Stockbridge
From Falling Curtains (Panflick History 1968–1971) Slow as Molasses Press
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1968, Stockbridge, Massachusetts
If I were to say I could pull a rabbit out of a hat, you would naturally think I had aspirations to be a magician. But it is just such a feat that I intend to perform, with full confidence that your credulity will be at least mildly stretched. I have little doubt that those who peruse this text with seriousness have already found Adam’s mother Mildred a person of considerable interest. How many women do you know who are aesthetes in reality, I mean who live for the seen, the touched, for whom sensuality itself is a matter of something looking right before anything else?
When Mildred learned Adam was moving to Stockbridge, something in her snapped. She announced to Melchizedek that she was through with Pickinsboro. She said they would build a virtually identical establishment some 70 miles south and west, on a hill she discovered in a town called Alford, ten miles from the Cherry Street home of her wayward son Adam.
Melchizedek had long since lost his love-at-first sight mode. Too much water had gone over the dam for such naive confidence to survive. But the glint in Mildred’s eye as she announced her plan stimulated a slight rekindling in Melchizedek. He knew his friend Reginald was in Stockbridge. That was a plus. He was tired of the long drive to Vermont from the city. And he cared not a whit about what sort of roof they had over their head. Alford would be fine.
It was clear from Mildred’s resolve that the Pickinsboro place would be replicated. And so it was.
The whole move was carried out with no fanfare whatsoever. Contractors appeared on Alford Road and worked under the supervision of a man named Simon Dangerfield, a Vermonter who was meticulous in following Mildred’s directions to a T. At the top of a paved drive, the Pickinsboro house was recreated down to the last detail.
The building took place in the months between Adam’s arrival and the close of 1968. By spring, Mildred and Melchizedek were on the Alford hill with all the trappings and geegaws of Pickinsboro.
In the summer of 1969 gardens were put in and an elaborate arboretum was commenced.
The senior Panflicks did not have a high profile in Pickinsboro. They wished no notoriety here. The move was just something Mildred did. Adam called it her pivot.
And what happened to Pickinsboro? Melchizedek thought he might save taxes by giving the entire spread to the little Vermont town. Mildred had no objection. She was, in addition to being the ultimate aesthete, a person of scant sentiment. She always cottoned to two phrases attributed to Jesus — Let the dead bury the dead and Shake the dust from your feet.
To my knowledge, when the Panflick Mercedes tooled down Route 7 to Great Barrington, Massachusetts and right on Alford Road to the new place, it never returned to what had once been Mildred’s be and end all.
As Mildred and Melchizedek moved past middle age, the prosperity of Panflick House leveled off. They still had a plentiful income which increased annually and the prospect that when the time came to part the coil they would leave an estate of substantial size. Melchizedek let it be known that he intended to divide the estate among the three boys per stirpes, with the caveat that, should Mildred survive him, she would have the use of it. Adam took this intelligence without much interest. He never envisioned needing a large estate. Melchizedek’s repetition of these intentions was incessant. That and a continuing interested in Adam’s various contacts.
Melchizedek was generous to a fault. If Adam needed money he had only to ask. But Adam rarely asked. For some reason, things took care of themselves. He was a Salvation Army patron. He was never happier than when he had few items. There was a natural flood of things around due to the existence of a family. But he paid little attention to possessions of any sort. It was enough to get up in the morning and run a comb through unkempt hair and put on his glasses and face the day.
His one concession to working from home was to put a long cord on the wall phone in the kitchen, which was the room in which they also ate, because it could accommodate a large table. They commissioned one from a local fellow who would become a friend, the taciturn Richard Huntington. Barter was rife in Stockbridge — at least in the circles Adam found himself drawn to. In short order, the back building became the home of others and in return Adam got carpentry on the house and back building and a successor to Pam, a girl from Pittsfield named Vickie Jost. Vickie fell in love with the family and it was reciprocated. The children were surrounded by the enduring and ever-expressed love of Ganya, the increased presence of Adam, whose availability took several forms, and the new input of Vickie.
It was natural that the atmosphere of Stockbridge at the time and the Panflicks’ entry into the community would raise some basic questions about the nature of their family. The so-called nuclear family was not held up as the only or even the best way to organize the smallest units of society. There was a move toward some extension. And the Panflicks embodied this immediately in Stockbridge. The house on Cherry Street had four adults and more and more visitors and passers through. Stockbridge was on the route some took to go to Canada and escape the prospect of going to Vietnam and being returned in a box.
A natural question was how an extended family should be organized and what the rules might be. The first years of the Panflick residence did not regard rules as a major problem. Ganya and Adam were the resident authorities and since there was no friction there needed to be no consideration of rules. In the abstract, it was assumed that the relationships that existed were sacrosanct. Though that would not be the word to describe them. In the simplest terms, monogamy held sway.
That will change, of course. Indeed, you may regard the whole of Book Eight as an exploration of the limits of monogamy as they applied to Adam and Ganya.
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Stephen C. Rose has written a number of books (Fiction/Non-fiction). You can tweet him here.
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