Legendry; Interview with Vrest Orton of the Vermont Country Store, Part 1 of 2

Good evening. This is the producer of legendary Frank Anthony. Welcome to the first of four programs by two legendary Vermonters. Tonight from Weston Vermont Mr. breast Orton almost as well-known as the country store itself. The third and fourth Saturdays of August feature John C. Lawson of Barrie Vermont a legendary figure who typifies not only the granite industry but a leader of the workers who kept the company store in business. Tonight. The keeper of the store Mr. Brest Orton. Can you remember very much about your grandparents Mr. Orcutt. Oh indeed I can because they both lived in until I was probably just 15 or 16 years old.

If you're talking about my paternal grandparents my grandfather oracular was a farmer. And he lived in a place called Greensboro bend up and Caledonia County. He was a small farmer and I often think that it couldn't be done today he probably never milked more than 40 hours. And yet he raised and sent five sons to school and they all became fairly successful. Today a farmer with 40 cows couldn't even make a living. He was a very good man and a deacon in the Baptist church and he lived a quiet life. My mother's father was quite a different person he or he was. Entrepreneur in a

century in this little town of North callus where my five grandfather had a country store. He not only ran a country store but he had a grist mill grind stone ground meal. He had a sawmill and he had an interest in a small wall and Mail in this little town. Oh there were probably two or three hundred people living there in the days this was nineteen hundred one thousand nine hundred and nineteen ten. And I was because of my this maternal grandfather that my father who had been born and had worked 10 miles north went to know as callous and went into partnership with my grandfather Teachout my mother's name and then they ran the country store in the gross mill and they saw mill and toll about 1910 or 12 when my father and grandfather sold out and my father went to Burlington

and I was all over. But it was this it was a stowaway. That provided many recollections of my year with because I was 12 years old when my fiver sold the pup ran out and left North collars and then arrest and thing about it was that it was 15 miles north of month period and the mail came up every night by a horse who had left Montpellier at a certain time and got the callus at 10 o'clock that night and every man without exception in the village spent all those evenings at the store waiting for the mail. And in those days nineteen from nineteen hundred and nineteen ten. Practically all of the old American were civil war veterans. And I remember sitting in the store and listening to them talk. One of the

interesting things that I found out later that one man whose name I've forgotten but he was the one who told all the great stories about the Civil War. According to him he had fought in every battle from both to wrap up Maddox and the other men chipped in a little but they didn't say much and I was only three or four years ago when I was doing research for a book that I am now writing on Mont that I found in Hemingway as a geyser tear which you know as a great source book of on history an account of the Civil War veterans of North callus and I found that the man who was telling all the stories enlisted and deserted in three months and never fought in many battles at all I see. This was when you were 10 or 12 years I was on there. I think you

mentioned in your book a very interesting book on the country stores that are. There are only about 5000 people in Montpelier back in those days. As I said it was an all day drive it was to get them on here 15 miles by a couple of horses and a buggy it would take. Well you would go take two or three hours as I recall you to a saw that people didn't go to Montpellier much in those days. Another thing I should add that that there were no. That the town of Khalis the village of North cowers y existed in in my youth just exactly the same as it had during the Civil War period. No electricity no telephone. That sort of thing. So I have a feeling that I have lived for about a hundred years because of that. Can you remember very much of significance about your early

education around that time. Well I went through the village school in north Kalus Weiss of ours. I musta gone I have a 3 1/2 year years and my father them moved to Burlington and took over a loud story there which is no longer there so I went through what we used to call grammar school and barely three and started high school in Burlington. I see. Was was the discipline there are very strict. Yes. If you didn't behave you're not only white doorway hand with a ruler but if you didn't behave well you were sent home. And your parents had to cope with you. I see. Who would you say was your single most. Significant influence at that particular point in your life would you say it was one of your grandparents your father I think it was my

grandfather my mother's father whose name was Teachout. I think so because I was the oldest of four sons. And when we lived in this little village of North Kalish my mother I think had I and four were three of the little boys. So I spent a great deal of time with my grandfather and grandmother who lived only a couple of doors away and I think I was influenced by him a great deal because after all he was in a sense a businessman. You say that your most significant memories were your. Your memories of your maternal grandfather. Yeah the mother's side. And how did he influence the reading material that you might have been doing at that time. I don't think he had any influence at that time because in the town of in the village of colors there was no librarian Margaret nobody had any books

but her. In Burlington I really spent half of my time reading books out of the public library there which was a very well stocked library so I really didn't begin to read it I guess until we left Callista and I was about 12 years old and I was in I didn't we had so much as I did later I read practically half the books in the Burlington public library when I was a kid. I just another kid to out. Playing. Basketball or whatever I was always reading. And what did you seem to be most drawn to as far as reading what I think history. Because they're my favorite books as are you with GA Handy's books which are always about various wars that were being conducted by the British Empire and those were the most

fascinating to me. Historic books. Yes. What are your early memories of your father and your mother. Oh my I would say that my father you know all of his business career was the most patient man I have ever known. He tolerated everything. And I had never known but I have a suspicion that the reason he sold out the store and property in North Kalus was that that he probably didn't collect over half of his bills and he wouldn't have ever done anything about that. He was so fond of people he never would bear down upon them to pay bills no matter how long they were due. That's my chief recollection of my fiver. My other recollection is that one time I did something when I was a kid that I thought now I would have thought that I know. What is something that's very

stupid. Well Mr. Orton as you recollect back over the years can you remember what led you into what attending college at Harvard University. Yes I can because in about 1930 and my father I moved to a place called Massachusetts manufacturing town. And there he built a beautiful department store. And in that time and I went to high school. And in high school I became editor of the high school paper and began to write for it and was very active and high score and they're OK. You don't major in anything in high school but English was my subject even in high school. And so I began to want to be a writer I want to I was in high school. And I think that's what led me to go to college. I was there to

have intercourse. The time that I had the greatest English faculty of any college in the country and the English faculty where I was headed by Mr. George Lyman Kittridge who as you know was one of the great to authorities on Shakespeare and Chaucer. The thing that I remember most about Harvard you were the great people that I was privileged to sit on. And I was just telling a friend of mine only yesterday up in the month period that he asked me Well what do you why did you think so much of the faculty at Harvard compared to what they have today. And I think I said that I guess due to the fact that those men were not only great. But they were mostly great teachers. They didn't spend all their time doing research and neglecting the students. The other thing I remember most is the fact that they had terrific authority the teachers did not

conduct dialogues with the students. And one particular thing I remember very bad and that Mr. Kittredge sat in a class in one of the he had made some statement as I recall. The statement I don't know what it is what it was but some one of the one of my classmates got up and mildly questioned Mr. Kittredge's statement. Whereupon Mr. Kittredge stood there and said. And I remember it verbatim. After 50 odd years young sir. If you have come to Cambridge to teach rather than to learn. I suggest you quit this campus forthwith. And that's the same as those are things that I remember. What what was your life like just after the Harvard years.

I went to California. And now at first I went to Mexico and I got tied up with the United States consular service in the west coast of Mexico where I stayed for a couple years. And then I went to Los Angeles and went into partnership with America and started my whole business career by having an advertising agency. And so that was a start of my interest in publishing an appetizer. And when I came back from World War 2 is when I went to college I should have mentioned that I didn't go to college until after we're doing well you see between the two wars and then after or after college. And after World War One was well out of the way. How did you what happened and how did you get into World War Two.

Well let's talk about before we get to that you know you might be interested in why I went to New York and what happened. Very much so. When I was in Los Angeles I had all my generation. Had to read the American Mercury nature and HL Mencken. It started about a year or so before I was in Los Angeles. So I was I still cherish it I have a paper indicating that I was a charter subscriber number thirty two I think. So I was much interested in Manc and I have to be in Los Angeles in this age to sit in a so I decided to take the bull by the horns and I went to New York cold to get a job on the American Mercury. And that now I look back was the most or dayshift thing I could think of because I knew very little I had no experience and magazine publishing. But lo and behold I got the job. And so I was wary

of Mencken for some time. In New York. How did you feel about New York when you got there. Oh I felt as if I had reached a new Viner I guess. Because in the 20s early 20s or the mid 20s it was the most exciting place in the world. It was just the time it was the beginning of a cycle of great artistic production not only in literatura but music painting and everything else and that sort of thing I feel happens every 70 years in this country. So I was very privileged to be connected with menkind. Working for the American my career and then I also became I was on the staff of the society or literature or for a couple of years and then I went back and worked for Alfred come out from the book publisher in Venice so

all those years I was privileged to know and meet their literary figures of the day and that inspired me to become a writer. So I started to write for publication in nineteen twenty six or seven. That was the beginning of my rural professional life is over. Where are you affected by the depression of that later period. Fortunately I seem to have got through the depression without any or any trouble. I was on I managed to keep on somebodies payroll most of the time. No I didn't suffer during the Depression as we went into the 1930s did you still continue to write. Yes you see that my first writing was as a bibliography of American first edition. I see

and I will vote many bibliographies in those days and publish one on third or Dr. Now all of which were gathered together in a book later. And so I and the in the mid twenties I became one of the authorities on first editions of American novelists. And so are nineteen twenty nine and eight or nine I conceived the idea. I started a magazine a book collector's magazine called the colophon. Which became a great success. I still am but not a great financial success. It went on for several years and I was one of the editors. And it was the first magazine to have a hide cover like the American heritage later had. And so they and that way through the colophon and beyond one of the

editors I became very close through many authors and began to write. What other things except bibliographic did you continue to write as you went into World War 2 or did you go into some other area. No I wrote a great many articles for magazines during the whole 20s and 30s. I never realized that I had written so many until five or six years ago a young woman who was taken to a degree in library science decided that she would do my bibliography so she came up with lists of magazine articles that I had written over the years that I had forgotten about. I suppose they were mostly mag articles about history of biography. I forgotten most of them.

But my first book was the book on Dreiser that I had published in 1929. And then you went into World War 2. Yes I was in the Ordnance Department in Philadelphia was doing public relations for one year and I was into the Pentagon and didn't get out of there until the summer of 1945. At that point you left Washington and you came back to Vermont. That's right. You see. There's a reason for that. I had come to Vermont in the mid 30s and bought a house and I lived here until World War Two making a living and writing. And also I was a consultant through or eight or 10 different colleges in New England like Dartmouth and so on. And also I raised money to build the first wing of the Mary Fletcher

hospital so I was doing all sorts of things and there was days and. After that I after a day at the end of World War true after V-J Day and V-E Day. Question No. Most people in the Pentagon was what what are we going to do when we go home and I had been dealing in the Pentagon I was deputy chief of a bureau which had charge of public relations for the settlement and terminations of war contracts. So I was dealing loudly they were a big industry in this country. During my whole time in the Pentagon. So naturally many of us who were so dealing with the industry got augurs over it. Excellent job in the Pentagon when the war was over we got offered as a job before we went home.

I see. So the temptation was to take one of these jobs and not come back to Vermont at all. So I figured out it was just merely a matter of bookkeeping. After the war was over in Japan and Europe everybody that was connected with this public relations department had or jobs offered them an industry doing public relations. And I figured that if I took one of those jobs it would probably I would be able to save 50 you know $20000 a year. And at the end of 10 years I would have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And then I could come back to Vermont and continue to be a writer. And it suddenly occurred to me that I if I lived in Chicago or New York or Akron Ohio or someplace like that

where I had jobs offered that at the end of 10 years I wouldn't be able to come back to Vermont because I'd be dead. So I decided to come back and restore my grandfather's and father's country store so I did well. What do you feel. I know there are many things that brought you back but what you feel is special about Vermont rather than other states of the Union. That's a good question I think mainly that Vermont still has. Still it is the one state that is more like aldermanic or want to live their states all the states were we in the 18th century. Having been born and raised here. I have a feeling that all our it's changed some in recent years. We still have a majority of the old fashioned type of people

that use the word hybrid all the other states. I might say that my definition of a monitor is based on what I thought about Calvin Coolidge who was frugal but not stingy. Frugal person is one who does not waste anything. A stingy person is the one who does not spend anything. So Mr Coolidge probably my grandfather was frugal with everything including wood. And I think that describes what I want is the best of any way I can. However I am very lucky because I have lived in so many different places and found out. Well I don't want to live. But I'm very I feel that I am very lucky to be privileged to live in Vermont. During the last part of my life.

Well considering this Mr. Orton as we wind up this first program of your two part series I would like to know if there isn't some advice that you could give to our young people who are coming along here in Vermont. Yes I can. I often do in fact I talk to a lot of young people who come here and they say we want to live in Vermont but we can't make up my mind how to make a living. And then others say to me Well we'd like to live in Vermont but we can't afford it we're going to work for about 20 years to save money and then we can live in Vermont. Although other people seem to think that Vermont is don't do any work they're all on a vacation and you have to have money so you don't have to do any work if you have come here. And I tell them all that the point is that we work like everybody else and if they want to live in Vermont they have to work. And what we want in Vermont to people who are willing to work live here take part in the life of the state the community the county

and make a contribution to life in Vermont and not come here and just think that they're going to live the life of Riley and never have to work anymore. I one time years ago I wrote a forward to a book by an old doctor in Vermont who had been for forty five years ahead of the board which examined young doctors so they could pass an examination to practice in Vermont. And in his book he said that many of these young doctors would come to me and say Now doctor I have passed the board. Where is a good place to practice in Vermont. And the doctor would say young man you'll go where you want to have your life and practice there. The area over. The

last six. Years. This is Frank Anthony. Thanks for joining me and my guest country storekeeper rest Orton next Saturday. Part two. Of the legend behind the Vermont Country Store. A recording engineer was Joshua Landis. Good evening. Sure. You're. In. The world.