Rumble Strip

Forrest really needs a new old truck. Will you pitch in a few bucks?

I’ve made lots of stories about my friend Forrest Foster, a dairy farmer in Hardwick. He prides himself on being an ‘independent dairyman’. But a couple months ago, Forrest sold the cows. The last couple years have been hard on him. He lost his wife Karen. His barn isn’t up to code so he recently lost his insurance and he can’t keep the wood furnace burning in the house while he’s doing chores in the barn. But hardest of all, and like so many families, Forrest has a son with an addiction problem, which is expensive and terrifying and fills his life with uncertainty. So. This is a story about why Forrest is getting done with dairy farming…at least for now.

This summer, a one-in-a-thousand-year flood hit the village of Plainfield, Vermont. A local apartment building, which everyone called the Heartbreak Hotel, collapsed and washed away down the Great Brook. Twelve people were living there at the time, and they all survived. Most of their cats did not. We talk a lot about the importance of affordable housing and community and village revitalization. For over a century, the Heartbreak provided all three. This is a story about what was lost that night, and what it might suggest about how we move forward.

All four of the people in this story are in recovery, but they spent years in the world of active drug addiction--a kind of world underneath the world. They’re aware of it in ways that most of us are not, and they agreed to describe it to me—what it feels like day to day, and its relentless demands.

Mark Utter was born with a form of autism that makes it impossible for him to say what he's thinking. For the first thirty years of his life, Mark did not have access to the world of words, except as a listener. An observer. When he was thirty, he was introduced to supported typing, and for the first time in his life, with the help of a facilitator and a typing pad, Mark started his life as a writer of words. This is an interview about what it's like inside the life and mind of Mark Utter.