Vergennes Union High School - Blue and White Yearbook (Vergennes, VT)

Page 13 text:

BLUE AND WHITE 11 The Welsh in Fair Haven usually speak English, but when they don’t, their language is nothing that anyone can understand. Second is its effect on the landscape. Nobody can call a pile of waste slate pretty, but to a homesick quarrier it looks comforting. Besides, on some of the older piles, adventurous birch trees and a few blades of grass manage to wrest a living from the loose rock, and eventually Vermont will have a range of low hills in addition to the Green Mountains. (Juarries also leave holes in the ground. These become filled with water, and make excellent, if dangerous swimming holes. They’re practically bottomless, and some of the larger ones have been stocked with fish. Recently people have evolved the practice of sur- VERMONT MADE Although Vermont is a great winter recreation center, it can be made a greater one. Officials predicted that Stowe could not have handled all its visitors had we had a normal winter in 1936. In 1936 Vermont collected 500 visitors per snow train on the average. Imagine 500 people suddenly barging into a town of 1600 people with two or three hundred visitors already there! And this was on a poor winter week-end. Vermont is becoming the American Switzerland to hundreds of skiers from the cities— skiers from all ages—six to sixty. If other towns with skiing possibilities and many have them—constructed runs and tows, the already overcrowded towns would be relieved of their surplus and all would be benefited at the facing dirt roads with waste slate. This is hard on tires until the stone breaks up, but it’s better than mud and gives the roads a beautiful green or blue color. Lastly I want to tell about the Pencil Mill. I his was located in the general neighborhood of Hubbardton in the days when chalk and paper were expensive luxuries. The Mill has been destroyed long since, but the site is st 11 marked by a large dummy. The Pencil Mill made pencils out of a very soft green slate that wouldn’t scratch blackboards. Imperfect ones were thrown into a pile outside and nowadays anyone who feels economical can go out there and dig himself some pencils. They are excellent for board work. Alfred Miller, ’38 RICH BY SKIERS? same time. Possibly the government could help the towns out by letting them use W. P. A. men and money to clear the runs. One part of the state, however, is decidedly unfavorable for ski resorts, namely—the Otter Creek Valley. When it is snowing in Bolton and Stowe, it is raining in the Otter Valley. Experts say that the river valleys are generally too warm for good skiing. This accounts for the lack of snow at some of the Middlebury College carnivals in recent years. All in all, Vermont already has some fine developments in some districts, but it has a large number of undeveloped sights which could be made profitable. David Smith, ’38

Page 12 text:

10 VERGENNES HIGH SCHOOL BUENA VISTA “Well, Henry, we’re here at last. Oh, he careful, you nearly ran into that tree! Oh clear! A poor little fern—all crumpled up. What?—It is too a fern. After all these years a member of the Women’s Horticulture Club. I ought to know a fern when I . . . did you say dandelion greens? Really. Henry, I’m sure I would have noticed it anyway. after all, I was a charter member of the Women's Hort-----Henry, were you laughing at me? I do wish you wouldn’t mumble like that. “Rrr-r—don’t you think it’s getting cold? Which box did you put our winter coats in? Yes. dear, you ‘told me so,' but after all. you’ll have to admit F was the one who remembered to lock the house up “Oh Henry! Isn’t it grand to be here! Just think—two whole weeks of pure enjoyment—no business—no telephones —no worries—no—Henry! Did you remember to tell the milkman not to stop? But I told you to! Fourteen bottles of milk just wasted. “Oh well—Let’s not worry. Let’s enjoy ourselves. Isn’t the lake lovely— and so romantic . . . Henry! Henry ! Where are you ? Oh there you are. Oh. no you don’t. You don’t go fishing yet, You’re going to help me unpack. ‘Lovely view’—humph! “Oh Hen, dear, I don’t remember putting this pail in, do you? . . . . Sometimes I think I might as well talk to a stonewall . . . hmm. This pail is heavy. Euk! doow! Oh my goodness ! What in the world! There, out vou go—you—you worms! HENRY, DON’T SHOUt AT ME. I was merely emptying that pail of dirt. “Henry, we’ve forgotten the knives and forks. Don’t stand there looking at me like that. Say something. Go over to that camp and borrow some right away . . . Heavens! My freckle cream spilled all over Henry’s socks. Whew I’m tired. I might as well write a card to Grace—she expects it. Let’s see—‘Dear Grace, having a swell time. Wish you were here—Mable and Henry !’ There— “Oh dear, why doesn’t Henry come back. Sometimes I wish we had never-— “Oh there you are. Why Henry— what ARE you grinning about? Tell me the good news quick! What—two of them? And they play bridge!? Oh Henry!” Jeannette Graves. ’37 SLATE Scotch Hill Road is a small road labeled “Legal load limit 20.C00 pounds” running out of Fair Haven toward West Castleton. If you drive along it. you will notice one thing in particular, piles and piles of waste slate, a lopsided derrick with maybe a pair of rusty tackle blocks protruding from the top of each—crude monuments to a mighty industry. I believe that Vermont stands second or third in world production of slate; that Fair Haven is the one place where one can get a real unfading green slate in the whole world, but that is neither here nor there. What I want to do is take up some unimportant but rather interesting phases of the slate industry. First of these is its effect on the people. Slate miners are, for some mysterious reason, Welsh. That gives a slate-quarrying town a different atmosphere from any other. The Welsh are a quiet people, slow to anger, and tough as the beefsteak I cooked myself. They have magnificent singing voices. In their own churches, they often sing unaccompanied, and the sound is something you’ll never hear elsewhere, and never forget.

Page 14 text:

12 VERGENNES HIGH SCHOOL Road to tunnels underground quarries. West Rutland, Vt. VERMONT’S MARBLE INDUSTRY Geologists claim that at one time the whole Green Mountain area, from the lower St. Lawrence to the present site of New York City, was all under water. Then it was that all the shell fish and lime-producing animals began the work of building marble beds. Ages 'afterward, when the layers of stone were well covered wth clay and mud, there came a wrinkling of the earth’s crust, which displaced the water with mountains and valleys, and gave to the Atlantic a new shore line. Thus was Vermont marble formed and buried in the earth. For centuries it lay undisturbed. Before the Revolutionary War, the first marble slab was split from Vermont ledges, and it straightway became in great demand for fireplaces. Shortly afterward, someone cut the first Vermont marble tablet and paved the way for a thriving local business. In 1870, the Vermont Marble Company was organized. When a quarry hunter finds a spot where the signs are promising, the first thing he does is to call for the coring machine. A cylinder of stone two or