The Town Clerk's Office is the Center of the Sherman Universe

Barbara Boone

     

     As I studied the documents in the Vault it seemed that the whole world was passing through the Town Clerk's Office. It's true that it was two weeks before the election, and many, many folk came in to pick up absentee ballots, but serendipity abounded.

     I heard someone speak of Barbara Boone, a name I hadn't heard in 20 years. There she was, an old friend from summers long ago. Much to my delight she told me wonderful stories of two of my favorite characters from the era of Hart Crane at Robber Rocks: Eva Parker and Marguerite Agniel. Barbara remembered both of them from their visits to her family's house on Timber Lake, over the hills and through the woods from Hidden Hollow. Eva, the adopted daughter of the Adams family on Hardscrabble Road, did a man's chores. Marguerite, the famed "Body Beautiful," or Marguerite-Wash-Your-Feet to Barbara, was famous for being photographed in the nude, and depicted in Slater Brown's The Burning Wheel as overly fond of young country men.

     One of Sherman's contemporary authors, Michael Quadland, also visited. I realized that he has restored one of the landmark houses of the literary era of the 1920s and 30s, the house that belonged to Guggenheim Foundation Director Henry Allen Moe, and before that to Charlie Jennings, immortalized in Slater Brown's novel as the cider drinking pig butcher. Michael invited me to see the house and its lovely pond, a special treat in its fall setting. His novel, 

That Was Then, is set in a small Connecticut town like Sherman.