by Glenda Bissex, Editor
The Co-op store has moved, but where has the spirit of the Co-op gone? And what IS the spirit of the Co-op, the spirit that makes it not just another store? Is it the old Co-op spirit or a new spirit for a new time? What can we do to make that spirit come more alive?
This is a new column to explore such questions. We want to hear from YOU. What stories and people from the present or the past embody the Co-op spirit for you? What stories can you imagine that would embody the Co-op spirit? Send your stories, memories, fantasies, reflections, questions by November 1 to the editor (Glenda Bissex, at songboat@vtlink.net).
Here’s a story from the Plainfield Co-op’s early years by Jim Higgins. A community organizer in 1971, Jim was one of the Co-op founders, along with Liz Sokol, Marty Levin, Larry Gordon, Anne Temple, and Larry Lindgren.
The Grange Hall Slowly Becomes the Plainfield Co-op
Reprinted from the Plainfield Co-op Newsletter Summer 2009
by Jim Higgins
The transfer of ownership of the Ivy Grange Hall to the Plainfield Co-op for $5,000 in 1972 was masterminded by Grange member Cyril Carty, himself a self-declared outsider as much as any of the Co-op organizers.
Mr. Carty was a retired merchant marine officer, worldly and erudite. He was of mixed race and spoke to me often of his love for the Plainfield community as much as he spoke of his challenges “fitting in.”
His finest stroke was negotiating the continued use of the Grange Hall by the struggling Grange organization, while, of course, freeing the group from the unrelenting headache of keeping this widely acknowledged “pig in a poke” operational.
But it was our “pig” and that it flourishes to this day is fine testament to the love and affection we lavished on it through dozens of building crises. It was the same affection Grange families lavished for many years before we came along.
The Co-op purchase agreement allowed the massive second floor space to be used for monthly Grange meetings, as it had been for decades. While we enthusiastically entered into that agreement, it did become our first serious challenge. (After, I suppose, the famously dysfunctional heating and plumbing systems whose idiosyncrasies bedevil to this day.)
The upside was that the monthly set up of the hall gave us newbies a feel for the lingering grandeur that was the Grange, a century-old national movement that was the first such rural group to allow women into its ranks and which also had its own rich history of organizing cooperative enterprise.
It came down to the chairs
Chairs, of all things, were our biggest challenge. Grange elders handled the rest of the regalia that adorned their meetings, which we not allowed to witness. The 30 or so massive, elegant chairs, once permanently in place, now had to be moved very carefully into and out of a storage room each month. Constructed of solid oak with thick velvet cushions, the larger chairs were six feet tall weighing a magisterial 150 pounds and adorned with hand-carved, esoteric symbols. They had to be positioned just so and cleaned meticulously by our ragtag, wheat flour-infused minions who had just spent many hours furiously cleaning up detritus from last food breakdown. Needless to say the patient Mr. Carty spent many hours with us clarifying precisely how the Grange wanted the hall set-up and we eventually got it right.
The contrast in our organizational styles was profound and actually quite humorous for those of us with an eye toward cosmic irony. But this providential convergence of two — at core — like-minded groups grew intimate, with several Co-op members eventually joining the Grange and many more Grange members partaking of the Co-op’s varied offerings.
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Being good neighbors was our next greatest challenge as new building owners. Many was the crazy day during food breakdown weekends when our plumbing guru, Fred Fowler, who was also fire chief, arrived at our doorstep requesting that a dozen or so cars be removed from around the fire station. Vehicular chaos reigned in that muddy turf surrounding the station house. Mercifully there was never a fire call that might have sparked possible disaster. I don’t think we ever really “solved” the parking problem and it would take another 20 years before some genius came up with the idea of designated Co-op spots.
Robert Frost got it right about fences
Our nearest residential neighbors provided us with a wonderful lesson in how all politics ultimately reduce to the personal.
Blanche Woodcock and her octogenarian mom, Octavia, lived in the building that now houses the town offices directly in front of the Co-op building. Their family history extended a century or more into Plainfield’s past, plus they were Grange members. They were also extremely, shall we say, wary of this sudden intrusion on their tranquility.
The tipping point arrived during one of our monthly, fund-raising Co-op community suppers that attracted several hundred folks to the building. Blanche approached me the next day and said that Co-op people had trampled parts of her small flower garden. She held most of her tears in, but this was one mighty upset woman.
Would she let us build a low picket fence protecting her garden, I asked her. Yes, she replied, and we did so immediately. After that small gesture she and her mom became good friends of the Co-op and her mom, in particular, became one of the Co-op’s greatest sources of local wisdom and colorful stories of Plainfield’s illustrious past.
I often think of the now departed Cyril Carty, who single-handedly persuaded a reluctant Grange membership to let go of their sacred space. In fact, I wrote a short story about him about six years ago, and wondrously, just two years ago, had his granddaughter in one of my history classes at Spaulding High School.
That Cyril Carty managed to orchestrate the sale of the Grange building while allowing the proud, but dwindling membership, to maintain a connection for as long as they wanted it, was one of the great secrets of the Co-op’s success at ultimately becoming an accepted community institution in its own right.
Note: Cyril Carty’s daughter, Lucy (Carty) Blue is a devoted member of the present Co-op.