Sep
18
2024

Where Did Summer Go?

by Gary Sanderson

Towering cornfields obscure roadside sightlines, purple loosestrife and goldenrod color marshes and scalped-hayfield rims, festive midways are clogged, and Labor Day has passed.

Autumn is here. Wow! Where did summer go?

Not complaining. Fall has for many decades been my favorite season – ever since I hung up my spikes, glove and bat from the old American pastime that begins in spring, the season of optimism, mischievous youthful exuberance and nesting.

Now, with the crack of the bat far in my rearview, even my passion for the upland bird-hunting game that replaced it has greatly diminished. Attribute that to physical wear and tear brought by stubborn refusal to heed orthopedic surgeons’ warnings about my battered left knee and other things. Even with my trusty, old, 16-gauge, Jean Breuil side-by-side back in action – thanks to the People’ Republic of Montague Center’s gunmaker extraordinaire, Richard Colton – it’s not the same.

But why go there? Aging’s inevitable, and swamp-busting is not forever. I accepted that reality long ago. These days, I satisfy my strong hunting instinct by chasing information instead of pheasant, grouse and woodcock, turkeys and deer, trout and shad. It’s no less fulfilling. Same game, different playing field.

But why digress? Back to fall’s arrival.

It seems like yesterday I was watching and writing about that great horned owl nest up the road. Now those nestlings peering down at me from their temporary April home in a dead white pine are casting large, predatory shadows as they swoop down to my lawn for rabbits, squirrels and whatever else tickles their dietary fancy. So far, they’ve spared an animated black squirrel I’ve been watching since spring. While I do hope that little critter escapes those owls’ talons, I sure do wish they’d get a grip on those damn chipmunks that have thus far robbed me of every last one of my Roma tomatoes as they ripen.

I keep waiting for the pilfering to stop. The bold little rodents that have been staying just out of reach since spring are industrious, indeed. Secretive, too. They climb two tomato stalks tied to a 10-foot rebar pole pinned to my barn wall and, starting at the nippled base, devour the oblong tomatoes, leaving only a stem and thin cap. It’s annoying, to say the least. What remains resembles an inverted mushroom.

It’s a problem I’ve coped with for a few years now. I savor those heirloom tomatoes, whose storied past date back to the garden of an infamous Springfield mobster gunned down in the Mount Carmel Club parking lot. Ideal for spaghetti sauce and quick, stovetop marinara, they’re versatile and ain’t bad atall in salads, BLTs and whatever else you choose to use them for. Unlike Big Boys and other popular garden varieties, the seeds from this dense, meaty fruit don’t squirt out the side and onto your shirt when biting into a thick sandwich.

Chipmunks apparently appreciate them, too. Which reminds me. It was just this summer that I finally figured out they were the culprit. My neighbor told me chipmunks were eating her tomatoes, too In the past I had suspected squirrels and more so woodchucks, which seem to find their way to my property, taking refuge in the barn cellar, below the woodshed outhouse, and the crawlspaces under the front stone terrace and my home’s 18th-century western wing.

The last woodchuck I saw in my yard was way back in early April. So, I must assume something killed it. Maybe a neighbor’s domestic dog, a coyote, bobcat, fisher or, hey, perhaps even a great horned owl feeding its young. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the so-called tiger of the Northwoods is capable of killing a woodchuck.

Other than that, it was an unusually quiet summer on the wildlife-sighting front. Far fewer deer on my daybreak walks around the Upper Meadows of Greenfield, and no sign of bears since that close spring encounter I reported a couple of months ago. Plus, curiously, I have not seen a turkey here in months, none of the typical summer hens and broods I’m accustomed to seeing. I still suspect those great horned owls may have something to do with that.

Which doesn’t mean deer, bears and turkeys have dwindled in my wildlife-friendly neighborhood. Just that I, personally, haven’t seen as many as usual. Sometimes there’s no explanation for such things. Luck of the draw, perhaps?

Just the other day at the coffee shop I spoke to a fella I often bump into in the morning. He told me he had in recent days seen at least 10 deer, including a big, handsome buck in a field where I used to walk daily with my gun dogs. The sighting occurred a quarter-mile or so from the southern perimeter of my morning walk. So, the deer are never far away, whether or not I happen to see them.

My friend and near neighbor agrees with me that he’s seen fewer deer and turkeys in his expansive backyard thus far this year. Yes, he’s seen occasional deer and a few turkeys, but nothing of note compared to previous summers. That said, he did tell of his nextdoor neighbors returning from their Maine camp a couple of months ago and discovering bear damage to a birdfeeder and a vulture nibbling at something along the wood line.

Upon closer investigation the following day, one of the homeowners investigated the scene and found the picked-over remains of a fawn’s hindquarter. What killed it is anyone’s guess. The bear? A bobcat? Fisher? Coyotes? Then again, perhaps it was roadkill scavenged in a safe place.

That’s all for now. We’ll see what the leaf-peeping, woodstove season brings.

posted in Columns | No Comments

Aug
17
2024

Falls River Has Become Fall River

by Gary Sanderson

A sharp, irritating, old thorn again found its way to my paw recently, placing me on a path I have previously traveled but never discussed in print.

I guess now is the time to go there. So, let’s venture off on a little discovery mission to set the record straight and put a vexing question in the rearview. I’ll try to keep it tight.

The topic is a trout stream that rises in the hills of Guilford, Vermont. Its path then meanders through Bernardston meadows, divides Greenfield and Gill, flows under Route 2 through the Factory Hollow gorge, and empties into the Connecticut River below the Turners Falls dam.

What we’re searching for is its proper name: Is it Fall River, or Falls River?

This issue has for me been a personal source of journalistic uncertainty for nearly a half-century. Whether writing about the stream from a fishing or historical perspective – both of which offer many interesting tendrils – my goal has always been to name it right. The problem is that the spoken word confuses matters, tangling the answer in doubt.

Which brings us to my most recent stumbling block, which popped up unexpectedly during map research unrelated to the Connecticut River tributary itself. It was just there, running down the periphery.

I was at the time attempting to plot the path through my Greenfield neighborhood of the so-called Seven-Mile Line, which had established Deerfield’s 12-mile western boundary in 1717. Viewing an 1894 topographical map, I noticed that the stream marking the town’s eastern border was spelled “Falls River,” plural form. This discovery immediately stirred my curiosity, compelling a deeper dive to a modern topo map that named it Fall River, singular form.

Hmmmmm, I pondered. Did I really have to go down that road again?

I thought the question was settled decades ago, when I decided upon “Fall River” without the s at the end. I had to choose a spelling for the sake of consistency because I often named the stream in columns about trout fishing and pheasant hunting, not to mention various historical subjects, such as but not limited to the fabled May 19, 1676 “Falls Fight” of King Philip’s War fame.

Despite making my Fall River decision out of professional necessity decades ago, I have had many informal conversations over the years with local yokels who grew up on the river and use the plural form, “Falls River.” Although our slightly different pronunciations were glaring to me but rarely discussed, I to this day find it awkward.

Who was I to argue in favor of the singular form, Fall River, when community language in Turners Falls, Gill, and beyond seemed to favor the plural form, “Falls River”? It was their river. Not mine. I grew up fishing primarily Southern Franklin County trout streams in the Deerfield and Mill River watersheds. Not Fall River.

So, when I recently read “Falls River” on that 1894 topo map, I revisited the issue to clear the air of uncertainty after six years of retirement and a lighter writing workload. I wasn’t sure how thorough my earlier investigation had been.

It never hurts to double-check. My latest fact-checking process began online, where I looked at the list of Connecticut Valley District trout streams stocked by MassWildlife. There it was in bold black letters: “Fall River,” confirming what I had already seen on the modern topo map.

But I wasn’t done yet. I had to back it up with additional proof.

I went to my bookcase and dug out the published histories of the three Franklin County towns the stream in question flows through – Bernardston (Lucy Cutler Kellogg), Greenfield (Francis M. Thompson), and Gill (Ralph M. Stoughton). All three agreed on the singular “Fall River,” without the s.

Deerfield historian George Sheldon also chose the singular form, “Fall River,” in his History of Deerfield. Maybe the other three historians, who published their works slightly later than Sheldon, followed his lead. That will never be known.

Although it appeared the case was closed and no additional fact-checking was needed, there is a little wrinkle.

Fall River was most likely first encountered by colonial scouts and fur-traders during the second half of the 17th century, when Northampton, Hadley, and Hatfield were being settled, and the stream had an important indigenous name that has not survived. Then came ancient Deerfield, which began as an 8,000-acre grant in 1663 and was expanded to seven miles square in 1673 – adding acreage that included Deerfield Fishing Falls and what would become the towns of Greenfield and Gill during the second half of the 18th century.

Although it’s unknown precisely when Fall River was named by colonials, most likely the name evolved over time, starting with the descriptive stream entering the Connecticut River below the falls, to Falls River, to today’s Fall River.

It’s important to note that although Deerfield was expanded in 1673, the seven-miles-square parcel wasn’t mapped until 1717. So, the river probably had no official European name before 1717, and most likely acquired one years later, sometime after 1750 when southern Gill, then referred to as the “nook of the falls,” was being cleared for settlement.

Greenfield split off from Deerfield in 1753 and Gill split off from Greenfield in 1793, and by that time the plural “Falls River” was probably in universal use. Still today that old plural form is alive and well in community memory, and widely used by deep-rooted “townies” and those who converse often with them.

So, who am I to challenge them? Though I intend to continue using the accepted, official, modern singular form, “Fall River,” in print, I’ll readily accept the plural form in informal conversation. In fact, I’ll probably even use it myself to keep the conversation rolling.

posted in Columns, Local history | No Comments

Jul
30
2024

Locating First Encampment of Deerfield’s 1704 Captives

by Gary Sanderson

Although it’s probably too late to prove the location of an important colonial Greenfield landmark, it never hurts to ponder the possibilities.

The place under consideration is the first overnight encampment occupied by captors and captives retreating from the surprise pre-dawn attack on Old Deerfield by French and Indian raiders on February 29, 1704. The aftermath left much of the small, isolated colonial settlement in smoking ruins, with 47 colonists dead and 112 missing. For the purpose of this probe, we’ll focus on the missing – captives, young and old, tattered and torn, marched to Canada in winter cold by their captors.

Experts and ancestors alike have concurred for centuries that the campsite touched down in the Greenfield Meadows. The question is where? In reviewing this question, I’ll use modern place and road names to avoid confusion.

Actually, during the first couple hundred years after the attack, people were secure on a location. Community memory placed the first campsite less than four miles from the Deerfield stockade in wetlands along the base of Greenfield Mountain – “west of the old Nims farm,” according to Greenfield historian Francis M. Thompson. The Nims farm he refers to was built by Revolutionary War veteran Hull Nims and is today, minus the old farmhouse, owned by the Butynski family at the Lower Meadows address of 370 Colrain Road.

Buttressing Thompson’s claim is an obscure Greenfield map on which an X marks the spot of “De Rouville’s Camp.” The site is between two spring brooks where now lies a small pond dug by the Butynskis for their cows in the mid-20th century. In 1704, the spot would have been ideal for an overnight stay, with a wetland providing thick shelter from the elements along with clean, sparkling water.

The map identifying this and other historic Greenfield sites appeared as a two-fold pullout in a now hard-to-find pamphlet published for the June 26, 1905 unveiling of the Capt. William Turner Monument at Nash’s Mills. Then a tidy neighborhood that included the North Parish Church, a silver factory, a large millpond, and Mill Brook Falls, the Nash’s Mills compound was erased in the early 1960s to clear the way for Interstate 91.

Indians killed Turner, the English Falls Fight commander of King Philip’s War fame, as he crossed the Green River below, just downstream from the so-called Greenfield Pool.

But let’s not confuse matters with Turner. He died a generation before the Deerfield attack. Back to 1704 and, for that matter, to the aforementioned Francis M. Thompson, who with the 1904 publication of his History of Greenfield introduced uncertainty into the previously-accepted location for the first campsite.

The Greenfield historian, who became a “Turner Monument Field Day” organizer the following year, offered this tidbit on Page 90:

“Until recently, the place of their encampment upon the night of the fatal day has been supposed to be in the swamp west of the old Nims farm, but later the discovery of an ancient broad axe (believed to be a portion of the Deerfield plunder) at the former junction of the Hinsdale and Punch brooks, makes it seem more probable that the first camp was made in the middle of the north meadows in Greenfield.”

More probable. Hmmmm? Really? On whose authority? But with that statement, the damage was done.

By now, Thompson’s hypothetical has been so often repeated in conversation and writing that it has grown from lean speculation to common knowledge. I have read of it elsewhere, including in a history of my own tavern home, and been informed of it by friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Until recently, I accepted it without further scrutiny. Took it hook, line and sinker. But when I revisited it recently, I realized Thompson’s off-the-cuff theory was thin indeed on justification.

Let me explain.

First of all, Hinsdale and Punch brooks did not meet in their original courses. They were violently joined by an 1843 flood that roared down from the western uplands to cut a new Hinsdale Brook channel to the Green River, picking up the Punch Brook bed for the final couple hundred yards. Punch Brook did, however, cross the major Indian trail leading through the Meadows to the Pumping Station and on to Leyden, Guilford, Vt., and the eventual site of Fort Dummer on the Connecticut River’s west bank.

Hinsdale and Punch brooks were then separated by nearly a half-mile at their closest point, with the former taking a sharp southern turn a short distance east of my home. From that sharp elbow, it sliced three-quarters of a mile down the Upper Meadows between Plain and Colrain roads, joining Allen Brook for their final half-mile run to the Green River. Before Mother Nature cut the 1843 channel, Allen Brook was thought of as a Hinsdale Brook tributary.

Thompson was aware of this, and even reported it in his Greenfield book. So, he must have forgotten or been confused in his inaccurate description of the axe-head-discovery site. Remember, Thompson was a native of Colrain, not Greenfield, and spent many adult years in Montana. He wasn’t nearly as familiar with Greenfield Meadows topography as his wife, Mary Nims, or her father Lucius Nims, heir to aforementioned Hull Nims farm.

Plus, even if the axe head did date back to 1704, the possibilities are many as to how and when it arrived at the discovery site. More likely than not it had no connection at all to the 1704 captors and captives. And even if it did, it wouldn’t necessarily mark the campsite.

Something else to evaluate when considering the veracity of the two possible encampment sites is sourcing. The best sources would have been captives old enough to remember where they slept in terror that first night. Thirty-one of them returned to live out their lives in Deerfield, and at least three of them were directly related to Hull Nims.

They were Nims’ grandmother, Elizabeth Hull Nims, who would have been 15 for the march, and his great-uncle and aunt, Ebenezer and Sarah Hoyt Nims, both 17 when captured. This trio of relatives died, in the same order listed above, in 1754, 1760, and 1761, and obviously would have been around long enough to identify the site.

Then again, Nims relatives weren’t essential. Community pillar Rev. John Williams was freed from Canadian captivity with four of his children in 1706 and returned to Deerfield, where he died 23 years later. That left him more than enough time to mark for posterity important sites along the march.

Does anyone honestly believe this man of the cloth never returned to the Pumping Station, some 3.5 miles away, where his wife Eunice met her maker? If so, he would surely have pointed out the first-encampment site in passing.

Even Williams’ valuable input was unnecessary. Five members of the Stebbins family who were 12 or older for the march returned to Deerfield with vivid memories, including husband and wife John and Dorothy, ages 56 and 42 in 1704. “Redeemed” sons John and Samuel were 19 and 15 when captured, thus could also have also offered helpful insight.

The reason I mention the Stebbins family – other than the fact that its eight hostages outnumbered all other captive Deerfield families – is that descendant Samuel Stebbins (1725-83) was an early Upper Meadows settler, breaking ground very near to or on the parcel where the axe was found. If the first encampment was there, within earshot of trickling Punch Brook, would he not have known it and told friends and neighbors?

Plus, how about searchers who followed the retreating raiding party’s tracks in the snow after the siege? They obviously would have seen the remnants of the first campsite. If not on the old Nims farm, would the eye witnesses not have quickly corrected the record?

When evaluating such questions, primary sources are always the best place to start. This is no exception. In my mind, the first encampment sat on the old Nims farm, which broke ground some 80 years after the Deerfield attack.

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Indians, Local history | No Comments

Jul
04
2024

Fawning Season

by Gary Sanderson

Father’s Day has dawned and I’m back in my study, where I’ll remain until the cold of winter shifts me to my kitchen writing nook near the woodstove. Facing two sun-splashed windows instead of sitting with one at my back, this seat can brighten my perspective some. Plus, my library is closer, which is a fact-checking convenience.

I returned yesterday afternoon from an overnight stay at the Capital Plaza Hotel in Montpelier, Vermont, where they’re still digging out from last summer’s devastating downtown flooding. We were in the Green Mountain State Capital to attend my grandson’s high school graduation in a bordering community.

Whew! How time flies.

As I sit here, thinking, there’s no time to malinger. I must buckle down to the task at hand, which is to crank out another column – this one addressing a topic I could have covered a couple of weeks ago, had not my focus been elsewhere.

So, let’s drift slightly back in time to the fawning season, right after Memorial Day, when wobbly fawns rise from their nests on spindly, unstable legs and quickly learn to run and dart and bound like deer. It just so happens that, lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, I got to witness a teaching moment between a doe and her spotted twins, and I want to describe it.

I remember that daybreak during the first full week of June as cool and refreshing – me clad in shorts and a t-shirt. It was breathlessly still, with grey skies suggesting rain as I rambled down the home stretch of my daily two-mile walk around Greenfield’s Upper Meadows neighborhood.

Though a few interesting events had unfolded, it had been, by recent standards, a largely uneventful spring on the wildlife-sighting front. Most salient was the absence of turkeys where they have been common. Curiously, I heard not so much as a distant gobble during the month of May and the weeks leading up to it. Strange indeed.

I attributed this void, in my May 9 column, to a great horned owl nest I watched in my friend’s yard up the road. It may or may not have been the reason why turkeys had vacated a place where typically there are many. Then, just when I had written it off as a wait-till-next-year scenario, on three or four days during the third week of June, like clockwork, between 7 and 9 a.m., gobbling from the woods south and west of me.

Hmmmm? The second mating of a hen that had lost her first nest? Hard to say. And truthfully, I can’t say I wasted much time evaluating it. It just happened.

Prior to those unexpected, phantom gobbles, the most extraordinary wildlife sighting of spring was a beautiful, large, shiny black bear – likely a solitary bruin in the 250- to 300-pound class, whose daybreak path I interrupted. He was headed for a Nichols Drive crossing as I passed through, up close and personal.

The burly beast detected me coming and froze like a statue, facing me from about 40 yards away. His nose and ears raised on high alert, he watched me approach before turning tail, sauntering three strides back and turning 180 degrees to face me as I headed toward Plain Road.

It was my first bear sighting in three or four years. Both were close encounters. This face-to-face was about twice as far from me as the previous one, but I’d say the first bear was larger. I can’t say I felt threatened on either occasion. Both bears were palpably cautious in my presence. I kept a peripheral fix on both of them and continued on my way without incident.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person who crossed that bear’s path that morning. A fella named Craig Franklin did, too. I learned that a week to the day later, when he stopped his grey Chevy pickup truck to report the sighting and the day it occurred. We often pass in our early-morning travels, and I always give him a friendly wave. He infrequently stops to report notable sightings.

Franklin must have seen that bear soon after I did that day. I wonder how many others neighbors saw it, or at least knew the beast had passed through. Probably not many, unless it left random calling cards.

OK – enough of the superfluous chatter. Back to the deer story I sat down to tell.

It unfolded less than a half-mile south and east from my home, along the eastern perimeter of a slim, 100-yard finger of woods partially dividing two hayfields. The timber stand shelters a spring that bubbles from the ground and trickles south, past a small burial ground and into another spring that connects with Allen Brook.

Walking west on Meadow Road, I was about 150 yards from a sighting that always leaves a warm impression when one is fortunate enough to bear witness.

Always, in passing, I carefully scan those hayfields for deer and often find them in varying numbers, this spring ranging from one to nine. This time it was three – obviously, given the size discrepancy, a doe and her fawns. I wasn’t surprised. Other does have nested in that midfield refuge over the years, and many more will likely choose it in the future. It’s a perfect birthing place.

Back when I routinely meandered the perimeter of those fields a doe once burst out of the tree line and bounded across the hayfield in front of me. She was obviously trying to distract my attention from her hidden nest by showing herself and romping through the field.

This time the fawns were on all fours, and from my vantage point they appeared to be nimble. Engaging their mother in an entertaining catch-us-if-you-can game, the little ones displayed remarkable agility for their young age. The frolicking fawns ran, darted, and jumped in tight half-circles around their mother, who feigned aggression by occasionally stomping in their direction, encouraging development of their agility and escape ability. I have seen an identical game played out many times between a bitch and her litter.

It was a joyous sight to behold – one I have witnessed less than a handful of times, and heard many others describe over the years. Come August and September, I will undoubtedly bump into this family unit many times, as the fawns lose their spots and continue to gain mobility.

Wildlife observation never gets old for an observant walking man who stays alert and knows where to look.

posted in Columns | No Comments

Jun
13
2024

Shad-Run Surge

by Gary Sanderson

With fragrant pink weigelas in full bloom and mock orange buds opening into white flowers, I know the annual Connecticut River American shad run is near its end, typical with Memorial Day in the rearview.

Long ago were the days when I was among the eager anglers wading the margins of deep, narrow migration channels transporting these upstream-swimming anadromous fish to spawning grounds where they were born. I can’t say I miss battling these strong fish that are fun to catch. Nope. As they say in Chi-co-pee (emphasis on the middle syllable), “Been dere, done dat.”

Good ole Chi-co-pee, a mill and sports town where it seems every other dwelling contains an angler of some stripe. I’ve bumped into them on my favorite local trout streams – heaven forbid – as well as places like northern Vermont, western Maine, northwestern New York, and even freakin’ Wyoming, for Chrissakes.

Of course, the Chicopee fellas don’t refer to themselves as anglers. Uh-uh. They’re just plain fishermen, old style, thank you. No need to honor gender-neutral political correctness. No sir. Not in Chi-co-pee, or even Chicopee Falls for that matter – where fishing likely dates back to soon after the peopling of our fertile valley some 15,000 years before the present.

This year’s shad numbers, tracked weekly by the federal Connecticut River Coordinator’s office in Sunderland, reveal that by recent standards, it’s been a good year. Why not? We’ve experienced optimal river conditions for anadromous runs. Everything lined up to near perfection, beginning with a mild winter and little snowfall, followed by a favorable spring, without disruptive rain events unleashing torrents of heavy, run-altering, fish-passageway-closing flooding.

So, migrating fish had it easy this spring – a steady swelled flow and a gradual rise in water temperature, all favorable to spawning runs.

This year’s run past the Holyoke Dam counting station looks like it will top 400,000 for the second time in 10 years, though it pales in comparison to the last one to do so – the 2017 run brought more than 537,000.

The best year on record since the counting began in 1967 was 1992, when nearly 722,000 shad passed Holyoke. Back then, state and federal officials manned several other valley counting stations to compute an annual total-river run, a practice that ended in 2017.

The record 1992 total-river count was a whopping 1.628 million, one of four recorded runs exceeding a million. The others, in declining order, occurred in 1983 (1.574 million), 1984 (1.231 million), and 1991 (1.196 million). Holyoke counts in the same order for those other three banner years were 528,000, 497,000, and 523,000.

In the six-year span from 2012 to 2017, an average of some 350,000 shad – rounded off to the nearest thousand – passed Holyoke annually. In the six years since, excluding this year’s incomplete total, the annual figure dropped to 278,000. So this year’s little surge is good news, considering threats of a warming planet on which sea levels and temperatures are rising along with Northeastern river temps that govern spawning runs and behavior.

Shad start running up the Connecticut River once its water temps reach into the 50s Fahrenheit. The run peaks in the mid-60s and ends as optimal spawning temps rise to 70. That’s when shad stop their upstream migration and establish spawning lairs in the shallows. There spawning unfolds as females deposit eggs to be fertilized by males. At this stage of the annual run, shad are preoccupied with reproduction and will not strike anglers’ shiny, sparkling offerings.

I’m sure local shad anglers have, over the past couple of weeks, been enjoying great success at Rock Dam in Montague City and many other popular Franklin County fishing haunts. The best Franklin County fishing is always a little later than Holyoke’s, providing serious anglers with the opportunity to follow the run upriver and extend their recreational opportunities. Some devoted anglers, many employing boats, fish the entire month of May, and then some, by starting at Enfield Falls and following the run all the way to Turners Falls.

Too bad the power company maintaining the Turners Falls fish-passage facilities doesn’t take its role in the anadromous fish migration game more seriously. Improvements are sorely needed to optimize fish passage past the Turners Falls Dam. Yet, sadly, the power companies overseeing the operations have never strived for peak efficiency.

So, don’t hold your breath awaiting impactful – and costly – adjustments aimed at improving poor anadromous-fish passage through the Powertown. Though power officials will continue feigning altruistic concern and giving the toothless plight good lip service, our warming planet will likely kill the shad run before the passage issues are ever resolved.

 

posted in Columns, Salmon, Shad | No Comments

Jun
13
2024

Constant Bliss Ambush

by Gary Sanderson

Gray, rainy, spring morning. Woodstove idle. Cool indoors. Still writing in my comfy winter kitchen nook.

I’m thinking about colonial New England soldier Constant Bliss, who, by chance, popped into view during recent local-history meanderings.

What a name, huh? Constant Bliss. Something to stive for. Perpetual joy. Very un-Puritanical.

Born to Reverend John and Anna Bliss in 1715, Constant hailed from Hebron, a small central-Connecticut town southeast of Hartford and below Manchester. Stationed in his 31st year as a Deerfield sentry under the command of a man recorded only as “Capt. Holson” on the fateful day of August 22, 1746, Bliss and nine comrades marched for Coleraine. (Note the obsolete spelling.) If there were horses involved, none are mentioned in published accounts.

The ongoing French and Indian War was aflame, and the times had taken a perilous turn for the English in this neck of the woods. Northern Indians from the Lake Champlain corridor – many of them carrying proud Connecticut Valley roots from between Springfield and Northfield – were on the warpath.

Yet the Connecticut soldiers were totally unaware that just two days earlier, in what is today North Adams, Deerfield favorite son John Hawks, vastly outnumbered by some 750 French and Indian attackers, had been forced to surrender Fort Massachusetts. Those on the northward march also had no clue that danger awaited where their trail would begin its upland ascent.

Historians don’t specify the precise marching orders for Bliss’ small party, but the destination was most likely Fort Morrison, also known as North Fort. Standing tall and strong in the northern part of the isolated colonial town, just below today’s Vermont line, Morrison was the most formidable of four Colrain strongholds. The other three all stood in East Colrain: Fort Morris, or South Fort, on the hill across the road from today’s Pine Hill Orchards store, and Fort Lucas and Fort McDowell, the fortified houses of Andrew Lucas and Reverend Alexander McDowell, nearer to the Chandler Hill Burial Ground.

Though the troop was undoubtedly sent to make sure all was well in Colrain, that we can only speculate. Documentary evidence, if there ever was any, apparently vanished long ago. Does it really matter now? No. They were soldiers doing what soldiers do.

What delivered me to this inquiry was a map I recently viewed that traces the soldiers’ path that day to within an underhand stone’s throw of my upper Greenfield Meadows home.

I discovered this interesting, hand-annotated, pullout map of Greenfield tucked into a rare Massachusetts Society of Colonial Wars pamphlet celebrating the dedication of a Greenfield monument to Capt. William Turner of King Philip’s War fame. This little paperback book, titled Capt. William Turner and the “Falls Fight,” May 19, 1676, was handed out at the July 26, 1905 ceremony memorializing a new stone salute to Turner and his fallen comrades.

The “Turner Monument” gala was a grand affair, brass bands and all, unfolding at the now largely forgotten North Parish Church Square at Nash’s Mills, which along with its tranquil pond enjoyed by many was removed to make way for Interstate 91 in the early 1960s. At that time the monument was also moved, down the hill and across Green River, to its current location beside Nash’s Mill Road below the outflow of the so-called “Greenfield Pool.”

As it turns out, the monument’s current placement is actually closer to the spot where Indians killed the fleeing Turner, as he crossed the Green River below the waterfalls cascading to Mill Brook’s mouth.

Though the creator of the pamphlet map goes unnamed, it’s a good bet contemporaneous local historians George Sheldon of Deerfield and Francis M. Thompson of Greenfield had a dominant hand in it, as well as the publication’s other fold-out map of “Nash’s Mills.” The two friends and Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association colleagues were repeatedly identified in the local press as leading voices behind the Turner commemoration. Their correspondence, housed at Deerfield’s Memorial Libraries, also clearly establishes a strong promotional relationship.

One annotated “X” on the Greenfield map immediately pulled me in. Not more than a quarter-mile above my house, the note accompanying it reads “Constance Bliss killed by Indians August 22, 1756.”

First of all, disregard the mistaken year – a very understandable transcription error. A few inches to the right of this marker lies another “X,” marking a later deadly neighborhood Indian skirmish known as the Country Farms attack, which claimed the lives of townsmen Shubal Atherton and Daniel Graves. This tragic event in Greenfield lore occurred on August 23, 1756, ten years and a day after the Bliss killing. Whoever wrote it was stuck on 1756.

As for the pamphlet’s spelling of Bliss’ first name – Constance – Sheldon and Thompson just had it wrong. Sheldon probably lifted it from 18th-century Deerfield records, and Thompson copied his spelling. Remember, Bliss was a transient soldier stationed only briefly in Deerfield. An outsider. Thus, the confusion. Historians in Sheldon and Thompson’s day didn’t have the luxury of Ancestry.com and other online sources, which consistently use the gender-appropriate spelling – Constant – in birth, death, and probate records.

Bliss was the lone ambush casualty that dreadful day. Personal knowledge, which I’ll get into, tells me he was killed and scalped at a predictable site where the ancient Indian trail tilts uphill to Colrain. Although his nine companions aren’t named, one of them was presumably Capt. Holson.

Historians trust that the survivors escaped to Colrain – an assumption likely based on the fact that Colrain was closer than Deerfield. Terrain Navigator measurements bear this out. The closest Colrain bastion, Fort Lucas, was nearly four direct, wooded miles from the ambush site, while Deerfield was nearly six miles away on flatter, more exposed terrain.

The reason I call the upper Meadows site “predictable” for this ambush is that it’s located near three active springs, which still run pure today. Better still, the one closest to the ambush “X” came equipped with an ancient permanent trailside mortar, hollowed into sturdy ledge and used for millennia to grind nuts into gruel grain.

The mortar was there for good reason. Early records note a prolific butternut grove just north of my property during the colonial period, and there are still many butternut, walnut, and other edible-nut trees standing in the neighborhood and surrounding hills. That includes two huge black walnut trees in neighbors’ yards. Walnuts, butternuts, and white-oak acorns were among our indigenous people’s most valued nuts.

Some, if not all, of the Indians who killed Bliss also participated in a sneak attack three days later in what is known in Deerfield lore as the Bars Fight, also memorialized by a stone near Stillwater. By the time the dust had settled on August 25, 1746, five colonists were dead, one miraculously survived a fractured skull, and young Samuel Allen, 9, had been taken captive.

Sheldon identified those attackers as “St. Francis Indians,” and gets even more specific by calling one of them a Scatacook. Both designations suggest the strong possibility that some of the assailants had deep roots here and knew the old trails through community memory and elder guidance.

As for the trailside mortar stone in the woods behind my house, I have not seen it with my own eyes – just learned of it in independent conversation with two neighbors who had. One of my sources is a friend five years older than me. The other, older than my parents and long dead, would be well over 100 today.

Both men last visited the mortar stone more than a half-century ago. They agreed it was about knee- to hip-high, near a spring on the perimeter of an old orchard long ago choked off by reforestation.

Had I learned of this ancient indigenous site during my first 15 years of Meadows residence, I undoubtedly would have forced myself to find it during deer-hunting diversions. Although I no longer hunt deer, I did search for the stone once, maybe five years ago, with an archaeologist friend. When our search came up empty and I described the unsuccessful mission to my surviving source, he suspected we had focused too far south.

Oh well, I guess I’ll now have to take another poke at finding it. I’ll begin where the spring meets the road and scour both sides. Hopefully, the lay of the land and outcroppings will offer helpful hints.

So, stay tuned. I may return with a photo.

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Indians, Local history | No Comments

May
17
2024

Great Horned Owls Nest

by Gary Sanderson

All I can say about last week’s start of the four-week 2024 Massachusetts spring turkey-hunting season is, what a difference a year makes.

It matters not that I no longer view wild turkeys through a hunter’s lens. My interest in the state gamebird will never fade. I will forever continue to observe and learn about these large roadside birds, which did not exist during my South Deerfield boyhood.

Last year, beginning about a month before opening day, I was greeted daily over the first half-mile of my daybreak walks by aggressive gobbling along the northern perimeter – rain or shine, far and near – interrupting the calming still of dawn. Later, on the Meadow Lane home stretch, occasional gobbles could be heard from the wooded western hillside across the road from my upper Greenfield Meadows home.

This year, not a peep – not even one of those distant, barely discernable rattles I long ago learned to identify. Hmmmm?

Why?

I suppose, with deep analysis, I probably could have arrived at a hypothesis sooner than I did. But I can’t say I ever really dwelled on it. I just kept my daily antennae alert, heard nothing and figured the gobbling would soon begin.

One obvious factor that didn’t line up and only confused matters was our mild winter and early spring. Why, of all years, would spring gobblers choose silence this year? It made no sense. Just another peculiar stoke of nature, I surmised.

Then, on the evening of the April 8 eclipse, my phone rang. A neighbor and friend called to chat about a new discovery in his yard. A woman who lives across the street from him had alerted him to a Great Horned Owl (GHO) nest, wedged into the crotch of a dead white pine about 40 feet above his driveway.

Interested, I walked to his yard to take a look – my first observation of a GHO nest in more than 70 years on this planet. What a treat. A mating pair had taken over and reinforced a former crow, raven, red-tailed hawk or maybe even gray squirrel nest, and it contained two large, light-colored fledglings being fed by the adults. According to many sources, GHO nests typically produce two nestlings.

By the time I saw the fledglings, I would estimate they were about six weeks old. They stood stoic and motionless on the nest’s edge, calmly peering down at me on that first encounter. Numerous online sources report that GHO nestlings begin practicing hunting skills at three weeks by pouncing on sticks comprising the nest. By six weeks they become “branchers,” hopping from limb to limb and eventually stretching their wings in preparation for flight.

Awkward flight tests then begin at seven weeks, and they maneuver their way to the ground after about eight weeks. Their parents continue to feed and protect them through the summer, and by autumn the young ones move on to seek new territory of their own.

The fact that the nest was there didn’t come as a great surprise. I had been aware of new owls in the neighborhood for at least a few months. I now know the timing made perfect sense. Online information identifies GHO as early nesters in the bird world.

I can’t recall when I first starting hearing those unfamiliar adult hoots, but it was probably in late December or January. I regularly heard them as I passed marshy meadows skirting the upland base north of my home. I immediately suspected GHO because I knew there had been a previous nest in the same area many years ago, when I was directly impacted.

Back then my sons were schoolboys and my daily Recorder shift brought me home at around 2 a.m. My last chore before bed was to run and water my English springer spaniel gundogs out back by the brook. That was the last time I remember hearing the long, haunting GHO hoot, which in no way resembles joyous barred owl hooting with its familiar cadence of Who cooks the stew? Who cooks for you awwwwwllllll?

When my small, female, calico Manx, Kiki, went missing, I felt certain she had been the victim of those large, wee-hour GHO I kept hearing, and I still believe this to be the case. Known as the “tiger of the north woods,” they hunt small animals like rabbits and squirrels. Kiki was no larger than a rabbit, and her highly visible white base would have made her easy pickings as she hunted the backyard stonewall day and night for mice, chipmunks, and you name it.

I now believe that the loud presence of GHO in the neighborhood is a likely reason why turkeys seem to have vacated territory within earshot of my home and morning ramble. I know turkeys do not view owls as friends. That I discovered as a turkey hunter who employed barred-owl locating calls to stimulate aggressive responses from combative gobblers establishing their domain.

On the other hand, hen turkeys likely try to avoid building their ground nests near the nests of large owls capable of devouring their broods. If hens leave a habitat, gobblers follow.

Thus far this year, my lone Meadows turkey sighting occurred at around 7 a.m. in corn stubble slightly more than a mile south of my home. There I caught two lonely hens scratching and feeding their way west toward Colrain Road. That’s it. Not another sight or sound of turkeys in a place where they have previously thrived. This at daybreak no less, prime time for gobbling – better still gobbling that carries great distances from high in a tree.

My neighborhood owlets disappeared from view about two weeks ago and are likely by now flying and helping to thin out the upper Meadows squirrel and rabbit population. I hope they eat young woodchucks, too. Woodchucks have menaced me and my neighbors in recent years.

As for the temporary scarcity of turkeys, well, I can’t say I’m concerned. They may not be in my backyard these days, but I don’t have to travel far to find them.

 

posted in Columns | No Comments

Apr
25
2024

New Weir Information

by Gary Sanderson

I spoke too soon about ancient Indian weirs in the neighborhood. So, with new information in hand about the stone fishing structures, a follow-up’s in order.

My last column questioned the curious (to me) design, and thus the functionality, of two extant, manmade, downstream-pointed weirs on the lower Westfield and uppermost Chicopee rivers. Little did I know that recent research has been done to analyze fishing practices on a similar structure closer to my doorstep.

Reader Michael Bosworth alerted me to this fact in a March 30 email query wondering if “the Indian dam on the Ashuelot River in Swanzey, New Hampshire was another example?” Accompanying his question was a reference to Page 50 of Robert G. Goodby’s 2021 book, A Deep Presence: 13,000 Years of Native American History, which I had not previously heard of.

I immediately went online, learned that Goodby is a respected Franklin Pierce College anthropology professor and contract archaeologist, and ordered his book, which had not arrived in the mail before deadline. It’s based on more than 30 years of New England archaeological fieldwork – at least 10 of them (2002-12) on the Swanzey site. After an exchange of emails Goodby sent me his 2014 site report, co-authored by Sarah Tremblay and Edward Bouras: The Swanzey Fish Dam: A Large Precontact Native American Stone Structure in Southeastern New Hampshire.

This 19-page report and its three-page bibliography shed new light on Indian weirs and fishing practices of Eastern Woodlands people. Finally, important information that was at best elusive the last I explored the topic some 35 years ago. Back then, the most helpful source I could find was Hilary Stewart’s liberally illustrated Indian Fishing: Early Methods of the Northwest Coast. Although the Native people she featured lived on the other side of the continent and fished for different but related species, I presumed their practices couldn’t have differed greatly from their Northeastern kin, and still believe that to be true.

One significant difference on this side of the continent, however, seems to have been common use of downstream-pointed weirs to harvest upstream-migrating anadromous fish on their spring spawning runs back to their natal streams.

“Huh?” I pondered. “Upstream-swimming fish on spawning runs confronted first by an abrupt point rather than the inviting, wide-open mouth of a V guiding them into a narrow trap?”

It made no sense based on what I had previously learned about Indian weirs pointing in the same direction as fish migrations and sketched in Stewart’s book. So, I questioned late-19th-century historian and former Whately pastor J.H. Temple, who, in his comprehensive histories of North Brookfield and Palmer, described slightly different fishing practices on downstream-pointed weirs.

That is not to say Eastern Woodlands Native people never built the upstream-pointed weirs preferred by their West Coast cousins. Just that on Connecticut River tributaries and other streams up and down eastern North America on this side of the mighty Mississippi, upstream-pointing weirs or dams spanning the entire width of streams were widely used to harvest migrating fish. These stone structures built across streams forced fish toward narrow manmade shoreline channels in which they were easily harvested by net, spear and arrow.

The Swanzey Fish Dam was such a structure, as were the previously mentioned shore-to-shore weirs or dams on the lower Westfield and uppermost Chicopee rivers. Recent research accelerating during the final quarter of the 20th century has uncovered similar structures begging for additional study. The closest sites to us are in Connecticut, on the Housatonic River and the Bashan Lake outflow in East Haddam, while others are known to exist in Maine’s Kennebec River watershed.

Who knows where else similar structures will turn up now that they are on archaeologists’ radar?

Let’s hope future research uncovers footprints of complementary, wooden, weir-associated apparatuses. Indians knew the value of durable, water-resistant woods like chestnut, cedar, and locust for companion pieces, and would have used them to build fences, lattices, and platforms to aid fish-gathering procedures. Because such woods have shown remarkable survival capabilities in submerged archaeological environments, the outline of such structures could likely still be mapped by field researchers.

Sadly, one important fact now out of reach is quantification of the various pre-colonial fish runs up and down the Connecticut River, and tributaries like the Ashuelot. There is just no way to attach accurate numbers to those prehistoric anadromous and catadromous fish runs. But take it to the bank: they dwarfed the largest modern runs on record. The volume of ancient runs matters in any assessments of pre-European Contact Period Native fishing practices and related structures.

The Swanzey Fish Dam is shaped like a checkmark. It rests approximately eight straight-line miles –perhaps 12 meandering river miles – from the Ashuelot River’s Hinsdale, New Hampshire mouth. Radiocarbon dating brings the structure back to the Terminal Archaic Period, some 4,000 B.P. (years before present). It was still in use by Squakheag or Sokoki Indians into the second half of the 17th-century – likely one of many fish-gathering constructions of various styles built along the Ashuelot’s 65-mile reach.

The most important fish migrations targeted by our indigenous fishers were the upstream anadromous spring runs of shad, salmon, lampreys, sturgeon, and herrings. Then came the downstream fall runs of valued catadromous American eels. The Indians would have known what type of adaptations were best for each species, and most of the adjustments would have involved wooden embellishments.

Although the Swanzey Fish Dam was known to colonial settlers at an early date and became local tradition, little effort was taken to understand the indigenous fishing operation. Goodby first showed interest in the site at the dawning of the 21st century. He ramped up his investigative efforts after the August 2010 removal of West Swanzey’s 1860s Homestead Woolen Mill dam. As had previously been the case during a 1950 dam-repair project that drew down the upstream impoundment, the Indian stonework was exposed, setting the wheels of discovery into motion.

The rest is history. Goodby’s site report appeared in 2014. Seven years later, A Deep Presence hit the street. Now, following local press coverage, scholarly articles in academic journals, a dissertation, and random book reviews, the Swanzey site is in the public eye… sort of.

Although there’s still plenty to learn about the social and economic activities at ancient indigenous fishing camps situated along large and small Connecticut Valley streams, at least new discovery is underway. New information will hopefully continue to surface, starting with radiocarbon dating of the other aforementioned New England sites.

As archaeologists continue poking and probing, they may yet open a clear window into what ancient indigenous fishing operations looked like in our fertile valley before the post-King Philip’s War (1775-76) diaspora took hold.

Buried in the floodplain meadows and river sediments are the answers we seek.

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history | No Comments

Apr
05
2024

Indian Weir Dynamics: A New Twist

by Gary Sanderson

A long, winding path sat me in this bow-back Windsor chair this morning – seasoned-oak oozing warmth from the woodstove to stimulate thought about Indian weirs.

My introduction to these manmade fish-catching structures occurred more than 30 years ago. Deerfield artist/illustrator Al Dray had been following my columns on salmon, shad, and ancient spring fishing camps situated around the Great Falls between Turners Falls and Riverside, Gill, and wanted to take me on a little field trip.

He’d been poking around the Connecticut River’s eastern shore down by Rock Dam in Montague City and was convinced he’d found vestiges of a weir above the “fishing falls” there. We went to the site, he pointed out the open mouth of a V-shaped stone column facing us, and suggested it was the handiwork of Native fishermen. The object was to funnel migrating fish into a shoreline trap. Though I was looking at my first, his argument was convincing.

The concept of fish weirs and traps fit snugly into my interests at the time. I was then passionately fishing for shad, studying waters I frequented, publishing weekly migration numbers during the upstream spring spawning migration, and taking the unpopular opinion that Connecticut River salmon-restoration was doomed.

With little helpful information about Indian fishing camps and practices available in the standard Connecticut Valley town histories, I hunted additional sources and found thin picking. Then came Hilary Stewart’s richly-illustrated Indian Fishing (1982 paperback), focusing on Washington State and British Columbia. Though the camps she sketched were faraway, I believed the tools and practices would differ little from those used by our own indigenous people. Subsequent research supported that opinion.

The rule of thumb linking all stream-fishing camps I reviewed was that upstream-pointing weirs were the rule for catching upstream-migrating fish.

Then, in recent weeks, I happened to read something in Rev. J.H. Temple’s History of Palmer (1889) that sang a different tune about Native fishing on the upper Chicopee River and its headwaters. Repeating an assertion made two years earlier in his History of North Brookfield (1887), Temple reported that Indians fishing the spring Atlantic salmon run there employed nets, spears, and arrows to catch ascending fish, and weirs to catch survivors returning to sea.

I knew nothing about the Chicopee River before exploring this topic, but have since learned that it starts at the confluence of the Ware, Quaboag, and Swift rivers in Palmer’s Three Rivers village and flows some 18 miles to the Connecticut River.

This was the first mention I ever found of fishing for spawning-run survivors returning to the sea. The new paradigm raised my interest after nearly 50 years of carefully tracking and extensively reporting our valley’s spring, anadromous-fish spawning runs of shad, salmon, striped bass, herring, alewife, and eels. Anadromous fish are born in freshwater, live as adults in saltwater, and return in their reproductive prime to spawn in natal streams.

Why, I pondered in print and then in email correspondence with a reader, would anyone exert time and energy catching an exhausted, depleted resource? Less than 10% of the annual Atlantic salmon run survives for out-migration, and those fish descend in weakened condition. Certainly not optimal specimens for human consumption.

Having witnessed as an angler the behavior of migrating fish on their upstream journey, I felt like I had insight and understanding about spawning-run dynamics. I learned to catch shad swimming in their preferred interior river channels, discovered how water flow and temperature governed runs’ ebbs and flows, and could easily identify their last dance in the sluggish shallows – a circling spawning ritual signaling the end of fishing season. About 50% of the shad run dies, leaving in its wake pungent, bloated reminders for scavengers.

Although I have never observed Atlantic salmon runs, they must have been similar to shad runs, despite fewer numbers and a higher mortality rate. Of course, if Temple can be believed – he offers no sources, and likely was not an outdoorsman – that was a moot point in the Chicopee River watershed above insurmountable Chicopee Falls. Only strong, agile salmon could clear that barrier, eliminating all other Connecticut River fish migrations above there.

I soon pushed to the backburner my impulsive inquiry into weirs designed to catch out-migrating salmon. The place was slightly out of my comfort zone. I could always revisit the topic if the spirit moved me.

That plan soon changed, however, when quite by chance a retired archaeologist friend reached out to me by email, then telephone, to discuss the ancient Indian fishing grounds bordering Montague’s Turners Falls village. Little did he know he was hitting on a hot topic.

His impetus was recent examination of a private, previously unknown, Riverside/Gill Indian artifact collection brought to his attention. When this find stirred his inquisitive juices, he dug out an archaeological “WMECo Site” report he wrote nearly 50 years ago about that Riverside excavation he led. He wanted to compare notes, so to speak.

We have often discussed Connecticut River anadromous fisheries over the years because he knows it’s in my wheelhouse and not his bailiwick. He just wanted to chat about run dynamics. Plus, he was eager to share maps and aerial photos he had found showing two extant Native weirs in the valley: one on the Westfield River, and the other on the – you guessed it! – Chicopee River in Palmer.

The photos showed two manmade, stonewall-like structures spanning the entire width of the streambeds. Both knee-high structures point downstream. The Westfield River example is a wide V. The one in Palmer is a shallow arc. Both of them point downstream and would have held back water under normal flows, forming a pool and presenting a clearable obstacle.

I told my friend I was not familiar with that type of weir. The ones I was familiar with from sketches and photos pointed upstream with mouths inviting fish into tight enclosures and traps for easy harvest with nets, spears, arrows. His downstream-pointing examples made no sense to me as weirs targeting upstream swimmers. Maybe Temple was right.

My friend suggested that such weirs extending across a river and pointed downstream could have forced upstream travelers toward narrow, manmade shoreline channels at both ends, where they could be easily harvested from shore. Other local historians have surmised that Indian fishers stood atop the weirs to take fish with dip-nets, spears and arrows. Perhaps, but smaller, tighter weirs would have been more efficient with higher yields.

Hmmmm?

Time to search for answers.

The first source I pulled from my bookcase was Stewart’s aforementioned Indian Fishing, which displayed a variety of stonewall-like, V-shaped, stream-fishing obstacles, some equipped with wooden cages, pens, fence posts and lattices positioned beyond the apex to delay fish. I could decipher none pointing downstream.

Next stop was Frank Speck’s classic Penobscot Man, about the lifeways of Maine Indians. There I found information about an important fall American eel fishery that relied on downstream-pointing weirs and traps to intercept out-migration to Bermuda Triangle spawning grounds and death.

Other than that, Harral Ayres’ The Great New England Trail mentioned springtime lamprey-eel fishing by eastern Massachusetts Natives. Then Gordon Day’s classic In Search of New England’s Native Past confirmed the importance of fall eel fishing but didn’t go into detail.

I believe it’s safe to assume that migrating spring lampreys and fall American eels were sought after by indigenous Connecticut Valley inhabitants – even after Three-Sisters, corn-squash-bean farming was adopted around 1,000 AD.

So, what to make of all this confusing information? Was the downstream-pointed weir on the Westfield River constructed to harvest fall, out-migrating American eels? How about the Palmer weir? It couldn’t have been built for fall eels, because Chicopee Falls blocked their way.

Questions remain. Food for thought. More grist for the thought mill.

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history, Salmon, Shad | No Comments

Mar
31
2024

The Penalty-Box Home Run

by Gary Sanderson

March daybreak. Frosty. Spring in the air.

Calm and clear. Brooks rattling – one a soothing roar, the other a gurgling whisper. Endless dawn sky blushing to a soft, warm blue. Soon the glitter of frosted lawns would vanish under the first rays of sun peeking over the eastern horizon.

The perfect setting for an introspective walk around the neighborhood.

I’m not sure what it was near the midpoint of that daily ramble that triggered thoughts of baseball. Probably the season. Maybe sweet, sharp cardinal chirps near and far. Perhaps the invigorating cool air filling my lungs, the exercise revving my heartbeat and circulation. Reminds me of a doctor’s advice in recent years. Discussing my mangled knees, he told me “motion is lotion.” I was living it.

Alone with fleeting thoughts, I flittered back a half-century to my short, undistinguished UMass baseball career, derailed before it blossomed due to misbehavior when it was mostly cool. Walking a quick pace, I went back to places I love to revisit. From indoor Curry Hicks Cage practice and its dim batting cage, to our weeklong spring-training trip to Miami Beach, to Sunshine State incidents that greased my exit skids, and most of all to a dramatic home run that ultimately, if you can imagine, sealed my demise.

The year was 1974, my 21st birthday a few months away. I was fit and fast, strong, sturdy and perilously untamed. Sometimes I wonder how I survived. But here I sit, undaunted and unashamed.

Wild times were in the air in ’74. The Massachusetts drinking age had been lowered to 18 the previous year. Infirmary lines of young college women awaiting birth-control-pill prescriptions were long. Booze and drugs flowed a raging torrent every night of the week. Temptation lurked in every shady campus corner. Young and frisky, I just got caught up in it. My fault. No regrets.

Count me among many voluntary victims of Sixties and Seventies excesses, when barhopping and partying were not only tolerated, but encouraged. So was challenging authority. Now I’m pretty much done with all of it. Except, well, I still tend to buck authority when the situation calls for it.

Though I have for many decades been a storyteller, the tale I’m about to tell has never been told in print. There’s a simple reason. We were sworn to secrecy by our coach, Franklin County’s own Richard “Dick” Bergquist from Orange. He demanded that what had unfolded on our curfew-free final night on South Beach should stay on South Beach. No reason to air our dirty laundry at home.

Till now I have honored his request. But he’s been dead five years and the story can finally be told. Nonetheless, why name my old friends and teammates? Unnecessary.

Our vow to secrecy concerned an unfortunate late-night incident at a strip joint a block or two up Collins Avenue from our beachfront Nautilus Hotel – home to many spunky Big Apple widows living the life with bling and bravado to spare.

On an after-midnight walk back toward the hotel after our final night on the town, my Vietnam-vet teammate and I spotted blinking blue lights and commotion within sight of our hotel. We crossed the street to discover two of our scholarship pitchers – one a senior, the other a freshman – handcuffed and getting loaded into the caged back seat of a cruiser. They were under arrest, on their way to the slammer, and would need bail for release. The charge was drunk and disorderly conduct for vulgar exchanges with a stripper.

A few of our teammates had, like us, found their way to the scene, and we decided to join other teammates in an adjacent bar to ponder strategy. Maybe we could pool what little money we had left to spring our teammates from jail before the coach caught wind of their arrest.

No such luck.

We hadn’t even begun pooling our money before our coach walked through the door with the trainer and a captain. They were rounding up players to escort back to the hotel. I had never seen the coach so angry.

After taking a call from police, he had gone looking for the captains and found one of them passed out on the white, sandy beach beside a cooler, a pile of empties, and two equally inebriated spring-break college coeds. It was a scene straight out of the movie Animal House or Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing debauchery, spiking his ire.

Uh-oh. Crisis mode. The wheels had flown off the wagon.

The first mistake I made was to spend much of the short walk back to our hotel chatting with the coach as only a foolhardy drunk would. Though I don’t remember the conversation, I’m sure it was typical drunken babble that only irritated him. Have you ever been a sober listener to a drunk? I have, and I shudder to think of it.

When we arrived at the hotel, we were ordered to our rooms. The party was over. Coach was ashamed of us. He scheduled an early-morning, pre-sendoff, conference-room meeting before our departure to Miami International Airport. Eight o’clock sharp. “And don’t be a second late!” he barked, before driving one of our rented three-seater station wagons to negotiate the release of his two jailed pitchers.

Coach’s anger hadn’t subsided for our morning meeting. We should be thankful, he warned us, that he didn’t have time to reassemble a roster. Never had he been a party to such unacceptable spring-trip conduct.

I think we returned to Bradley International Airport and Amherst on a Sunday. We had five days of typical cold, windy conditions to prepare for our Saturday home opener against Springfield College at Earl Lorden Field. The Springfield and Northampton newspapers previewing the game and season published a starting lineup for the opener. I was batting fifth and playing right field.

It was to be my first regular-season game in Amherst, delayed a couple of years by injury and other issues too complicated to quickly explain. The wait had been long. I was so psyched that I even went to bed early the night before the game – a rare event.

On the day of the game, I put on uniform No. 12 in the Boyden Gym locker room and walked through the tunnel and on to distant Lorden Field for batting practice and warmups. There the starting lineup was posted on the dugout bat rack, where I discovered my name stricken from the five hole and replaced by a teammate.

My blood boiled. I approached the coach for an explanation. He told me Springfield was going with a righty, so he opted for a left-handed hitter. I couldn’t conceal my anger.

Seething in the dugout for the first pitch, I removed myself from potential conflict by going to the batting cage along the left-field line. I wanted to cool down and take out my frustrations on baseballs delivered by a teammate feeding the JUGS pitching machine. When done tuning my stroke, I returned to the dugout sullen and ready to explode. I felt like I had been done dirty and was hoping for an opportunity to swing the bat.

My chance finally came in the bottom of the seventh inning. Trailing 5-1 with two outs, two runners on base and a lefty reliever on the mound, Bergquist called my name from the third-base coaching box he occupied. He wanted me to hit for the player who’d taken my spot in the original lineup.

Totally focused, I took my stance in the batter’s box, worked the count in my favor, and smoked a waist-high fastball, away, up the right-field power alley. I knew I hit it sweet but wasn’t sure it had enough lift to clear the green, eight-foot, wooden fence. So, thinking triple as I burst out of the batter’s box, I rounded second base at full speed.

Facing Bergquist, he was signaling home run by circling his hand above his head. Time to slow down. It had cleared the fence over the 375-foot sign. As I rounded third base, Bergquist offered me his congratulatory right hand, which I whacked with all my might on my way to teammates awaiting me at the plate.

For all intents and purposes, that glorious moment was the end of my promising UMass career. I was immediately removed from the lineup and handed a seven-game suspension for my defiant “hand-shake.” I had showed him up on center stage, he charged. I finished the season on the roster, but was used sparingly, and could never get comfortable in that unfamiliar role.

I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. School and baseball never mixed well for me.

Season over, I dropped out and took a job as a land surveyor. A year later, I went on the road as a professional fundraiser traveling the land. I returned to college a couple of times, lastly in UMass’ progressive University Without Walls program.

It worked for me.

 

posted in Columns, Local history | No Comments

« Previous Posts
Mad Meg theme designed by BrokenCrust for WordPress © | Top