WEST BRATTLEBORO — Thanks for the front-page coverage and memories of the Marlboro Schoolhouse on Higley Hill Road in Marlboro. I was a rental occupant from 1972 to 1985.
I awaited Liza and Casey Murrow's transition from the Schoolhouse to their new home on Lower Dover Road. I bided my time there in the midst of sawdust before our final move. Liza was very pregnant with their first son, Derrick. She somehow managed to navigate the Schoolhouse ladder to the “upstairs” bedroom/loft.
With the Schoolhouse as a sentinel at the head of our road, Diana Heiskell and Frances Shanahan and I became very close friends. We were a family. (I was among the first responders to their tragic accident and loss of Frances on Route 9.)
Will and Eyre Davisson were also close friends and gracious landlords. My earlier rent of $85 rose to $90 sometime around 1980.
One of my most memorable experiences at the Schoolhouse was the amphibious sound progression from early spring to midsummer, starting with quacking wood frogs and the din of spring peepers and moving to the marvelous trill and changing chords of common toads, to the plucking of green frogs, and to the groaning resonance of bullfrogs.
I am now a person in my early 70s and am grateful to live “in town.” It is a relief to not have to take on the treachery of the sharp uphill turn called “Suicide Hill” (even in four-wheel drive) just before the changing and wetter schoolhouse topography!
Kudos to Alina Kulpaviciute and Jesse Lockwood Kreitzer, and best wishes!