A place for open letters to the good people of the world.

Dear Pilot,

Dooley noted. I hope he gets broken in sooner rather than later.


Sleepily,

Troop

 

Dear world,

It's too damn early.

Yours in needing starbucks,
spup

 

spup - yet another reason to curse the effin' PNW. hugs, tomas

 

Dear Tim Horton's
If it's OK with you I'll pick out my own damn donuts!
When I order a dozen assorted donuts. I want an assortment of my choosing. And don't look at me like I have a third hand growing out of my forehead - though if I did it would be giving you the middle finger! - when I tell you I would like to pick out my own donuts If you don't mind.
I don't know when it became standard operating procedure for employees to pick out an assortment of donuts for customers, but I ain't down with it.
Let me choose my own donuts from now on and we'll be cool.

Yours,

Evil .... Thy Name is Orville Redenbacher!!

PS: Nice job on the chocolate chip muffins!

 

Dear Evil,
There is no apostrophe. It is Tim Hortons.
Cheers from Canuckistan,
Flashy

 

Dear Yoga Zone,
I have missed you. I promise to be a better friend now and in the future as I attempt to return to my bendier ways.
In the meantime, my abs are as sore as hell.
In pain,
Flashy

 

Dear interview board;

It has been four days since I interviewed, and your last statement was, "We'll be in touch."
Is it too early for me to start panicking? ???

Sincerely,

Platy

 

Dear New England,

Well, 12 years later I bid you a fond — and final — farewell.

I came to you in August 1995 excited to experience your culture, lifestyle, people, food, foliage, rivers, mountain roads and mud season. Even when I left a few times to experience other locales (Jamaica, Roswell), I came back to you because something about you got under my skin, thank you very much, Luscious Jackson.

In Vermont I lived in Bennington, Brattleboro, Putney, and Rio Blanco. I covered your high school sporting scene; probably saw some 50 of the 72 high schools at one point or another. Also got to cover Southern Vermont College; still have Jeff Casey's SVC baseball jersey from '96 that he sold me for $5; in fact, I'm wearing it right now. It's my golden boy, thank you very much, Seinfeld.

In New Hampshire I lived in Lebanon, in a pink apartment house. Nothing against Leb or New Hampshire, or even pink apartment houses, but I moved back to Vermont after 6 months. Just felt right. Something I needed to do.

Been to all 4 of them thar corners of the Green Mountain State; sure as hell more than Bush can claim since this is the only state he ain't done hit. Bitch. Bennington, the land where the 4 winds blow and home of Mount Anthony wrestling — 19-time defending state champions; one more breaks the national record. Brattleboro, where 70-year-old hippies walk naked in Harmony Lot, and where in one sitting with the other half of the sports department watched the entire Ken Burns Baseball production. Putney, where I listened to the baseball game on the radio when Carl Everett broke up Mussina's no-hitter with 2 outs in bottom-9; I cheered for reasons I still don't know. Putney, where I was on 9-11. Rio Blanco, oh Rio Blanco, you're a strange little railroad town that's sprucing itself up on an artistic level.

I never say never, thank you very much, Romeo Void, but I don't think I'll be coming back here any time soon. Doesn't mean I will forget you. All those tiny towns and terrific, unique townies. Bennington (where I fell in love with a terrific girl; a keeper in every sense of the word). North Bennington (which prides itself as "the conscience of Bennington." What a bunch of pompous-ass bastards). Wilmington. Whitingham (home of the Glitter Girlz). Arlington. Manchester. Bellows Falls! Oh, Bellows Falls. I'll always love you, Bellows Falls; no one makes better clam chowder than Father's Restaurant on Route 5. Windsor. Hartford. Hartland. Quechee. Morrisville. Vergennes. Vernon, home of a nuclear power plant that no one feels is safe. Chester, where everybody walks for leisure. Springfield! St. Johnsbury and the Northeast Kingdom. Sunderland (where I worked construction for 2 months one summer and helped expand a road bridge ("bring me some more rebah!" is forever etched in the back of my mind). Stratton Mountain (where I worked as a ticket scanner in the winter of '98). Woodstock. Bethel. Chelsea. Sharon. SoRo. Pownal. Thetford. East Thetford. North Thetford. Killington. Bridgewater Corners, where if you drive faster than 25, you WILL get a ticket! Rutland, Westminster West. Saint Albans. Townshend. So many peculiar nooks and crannies and craggy roads. Oh yes, the roads. I-91 was built — so beautifully engineered — for those who love to dominate the gas pedal. Route 11 from Manchester through the mountainside to Springfield. Route 5 from Springfield to Rio Blanco along the Connecticut River. Route 30 from Brattleboro to Townshend, which springs up just after those "dyno humps." None of those roads, however, compare with Old Lady 9, that curvy, swervy rollercoasteresque asphalt from Bennington to Brattleboro, Brattleboro to Bennington. No trip to Vermont is complete without a journey 'cross Old Lady 9.

It gets brutally cold up here. But for an L.A. boy, learning to adapt to days and nights of 10-below was the best thing that ever could've happened to me. See it's always 75 degrees in L.A., and people's personalities follow suit: always happy, shiny, never changing. But in New England, boy, you've got to adapt to the seasons, especially winter. 3-day snowstorms made me happy the way a 78-degree day in Long Beach always put me into beach-bum mode; or in the mood to go hoop it up at Horny Corner. My favorite snow moment happened one night in Brattleboro, when the other half of the sports department — a great man — and I decided to walk home after deadline in a blizzard, a 2-mile walk. We walked on the street because sidewalks were covered in snow 2 feet high. Halfway there, a monstrous plow starts bearing down on us, so we start to run, laughing. We get to a rising bend in the road and there was no real shoulder to our right, just a steep slope. We kept running, and the plow with its industrial lights bore down on us more. The colleague reached the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill. I'm thinking I'm going to have to dive down the slope and turn into a human snowball, but just make it down the hill to the sidewalk in time as the plow roars by. The colleague and I laugh some more. We make it home — we lived in the same apartment building — without further ado and enjoyed Dewar's into the night.

The other blizzard story is from March 2000, the night Bellows Falls played Montpelier in the D-II boys hoops title game at the Barre Auditorium — "the old brick building on the hill." Montpelier is a border town, so the Solons had their 1,000 fans in the stands. BF is 90 miles away. The storm hit in the afternoon, so less than 100 made it up. This BF team ... man alive, I don't think I've covered a more emotional, eclectic, explosive, determined team in my life. Enough stories to write a short book, and one day I just might. Maybe for the 10-year anniversary. Anyway, I drove up that morning just to make sure I'd be there. The game went to overtime, and BF won the title. Strange to think that was 7 years ago. I think about those guys, still. BF's girls won the title, too, that year, and that's a whole 'nother story of a lifetime.

Then there was the nipple-freezing November day in 1995, my first experience with what true cold is, when I had an out-of-body-type experience, when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. It was the day I covered 2 state-championship soccer games. I've written about it here before so I won't go into the full details. Suffice it to say, never had I experienced such an extreme in emotions in one day.

I could go on and on about Vermont, which is a wonderful state to live in. And that would be without even talking about my New Hampshire experiences, not to mention the times I covered games in Massachusetts and Connecticut. I can't remember covering a game or event in Rhode Island, but I think I did once.

Anyhoo, this is my last night in New England. Twelve years of memories. I haven't even scratched the surface in trying to rehash them. Oh well. One day.

Well, New England, it was.

Sincerely,
Xan

P.S. Genital soul! (that's the name of a song a local musician sang on CAT-TV; he also came up with the phrase "Bennington, the land where the 4 winds blow." I told my best friend about the guy, so he hired the musician to play his wedding in Vegas).

P.P.S. Rest in peace, Steph and Graham Davidson.

 

X-Man,

You make me want to move to the Northeast. Alas, the Pacific fits me better than my favorite winter jacket, so I'll stick with SoCal. (Besides, if I moved up that way, it'd be to Cooperstown so I could work at the Hall. And then I'd never leave.) But there's a part of me that wants that life, too. Maybe when I'm older. Gotta lotta life left to live ...

Fascinatingly,
Buck-Dub

 

Xan,

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to experience just a bit of that before you hit the road.

Appreciatively,

ut

 

Dear bucky and UT,

Thank you.

It's thundering and lightninging right now. Someone must've kicked a hole in the sky so the heavens could cry over me, thank you very much, Oasis

And UT, the creative world is at your fingertips. The dream you told me about that day in Borders, I know you're going to see it come true.

Sincerely,
Xan

 

Thanks, Xan.

Your confidence is nice to hear. Believe it or not, I'm actually at work at that little project right now.

ut