"BARTONS POND"

                       
                      Barton’s Pond
                        By Peter Yule
                        Chapter One

         Clarence Barton was well known as a careful and methodical person. He was not a man to make a move without a plan. Not a person to experiment with new ideas. Clarence owned a large farm over along the state road. His farm covered about four hundred acres, and contained several small hills. His own home, in which he and his wife had raised two boys and a girl, was neat well kept and surrounded on three sides by a wide porch. The house was set way back from the road atop of one of the hills. From his porch on a clear day you could see clear over to Vermont on the west, to Concord on the east, and to the south the Berkshire mountains along the Massachusetts border.

         From the front of the house, the land dropped away through a large open meadow, and rose again on the far side to stone wall that ran along the state road. Clarence never farmed the meadow, never put a plow to the soil or planted a crop. He kept it clear cutting it twice a year and often times would let his sheep or goats feed on it. It was his daughter, oldest of the three children who tended the animals. The boys worked the farm with Clarence. Most of the crops grown were for market, usually cash crops like corn, beets, celery, carrots, squash and the like. In the late summer and into fall Mrs. Barton would open up a roadside stand out at the front edge of the land. She could turn a fair profit from the sale of produce. She and the girl would make cheese from the goats milk which sold real well.

         Right after the war ended, when the two boys returned from the Army, things changed as they often do. The daughter married first and moved away to live in Vermont. Soon after both of the boys took wives and left the farm. For several years Clarence and his wife with some local hired help kept the farm running, but several years ago, Mrs. Barton passed on. It was just Clarence alone now living on his farm.

         For the first year after her passing Clarence tried to run the place, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Those who knew him best kept an eye on Clarence and would visit him more than in the past. On a Sunday evening in early spring I sat with the minister from the church and several others on Barton’s front porch to see just what his plans might be and to offer him our help. Well, we were all taken by surprise when Clarence in a very calm and deliberate manner told us that we need not worry about him. He was going to do what he had always wanted to do. He was going to sit on his porch, looking south over his pond, and enjoy the rest of his days.

         “Maybe, just maybe” he said I will do some fishing there”. Well we were all greatly relieved to know that Clarence was thinking ahead, and as he pointed out, he still had his boys and his daughter should the time ever come.

         As we left his home that evening we were all quite perplexed. Clarence Barton seemed to be in full control of all of his facilities, and his solitary life, but we were all aware that there was no pond for him to watch over. No pond to fish in within miles of his home. From what he had told us, and what happened over the next few months, well, it would just plain turn our town around forever. Let me tell you about it.


                            **(NO PICTURE WORKING ON IT)
                  


                              Barton’s Pond
                              Chapter Two


         The very next day, following our visit to Clarence he drove into town in his old pickup truck. He was a man with a mission and now appeared to have finalized a plan known only to himself. He drove up to Paddy Dwinks hardware store and proceeded to buy and borrow some very unusual items.  He borrowed from Paddy a surveyors transit, and some very long tape measures. He purchased several lengths of cast iron pipe of different sizes, and a very heavy chain hoist. Most unusual of all he purchased several sticks of dynamite and borrowed an electric detonating device. From Paddys he went out to the sawmill and loaded up his old truck with a great number of rough sawn timbers and wide thick boards. Several folks on meeting up with Clarence asked him what he was up to, in trying to fathom out his plan. Clarence had only one response to their questions, as he told them in few words that he was going fishing. 

         It was not by accident that a number of the “regulars” around town found cause in the following weeks to drop by Barton’s place. At first he was seen every day from early morning to evening in the lower meadow in front of his house, peering intently through the transit. Each day it appeared that he would move about on the property, driving wooden stakes into the ground in a somewhat meaningless pattern. By the end of the second week he had returned the transit to Paddy. When next seen Clarence was hard at work building a very large wood platform way down at the lowest point in the meadow. A strange thing it was, being twenty foot square with a single four foot square opening in the center of it. In short time the platform was complete and soon a tall framework of pipe straddled the center opening. By the end of the third week several long pipes were laid across the opening. One piece of pipe, about two inches in diameter had been carefully inserted into a larger pipe of three inches in size. Both pipes had been capped at one end and with the help of the hoist, were centered in the opening, and were standing upright from the ground. Now with curiosity growing, several folks offered help. Clarence needed no help, he was after all a man with a plan.

         For the next few days, time after time, Clarence would haul a very large weight up with the hoist, and then carefully drop it onto the capped end of the pipe, driving it deeper and deeper into the floor of the meadow. Clarence succeeded in driving the pipe down to a depth of twenty five feet or more. When he had finished he removed the cap from the outer pipe. He used the giant hoist, with some ropes and pulleys attached and made fast to his truck, to pull the smaller inner pipe from the ground. As the inner pipe was removed, he took delight at the seeing the soil that clung to the end of the pipe. It was sandy and very wet. Next Clarence set about rigging the hoist and chains to the outer pipe and attaching it to his truck. Before he removed the pipe, working with great care, he lowered several sticks of dynamite carefully taped and attached to electrical wire down to the bottom of the pipe. With increasing care not to damage the wire, and feeding it down the pipe, Clarence extracted the larger pipe from the ground. When the pipe was out of the ground, Using his truck, Clarence removed the platform with its towering pipe-work from the area, and then filled the hole with sand and dirt.

         By midday, with several friends looking on he was ready to carry out the next part of his plan. He led the wires sticking up from the ground back to his truck some one hundred yards away. Protected by the truck and the large platform he touched the lead wires to the battery in the truck, igniting the dynamite now encased in the ground below.

         A dull thump from beneath the surface, followed by a shower of dirt and mud was blown high in the air from the blast. Now there appeared a ten foot deep and equally wide crater in the earths surface. We approached the crater and looking down to the bottom of the opening, Clarence grinned as he saw his plan become a reality. Water, clear clean water was spouting steadily skyward and beginning to fill the hole. Mr. Joe had been right again. Why twenty years earlier, he had cautioned Clarence not to plow or even dig in that low meadow, because he was sure an underground river was laying in the soil and just waiting to burst forth if ever it were disturbed, and he was right. Mr. Joe had told Clarence that if that river ever broke loose it would flood his whole meadow, and turn the whole place into one very large pond, and Clarence was counting on that very fact to make his plan work.

         By nightfall the low end of the meadow was totally under water. Looking very much like a small shallow pond, the water now spread across an acre or more of the meadowland. Clarence sat that evening on his porch, looking south as always, and now he could see the bright moon reflecting on the surface of his pond. As he sat there looking toward the state road, Clarence was well pleased. His plan, now started was working well.

                                  Barton’s Pond
                                  Chapter Three


         At sunrise the next morning, Clarence stepped onto his porch, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He set his coffee mug on the railing and looked down toward his pond.  He was not ready for the sight before him. The pond had doubled, no tripled in size. The big wood platform that only the night before had been one hundred yards from the water was now floating, gently bouncing at the  edge of a small lake. Quickly now he sprung into action. Step two of Barton’s plan must be done fast.

         He went into his barn and started up his old tractor, and attached a rusted plow blade to the front of it. He drove from the barn down to the far side of  what had been his meadow, and was now the other side of his pond. He began removing long strips of top soil along the road. He plowed and pushed all of the soil to one end of the pond, creating a large earth dam between it and the nearest part of the state road. It took most all of his day going back and forth stripping and piling the soil to buffer his pond from the roadway. In the process Clarence had taken off a million years of rich soil, from the far side of his meadow, and now left exposed nothing but the sand that lay beneath the surface. There at the end of day, for a hundred yards or more, between the stone wall that marked the state road, and the still deepening waters of the growing pond, lay nothing but clean soft sand. The sand was of course a vital part of Clarence’s plan. At nightfall Clarence walked around his pond, stopping regularly to notice it’s growth. He looked at the pond as he stood by each of the wooden stakes he had placed in the ground weeks before. He was well pleased with his work.

         It was late May now, and as is so often the case, rain moved into the area. For two days it rained adding to the growth of the pond. The rain washed away the last of the soil at the far edge of the pond, and flushed it into the edge of the pond. It would almost appear that nature was at work helping Clarence with his plans. Unseen however, the rainwater had also been at work, eroding the back side of the earth dam that held back the water from the state road. Soon the water flowing out of the pond was making it’s way to the road, and flooding over it causing great cracks to appear on it’s surface. An anonymous call to the state alerted them of a possible wash out of their roadway. Within hours road crews with heavy machines, bulldozers, cranes and such were hard at work laying large sections of drainage pipe beneath the roads surface allowing waters to pass under the road without disturbing it. The man in charge of the road crew  met with Clarence. I doubt if any mention was made of dynamite or underground river beds. The state folks just assumed the dam to be an old structure, and asked for permission from Clarence to replace it with a proper dam and floodgate that would allow for control of the water. Clarence would now have control over the size and depth of his pond. It was something that he would admit later had not been in his plans at all.

         The rains ended as did May, and soon the warmth of June moved over the area. Clarence kept busy moving earth and sand and rock with his tractor, and by mid June he removed two sections from his stone wall, creating a natural driveway into and out of his pond, from the state road. Before June ended youngsters from all over had found their way to the pond. Clear, clean, and cool water that the pond provided became a natural swimming spot for all of the “locals” and this too fit well with Clarence Barton’s plan.

         Soon word of the pond had spread and folks from other towns, and tourists from places like Concord and Manchester were stopping by to use the beach for picnics and to swim at Barton’s pond. Clarence had turned his attention to relocating the old farm stand, to an area at the back of the beach, and to repainting it. By the end of July, with more people coming, a new sign appeared at the opening in the wall from the road into Barton’s Pond. The sign declared the pond to be private property, and allowed use by “permit only”. Permission would cost ten cents per person per day.

Several of the youngsters who by now had become regulars at the pond, told Clarence that they could no longer afford to come there. He enjoyed the children, so he quickly entered into a bargain with them. He instructed the children to take a pail and a fish net and to go over to the old stream and bring back some fish. It didn’t matter what kind or size, as long as the fish were alive and swimming on arrival at the pond. He told them that if they would do that, to help him fill his pond with fish of all kinds, that he would just forget that sign and they would always be welcome at the pond. From then on the children came, one day with sunfish, the next day some small mouth bass. Over the course of the following weeks the children would take great delight in coming to the pond and showing Clarence the fish of every size and variety known to the area. Some of the older boys, looking for special bragging rights had bicycled out to the other end of town and captured and returned to the pond several prized trout that would become legendary living in Barton’s Pond.

         When August began, several of the out of town visitors began to ask permission to stay overnight in tents down by the pond. Clarence expected this. He led one group after another down to the backside of the pond, politely and proudly showing them small plots of land all neatly marked by stakes driven into the ground, long before the pond ever existed. To the sign that had been placed by the road, new wording was added to identify to the world, “Barton’s Pond and Campground”. To the old farm stand a small addition had been made providing neat and clean “public facilities”. Our town, in just a few short months and by the single handed efforts of Clarence Barton with his careful planning, had it’s very first genuine tourist attraction.

         In time, Clarence allowed some of the new tourists to not only camp, but to build small cabins on small plots of land that he would lease to them on twenty year leases. Several  row boats and canoes were made available for daily rental at the farm stand, that now had become a center of activity on the beach. Soft drinks and bottled soda became available there, as well as other items in the months ahead. The farm stand was added on to several times.

          The pond grew in size just as Barton had envisioned to cover thirty to forty acres of his low meadow. He hired several of the older boys from town to help him now with the chores of keeping the area clean and to collect the daily fees from the visitors. They would also help him as he went about surveying on the north side of his property in another area that was quite low, but set back much further from the state road. That land was covered by small scruffy shrubs, and in the middle of it all stood a marker, a section of iron pipe, placed there by Clarence and Mr. Joe many years before. Folks began to wonder about Clarence Barton and just what he might be planning.

         Our town welcomed the tourists and was on it’s way to changing forever. Clarence Barton would,just as he had said sit on his porch in the evening looking out over the pond just a few yards from his home, and on occasion he would fish, just for fun.