Edward (Ed) and Celina Messier moved from their family farm at the foot of Jay Peak in Montgomery, VT, when their children started entering their teens. They operated the Doane farm at Fairfield Center for three years and lived near the bridge just east of the village.

In the winter, Frank and his sister, Eva, did a lot of skating on the pond near the bridge. They always talked about their racing days when they got together. He had made some custom made racing skates just for her, with long runners. Sleigh rides were also among their favorite memories. They always had a lot of bells on their team so everyone in town knew they were coming.

Ed and Celina then bought the family farm in East Fairfield, one mile above the Lapland school on the Howrigan Road where they spent the rest of their lives. The farm was located at the foot of Fletcher Mountain and ran up to what was called Pine Ridge. It consisted of two hundred acres with a brook running through the total width of the farm and another coming down the hill by the barns emptying into the main brook. This created the old swimming pool. There was a large sugar bush on the farm with a sugarhouse about a thousand feet from the house. There was also a large blacksmith shop that was above the road toward the mountain with the stream running directly behind it. The hen house and hog pen were above that along with extra hay barn with the turkey roost built up the side of it. The hay barn backed up to an apple orchard in the hill with the back left open so that the heifers could feed through out the winter day. They were several deers always wintered there with the heifers. One could always find a family of guinea hens around the shop or haymow. They were probably the family mascots for neighbors could never remember not seeing guinea hens around. The main dairy barn was located across the road. The garage that housed the old Pontiac car that Ed prized so much was between the house and barn on a circle drive way. Along one wall of the garage could be found a long workbench with a lot of interesting tools.

Frank and Edward Jr. ran the blacksmith shop until Edward Jr. left home. They also had a portable sawmill that kept them busy sawing woodpiles.

When Frank married, he lived in East Fairfield Village but still ran the blacksmith shop with his father for a few years until he purchased his own farm. He also made and repaired wagon wheels. One of his specialties was designing scooters or so called jack jumpers. This was a narrow ski with a steel runner with a seat mounted on it. In the winter when conditions were right, he could mount his scooter from half way up Wells hill and ride all the way to East Fairfield, which was three miles. He would ride like the wind down the long hills building up momentum to make the next grade. His own personal design was one of perfection, with just the right balance. The only traffic on the roads at that time was logging teams and they were long gone home by chore time. He rode with such skill that the population along the road watched for him to go flying by with his head bent against the wind. He went faster than any vehicle had ever traveled across Fitzgerald flats. On a bad day the most he had to walk was the last two hundred or three hundred feet over Morey hill.

Edward Sr was a self-educated man having taught himself to read and write. He spent a lot of time reading the Burlington Press and his bible. Every year, he put on a barn dance to raise money for the Lapland school. He felt every child should be educated in order to have a better life. He always said that anyone that couldn’t read or write could be made a fool of.

He was a carpenter and had a great understanding of gasoline motors. Grandsons Ronald and Norbert spent all their extra time in the blacksmith shop designing home made cars. By the time they were teenagers, they both had cars that ran.

Edward Sr. was blessed with a great ear for music. He made all kind of crude musical instruments, carved some out of wood like a piccolo and made some with strings. He always carried a harmonica in his pocket. The organ was the most important piece of furniture in the home and everyone had learned to play it when they were very young. He thought that everyone was born with this talent and had very little patience with anyone who didn’t play music or dance. His sons Frank and Edward always carried a Jew’s harp in their pockets as well as a harmonica when they went into the woods to cut wood with their father. During rest periods they would have a little jam session. The boys weren’t always appreciating of this tradition but went along anyhow. Their father would tell them that playing good music would keep their mind clear and their souls clean. This tradition went back to their family and Canadian culture and to the Messier’s lumber camps in Montgomery, VT. There was always fiddling and dancing the jig in the evening and at mealtime. Edward used to talk about his father Francis and his brother Joseph fiddling together and making those fiddles sing. His sister Rose also played the violin. These great gifts of craftsmanship and musical abilities have been inherited by many of his grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

Before electricity became a household word in the mountain areas of East Fairfield, the Messier family had electric lamps. Ed had invented a generator that he mounted onto the roof of the house with paddles run by the wind. He wired it to pull down lamp and when the wind blew there were electric light at the dinner table. It worked so well that he built one for his neighbor.

He always kept his rife over the kitchen door and his shotgun in the the corner of the dinning room. The ammunition was always lined up on the top shelf of his writing desk. He had a special cartrage made up just for thieves for you were your own law enforcement agent in that part of the county. It consisted of rock salt and pellets. He always told a story of the man of little ambition that tried to rob him of his small tools on one moonlit night. When the old collie dog growled he got up and put on his pants, then grabbed his shotgun with a special load. He had carved a special groove on one of the veranda pillars to steady his aim. As the thief came out of the garage with his bag of tools, Ed was waiting for him. When the thief turned his back to the road, he took aim and fired, hitting him in the backside. He went screaming up the road. Ed then went to the barn, got on his horse and followed him. By the time he caught up to him he had reached his home and was lying across the kitchen table with his old mother tweezing out buckshots. Ed went right in and confronted him and that was the last of his thieving in those parts.

A brook well stocked with trout ran by the house about a hundred feet from the front door. Every morning about five thirty before chores, Ed would throw in his line off the bridge and catch a couple of trouts for his breakfast. If a grandchild happens to be there that was their job. He said: "God had put them there for him to eat".

There was always a large garden behind the house. Canning days were when all his daughter’s came home to can tomatoes, beets, corn, and other vegetables. Then there was pickle days when they all made pickles for the winter. They used the vinegar that he had made from cider the year before. Cider days came when the apples were ready. The best apples were placed into the apple bins in the cellar and the rest went into the press. This was hand turned and everyone had a turn. The juice went into the three big wooden barrels in the cellar until it turned into cider.

Grandpa always planted popcorn to pop during the winter evenings. This was hung to dry. In the evening this was shucked and put into jars.

When neighbor needed a new water source, they usually came to see grandpa, for he was truly a dowser and could find water if there was any to be found.

As he grew older, his carrot red, curly hair turned snow white but his beard stayed bright red. Every fall he let it grow, as did all lumbermen to protect their faces from the cold winters. The day after sugaring season he shaved it off. His piercing blue eyes always remained the same. When he said: "Now young lady" you stood at attention and knew that you had displeased him. His large structure was overwhelming to a child anyhow.

Life could be interesting at Grandpa’s house. Occasionally he had turn at a neighborhood social. The women all sat in the dining room making quilts as they exchanged conversation, while the men sat in the kitchen playing cards and drinking cider. Grandpa was always asked to play a tune or two and tell a story.

Story telling was another one of his talents. He could either scare the wits out of you with his haunted house stories, or make you laugh till your insides hurt telling of funny things that had happened in his lifetime.

Having been brought up in the French and Indian cultures, he was always teaching survival tactics to his grandchildren. He would walk them through the woods pointing out what was poison and what was not, which flowers that we could pick and the ones that were deadly. He would cut off some Spruce gum for us to chew and be sure that we could identify a spruce tree. We would pick cowslip for greens and other wild greens. We weren’t allowed to pick that very special flower, just look at it and draw a picture of it but on the way home we always picked pussy willows.

He had a poultice for every kind of illness made from bark, roots, and herbs. Every spring he fed us sulfur and molasses every night for a week. This was to clean out your system.

Grandpa was a religious man and always carried a crucifix. He said, "that the devil still walked the earth and that was his protection from him."

He always said that his kids cut their eyeteeth at the end of a crosscut saw and knew what a days work was by the time they were knee high to a grasshopper. As a nine year old facing him at the other end of a crosscut saw, I didn’t dispute that statement one little bit.

In those days one never wasted a minute. There was no time for children to play for there was too much work to be done. Children picked strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. On rainy days, you cracked butternuts for cooking and candies and piled wood in neat rows in the woodshed.

Occasionally, we drove to town to Chase’s wheelwright shop where he taught me to cut puzzles with the jigsaw.

When grandpa married his second wife I had gone to live with them. We called her aunt Louise, a sweet little lady from Littleton, NH. Before that, I had lived about a mile and a half down the road from Grandpa.

My sister and I often walked up to his house bringing him fresh loaves of bread and doughnuts and spending the day with him since he live alone most of the time since Grandma had died in 1930. The last year that I live there, was difficult for Grandpa, had became ill. He mourned his brother Joseph, who had died the year before in New Hampshire. The doctor said that he had to slow down for his heart was very enlarged.

This led to a trip to Hardwick to get a teenage grandson to help carry the load. Lewis (Sam) Messier came in the summer of 1938 and stayed until Grandpa died in 1940. I was sent back to my family in Milton, VT, the summer before he died having had the very good fortune to have gotten to know him, a man of many talents who had developed every facet of his abilities.

Aunt Mary and Aunt Rose came from Massachusetts to the funeral. They were both very lovely ladies. Aunt Rose was shorter and looked just like her brother Edward. Her red hair was a bit faded then but she had that twinkle in her eye and a spontaneous laugh.

Arlene Martell