The Events of Thursday, September 30, 2010

          We awoke around 7:15 this morning in a very cold RV. We had slept the entire night with all of the windows wide open and none of us wanted to budge an inch out of our cozy beds. Daddy, back from his morning walk, turned on the heater and the day began. We ate a breakfast of cold cereal and talked about our crazy dreams of wood hogs and beavers, school, children, strange cities, and juggling cheese knives. We unhooked Harvey from our beautiful campsite in the Brookwood RV Resort in New York, and drove down to the campsite’s showers where we enjoyed clean, hot showers in contrast to the already cold, rainy, and disgustingly muddy day. Once we were all clean, we discovered that we finally had Wi-Fi after having none for the last two days. So we sat in the campground for a while longer, checking e-mails and posting blogs. When we finally got caught up with the world, we headed out into the fall colors and started towards Vermont.

          We drove for almost an hour and were then welcomed into Vermont. We stopped at a rest stop, used the facilities, and got some information on the sights to see in Vermont and then headed back to the road and continued on our way. We drove through the rain and misty fog on a “scenic route” through the fall colors on the rolling hills that surrounded us in every direction. We viewed quaint houses and churches while listening to “Pictures of an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker". We pulled off for lunch by a little community center that had picnic tables and shelters amidst the fields and trees. But there was no way that we were going to get out of the car into the now hard driving rain. So, instead, we stayed cozy inside the RV, while we ate bread, pepperoni, Vermont white cheddar cheese and New York apples.

          Once we were satisfied, we drove on until we reached the Bennington Museum, an art museum. We strategically entered the pouring rain, running straight to the front door of the museum and not stopping to read the captions for the numerous statues outside the museum. We hung up our dripping wet coats in the coat closet (something you don’t get in California) and then headed into the gift shop to purchase our tickets for the self guided tour of the museum. We received stickers for entry and then entered the gallery. The first gallery featured paintings by Anna Mary Moses, more commonly known as Grandma Moses; a painter who became famous in her late 70’s for her landscape paintings. We looked at Grandma Moses’ paintings which we later decided, reminded all of us of our Great-Grandmother Sylvia Knickelbein’s paintings. We saw a video of an interview of Grandma Moses, filmed in 1955 and in it she talked about her life and works and even about when, as a young child, she had learned of President Lincoln’s assassination! When we heard this, we all looked at each other in amazement, thinking, “This lady’s ancient!” But her artwork is very detailed and beautiful. We then viewed a gallery of a modern artist whose paintings represented mortality in nature and then reentered the world of Grandma Moses. We viewed the schoolhouse where Grandma Moses, her grandchildren, and great children all attended. There were “of the time” props and classroom supplies. We played checkers on old wooden sets, spun tops, tossed hoops, and tried on old fashioned hats. In the schoolroom were old fashioned desks, slates and quill pens. There was even a list of rules for teachers and rules for students. We laughed to see that if Daddy had taught back then he would have had to prepare the quill pens for his students and would have only been allowed to spend one evening a week courting, two evenings if he attended church. Teachers were also encouraged to set aside some of their earnings for retirement, so they wouldn’t be a burden to society in their old age and IF they did a good job, after five years they would receive a raise of 25 cents a week. We left the Grandma Moses gallery and then viewed a gallery on Vermont’s history, specifically the Battle of Bennington. The British had planned to divide the rebellious colonies into three parts, seeking to separate the rest of the colonies from the main “trouble-makers” in New England. It was the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont that aided in this rout of the enemy. The exhibit also celebrated the guns that were made in Vermont that helped aid the Americans to win their freedom from Britain. It also featured a wall size painting of the aftermath of the Battle of Bennington, painted in the 1930’s by an artist commissioned through FDR’s WPA program. Only there were a few historical inaccuracies, most notable was a black man on a horse leading a group of prisoners. That was idealist 1930’s thinking and would have never happened during Revolutionary War times.

          Then, we walked upstairs to some more galleries, featuring a sofa bed made out of quarters, grandfather clocks, an old fashioned town car, quilts, statues and paintings done during the 1700s, and artifacts of the Revolutionary War times. The next few rooms were filled with pottery, china, glass art, and woodworking. Some highlights were a flag flown on August 16, 1777, an entire necklace of heavy glass circles, and a large glass bubble with flowing colors within. There was an entire corner room devoted to pottery. On the wall, Mom found a scavenger hunt for the room and in teams of Caitlin and Abby, and Ben and I (Lindsey), we raced to finish the hunt. Ben and I won by just a little bit. After this, we used the museum’s facilities and then looked at the statues outside in the now misty drizzle. But, by the time we reached the car, the rain came down full blast again and we all ran inside the RV for cover.

          We drove on through Vermont, seeing more fall foliage and quaint little towns and farms. About a half hour before dinner time, we pulled off the road into a pull off. We held a math meeting to discuss how we would fit math into our lives on the road. We completed a geometry level worksheet while Mom prepared dinner. When we finished, we sat down to a satisfyingly warm meal of mustard chicken, rice, and acorn squash. For dessert, we finished off the cherry flavored Jell-O that Caitlin had prepared the night before. We drove on to our stop for the night, boondocking in a Wal-Mart parking lot and settled down to sleep with the rain still pounding on the roof and trains frequently clattering down the tracks fifty yards away from our heads.