Stuck in a rut? Feeling muddled? Mud season takes its toll on this car and its occupants after the driver ventured onto a dirt road in St. Albans Town. Judging by how deep its buried, the car will likely still be stuck in July.
Sledding may return to Congress Street
Ordinance, chestnut concession in the works
By MESSENGER STAFF
ST. ALBANS CITY — The St. Albans City Council next Monday evening will hear the third and final reading of an ordinance that would permit fines for motorists who do not take precautions to avoid children sledding on the main thoroughfare of Congress Street.
With expected approval, hundreds of children might be sledding on the street next winter.
Largely ignored hearings held in recent months have led to the decision to permit cars to continue using the street, as long as children wear brightly colored outerwear.
However, motorists, will be subject to traffic fines of up to $125 if they do not obey spotters who will stand at the intersection of Congress and High streets to alert them to sledding activity.
The request for the ordinance came after a few children began sledding near the Congress and Smith street intersection last winter.
Police initially received complaints from motorists. One in particular involved a sled that became entangled beneath a dump truck. The child escaped harm by rolling into the path of an oncoming semi-truck rig in the other lane, who luckily was able to stop.
There is historic precedence for sledding on Congress Street. At least that's what the city found when, as some described, the police department rather heartlessly intervened in an attempt to prohibit sledding this past winter. At the turn of the 20th Century, the area was widely used by children who sledded down Congress Street to a chestnut roasting cart that was then located at the corner of High and Congress.
With word of this, a led by mother of three, Nola Neidzabrayn, begged to differ.
The minutes of a council public safety committee meeting show Neidzabrayn told aldermen, "My kids and their friends spent hundreds of hours on video games. They literally never left the house until they saw Tommy Hildweller on his sled on the street."
It was 11-year-old Hildweller who had the near brush with death, but, according to the Neidzabrayn children, that made the new outdoors activity all the more attractive.
The city resident said her and her husband were happy to see their children getting exercise on the icy street rather than "become ever more obese."
Neidzabrayn even brought the dump truck driver to a council public safety committee meeting. That driver admitted being upset when the sledding Hildweller boy came barreling toward his truck. On reflection, however, he told the alderman, "The boy was wearing a ski helmet. How bad could it have been?"
Still others told council members that street sledding has other benefits, including a possible influx of out-of-city dwellers who might drop off their children on Congress Street and then frequent local businesses, restaurants and bars.
There is already word that a local couple, Gwyndyln and Llewellyn Fabersham-Smythe, formerly of London, England, are considering reviving the chestnut stand. Such an operation, however, would require a conditional use permit from the city and, among other things, would have to meet specific color schemes required for nut-warming concessions within an historical residential neighborhood.
New World Order group eyes St. Albans settlements
Advocates for a New World Order (ANWO), a left-wing socialist group based in Southern California, is pushing for like-minded individuals to purchase homes and settle in St. Albans City and Town.
The small, but aggressive group has numerous postings on the Internet in support of a world government as the only true end to global strife and hunger.
First word of ANWO's interest in St. Albans came from a Google Alert regarding a blog posted by the group.
The unnamed author claims to have family ties to the area and a familiarity with the more than 100-year divide between St. Albans and City government officials.
The blog that mentions St. Albans is a nearly 6,000-word rant about ANWO's philosophy and determination to build a New World Order.
However, and of interest to St. Albans, is this from the writer:
"ANWO members' residency in St. Albans City and St. Albans Town - with the firm resolve to affect merger of the two municipal governments - would affirm our organizations' ability to affect dynamic change.
"While some might warn that animosity to a single world government runs deep internationally, any progress in pulling the two St. Albanses together would show: If we can make it there, we can make it anywhere."
Thus far, newspaper efforts to contact ANWO have been unsuccessful.
Birth Numbers Tied To Festival
A survey of Franklin County birth records shows a link between the date on which the annual Vermont Maple Festival is held and the number of children born nine months later.
In its early years the festival was held closer to the actual gathering of maple sap, in either February or March. In recent years -in an effort to correspond with better weather - the festival date has more and more worked its way toward May. Statistics show the number of births for every 1,000 couples were far higher nine months later when the three-day event was held in March, than they have been in recent years.
The theory is that the winter-like weather festival, despite its brutal weather conditions and sometimes slimy mud, got people out of their homes and up and doing something.
Now, without a festival, couples are left at home alone with little else to do.
A Vermont statistician first noticed the trend and said it does not apply to families that are sugarmakers.
"Birth record show that they are generally too tired to do much of anything at that time of year," said the researcher, who asked that her name not be divulged.
