I knew the guys had their work cut out for them. And looking back at the individual events, it was a great day.

However, we drew Shrewsbury, one of the top water polo teams in the state, in water polo, and ultimately, that sunk us.

Middlebury dethroned us Saturday at the Vermont Teddy Bear Friend for Life Festival. Four events. We won Midnight Alarm, beating Middlebury be 4/10ths of a second, 34.0 sec. to 34.4 sec.

The guys were flat-out AMAZING in the wet hose coupling, pulling off a state tournement time of 18.1 sec. Middlebury wes 6th.

In the mean time, in our opening round of water polo, we battled-literally battled- Shrewsbury. Long stretches where the ball stayed in play without a team scoring. Shrewsbury lead, 5-3 at the half, and we couldn't get any closer. 12-4 was the final. Middlebury, meanwile, went to semi-finals, and ultimely finished fourth.

We had set fast time in bucket brigade with a time of 1 min. .5 sec.

Middlebury, the last team to go, did it in 58.14.

With 14 teams, the scoring for the individual events went 14 pts. for 1st, 13 for 2nd, and so on. Because we scored the fewest goals of the first round losers, they gave us 1 point for water polo. Middlebury had 47 pts. We tied with Shrewsbury for 2nd with 42 pts.  For a tie-breaker, they took the faster time in midnight alarm. Thus we got second.

The guys did a fantastic job. Great runs. A lot to be proud of.

 

Hats off and congratulations to Middlebury. They earned it. They were consistant all day and fast in Bucket Brigade. I felt kinda helpless standing there watching them, and when it was done, I looked at my own stopwatch and saw it was over. I know how they felt last year when we both tied for the title and it was decided by a dry hose coupling challenge. We beat them by 2.5 seconds. We were ecstatic. I knew Middlebury wasn't.

 

The team picture, above, clockwise from the upper left- Ryan Zeno, Jeremy Zeno, Ivan Patry, David Toof, Mike Cain, Jesse Fleming, Jordon Hayes, Kyle Magnuson, Jamie Latimer, Justin Hayes, Matt Gillilan, Tom Crucitti, and Kyle Williams. Next Sunday, some new team members will compete at the Muster at the Franklin County Field Days. We will not be competing at the State Convention in Bennington the following weekend. We will gear up next year when the State Convention comes back to St. Albans.

Back in 2001, down at the state convention in Bennington, we were leading St. Albans Town by 1 point. St. Albans tied Shrewsbury for 3rd in SCBA Endurance, so there was a dry hose coupling challenge to see who was to get the 3 points for 3rd. Again, standing there, just watching, as Town beat Shrewsbury and got the 3 points and the overall title, again. At the banquet that night, DJ Charbonneau and I attended, and were in total disbelief, as we went up and accepted the Sportmanship trophy on behalf of the team. That removed the sting of that afternoon.

 

Wasn't able to get to Bear Ridge. I waiting for Anthony to call with the results.

 

I added a page for Mom's Photo Album. I also updated the SCONE page with pictures and driver roster.

 

Took a bunch of pictures. Expect muster pictures for a couple of days.

Kinda nervous going down to the Teddy Bear Muster, Saturday.

I know we can win, but other teams can, too. If the guys can have some good runs and we try to go deep in the water polo games we can hold our own.

 

Couple of pictures of Jeffersonville and a shot of an ice jam in Georgia.

 

Anthony is racing down to Bear Ridge, Saturday. I'm trying to figure out how to go from one place to the other.

 

Today's pictures have a theme. These were all on the same page in Mom's photo album.

The last picture of Westford village was sent by Lucy Castle of Westford to Clara Southard of Fairfax. It said, "This is a picture of my aunt Lucy's house." It was dated August of 1908.

 

There are some of Jeffersonville I will post either Saturday or next week.

 

It's Friday!

Running late tonight. No theme with the pictures, just picked out three interesting ones.

 

Went up to muster practice at the station tonight. Did not take my camera with me with the threat of rain. I was walking home when, as I was passing Cliff Ross's garage, the pager went off for flooding out on Rt. 104. Turned around, got back to the station, and made it to the scene where I spent most of the time with the clipboard getting information. Water was running across the road, and traffic was cut down to one lane only. Again, no camera, and I missed some good shots. Such is life. Dave St. Pierre was there and we were on the Ch.3 news at 11. I could see me standing there holding the clipboard.

Welcome, one and all, to Mom's old photo album.

 

I looked through it and chose these pictures and postcards for today. I will try to have a theme for each day. Today is the old double covered bridge and what was once called South Street. It is now called Main Street. Before the new 911 system was put in, Main St. came through the village from St. Albans(probably starting with Nan's) and going through the village and down Main Hill and then starting up what is now Fletcher Road and stopping in from of Phyllis Soule's place. Keep going and you are on River Road, turn left and you were on Mill Street.

When you turned to go to St. Lukes' or head to Westford/Cambridge, that became South St.

The covered bridge was built in 1833 and met it's demise in the 1927 flood.

Road was quite narrow back then.

 

I wll probably set up a page for these old pictures and postcards.

Sorry, folks. I didn't change the pictures today, just re-arrainged them.

 

I got my Canon T-50 for Christmas of 1985. That was the last year of the old NASCAR North tour and basically, Hector's last year of racing. He never really did sign on with the new American Canadian Tour. Thus I never really took any pictures of Hector while he was racing.

Bummer.

 

If you look at Hector's car, he is sponsered by LeClair's Atlantic. Maybe some of you in town can remember when Hector's brother, Richard, owned where Cliff Ross is now. Obviously, this picture was before Atlantic Oil changed their name to ARCO. At the same time, Esso changed their name to Exxon. I never understood why they did that. It is still called Esso in Canada.

? ( a shrug of my shoulders)

Back to Richard. He raced the old Hurricaine division at Catamount and went to Thunder Road a couple of times. I remember Richard winning a couple of features, one by a nose. One memory I have is Dad and I rode with Richard to the races and Richard came in the top 3. I am not sure if he won or not, but he did get a trophy. On the way home, I was in the middle of the seat of Richard's wrecker/hauler, between Richard, who was driving, and Dad. I was holding the trophy. Suddenly, we were back at Richard's garage. I had fallen asleep. Dad told me he could see that I was asleep, and was worried I might drop the trophy. He took hold of the trophy to slip it out of my hand, but as Dad said, "You had quite a death grip on it. Even asleep, you weren't going to let go of it."

Richard always said of me- "Jeezus, Mike, you're so tall, if you fell down, you'd be halfway home." One time, my brother, Carl, had a comeback. "What if he fell the other way?" Richard's response- "He'd be in a lot of trouble."

 

OK, so I reverted back to racing.

 

Here's a story you will like.

Henry Raymond is Vice-President of the Fairfax Historical Society and has done a FANTASTIC job of scanning and preserving some of the society's old photos. One day, I went scrounging around and found one of Mom's old photo albums. I realized what I had and called Henry. He came to the house and we were literally amazed at what was there. Henry wanted to take the book and scan the pictures- this was a couple of years ago, I have had my scanner for the last month and a half or so.

In the middle of all this, my sister, Margie comes home and I am explaining what I had found and what Henry and I wanted to do.

Margie gives me a look and says, "You knew they were there!"

Yeah, well I guess I did but I forgot.

 

Anyway, one of the pictures was a shot Mom took of Larry Parsons' old Dodge Flying Tiger. Larry was known as "The Flyin' Fire Chief" as he was indeed the fire chief for the Fairfax Fire Dept..

Tonight I went through Mom's book again and found Larry's car.

I also went through my own scrap book and found the two pictures on the right that I bought at Catamount. I am guessing Bob Doyle took those pictures but I will check with Bill Ladabouche to be sure.

 

In going through Mom's photos again, there were quite a few postcards of Fairfax as well. I will be going through the book and much to Henry's delight, I will scan some of the old photos to post on this site.