Vermonter.com

I love fall foliage season in Vermont. It’s that short but wonderful time of year where you can drive around and just take in the scenery. If you can afford the gas. You just never know what you’ll find. Also because it’s an election year, political candidate signs are more prevalent than weeds.

Driving through the town of Monkton the other day, I happened to view these two signs placed next to each other. The name combination was vaguely familiar…”Douglas” and “Heffernan”. With that in mind, one may jokingly conclude that a fictional and portly package delivery driver from NY is up for election in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

Legend has it that, many years ago, the entire Hayden family of Albany, VT, perished as victims of a curse. In 1910, a horse-drawn hearse carried the final remains of William Henry Hayden, last in the male line of his family, along the South Albany Road, to the village cemetery. Curtains were drawn across the mansion’s windows in tribute, even though the extravagantly furnished house had remained without a tenant for nearly twenty years. Some would remember Mercie Dale’s curse upon the family that the Hayden family name would die and pass into oblivion. What would happen now to the vacant, dark mansion with its wide fields and impressive barns? Was there a hidden family fortune and if so, where had it been hidden away? Those answers and other secrets may lie within the final resting place of Henry Hayden.
Ghostly lights in the formerly abandoned property, overturned gravestones in the Albany cemetery, phantom violins playing in the moonlight.
Actually, Dwight Dow, one of the Hayden family’s descendants set me straight with the facts for a school project back in the late 70′s.
Words from Dwight himself: “Ghosts? Hell no!!! Just some drunk passin’ by in the middle of the night making up things. They had a ballroom floor, on springs, for dancing but they weren’t no ghosts or none of that. Who’s the damn fool that told you that anyway?”

Ray Bradbury’s Halloween tale spawned the ominous saying. “Something Wicked This Way Comes”. With the United States economy in a precarious situation and uncertain times ahead, that saying somehow seems eerily appropriate. On the Vermont local news reports, we’ve heard several times that the economic downturn hasn’t affected us yet. Maybe the Vermont news teams need to dig a little deeper because there is proof to the opposite.
After speaking with a number of people including a few innkeepers in northern Vermont, it seems that business is indeed on a severe decline. It is foliage season in Vermont, yet some inns and bed & breakfasts have little to no guests during a season that is nearly always sold out during a normal year.
I don’t have much faith in the presidential candidates either. I don’t believe that either one has the leadership qualities to dig us out of this quagmire.
Obama has a lot of aspirations and promises a lot but we’ve heard all that before. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
John McCain isn’t any better of a choice and doesn’t seem to have any answers. Neither does Sarah “deflector shield” Palin, who changes the subject whenever she’s asked even the simplest question and somehow spins it back to the subject of “hockey moms in Alaska”.
Yet during one of the most ominous and critical crises in America’s history, the two candidates are more concerned with pointing out each other’s weaknesses.
Leadership is lacking, the economy is tanking and the rich and corrupt are enjoying their golden parachutes. Meanwhile, the lights are going out within some country inns of Vermont because they can’t make a go of it. Small businesses get no bail out. I guess their parachutes aren’t golden enough.