green guitar : October 2017

green river farm

my first job was at modern dairy ( now green river ) farm throwing hay for my cousin moses, 4 years before reagan's federal dairy buyout in 1986

the manager of the farm at the time was a guy called fritzy who would look at me funny like i was supposed to do something odd

turns out he looked very similar to to the german steel magnate fritz thyssen and the farm was next door to the store at five corners recently purchased by william vanderbilt the 3rd whose family were railroad magnates

the town was a small new england college town and for some reason the college once owned one half of the town of littleton maine just north of houlton

five corners

about a quarter of a mile north of the store at 5 corners stood the hall house where winston churchill's great grandfather once lived

churchill s mother jennie jerome was credited with creating the college s school colors for an early baseball game against harvard

another quarter of a mile north finds our highschool where in our 7th grade year of the class of 1981 a teacher told us one of our fellow students was the grandson of rudolf hess and later the left tackle of our kosier league champ football team mentioned to me on the bus home from practice that he was one of hitler's god children

mt greylock rhs

to be fair im still trying to locate the exact locale of mr vanderbilt s farm both robby steele and fritzy were there during hay season and the way i remember it explained to me was that fritzy was the farms manager, robby was using the farm s milking equipment for his cows and moses was storing his hay in the hayloft

so field farm, once owned by the field family, neighbors cricket creek farm once owned by william vanderbilt, both about a mile west from modern dairy / green river farm and both at the intersection of oblong road and sloane road

did the famous " silver spoon communist " frederick vanderbilt field once own the field farm which neighbored the famous " oss capitalist " william h vanderbilt lll 's cricket creek farm?

they were both great - great grandsons of cornelius vanderbilt

so piecing together the old north adams transcript snippets, iberkshires and berkshire eagle stories, mr vanderbilt lived on cricket creek farm which is at the west end of sloan road and bought steel s corners store from jim steele in 1978 while fritzy bought modern dairy farm from jim or robert steele in 1954 and retired while auctioning off his cows in 1980 the year before i worked there

william henry vanderbilt lll

william vanderbilt purchased mr henry l george s milk route in 1949

modern dairy milk bottle

the milk route may have become modern dairy milk which was the milk delivery service in the area and whose central bottling plant was on main st just before entering north adams from williamstown

milk box

we all had lidded metal boxes saying modern dairy on them outside our doors where the milkman would leave the milk in the morning in 1/2 gallon bottles

view from town selectwoman anne o'connor s fb

the reason it matters is that during ww2 mr vanderbilt went from being a lieutenant commander in the navy to the executive officer ( second in command ) of the oss s special operations dept then became governor of rhode island before retiring to williamstown where a story begins...

you see, my mom died 7 days after rfk was assassinated on june 6, 1968 and i'm hearing little clicks in my ear as i type almost each of these letters like my ear is receiving the microwave signal through the frey effect

i just checked it's not the phone making the clicking noises it was clicking right in my left ear...i guess they are just more clues to the story that i decided to begin after i died one day back in 2007

thought i had heard mother theresa had died the day before and then thought i heard princess di died the day after but...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

berkshire eagle regional dairy farming history

a warm south williamstown hello to our russian visitors because russia is very much part of the story...

i had a russian teacher once, or it was alleged she was russian...she was also reported to be one of the top mathematicians in the world...

we weren't allowed to ask her questions because it was towards the end of the cold war and she had two burly russian teacher 's assistants who sat on either side of her who we could ask questions of

i tried to ask a question once and the t a said " go back ... sit " while pointing at my desk

frederick vanderbilt field

frederick's mom

marilyns missing fbi files were discovered in 2012

view from the field farm

lona cohen

venona project

venona list

field farm

cyrus west field

1753 house at field park, named for cyrus field who laid the first trans atlantic cable

leonard cohen

memory chimes

hammond castle

had a deck of souvenir playing cards from hammond castle which we visited on a 6 th grade field trip to cape ann ...

its builder, john hays hammond, jr had over 400 patents and was considered the father of remote control