About the Book

Charles Morris Cobb grew up in the 1850s on a road he called Rum Street, a hardscrabble hill farm community just two miles but worlds away from the prosperous village of Woodstock, Vermont. For 13 years he recorded the stories of his neighborhood in such detail that he considered “it as useless labor to play a game of cards, unless I keep a record of the proceedings.” He described himself … “In my old coat over t’other, hair a foot long, face and hands unwashed six weeks and tanned like thunder, I do look bad enough to scare crows” … along with the opinions, work, avocations, spiritual life and struggles of a group of people whose story is seldom told. This is a sensitive teenage boy’s own tale of his troubled community, the failure of his father’s farm and his successful pursuit of life as a New England musician in the second half of the 19th century.