how did you happen to come to underhill i was working and living in fort lauderdale florida which is a very flat land so i could be called a flatlander for that and and i had originally come from the east i'd grown up in new jersey pennsylvania i was born in pittsburgh pennsylvania really enjoyed greenery change of season and we didn't get any of that in florida it was pretty much summer year round or so it felt that at some of the holidays christmas for instance it was really odd to see people bringing christmas trees into their ready to go and i want to move to new england and within a week the fella got back to me and said well i've got i've got an opening up in vermont which i didn't really consider necessarily new england i was thinking more like boston or massachusetts but i said i'll go on that interview it was to i b m here in essex junction and i came up i left i was on the beach i remember on a saturday in fort lauderdale on the beach in january january tenth and on the eleventh i was up in burlington vermont it was ten below zero and i thought impossible can people even how can people live in this sort of you know environment with it being that cold and i we took a bus tour from the radisson the old radisson hotel to to i b m and travel through a new ski and the bus driver explain that this is the town that was going to be covered with a bubble and and i'm looking out the window and saying wow people are actually walking on the streets and thick heavy coats and people can live here and so i interviewed here at the plant and it was a really good match technically and and and i really came to just love this this this area like i'd mentioned i'd actually moved around a number of times and and i want settle down put down some roots and it didn't take long to realize that the for modern general and particularly the vicinity of chicken county was the air was clean the traffic was minimal you could argue that today we've got the lake for boating swimming skiing the mountains and all the major cities are nearby as as well new york boston montreal  government i understand you were part of the planning commission and i believe for a while or well this is the zoning board of zoning actually yeah yeah they're closely related to the planning commission and that's kind of interesting event how that happened i was actually on the board for fourteen years on the zoning board and chairman of a ford for twelve and the reason i got involved in the town politics was when i moved here on to this was basically in ninety six acre the remainder of the kelley farm i had purchased it with with a friend with the intent to subdivide and develop the land and make some good money and move on but i quickly upon finding this particular house and property we walked it one march day when the snow was two feet deep and there were deer tracks everywhere and and i just immediately fell in love we couldn't get into the house we  actually didn't come with a realtor we we came climbed up on the back of the back balcony and looked in the windows and i just saw this cavernous space and i thought wow this is in the woods it was quiet and then the peacefulness of the nature and the woods  and the views that you know looking out towards the mountain i just instantly fell in love with it and felt it was almost a spiritual connection to this area and i realized i needed to find a way to pay the mortgage which at the time was one of these adjustable mortgages at thirteen percent extraordinary and as a result i needed i was single and and i took on roommates we had three myself and three other roommates renters helping me pay the bills and the mortgage and so we put together a whole proposal to create a small business to run this paint ball operation up here through the woods and again with and less amounts of words we thought that was just the perfect use of the land so i didn't have to develop it and we took that proposal to the town to the to the zoning board and were quickly realized that  that folks were not necessarily so eager to embrace outsiders per se and and a concept of paint ball because it included however minimal the use of you know some sort of guns in a way paint ball guns and so we got a tremendous pushback from the board all but one person disliked the idea but that one person i won't mention any names but spoke up and said i don't understand how if if a person that has one hundred acres can't you know can't even use their hundred acres to the way that they feel is appropriate and this sounds appropriate to me that i i just don't get it and i really applauded that that one individual for standing up for you know for me at the time but i felt like i was probably just representative of of lots of folks who come into the boards of any town but particularly the town that i now live in and present a proposal and because there's it's always a general impression that folks think you know if you're not from here you know we're not necessarily going to race your ideas or we don't like to see things change so i immediately came down to the town selectmen and volunteered to be a planning commission person heard zoning person but i wanted to be on a board so that i can just start to in my opinion  balance things out or at least to represent again the the the individual who comes in up against and it can seem daunting on occasion to come up against you know a whole group of individuals who are staring you down and and questioning why are you farai notoriety right from pleasant valley road and marion was she was a mentor in a way and and i just appreciated her sound and rational point her she was aged and her health was failing her eyesight was very poor and at one point after about two years of me being on the board she asked me if i would be willing  interested in becoming the new chairman but i've also always realized that that changes inevitable and what's important is to find a balance a way to to to compensate  basically the landowner the person that maybe grew up on the land or you know or farm the land or whose parents own the land or in my case purchased an old farm essentially and and at some point the pressures increased to either want to or need to sell out or develop you know for different reasons for different people and so i think there's that constant pressure and we're seeing it today in the old  relatively level and maybe i might have had something to do with that too in terms of allowing what's practical and reasonable from the zoning board perspective and contributing to rewrites of planning documents and zoning ordinances so that there are rational but again i think it's really important that we that we do at least minimal somewhat of a you know residential community folks most folks live and work here but a lot of folks travel to jobs elsewhere so i think we you know unfortunately we have fifteen route fifteen running right through the center of town and clearly that is the only thoroughfare you know in this vicinity to to to to transfer point folks from the north to you know to areas but only slightly southern  so the pressures to increase this with of the road in the amount of traffic and we are going to be there and the development pressures right it's not just a side note it's frequently i'll go down to the bottom of the road consider you know what's appropriate for those areas you know as well as as what's the appropriate compensation for the landowner and some folks maybe want dollars and cents and other folks want maybe recognition if they were to you know to deed the development rights to a conservation society or something right right but it's really important to not just look at it from we don't want any developments  contrary controlled development but to look at it from the perspective of how how can we make it a win win right yeah so the underhill two hundred fiftieth year celebration well i credit i think it was te who put an announcement into our front porch for him recognizing midway or late in two thousand and twelve that the anniversary was coming up and shouldn't we establish a committee and folks  who would want to determine you know if we want to do anything special to celebrate and but we boiled it down to let's well let's you know let's do let's do a parade let's do a barbecue let's do exhibits know open up the old schoolhouse let's include the farmer's market but let's make a day of it and so much of our activities for the early part of two thousand and thirteen were focused on those activities and how we would pay for them and who would be involved and and all the various details necessary including things such as raising money we designed t shirts and right and at the town meeting last march which amazing as almost a year ago already we took three designs to the to the town meeting and and little canisters so people could vote down and write their favorite remember voting on that yeah and we pick the most favorite two and produced those t shirts to which we've sold about seven hundred fifty of those t shirts and some of the money's going towards supporting our activities in the balance of it turned over to the historical society from from  some point forward but yeah it's been it's been a fun and active year with the two fifty activities probably the best part being just seeing the town come together there is that remarkable photograph we have that the town photo yeah that was one of the ideas why not why not take a photo of everybody in town and so then we needed to find a photographer who could take a picture that had a wide angle perspective you know and that was challenging in itself to find that the target for but we found martin miles an incredible fellow and photographer who did something in fact it was raining that day in and i remember the day it was jury were fearful it would be you know things would not work out the parade might not work there the picture might not work martin did in an amazing thing he if you recall he all he told us i'm going to take the picture three times and what i'm going to ask you to do is everybody shut your eyes and i count to three open them and i thought what a brilliant idea to get eight hundred thousand people all have their eyes open i say right words without blinking and he did that three times it was amazing smell the beginnings of hamburgers and hot dogs and cooking in the background but i do want to mention i need to mention the parade that parade was blew me  away we were worried for weeks who's going to be in the parade and you know we were soliciting folks to be in and we really didn't have a great idea wasn't clear and nate sullivan was our parade foreman marshal played marshal wright and he did a fabulous job recruiting it seemed every person that in town that only a tractor to be in that parade these activities in general the opportunity it provided was was just having you know people who neighbors who participated minimal activities get together on a broader scale and join in and after each activity they would tell us we need to do that again we need to do this event this this barbecue yearly we need to do this contra dance every month we need to do this historical bus tour you know again next week so it was really you know a labor of love that it produced some really wonderful community well thanks a lot for