I’ve had a letter sitting here on my desk for a couple of years, one I’ve “been meaning to get to,” if you know what I mean. But here I sit, finally getting back to it, prodded by the man who sent it, dignified octogenarian Edward M. Wells of Leyden, Franklin County roots nearly as deep as the Sunderland sycamore.

It was Mr. Wells who showed up at my door a month or so ago inquiring about the letter. Did I still have it kicking around? If so, he thought he’d float it past Irmarie Jones or someone else who may be interested. It brought me back to my school daze many years ago, the Harris-tweed, bespectacled teacher, chalk-dusted shoulders, asking how many more days I’d need to finish the essay due last week. Well, let’s just say Mr. Wells got a 21st-century response, no resemblance to my trusted 1970 friend, Sixties Defiance. The story of Robert “Bud” Coombs’ had indeed interested me; loved the writing style, too. I did intend to do something on it. Just needed a little poke, I guess. Well, Mr. Wells was there to dig his dusty pointer stick between my ribs. So here I sit, wondering where to start.

Accompanying the essay was Mr. Wells’ handwritten letter, dated June 2, 2007, prefacing the little tale, deft touch, that had been written for the Christmas holidays by his late cousin’s Tucson, Ariz., widow. Her name was Jean, wife of “Bud” Coombs, he from, you guessed it, Coombs Hill in Colrain, just a hop, skip and a jump west of me, on the site of the old Fort Morris of French & Indian War fame, one of four garrisons available to Coleraine’s earliest Scots-Irish settlers when danger loomed in the howling wilderness. Bud’s people had farmed that idyllic spot looking east at Monadnock since the start, parts of four centuries turning up stones and Native implements while tilling the soil.

But this is not a history of Coombs Hill or Coombs Farm or that old “South Fort.” No, this story has Franklin County Fair flavor, one that some of the older readers among us will remember well. It’s about what the annual September gathering on Petty’s Plain once meant countywide to farm- and schoolboys alike. Sadly, this weekend there will be no
schoolboy athletic competition akin to the days of Bud Coombs and my own father, himself a former fair sprint champion, then a Deerfield teen representing Greenfield after putting Deerfield High in his rearview due to “issues” with the school administration. Like they say, the apple doesn’t fall from the tree. Maybe I too should have fled. But I stayed … and ultimately paid.

Enough of that, though … back to Bud Coombs and his Franklin County Fair day in the sun, as told by his sweetheart in her stylish, heartfelt essay that touched on a little of everything pertinent to country fairs and those who attended them way back when. Times have changed. Now the grandstand is filled for demolition derbies; in my day, fireman’s
musters. Not back then, in 1942, bombs disrupting daily lives worldwide, subsistence hilltown farms struggling to make a go of it with laborers off to war on faraway
continents. Like many other agrarian highland lads, Bud Coombs was strong like bull and fleet afoot but unable to join proud Arms Academy’s athletic teams because daily farm chores precluded it.

The story begins in the barn, where Bud and his father are performing morning chores as part of their daily routine, the reticent teen hinting that he’d like to break free, no school, and take the old Chevy to the fair. His father, painfully short on words, one-ups him, tells him to take the big red Oldsmobile, quite a treat for a 17-year-old rolling down dusty Brook Road and across the lush Greenfield Meadows to the county fair. Yes sir, he was living large.

He climbs the gentle slope to the fairgrounds, parks the Olds out of harm’s way and heads for the gate. Once inside, young Bud goes directly to the grandstand area to catch the track meet, where the county schools — his Arms, Greenfield and Turners, probably others — vie for bragging rights annually in a spirited competition fueled by town and school pride. Remember, those were the days when every Franklin County town had
its own summer baseball team, and inter-town rivalries were intense, more so than today,
when kids have traded their Louisville Sluggers for joysticks. But let us not digress, or take cheap shots at today’s youth. Back to the ’42 fair, nine months removed from Pearl Harbor, the world aflame, young Bud quick-stepping down the midway to the track.

He arrives at in front of the grandstand and the Arms coach, short of competitors, is nervously pacing, furiously scanning the bleachers, the track, anywhere for able bodies. He spots Bud. Can he run? Timidly, Bud nods. Yes, he can run. He’s promptly rewarded with Arms maroon and white to don, a pair of “roomy” track shoes to lace up. He puts on his new uniform, receives quick lessons in stance and how to burst from the blocks at the report of a revolver, and proceeds to win the 220- and 100-yard dashes, helping his school secure the Franklin County track championship, quite a feat against the larger schools. A story fit for the big screen, that of Bud Coombs’ day of glory at the fair. Yes, a
wartime tale worth repeating.

Before departing for home, back up Brook Road to Coombs Hill, Bud is named captain of the fair team and spends the rest of the day walking the lanes, flirting, eating hot dogs, cotton candy, candied apples; playing games and riding the Ferris wheel with adoring Arms coeds, frightened by rocking at the peak. He arrives home a little late for evening chores and his father is already at it. He doesn’t say much, just nods and softly kicks a milking stool toward a waiting shorthorn. Bud sits firmly, grabs a teat, pulls and twists, producing that familiar hollow splash off the base of an empty bucket.

“Good fair?” his father inquires.

“Yup.”

More splashes.

Humble souls, those country folk from our bucolic Franklin hills. Don’t say much. Never did. Never will.

Just enough.

The first Indian trails I ever walked are carved into the Sugarloafs, north and south, one snaking its way up the south face of Wequamps to King Philip’s Seat, the other meandering through the cliffs on the west face of North Sugarloaf to another shelf-cave we were told had Native significance. How I found them I can’t recall. It must have been word-of-mouth on Graves Street and Eastern Avenue. But does it really matter? All I know is that we walked those trails often during the pleasant months, getting away from adult supervision, never a bad thing then or now, free play, even a little mischief now and then. Big deal. Out of sight, out of mind; no harm, no foul. Can you think of any other cliches to raise the ire of devoted AP stylists, if there are any left?

I’m sure I could still find those ancient trails with little effort, the more difficult of the two being the one on North Sugarloaf. To get there, you had to go to the end of Graves Street near a little electrical sub-station, then angle southeast to the base of the cliffs and follow it to pick up the trail, an obvious footpath sunken deep into the hard red clay. I don’t even know if kids still walk it. I hope so. But one never knows in these paranoid times. Could be that those footpaths haven’t been used for years. We always called them Indians trails. That’s what I believe they are. Who else could have made them prehistoric deep?

Since those youthful days of explorative bliss, I have read much about our indigenous trails, honing my knowledge and fine-tuning my eye for historic landscapes and their traversing trails. The trodden paths that greeted Bradford and Alden, Winthrop and Saltonstall during New England’s contract period later became their highways to manifest destiny, widened and diverted here and there over time to become Boston Post Road or Bay Path, suitable for wheeled vehicles after improvements and corduroy roads through troublesome depressions. Over time, the secondary roads were discontinued and abandoned, but they still exist in our wooded highlands, many lined with stone-clad depressions and above-ground foundations that provide clues of what used to be.

When you ponder it without getting carried away, it’s really quite simple. Do you really think Rev. Thomas Hooker and his Puritan flock cut their own path to Hartford in 1636? Of course not. They followed existing trails to the Connecticut Valley, then used waterways and other paths northward to places like Northampton, Hadley, Deerfield and Northfield. Once those towns started to fill up with pre-birth-control congestion, settlers looking for space branched out into what became our hilltowns by following existing trails and staking their claims along them. They’re still there under a dense forest canopy, a lost world with fascinating historic relevance.

I continue to learn more about these long-lost hilltown roads and farms. Soon, I will start putting to use a new tool — my DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 hand-held GPS unit — to mark the roads, cellar holes and landmarks along the way. I think it’ll enhance my perspective, snuggle me closer to the land stained with my ancestors’ sweat and blood.

It’s great. Here I am 56 years old and still enjoying free play in the woods. Hopefully my grandsons will follow my footsteps long after I’m gone. Better still, maybe they’ll even use the intuitive computer skills I’ll never have to help me master the new toy.

That would be fun indeed.

I’ve had a letter sitting here on my desk for a couple of years, one I’ve “been meaning to get to,” if you know what I mean. But here I sit, finally getting back to it, prodded by the man who sent it, dignified octogenarian Edward M. Wells of Leyden, Franklin County roots nearly as deep as the Sunderland sycamore.

It was Mr. Wells who showed up at my door a month or so ago inquiring about the letter. Did I still have it kicking around? If so, he thought he’d float it past Irmarie Jones or someone else who may be interested. It brought me back to my school daze many years ago, the Harris-tweed, bespectacled teacher, chalk-dusted shoulders, asking how many more days I’d need to finish the essay due last week. Well, let’s just say Mr. Wells got a 21st-century response, no resemblance to my trusted 1970 friend, Sixties Defiance. The story of Robert “Bud” Coombs’ had indeed interested me; loved the writing style, too. I did intend to do something on it. Just needed a little poke, I guess. Well, Mr. Wells was there to dig his dusty pointer stick between my ribs. So here I sit, wondering where to start.

Accompanying the essay was Mr. Wells’ handwritten letter, dated June 2, 2007, prefacing the little tale, deft touch, that had been written for the Christmas holidays by his late cousin’s Tucson, Ariz., widow. Her name was Jean, wife of “Bud” Coombs, he from, you guessed it, Coombs Hill in Colrain, just a hop, skip and a jump west of me, on the site of the old Fort Morris of French & Indian War fame, one of four garrisons available to Coleraine’s earliest Scots-Irish settlers when danger loomed in the howling wilderness. Bud’s people had farmed that idyllic spot looking east at Monadnock since the start, parts of four centuries turning up stones and Native implements while tilling the soil.

But this is not a history of Coombs Hill or Coombs Farm or that old “South Fort.” No, this story has Franklin County Fair flavor, one that some of the older readers among us will remember well. It’s about what the annual September gathering on Petty’s Plain once meant countywide to farm- and schoolboys alike. Sadly, this weekend there will be no schoolboy athletic competition akin to the days of Bud Coombs and my own father, himself a former fair sprint champion, then a Deerfield teen representing Greenfield after putting Deerfield High in his rearview due to “issues” with the school administration. Like they say, the apple doesn’t fall from the tree. Maybe I too should have fled. But I stayed … and ultimately paid.

Enough of that, though … back to Bud Coombs and his Franklin County Fair day in the sun, as told by his sweetheart in her stylish, heartfelt essay that touched on a little of everything pertinent to country fairs and those who attended them way back when. Times have changed. Now the grandstand is filled for demolition derbies; in my day, fireman’s musters. Not back then, in 1942, bombs disrupting daily lives worldwide, subsistence hilltown farms struggling to make a go of it with laborers off to war on faraway continents. Like many other agrarian highland lads, Bud Coombs was strong like bull and fleet afoot but unable to join proud Arms Academy’s athletic teams because daily farm chores precluded it.

The story begins in the barn, where Bud and his father are performing morning chores as part of their daily routine, the reticent teen hinting that he’d like to break free, no school, and take the old Chevy to the fair. His father, painfully short on words, one-ups him, tells him to take the big red Oldsmobile, quite a treat for a 17-year-old rolling down dusty Brook Road and across the lush Greenfield Meadows to the county fair. Yes sir, he was living large.

He climbs the gentle slope to the fairgrounds, parks the Olds out of harm’s way and heads for the gate. Once inside, young Bud goes directly to the grandstand area to catch the track meet, where the county schools — his Arms, Greenfield and Turners, probably others — vie for bragging rights annually in a spirited competition fueled by town and school pride. Remember, those were the days when every Franklin County town had its own summer baseball team, and inter-town rivalries were intense, more so than today, when kids have traded their Louisville Sluggers for joysticks. But let us not digress, or take cheap shots at today’s youth. Back to the ’42 fair, nine months removed from Pearl Harbor, the world aflame, young Bud quick-stepping down the midway to the track.

He arrives at in front of the grandstand and the Arms coach, short of competitors, is nervously pacing, furiously scanning the bleachers, the track, anywhere for able bodies. He spots Bud. Can he run? Timidly, Bud nods. Yes, he can run. He’s promptly rewarded with Arms maroon and white to don, a pair of “roomy” track shoes to lace up. He puts on his new uniform, receives quick lessons in stance and how to burst from the blocks at the report of a revolver, and proceeds to win the 220- and 100-yard dashes, helping his school secure the Franklin County track championship, quite a feat against the larger schools. A story fit for the big screen, that of Bud Coombs’ day of glory at the fair. Yes, a wartime tale worth repeating.

Before departing for home, back up Brook Road to Coombs Hill, Bud is named captain of the fair team and spends the rest of the day walking the lanes, flirting, eating hot dogs, cotton candy, candied apples; playing games and riding the Ferris wheel with adoring Arms coeds, frightened by rocking at the peak. He arrives home a little late for evening chores and his father is already at it. He doesn’t say much, just nods and softly kicks a milking stool toward a waiting shorthorn. Bud sits firmly, grabs a teat, pulls and twists, producing that familiar hollow splash off the base of an empty bucket.

“Good fair?” his father inquires.

“Yup.”

More splashes.

Humble souls, those country folk from our bucolic Franklin hills. Don’t say much. Never did. Never will.

Just enough.