Two little stories about my move to Stowe

BY BIDDLE DUKE

Let’s get something clear. I didn’t move to Stowe. I bought the Stowe Reporter.

That was an important distinction — more so then, when we made the move, and I was only 35 and in the middle of a newspaper career and my working life. I wasn’t retiring to the good life in a quaint resort town in Vermont. I had found a newspaper I could afford. That it was in a beautiful community with a sound economy and decent economic prospects and a great school sealed the deal, which went down May 1, 1998.

I remember when in March of that year I went to Peter Manigault, the chairman of the Evening Post Publishing Co. He’d been my mentor and my friend and he’d invested almost five years in me, teaching me much about business, journalism, life and friendship.

Peter was stunned by my choice. I was leaving his company of many newspapers and TV stations, where I had terrific prospects, and his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, a place that people want to move to, not away from, to buy a tiny newspaper with middling prospects and cold winters.

“You want to spend the next 10 years fleecing ski bunnies from Boston and New York?” he said in his halting manner.

Once I was in the saddle here, the questions from neighbors, most of whom I would discover had some economic connection to my new venture — as advertisers, readers, employees — were more rhetorical: “How did you decide on Stowe?”

I didn’t. Stowe had little to do with it. That response, of course, is not what most people imagined or probably what they wanted to hear. Most folks live here by circumstance or choice and people are comforted when the choices of others confirm their own. But I wasn’t going to do that. I moved to Stowe to run the newspaper; that it was located in a terrifically cool place just made that prospect more appealing.

It bears mentioning that one of the other papers I’d looked at was in Libby, Montana. I’d have moved there in a heartbeat for all the reasons that people are moving away. W.R. Grace’s vermiculite mine had contaminated the town and the paper was leading the charge against the big, bad corporation. If it wasn’t, it sure would have under my ownership. (W.R. Grace was eventually brought down by the Libby case).

My wife smacked away that idea. Who was I kidding? Moving our family to Montana was a stretch, but moving to a toxic mining town was a joke not even worth considering.

So Idoline, a UVM grad, greeted the prospect of Stowe like an oasis in the parched desert. Then we visited, saw that it was really nice — that the entire state of Vermont is an oasis — and made the decision that, yes, I could proceed with negotiations to purchase the Stowe Reporter.

Which I did.

And I’m sure glad I didn’t ruin my marriage and my health and move to Libby. I would never have discovered, 10 years later, what a great excuse buying the Reporter gave me for moving to Stowe and Vermont.

•••

The other story is tangential.

When we moved here, we didn’t waste any time finding a house, which is emblematic of how we approached this move: It was all business. We weren’t necessarily looking for the perfect home. It just had to work.

At the end of one day of searching, we spotted something in the window of McKee Real Estate, Brent Libby’s operation that is now the Sotheby’s affiliate on Mountain Road.

Brent was in. The house was up the street and we could see it right away. We went.

Other than being smack on the road, the house was ideal and in many ways picture perfect. And in our price range: $292,000. Four bedrooms, a pond, 2 acres, two old barns, within biking distance of town and schools.

We made an offer on the spot. Sold.

Of course, being all business, I went right to work on the house’s first problem: that cars were flying by some 10 yards from the front door. Within the first few weeks of moving in, I called and introduced myself to the very congenial police chief and explained my problem to him.

Ken Kaplan replied: “I’ll send a cruiser up there. That should slow people down.”

Genius, I thought. I like this town. The chief’s on my side.

Sure enough, one of the officers pulled right in to my driveway and parked facing the road. Pretty soon, he pulled out with his flashers on and pulled someone over.

Sonofagun, I thought, that’ll slow ’em down. Then another and another.

For the next few weeks, people were damn careful driving by my house. Those speeders. That showed ’em.

A few months later, a nice man I know threw a party for me. One of my neighbors, Chip Percy, attended, along with a bunch of other Percys. To be a Percy in Stowe is like being a Kennedy in Massachusetts — they own tons of land and businesses and are speckled throughout local government.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you how much I appreciated the way you introduced yourself to your neighbors,” said Chip. “You had the cops saying your hellos for you.”

What do you say at moments like that?

What I said was “Oh, darn. Sorry. I didn’t know they would issue tickets.” Which was the truth.

And all credit to Chip for pointing it out, clear and simple, the first time we met. He laughs now at the memory of what a dumbbell I was, and he’ll have that on me till I die.

What I didn’t know then and what I understand so well today is that almost nothing you do in a town of 5,000 or so is a secret. Which is pretty slow thinking for a newspaper publisher. But while I’d spent 15 years working and running newspapers, I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I took over the Stowe Reporter and moved, yes, moved, to Stowe, Vermont.