week20-09

My My Hey Hey

By Rae Ellis
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

"It's better to burn out than to fade away." -Neil Young
I.
My grandmother has arthritis.
Her hands have been twisted and warped
into gnarled knots of fading twine.
They twitch when she reaches for a plate,
and then they lay in her lap,
a pile of helpless bones.
She has to sleep with a splint on her wrist
so that while her mind is elsewhere,
her hands won't fade away entirely.
She used to be a teacher,
a writer,
a baker,
an avid correspondent.
Now when I look at her hands,
I feel guilty about all the times I made fun of her.
All the times I complained.
When my grandmother isn't in the room,
her children
and their spouses
and their friends
shake their heads and say
"that poor woman,
she doesn't have much time left."

When my grandmother laughs,
she loses control of her body.
She forgets for a moment to tame her wildly twitching hands
that are curling into a knot, Read more »

Mill Girls

By Haley Harder
Heartworks Renaissance School, Grade 5

Laura put one arm on Martha's shoulder, and the other on Josie's.
"Here we are," she said. Martha knocked on the heavy, wooden door. A large man answered.
"You are the new mill girls, right?" Josie opened her mouth to make a smart alec-y remark, but Laura stopped her.
"Yes," she said.
"I'll show you to your looms," said the man.
Josie and Martha had come from Canada. They had similar lives; both of their fathers had lost their jobs. When they heard about the cotton mill, they decided to cross over to Vermont.
Josie and Martha met on the train. They had become fast friends, even though they were opposites. Josie was loud, Martha was quiet. Josie was short, Martha was tall. They met Laura when they got to Vermont.
Laura liked Martha immediately, but it took some time for her to like Josie because her first words to Laura were, "And I thought I was short!" Read more »

Mud Turtle Rock

By Warren Ouellette
Renaissance School, Grade 5

At my camp on Lake Champlain in Colchester in about 1945 my grandpa, who was 14 at the time, was watching his dad's friend and his friend's son go out on the lake in a speedboat. My grandpa was thinking it was a wonderful, warm, summer day when suddenly . . . CRASH! The speedboat hit a giant rock just 150 feet from the shore, throwing both his dad's friend and his dad's friend's son into the water. My grandfather thought they were badly injured. The speedboat was destroyed, but no one was hurt. They were saved by another boater on the lake. The rock was the size of a small car and was named Mud Turtle Rock.
After the incident, my grandpa reported it to the Coast Guard. He wanted to mark the rock with a buoy, but the Coast Guard said no because it wasn't a navigable waterway on the navigation chart. My grandpa said, "Well then it's going to happen again." Read more »

Late Again

By Amber Brooks
Rivendell Academy, Grade 9

I fled. Ran as fast as my skinny legs could manage, past the horse pasture and then the barn. I halted next to the well and pulled the lever. Grabbing the pail and splashing the cool water upon my face, I attempted to wash the traces of sweat and dirt. I sprinted toward the house and climbed onto the deck, my dress bunched in my hands. I leaped over the lazy old dog that lounged on the porch, and leaped up the steps to the screen door. I scrambled in the door and stopped as I saw the scowl on my mother's face. I smoothed my hair down over the planes of my face and wiped away the gritty dirt that was embedded in my skin on the back of my dark dress. Mary stood with a hand propped on her hip and narrowed her eyes at me.
“About time,” she sneered Read more »

The Icicle

By Kay Bushman
U-32 Middle School, Grade 7

When my grandmother, Queda, was a kid, her parents had a rule that she needed to go outside for at least 30 minutes every day. Rain or shine, wind or snow, below 0 or above 100, they made her go out and entertain herself for half an hour. Read more »

Picture

By Bridget Iverson
Mount Mansfield Union High School, Grade 10

I didn't want to, didn't intend to when I got up this morning but the afternoon was hot and lazy and there were no customers except Charlotte the ghost by her curtains and b'sides, I liked the man's face. It was wide and clear, like a child's. He stuttered some when he asked me, and dropped his hat on the polished floor and knocked over his tripod trying to pick it up and looked at me so pitifully; a dog, begging for scraps. I helped him up. Nodded. "Okay." Read more »

Smile!

By Nina Cavender
Crossett Brook Middle School, Grade 7

Anna looked into the camera, her eyes aglow. She, a modest mill girl, was being photographed! Her heart thumped loudly and quickly. Not knowing what expression to give to the camera, she peered over at Lily, her cousin, standing to her right. Lily's face was serious, like she was trying to peer into the very soul of the camera. She then looked over at Mary-Ann, one of her closest friends. She was smiling a big, broad smile, obviously trying to look like she was happy. That was very far from the truth though. Mary-Ann basically lived at the mill, never wanting to go home, for fear of her parents beating her. Anna then looked into the camera and gave it a simple, blank expression, wanting to have a face of her own. The camera man, under the little black cloak that was attached to the camera, said "Smile!" and the bulb went off like lightning.

The Missing Shoe

By Kira Margolis
Richmond Elementary School, Grade 1

Chapter 1: The Shoe
Alice was 13, Samantha was 19, and Jessica was 18. One day Alice lost her shoe. She needed it by now. Her mother, who they called Marmee, was sad when she heard. So Samantha decided to look for it. She looked everywhere. She could not find the shoe. Jessica was going to help, but she failed. Alice looked everywhere—-out on the street, even in people’s houses because people could have stolen it.
That night Alice looked out her window. Then she looked up at the stars. She saw a constellation. The stars formed a shoe. “My shoe,” Alice gasped. “How I wish I could find my shoe,” she said with a frown. Then she went to sleep.
When morning came Marmee said good morning to all the girls. First was Samantha, second was Jessica, and third was Alice.

Chapter 2: Samantha Fell in Love Read more »

Three's a Charm

By Jenna Rickson
Essex High School, Grade 11

Only by the callouses on our
fingers can we expect to
get a few cents a day
though it's never enough
to keep loved ones hopeful and
alive

years of torment
weighing and trying to balance
our terrible home lives with how
well we perform in our
day-to-day duties

only by the sweat of our brow
can we provide for our family
for a muddled father
who would rather sit and waste
his wages with a foaming mug
than get medicine for a
sick and dying sibling
or food on the table every night

only by the determination of our minds
can we amount to anything useful
scolded by school teachers who say we're
nothing and that all we can expect
to become is mothers of children who
won't make it past the age of three
wives of husbands who are never faithful
daughters of parents that wish
we had never been born

only by the tears that fall down our
cheeks can we remember to keep going Read more »

Love at First Sight

By Felicia Neuhof
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

It was a warm day in May, 1989. The old blue Chrysler New Yorker rattled down the back dirt roads of North Bridgewater Road. The sun beat down, the flowers were in bloom, the birds sang out harmoniously, the nearby brook babbled rambunctiously in its course and the passing breeze was laden with the pungent odors of spring. My Mom, Dad, and ten-month-old sister were bumping along the winding road in the car, picnic basket abundantly filled with fresh sandwiches, cold lemonade, crunchy chips and crisp apples. They were on their way to spend an afternoon with their two Arabian horses at Royal Brooke Farm. My infant sister Ashley danced and laughed in her car seat to the repeating sounds of her favorite song “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” When my parents tried to change the tape to a different song, she cried and yelled out in her displeasure. Read more »

Family Story

By Jennifer Leggett
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

My grandmother was born and raised in Cuba and my grandfather was born and raised in Spain. So how did two people from two different countries fall in love? My mother has told me this story briefly before but never the way my grandmother did. Read more »

That's What They Call Us

By Ellie Ramsey
Crossett Brook Middle School, Grade 7

1-2-3
that's what they call us
the three musketeers
that's what they call us
we do everything together
we can't be pulled apart
we're like sisters
joined at birth
no one can keep us apart
three peas in a pod
that's what they call us
always together
no matter what
we have grow up together
triplets
joined at the heart
that's what WE call us

Exlax Cake Anyone?

By Damian Coburn
Chelsea Public School, Grade 12

When my grandmother was about 18 she lived with her mother, brother, husband, brother-in-law and two sisters. Since her husband and brother-in-law worked all day my grandmother and her sister Joy would stay home to clean and prepare meals for work for the men. They usually made chocolate cake for dessert every week because it was my grandmother’s husband's and her brother-in-law's favorite. But, after about two weeks of the men’s chocolate cake disappearing out of the refrigerator my grandmother and Joy came up with a plan to find out who was sneaking into the refrigerator at night and eating the cake.

My grandmother and Joy put a whole box of Exlax into the cake batter and baked the cake. For someone who ate just one or maybe two pieces of cake, the Exlax would not bother them. But the person who was having late-night chocolate cake binging would be making very good friends with the bathroom throne. Read more »

Sounds fishy

By Lucas Bendig
Clarendon Elementary School, Grade 6

I go fishing in the summer at Tinmouth Pond. Just before dark, you can always hear the bass rising out of the water for bugs. They slam to the surface of the water. It makes a splatting sound. The louder the splat the bigger the fish. So I always cast toward the loudest splatting sounds. The best nights to hear the fish are the warm and humid ones because the mosquitoes are out and active. These warm summer nights are when I'm most successful. Sometimes my grandfather and I go out on his boat. We don't normally catch bass when we are in the boat. Instead, we usually catch pike. It is still fun to hear the fish jump.

Memories

By Elizabeth Annis
Dummerston School, Grade 7

That day I went into the attic brought back so many terrible memories. I was looking through a box my mother had given me before she passed away. Most of the stuff was just her old trinkets from when she was young. There was a little wooden sculpture of Jesus Christ, an old picture of my family, and a doll that had been my mother's and then mine. I would’ve given it to my daughter but I thought it had been lost but she is off living with her husband and 2 boys. That made me sad to think I would never see any other baby girl playing with this doll that I loved my whole childhood. Read more »