 
     surveyed the shallows and grooves of mud in front of him. The 
     place he wanted to go was on the far side of the mud pit, and 
     up a small hill that curved out of sight.
       Two men with trucks were on the other side of the mud 
     ravine. The Nissan driver left his car to approach the men. I 
     was in the

[[Page S6042]]

     back seat of the Nissan. Glenn Russell, a Free Press 
     photographer, had the front seat.
       Through the window, we watched the three locals talk mud, 
     and discussed if we'd try to forge the muddy road if we were 
     driving. No way, I said.
       Glenn said he might if he were Howard Frank Mosher, our 
     tour guide that day. Mosher knows the people and trucks 
     around here; he can always get a tow.
       Mosher, meanwhile, had made another arrangement.
       If he couldn't get to the other side of the mud, where 
     Margery Moore, 91, his longtime friend lives, then Moore 
     would come to him. One of the men Mosher had been talking to 
     was her son, Michael; he'd pick up his mother in his truck 
     and drive her through the mud to Mosher.
       While we waited for Moore to arrive, Mosher, 68, told us 
     stories. Delightful and engaging tales--warm and humorous, 
     with a north country bite. The kind of stories you might read 
     in his Kingdom County novels.
       And now here we were, deep in the Northeast Kingdom on 
     Moore Lane in Brownington, waiting to meet a woman of Mohawk 
     ancestry, whom Mosher got to know 47 years ago, his first 
     year in the Kingdom.
       She showed up in a big blue rig to say hello. Her son 
     lifted her from his truck and helped her into a wheelchair. 
     Moore greeted Mosher with a hug.
       He gave her a copy of his most recent novel, ``Walking to 
     Gatlinburg.'' After some talking, we headed back to the 
     Nissan.
       Michael Moore called to us as we walked to the car: ``Don't 
     let Howard lead you astray out here!''
       To read Mosher is to be led, if not astray, then away--to a 
     place that is, at once, invented and familiar, enchanted and 
     real, made-up and true.
       The truth can be found in Mosher's evocation of the place 
     he calls Kingdom County, a rugged, rural border landscape 
     where people scratch out hardscrabble livings, go without 
     spring, learn to read the woods and rivers, build strong 
     allegiances and cast a wary eye on newcomers. Mosher's county 
     and the characters who inhabit it are informed by and created 
     from the landscape and people around him: He uses for his 
     material a place that is distinct and fascinating, yet one 
     that's been changing--maybe merging with outer and other 
     regions--even as Mosher put pen to paper: making it last.
       In Mosher's 1999 novel, ``The Fall of the Year,'' the 
     book's central figure, Father George Lecoeur, is writing ``A 
     Short History of Kingdom Common.'' Mosher, too, is the author 
     of a history of the Kingdom--his history is contained in the 
     thousands of pages that make up his 11 books.
       The words Mosher uses to describe ``A Short History,'' can 
     be applied to his own work. They are narrated by Frank 
     Bennett, Father George's adopted son, as Frank settles down 
     to read the history: ``I could hear Father George's voice in 
     my head, hear its slightly speculative, wry resonance. And at 
     that moment, whatever else I still did not understand about 
     the events of the past summer, I realized that long after the 
     passing of the hill farms and the big woods and Kingdom 
     Common as we had known it, these stories would remain: a 
     golden legacy, to me and to the village, from Father 
     George.''


                            A special place

       Mosher and his wife, Phillis, a retired teacher and school 
     counselor, have lived in the Northeast Kingdom since 1964. It 
     is where they raised their two children, Jake and Annie. 
     Advertisement I was like a kid in the backseat on a recent 
     drive to the hot spots of Mosher's adopted home turf.
       The kid thing involved a surprise and recurring attack of 
     carsickness: no fun! On the upside, it meant that as a 
     passenger of Mosher's, even a newcomer from Burlington, I was 
     given a free pass to the Kingdom, embraced by the old timers 
     on Moore Lane.
       Like a kid who (still) believes in the grownups up front, I 
     saw the world through the eyes and observations of the 
     driver--which thankfully transcended my own hazy vision. As 
     we pulled out of the driveway of his Irasburg home, not far 
     from the town green, Mosher enticed us. First stop, he said, 
     was a place he'd had an ``epiphany.''
       What and where it was, we'd find out when we arrived at the 
     scene: Orleans' sleepy main street. This is going to be a fun 
     trip, I thought. Anyone who can have an epiphany in downtown 
     Orleans, is the right person to ride with.
       The street was deserted the day Mosher steered his 
     grandfather's Super 88 Oldsmobile into town. He and Phillis, 
     farm kids from upstate New York barely in their 20s, were in 
     Orleans to interview for teaching jobs.
       The Kingdom quiet was busted that day by two rough-looking 
     drunks in fisticuffs, fighting their way down the otherwise 
     empty street. Mosher rolled down his window to speak a 
     sentence that revealed the budding wordsmith within: ``Could 
     one of you gentlemen please tell me how to get to the high 
     school?''
       We'll do you one better, promised the brawlers. We'll take 
     you there. With a welcome from Mosher, they climbed into the 
     backseat of the Oldsmobile and directed the teaching recruits 
     to the school.
       ``I was beginning to get the idea we had come to a special 
     place,'' Mosher said. Just how special, was soon to be 
     revealed: After the gentlemen disembarked from Mosher's car, 
     Phillis turned around to peek at the two. She saw they had 
     started punching each other again, and suggested Mosher take 
     a look.
       ``Well, honey,'' she said. ``Welcome to the Christly 
     Kingdom.''


                   Reciting Frost at a covered bridge

       Kingdomy words like Christly--if there's another word like 
     Christly--were flowing from the front seat, sprinkling my way 
     that day.
       Gool, Glenn said. What is that word?
       It's a dam, Mosher said.
       At least he thinks it is, and that's how he uses it. He 
     picked it up from the locals many years ago; people talk 
     about taking a walk to the gool after supper.
       What about carcajou? Glenn asked.
       ``Wolverine,'' Mosher replied.
       We talked about poems and poets and novels and writing that 
     day in the car--and outside it, too.
       At a covered bridge in Coventry, which Mosher noted with 
     appreciation was set afire after it received historic 
     designation, we talked about Kingdom colors and seasons, 
     poised for change. The novelist recited a poem by Robert 
     Frost: Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.
     Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour.
     Then leaf subsides to leaf.
     So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day.
     Nothing gold can stay.
       Switching tenor and tone, Mosher launched into a story of a 
     Depression era whiskey runner and friend who, fleeing the 
     law, missed the curve at the bridge and wound up in the 
     river. He hid in the river while the feds passed by on the 
     bridge above, satisfied his thirst, and finally made his way 
     to Barre.
       Stories like these, which Mosher heard from Kingdom old-
     timers and which still give him a kick, persuaded Mosher he 
     had found his living and writing place. (``Imagine if 
     Faulkner got here first,'' he said.)


                       Wise people of the Kingdom

       Mosher found, in the woods and village, not just stories, 
     but wisdom and guidance and important friendship--in 
     particular from two people. As a pair, the two are as 
     improbable as Mosher's talking turtle or spire-climbing 
     tomboy.
       James Hayford, who died in 1993 at age 79, was a 
     Montpelier-born poet who settled in Orleans, where he had a 
     teaching career. Hayford studied poetry with Robert Frost at 
     Amherst College, and captured the life of his village in 
     verse.
       The memory of meeting Hayford, at a teachers' party in 
     Orleans, is as vivid as the day his kids were born, Mosher 
     said. Hayford, a scholar of Vermont, assured Mosher he would 
     find his voice as a novelist.
       Frost had assured Hayford he would find his poet's voice, 
     Mosher said.
       From Moore, a close friend, he heard real life stories of 
     traveling in a boxcar with a menagerie of animals, of cooking 
     in a lumber camp and waitressing in a dance hall. He heard a 
     different voice assure him he'd find his way.
       After her first marriage fell apart, Moore allowed herself 
     to cry only after her sow's 13th--and final--piglet was born.
       ``Margie, my girl,'' she said to herself. ``What have you 
     done with your life?''
       ``And she told me that right when I was trying to figure 
     out what to do with mine,'' Mosher said.
       In their ways, characterized by a fierce independence of 
     mind, Hayford and Moore are among the great people he has 
     known, geniuses to some degree, Mosher said.
       ``They could've gone anywhere, done anything and been 
     anything including president of the United States,'' Mosher 
     said.
       ``What they wanted to do was live in the Northeast 
     Kingdom.''
       Mosher spoke wise words of his own that day from the front 
     seat. After asking if we'd like to stop for lunch at 
     McDonald's--holy moley! McDonald's in the land of the 
     localvores and I'm carsick!--Mosher said something I've 
     passed on to my daughter.
       He told Glenn and me he's never known a person who pursued 
     an interest in the arts and regretted it.
       But he could think of many people who turned away from 
     artistic interests and talents, and did.


                         Go back while you can

       Teachers' pay wasn't so great in Orleans back in 1964, 
     Mosher discovered not long after the drunk brawlers guided 
     him to the school. By then, however, he'd had his first 
     Kingdom epiphany--and that was clearly worth something.
       Still, the working plan was to teach a few years, save 
     money and go to graduate school. Was it possible on a salary 
     of $4,100, and less than that for Phillis? Sensing hesitation 
     from the teaching recruits from upstate New York, the 
     superintendent asked the couple if they fished. When they 
     answered yes, he took them to the Barton River.
       The trout were jumping that spring day, making their way up 
     river.
       ``I looked at Phillis, she looked at me,'' Mosher said. The 
     sight of the fish jumping the falls persuaded them to move to 
     Orleans. They accepted the teaching jobs, and taught for a 
     few years before moving to California, where Mosher planned 
     to get his master's of fine arts in writing. He scrapped that 
     plan after eight days, long enough for a truck driver to pull 
     up to the Moshers' car at Hollywood and Vine in L.A., and 
     deliver a message on seeing their green license plates. ``I'm 
     from Vermont, too,'' the trucker driver

[[Page S6043]]

     said. ``Go back while you still can.'' The stories Mosher 
     wanted to tell were rich and ready and far from Hollywood and 
     Vine. ``I cut myself off from all my material before I 
     understood it well enough to write about it,'' Mosher said. 
     They headed home; Mosher to write, Phillis to teach. ``We 
     knew right away we had found a gold mine of stories,'' Mosher 
     said. ``And we found out nobody had written them. I couldn't 
     believe it. It took me 15 years or so to begin to figure out 
     how to do it.''
       Much of his first novel, ``Disappearances,'' was written in 
     the library/opera house in Derby Line, a granite and brick 
     building that straddles the U.S.-Canada border. Mosher would 
     place half his chair in the U.S., and half in the foreign 
     country, when he wrote. He sometimes got such a kick from his 
     own work, he created a disturbance. Or so the librarian 
     thought. ``I would burst into gales of laughter with each new 
     outrageous passage,'' Mosher recalled. `` ` Mr. Mosher,' he 
     was warned, if you can't control yourself, we will have to 
     ask you to leave.' ''


                     Keep the kids out of the mill

       Talking in hushed library tones in the dual nation reading 
     room where he wrote Disappearances,'' Mosher said he was 
     amusing himself during the writing of the book. ``But I was 
     also in a state of desperation,'' he said. ``There's a degree 
     of desperation about the writing.''
       Decades later, Mosher is amused by the response to 
     ``Disappearances'' of Wallace Stegner, the famous novelist 
     who lived in Greensboro. Stegner read Mosher's book to write 
     a possible blurb for the cover.
       Stegner, the story goes, didn't get too far before 
     crumpling up the manuscript and throwing it in the fire, 
     announcing: ``This book is a hymn to irresponsibility.''
       ``I didn't know enough to use it,'' Mosher said.
       Mosher drove us past the place in Irasburg that would serve 
     as a springboard for perhaps his best known story: the house 
     where a black minister was living in the summer of 1968, when 
     his home was shot at. The racial shooting, which came to be 
     called the Irasburg Affair, informed Mosher's 1989 novel, ``A 
     Stranger in the Kingdom.''
       We visited, too, a place that will figure in the book 
     Mosher is writing. His forthcoming novel also has a black man 
     as a central character: Alexander Twilight, believed to be 
     the first black person in the country to graduate from 
     college (Middlebury, 1823).
       We walked outside the wonderful stone schoolhouse, 
     reminiscent of the Middlebury campus, Twilight designed and 
     built on a quiet plateau in Brownington. Twilight was 
     principal of the school, and a minister and state legislator.
       ``He had a dream,'' Mosher said of Twilight.
       ``There's no doubt about it.''
       When the Moshers started teaching in Orleans, they were 
     instructed by the district superintendent to ``keep the kids 
     out of the mill.'' The administrator was referring to the 
     Ethan Allen furniture factory, which appears in Mosher's 
     novels as American Heritage.
       Mosher, whose first apartment was next to the mill, said he 
     heard the words ``keep the kids out of the mill; keep the 
     kids out of the mill'' rise in rhythmic chant from the 
     plant's vents outside his window.
       It is unlikely the long-ago superintendent, issuing that 
     directive, had in mind the manner by which Mosher would 
     fulfill the mandate. But any Kingdom kid who has found his 
     way to Mosher's novels, is transported to a place that is 
     true to the mill, and the river nearby, yet worlds apart and 
     away.

                          ____________________