You know, this wandering around that happens from time to time can yield some interesting results.
Quite a while ago after a job in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area and stops with my sisters throughout the state, I decided to visit with our daughter Mae at Bennington College in Vermont. From my last stopover with sister number two I plotted a course to Bennington via Interstate 88, Binghamton to Albany, with some side trips along the way. No big hurry. It’s about a two-hour drive that took me close to six hours as I wandered about. Route 88 is fast but boring so slipping off to Route 7 was a lot more fun and interesting, and it is the road I took to get from Albany to Bennington.
Now Bennington is an interesting place. When we drove Mae to school, over the Hogback in Vermont, the scenery was magnificent, especially after passing through Keene, New Hampshire in the fall. The joy of that drive diminished in winter which could be a real killer. Once, the five-hour drive took us 10 hours after a snow and ice storm that took down trees and power lines, littering the roads with wrecked cars and jackknifed trucks. Such was not the case for my drive from the Pennsylvania approach.
I had been to Bennington years before Mae enrolled. I helped to produce introductory materials for a planned retirement community much like the one I worked on for St. Andrews Village. I worked with a brilliant graphic design lady from Los Angeles on both projects, but there was never much down time for exploring.
So I figured I’d spend a little time poking around before landing at campus, never quite sure what I would find afoot there upon arrival. Bennington held many surprises even for a veteran of the college ’60s!
I love old stuff and Bennington has some real treasures, one of which is shared with today’s adventure. There is the “Old First” Congregational Church, oddly enough, where Route 7 rolls into town – talk about serendipity! I couldn’t resist and pulled over to investigate. What a great old building with a cemetery right adjacent. Apparently there are soldiers from the Revolutionary War Battle of Bennington (1777) buried there, but I had no knowledge of that at the time. What I also did not know was that Robert Frost is buried in that cemetery. Imagine my surprise! When I was more of a reader, Frost rocked. Still one of my most favorite poems of all time is “The Road not Taken,” which I have taken many times!
I could not believe this coincidence. As Mr. Berra (a Montclair, New Jersey student parent) once said, “Deja vu all over again!” And there I roamed for over an hour in and around gravestones and inside the church, where I met a man with ties to Maine as he put away papers gathered from an earlier service. And “I took the one less traveled by,” which has made all the difference.