Playin’ Wuff

A pho­to­graph from the Cary Maple Sug­ar film that was used at Maple Grove in St. Johns­bury. Cary orig­i­nal­ly used oxen teams to gath­er the sap for his huge sug­ar­ing oper­a­tions. Many of the hous­es were in North Danville.

The four Peck boys grew up on a hard­scrab­ble farm over in the Tampi­co area and became men about the time George Cary’s sug­ar­ing oper­a­tions bloomed in North Danville. The Pecks were prob­a­bly no dif­fer­ent than any of the oth­er local farm kids, but they were not­ed as being extreme­ly rugged and very com­pet­i­tive. In fact, it was said that if you could some­how yoke them, a span of Peck boys could like­ly pull Cary’s prize oxen through a knothole.

The locals would often gath­er on the Old North Church road in Water­man’s field for a pic­nic and a Sun­day after­noon game of base­ball. Some­times an equal­ly rag­tag team from anoth­er town could be enticed to par­tic­i­pate. Ora Peck often pitched. He could throw it long on speed and maybe a lit­tle short on con­trol. It was well known that if he hap­pened to hit a bull in the head with one of those pitch­es, you might as well break out the knives and forks.

First time up, the oppos­ing star belt­ed it to hell. Gone out into the hay. Next time up, the obvi­ous solu­tion was to throw it even hard­er. The pitch got away, the star got beaned and dropped for the count. A live­ly dis­cus­sion result­ed. After a few bumps and bruis­es, the game resumed. A severe­ly sprained ankle (“Naw, it ain’t broke) and chore time end­ed the fun. 

Some­one remarked to Ora’s broth­er Free­dom. “Lit­tle rough, was­n’t it?”

“Naw, not bad wuff, jus good wuff.”

In his late years, Free­dom was help­ing a new­com­er with some farm-type chores. It was sug­gest­ed that if Free­dom saw the new­com­er doing some­thing wrong to please bring it to his atten­tion. Free­dom’s reply, “I real­ly ain’t used to talkin’ all that much.”

Come spring­time in one of George Cary’s big sug­ar hous­es up on the Sprague farm, the Peck boys were boil­ing and a bunch of the oth­er base­ball team mem­bers were gath­er­ing. The sap had been run­ning non­stop for three days and showed no sign of let­ting up. The buck­ets were all run­ning over; every­one was work­ing ham­mer and tong and get­ting sick of it. 

That’s when the boil­ers ques­tioned the gath­er­ers as to their man­li­ness, their worth, and why they could­n’t keep up. Some­thing else start­ed to boil then, but every­one was too tired to do much about it, so off the gath­er­ers went for anoth­er sled-load of sap. As they went down into what is now Hick­ey’s sug­ar woods, they passed the big spring there and stopped to water them­selves and the hors­es. Some­one mirac­u­lous­ly found a big jug under a rock, and it got passed around a cou­ple of times while the hors­es got their fill. 

The pump log from the spring came right to the top of the gath­er­ing tank and jug wis­dom inter­vened. Many loads of water lat­er, it was hard to tell if it was sweat or steam com­ing out of the sug­ar house vent as the Peck boys dogged­ly tried to make Cary maple syrup with a lit­tle sap and a lot of pure spring water.

Jus some good wuff fun!