for the ghosts in old logging forests all over (or, in skepticism of curb appeal)

a while ago, i had a wonderful conversation with a friend and fellow new england native about the fascinating small-town lore you find in this part of the country. we talked about how the closest relative to this specific strain of myths and urban legends is probably appalachian folklore- how the two are similar and yet distinctly different. we found quite a few parallels in the kinds of ghost stories that the older folks had been passing on to us since we were kids, in two small underserved new england towns with over 160 miles between them.

immediately, i was bursting to tell them my favorite legend from my hometown of pittsford. 

between 1907 and 1966, pittsford was home to the vermont sanitorium, where tuberculosis patients were treated. part of the former sanitorium is now the vermont state police academy (still praying there might be some particularly hardy tb bacteria waiting for their time to shine) and the other part is now home to the fire department's famed haunted house, an annual fundraiser. i told them about the legend that still persists surrounding the police academy. 

every kid in pittsford has heard this story, and yet you could ask twenty pittsfordites to tell you the story and end up with twenty different retellings. central to the story is the idea that there's a ghost who now inhabits the police academy and, in some retellings, can be summoned by pressing a call button in a specific room. this is where the story's details become muddled and contradictory. some people say they heard the ghost, who it is generally agreed appears to be a woman, was a former patient at the sanitorium while others say she was a nurse. one retelling says she died falling down the stairs while another says a delirious patient killed her. another version says she caught tb while treating the patients and that's what killed her and a different version says she just dropped dead of sheer exhaustion. here, the stories converge and we agree that no matter how she died, her spirit remained at the sanitorium. then the retellings fray and split- some versions say she's friendly and helpful to the recruits (bootlicker!) while others say she's often antagonistic and troublesome (one can hope). 

when i told them that story, i found myself looking up the sanitorium and the information i could find surrounding it, just for the sake of my own curiosity. and what i found startled me.

it's no secret that i often take a dim view of my hometown. it's a tiny, underserved rural town that's largely home to quarry workers, construction workers, and farmers, and it's one of just a handful of towns in vermont that went red in the last election. when i return for breaks, the first thing i notice is how fucking dead the whole town is. it feels like everyone there is stuck in some endless groundhog day-esque loop, waking up to work the same back-breaking, shit-paying job at the same ungodly hour and stopping at the same tiny country store (the only one in town) for a lukewarm breakfast sandwich on the way to work. pittsford hangs on to stick-season gloom year-round. even when the grass is green and the flowers are blooming, there's still no escaping how weathered and worn the buildings and people look. 

but in that conversation, i realized how excited i was to talk about a bunch of old abandoned buildings and a legend that's persisted through the families that have often been here since the fort for which pittsford was named was first built, families that for some reason parked their asses here back in 1769 and never got around to ditching this place. i started remembering other legends i learned when i was younger, about all kinds of ghosts supposedly wandering around this tiny 2,000-person town. my mind started racing as i remembered reading old handwritten records at the library, as i recalled the head librarian eagerly pouring out the story of how maclure library got its name. i remembered kids at school telling me the old gym was haunted (i might be an atheist, but i've spent enough time in there to keep my skepticism to a minimum). i remembered real, legitimate stories unique to pittsford, about the cox family and the ice caves and the five covered bridges i could still list off as easily as my own name, and silk stocking row and all these other stories still wandering the cracked sidewalks of the town where i grew up. 

for a brief moment, i realized i was just the tiniest bit proud of pittsford.

i didn't immediately fall in love with the town that i nearly drove myself insane in, but that conversation made me realize there are plenty of things i don't hate about pittsford. i love the library where i spent my summers, and the old bank vault they found in the wall of the reading room and left as a sort of monument. i smile when guy, the butcher at the deli where i used to work, recognizes me even after a hundred different haircuts and style overhauls, and at the memory of him finally standing up to the boss we all hated. my day gets a little better when the friendly young cashier- my best friend from kindergarten- is around to talk as i'm paying for my things. i like the winding trails through the recreation area, and i remember fondly all the times i'd play in the creek or the pond there during the hot summer months. i'm just a little bit proud of the reputation i built for catching frogs in that pond. i can still picture the canvas bunk beds at the summer camp up on the hill, and my friends who used to live in the old white house across the road. i can still remember helping tear up linoleum in the kitchen of a massive old house that was donated to the town and now serves as a public gathering space. as much as my old job at the day camp depressed me, my heart still gets a little lighter as i picture the smiles of the kids who were always happy to see me, even when i was just tired and sore and sunburned and overstimulated and wanted to cry. i thought about the story my father told me about the polish immigrants who'd come to work in the marble quarries in neighboring proctor and brought with them a love and talent for soccer unmatched by almost any american-born players in the area. my father is a former professional soccer player and referee, and yet he still speaks with deep admiration at the memory of their talent. and how could we forget that this is the home of fort vengeance, the only surviving site of a military fort from the revolutionary war?

this town needs several lifetimes of work to lose that depressing feeling hovering over it. but in that conversation, i discovered the things i liked about the place i'd largely always thought of as the most boring, lifeless town in the united states of america. i thought more and more about the generations of people who'd come here, many of them no richer than their distant descendants remaining there today, and somehow, despite everything vermont's environment and the ever-shifting whims of politics and economics far beyond their control, they'd stuck it out. even in this place that seems built to smother and crush people, they'd hung in there. the more i thought about it, the more awestruck i was. and it made me think about how even in the most run-down, bleak, depressing towns in america, there's hope in their stories. in the fact that people still managed to stay through everything they encountered. certainly, some of them couldn't afford to leave and aren't remaining in pittsford by choice. but even those that have no other option are still going through their lives in open defiance of everything stacked up against them and trying to build the best lives they can under their given circumstances. 

i used to dread passing the fort vengeance marker- a little tower similar in shape to the bennington monument, carved from vermont marble, standing just a few yards from route seven, the only "real" way into or out of pittsford. that meant i was minutes away from seeing the same worn, broken-down buildings and the rusting omya quarry trucks and people who'd lingered in this town since a time when my father was younger than i am now. 

even though i'm not quite excited, i'm far less apprehensive at the prospect of going back now. at seeing the work of generations of tough, stubborn vermonters, and how it still stands even with the markers of a hundred flavors of hardship and disadvantage carved into the buildings and streets, visible almost wherever you look. oftentimes houses start to look neglected because the occupants are too busy doing everything they can to build and hang onto a life in a geographical and economic climate that barely supports their persisting existence and simply have no time, resources, or energy to spare when it comes to repainting the siding or weeding the garden. this is not to romanticize working oneself to the bone, but rather to suggest that these cosmetic (and even structural) flaws do not imply moral shortcomings of the people who call these places home. it does, however, suggest the moral failure of anyone with the power, money, time, and/or awareness to affect widespread change here who chooses not to do so for their own selfish reasons. it also suggests the seemingly inexhaustible resilience of the people who continue to carve their way through life here.

and there's countless towns out there just like this. even in the most run-down, disadvantaged, battered corners of the country, there's still something remarkable in the fact that they're there at all. that they continue to stand through everything life has thrown their way. in this regard, weathered and dilapidated houses with overgrown yards strewn with all kinds of things house something well worth admiring if you look at them the right way. 

in time, i've come to realize that many places i was once in awe of like lake placid, stowe, and any other overpriced, polished town full of people with too much money on their hands are all far more depressing than pittsford. in these places, you still see people sleeping under storefront awnings and in doorways. you still see folks working those exhausting, horribly underpaid thankless jobs and those who walk around with slumped shoulders and thousand-yard stares. but in these places, people have more than enough money to fix this if they fucking wanted to. and yet, they don't. they turn a blind eye, place a veneer over all that threatens this immaculate image. they kick the fallen ice cubes under the fridge to melt because bending over and picking them up is at their own expense.

pittsfordites? even if they had the money, i doubt many of them would put it towards fixing aesthetic flaws, at least not as a first priority. but no one comes together for one another like the people in this town, even with far less to spare than the people in the aforementioned towns. if someone is diagnosed with cancer or something else they can't afford to treat or if some disaster befalls them, word gets around at warp speed through the notorious small-town grapevine and within days there's people lining up around the block to help however they can, taking time off work or bringing their kids along to drop off donated food. in spite of having little to spare, they give far more. in open defiance of their own circumstances, they do more to help their neighbors who need it than those with double or triple the resources at their disposal. it's one more expression of that unwavering stubbornness that allows people to hang on here, and this is the only way i can fathom how towns like this remain standing.

maybe these ostensibly bleak parts of the world reflect a testament to something far more admirable than visual appeal. maybe they represent something in direct opposition to the feelings and judgments they tend to prompt at first glance.