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Directions to Carl Blaisdell’s house: Go about seven miles down this road. Then there’s a road that kind of goes up to a Jersey farm on the left and then there’s a pond. But there’s no sign to the pond. So after the pond, drive past the pull-off and Carl’s trailer sits way up in a field at the top of that hill. There’s a lot of pipes. And a lot of cars and trucks. And lots and lots of hounds.
But Carl wasn’t home. And so I went back the next day and we sat in his truck and talked. Carl’s trailer looks out over the farm he ran for most of his life, then sold. After farming, Carl seemed to make a smooth transition to being a mountain man, which is how he described himself, and the name pretty much fits. He’s private. He only goes to town to get something he needs. His life is close to the ground, to his dogs, and to the outside.
Larry Massett was inspired by the hounds and made this short piece. It’s called Where’s Carl.
Credits
This interview was conducted while I was reporting for an episode about the Northeast Kingdom, by Brave Little State, which you can find HERE.
Music for this episode is by Emily Kueppers
And here’s a link to Caplan’s Army Store, where I have bought a LOT of socks.
So enjoyed hearing Carl’s take on living life. The animation in his voice was both inviting yet down to earth.
Interviewing demands patience and you got a few questions in betwixt Carl’s colorful story.
I like his advice: do what you wanna do before you lose the chance to persue it.
Not sure what type of woman would pair up with a fellow like Carl but she seemed strong, tolerant, and a bit as unusual as Carl. I met a woman once who said she told her husband she wanted kids and he gave her four dogs. She left him a bit later, without taking the dogs. Carl’s wife took on their relationship until it was time to leave – a smart thing to do, in my opinion. Carl never mentioned if he sees/saw his kids again ( did I hear wrong?). That was unfortunate.
But him and the dogs – what more is there to living?
That Carl “allowed” you the interview was a wonder. That he had you capture it in his truck -classy.
He sees his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.He is an extrodinarry montain man!
Erica–Jay and I just listened to this. What an important thing to capture the voices of a Vermont like this . In many ways it is an end of an era–but you are making sure we don’t forget. i love the line ” I don’t give a goddamn, but it ain’t too shiny”
Bravo again. Thanks-
Excellent reporting. Thank you SO much for recording and interviewing Vermont life like this.
Love your work
Thank you Bill!
As a chield I grew up in the summer over in NH without electricity or running water just a pump at a well and a wood stove . No phone and only a radio for a half hour each day as it run off a car battery. My mother liked it that way and wanted it no other . And she took me around to meet folks who thought like her . They had been poor to lower class as people say but they were happy in there own way and very often smarter then you thought they were. They sounded like Carl pretty much and worked most of there lives on farms . At one point I actually meet a woman who was born in our house with no doctors or nurses around. She had hated the farm as it had been back then , having to spend an hour at least churning the milk to make butter by hand and walking over a mile just to get a ride on a horse to go to school . So as soon as she got old enough she moved out to be nearer the city . But those that stayed raise hunting dogs like Carl black and whites , Black and Tans , red bones , and blood hounds . Some got hunting license‘s in every state they could and found time somehow in there busy lives to hunt and fish as they had as a child before the hard work of kicked in from farming . Talk was either about the farm or hunting , there dogs or some animals they knew about . And if they knew you knew someone they knew they would gossip about them or get you to gossip about them . I think in the end I got to like them more then my mother did even though she might know them and there families much longer then I did .
Sadly as you already know few are left like that any more . And all I can say is I miss that sound of there voice and hearing the wise words they spoke and there sheer joy at the simplest things in life so many don’t know about in these times . But the land that they knew and I do now living in Vt still speaks to me the way it did for both them and me .
The deer will walk in the same places that there great grand parents did and so it’s never hard to find them nor is it for many of the animals here you just have to know them like Carl dose and I almost know as well as him.
Responses like these are why I make this show. Thank you Thaddeus.
Erica:
Oh such a treat to hear Carl’s story told mostly by Carl in his Kingdom vernacular and voice.I have heard a close friend who moved away from Vermont, never to return , speak in that great accented speech.When I told him we were moving up here , he called us cuckoo birds.He has fallen in love with the big blue warmth of the West we left behind.I think we can have more than one love of place without it being cheating.