(HOST) Commentator Tom Slayton says there’s a new book out that documents a bit of Vermont history that influenced both the back-to-the-land movement of the nineteen-sixties – and the Vermont we know so well today.
(SLAYTON) Though it seems hard to believe today, there was a time when Vermont was not terminally hip, not a with-it mix of political lefties, organic farmers, artists, writers and New Age mystics.
Okay, okay, I know – Vermont isn’t really quite that extreme, even now. But back in the early 1950s, Vermont was very different. It was almost universally poor and rural, with the emphasis on poor. The prevailing ethic here was pragmatic, the prevailing mode of living was survival, and the prevailing political party was Republican. People ascribed to a simple lifestyle out of necessity: it was not voluntary simplicity, it was involuntary. And most young people assumed they’d have to leave the state to make a decent living.
Things began to change when more money and education came into Vermont – usually along with urban refugees seeking a simpler, more rural lifestyle. The Vermont of today is a direct result of the cultural collision between the Vermonters living here after World War II, and the would-be-Vermonters who showed up later.
A new book, just published by the Vermont Historical Society, documents and comments upon one of the first of those cultural collisions – the fragile moment in 1950 when a tiny community in southern Vermont welcomed the first urban newcomers into their midst – at least for a time.
The book is Almost Utopia: the Residents and Radicals of Pikes Falls, and it is a collection of the striking black-and-white photographs of Rebecca Lepkoff, with an essay by Greg Joly.
In 1950, the tiny hamlet of Pikes Falls, in Jamaica, Vermont, was, without knowing it, about to enter the modern era. That was when traditional Vermont – self-sufficient, hard-working, poor in money but rich in other ways – came out to meet the first of the outsiders who later came in droves.
One of the newcomers was Rebecca Lepkoff, a professional photographer. She documented the longtime residents of Pikes Falls and the newcomers, who included the political radicals, Scott and Helen Nearing and others, as they worked and played. The new book, Almost Utopia, is a collection of the resulting photographs.
Those photos record what amounted to the meeting of two different cultures, one urban, idealistic and politically radical, the other backwoods rural, pragmatic, and politically conservative. They are touching and profound, showing the native Vermonters as strong and sweet, and the newcomers as idealistic and more than slightly naïve.
Ultimately, their differences proved too much to overcome, and the meeting of the two groups ended in conflict and bitterness. But for a brief moment in 1950, there was acceptance and an attempt at understanding. Lepkoff’s beautiful, haunting photographs document that moment and the people who were trying, with all their hearts, to build a life together.
Almost Utopia is a very touching and insightful book about an overlooked aspect of Vermont history.