Maple Syrup

Greetings Everyone.
I have been lurking for a few months, but that condition is about to change by virtue of the following, which while incomplete, represents the first chapter of a novel in progress.
Cheers
Ted

Maple Syrup. It's hard to believe, but that was at the root of everything that happened in Four Chimney's Vermont. Everything that was sweet and right. Everything that was sour and wrong. That's just the way it was.
Old timers, (there are still a few real one's left) will tell you that's the way it's always been.
"Been that way as long I can remember"
Others, those who were young enough to fight in WW 2 generally agree with their elders, occasionally with some modification:
"More snow, way back when...deeper, whiter, colder.
"That's it? That's the only difference?"
"Yep, that's about it."
Of course, Four Chimneys was not unlike any other town whose economy was tied to one specific industry. In Gloucester, it was fish, In Bethlehem. steel and so the story goes.
But maple syrup? The cold hard facts were these: Most sap suckers in Four Chimneys, were hard working, god fear'n pioneers. Up and out early, and out they stayed until the very last rays of the sun cast no more shadows, and the snow began to crunch under the weight of their boots. And if they were lucky, the warmth of mid day might have permitted the maple sap to run freely ..for a while. Long enough to fill a few pails with the sweet brown blood that for them was life...as much as that which throbbed through their very veins.
Yes, those long cold snowy days of winter, when the deer tracks and foot prints of yesterday were gone, re-filled smothered and smoothed with fresh fallen snow, and the cold was too much for the brown blood and if you hit your tap hard...hard into the maple bark, it was fruitless for the fruit was stubborn and the wind was cold and life was hard.
Then, sometime, around mid April, when the light was just right, you'd see swarms of the tiniest winged creatures, spinning in spirals, darting back in forth, going nowhere but non-the less performing an invaluable service for the people of Four Chimneys Yes, it was the dance of spring and they rang the inaudible bell that only the maple trees could hear.
So by the time May rolled around, the sap was warm and thin and completely in compliance with the forces of gravity. And the giant Silver Maples were in all their glory and gushed forth with their sweet nectar and filled pail after pail. And no one could remember the cold hard winter anymore and the grass was so green and the daffodils so yellow, the people of 4 Chimneys wiped white and gray from their memories. And if they tried, very hard, they could almost say the word "winter." But it wasn't easy.

But what to do with all that sap? The fires burnt bright with orange and the syrup was boiled and skimmed and cooled and boiled again and strained and filtered and poured into cans and bottles and molds and stored on old cedar shelves. And next fall there would be syrup and maple candy and brown-frosted doughnuts and Four Chimneys Vermont Grade A would be on the labels and medium amber would be the color of choice and the price would read $22.00 for a half gallon and $6.00 for 2 pints and maple Syrup would be on the lips of the locals and tourists alike...and everyone who passed through that 3 light town would know, well before they reached that 3rd light exactly what Four Chimneys was about. How could they not? Even if you absolutely loathed, despised Maple syrup...as if anyone could, you couldn't help but stop at our general store...Nope, people would actually pass it and then, as if some invisible hand had reached out and grabbed them, they'd turn around, sometimes they'd be a mile out of town...it didn't much matter, the lure of that country store would pull them back. The beautiful sound of that bell jingling on the door the delicate and intricate inlay's on that old brass latch...oh and the floor. Those wide, dark brown pine planks, almost exactly the same color of that wondrous raw maple sap... dappled throughout with those flattened silvery nail heads.
Oh I know what you're thinking…. you've been in other country stores before, you seen the apothecary jars filled with candy, seen the antique bronze cash resisters, but I'll bet you anything you've never experienced anything like the splendor and dignity of this place. Just to listen to that floor creak... such sweet music, the Stradivarius of floor creaks that's what it was. Mrs. Swift, she's a widow now, been a widow for as long as most can remember but, there I go, painting a syrupy tapestry of Four Chimneys...when the truth was and is colder, crueler more human...more inhuman than maybe I should admit, than maybe you want to hear but maybe that's why we're here maybe that's why Four Chimneys is so intriguing...Could it be, just maybe that we all come from Four Chimneys.
But as I said before, there I go again, rambling when I should be introducing the narrator. But first, maybe you want to know a little about me.

My name is Carolyn Beach. Ask around town, they'll tell ya the Beaches have been inhabiting these parts for close to 150 years…I'm a 5th generation 4 Chimmney-er. My father, a doctor like his father, recently died at the age of 78, yet unlike Grandfather, Dad wasn't your stereotypical country physician. No, there was a lot more to his practice than delivering babies and signing death certificates Carl Beach was a noted surgeon. His skill with the scalpel took him far away from the shingle he hung outside our house after graduating from Medical School…5 years before I was born in 1958. And far away from me and mom and my older sister Jean.

My mother, who is proud to share her name with me, is thankfully alive still, but she misses Dad and pines for him. Sometimes I see her tending to the circle of flowers in the bed that surrounds Dad's Shingle Post. She says nothing, but if you look carefully you can see her lips moving ever so slightly, and there is a smile, faint though it is, yet in her heart I imagine it's as bright as the midday sun.

Everyone always says that Jean and I look more like Mom's sisters than her children. I guess we inherited Dad's lankiness, but all the rest came from Mom. Her long yet thin blond hair, fair complexion, pug nose and full mouth complete with the smallest teeth you've ever seen were all passed down to us. And true, though rare, neither my sister or me have ever had a cavity. Not a one.

Oh you must forgive me, I never shut up, I can't help it, my mind just races constantly?-one thought after another in rapid fire. You'll hear more about the Beaches as the story progresses, but now I must introduce Thomas. I can tell you, you're very lucky to have such a fabulous gentleman as your chief storyteller. Thomas is true to his word, never exaggerates and has a special way with words that most people don't. I know I don't.

One footnote. Thomas is blind, always has been and like Dad used to say: "Always will be." It's really not that important, but I thought you ought to know. So bye for now, we'll meet again. Here's Thomas…

Thomas was the name given to me by Mrs. Whipple. Never knew what, if any name my birth mother gave me and even if she had and I learned later that I was a Jim or a Paul, I'd still go by the name Mrs. Whipple picked out.
Even though she raised me from a pup, I was never quite comfortable calling her Mom or Mother or anything other than that. Her first name was Sarah, but it just ain't proper or fitting for a child to call his guardian by her first name. Not by my reckoning anyway.

Mrs. Whipple found me, just like you hear bout on the TV, well not exactly, not wrapped in a blanket on the hospital doorstep, heck the closest thing to a hospital here in 4 Chimneys is Doc Beach's house, and she'd have no business being way up in that part of town, unless she was ailing and as long as I knew that woman she never had even the slightest cold, a touch of arthritis maybe, but I can tell ya, if the Beach's had to depend on folks like Mrs. Whipple for their income, they'd all be on welfare today.