Circles Around an Old Man’s Eyes

Publisher’s Note: “Wisdom Stories” is an ongoing column featuring the life, times, and wisdom of Theron Boyd, a Quechee old timer in the 1970s, as told by an unlikely best friend, Chris Clark, a teenager at the time. If you have any ‘Theron’ stories you would like to contribute, contact the Quechee Times at editor@quecheetimes.com.

Theron Boyd

Fifty years ago, our great nation was preparing to celebrate its Bicentennial. The air was filled with excitement – news of the Tall Ships touring the East Coast and mooring in Newport for the Fourth of July, parades marching through the streets, fireworks lighting up the summer sky. After years of protest and division over forced busing in Boston and the unpopular war in Vietnam, I remember feeling a renewed sense of patriotism, an awakening of unity after long discord.

My mother had remarried and moved to Rhode Island. She urged me to leave Quechee and come visit to see the Tall Ships, promising it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. She was right, of course, but I decided to stay in Vermont.

At sixteen, I was tapped into the Vermont life and drew from it like a sugar maker draws sap from a maple – an endless flow of inspiration running through the flues of my young imagination.

In the three years I had known Theron, I had grown to love his way of breaking into song – an Indian maiden named Red Wing, The Ballad of Barbara Fritchie waving her flag at General Stonewall Jackson, or his powerful recitation of The Gettysburg Address. If you closed your eyes, you could almost believe Abraham Lincoln himself was speaking from the back of a train.

I found many old poetry books in the abandoned buildings of Quechee. I fell in love with reading poems and hearing them read aloud, and soon I was encouraged to write my own.

I remember sitting in a booth at my dad’s restaurant, The Food Caboose, at the Gorge. Hugh Laughlin, from Scotland By The Yard, was there and asked what I was working on. I told him I was trying to write a poem about Theron Boyd. “What do you see?” he asked. “Circles,” I said. “Where?” he asked. “Around the old man’s eyes.” He smiled. “Keep going.”

My high school English teacher, Bob Velleca, read my poem and, without telling me, submitted it to a national poetry contest for the Bicentennial. I had no idea until it was announced that Circles had won.

The poem was published in Young America Sings, a national anthology, and placed into the time capsule inside the Washington Monument in 1976.

Theron was deeply touched that our poem had been recognized. He encouraged me to keep reciting Circles and to continue writing the Vermont poems and songs that flowed from those early days.

Now, fifty years later, I’m still writing – and it’s comforting to know that a small piece of Quechee history, and of Theron Boyd himself, rests sealed in time, beneath the stone of the Washington Monument.

Circles

Circles around an old man’s eyes,
That meet at a line
When he squints in the sun,
Are circles of knowledge
And a time gone by.
He whittled the cheese with a rusty old knife,
Told tales of an early life,
Enticed my imagination with the words he spoke
of how the fields were plowed with an ox and yoke.
Circles round an old man’s eyes,
That meet at a line
When he squints in the sun
Are circles of knowledge
And a time gone by.
I sat, he talked and reminisced,
Felt cheated of those days I had missed.
Circles around an old man’s eyes…
~ Chris Clark , Quechee, Vermont, 1976