The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-01-24
SOUTH BRITAIN BRIEFS
By BILL GARRIGUS

The unhappiest place to live is beyond your income. Smoky Jen- son, the charcoal burner of Shal- low Hollow, found that out years before anybody ever wrote book about it. Smoky buys a bag of beans, a jug of good molasses, a bag of flour, a side of bacon, some tea, salt, and baking powder, and holes up for the winter. Come Spring, Smoky takes a bath, locks up the cabin, and treks to town. Rumor has it that his first call is the bank.
 The church choir hasn't been so good since Sam Pierce went south, but the music classes at the rural schools increase and multi ply. Teachers from the city have discovered the milk block belt, and they are banking real money. Moppets learn to operate stringed instruments and parents are urged to buy fiddles on the installment plan. Culture and a keen appre- citation of music comes to the dairy farms, via the music teach CTS and the radio, but the hon. est masculine music is rendered by people like Bob Platt's kitchen orchestra and Swede Stolt's Corn huskerS.
 Abe Martin, Salisbury leading citizen and businessman, called the other day. Abe complimented us on our new school for mental defectives. and assured us of a few recruits from the hill country. He reported great interest in winter sports and fair transient trade, but his reports on personnel were not so encouraging. John Mon- ahan has died, Bill Suydam has banked his tiny cabin and holed up until spring, Charley Bonho- tel drowned in Forge Pond, and the medicine man who used to make invigorating fluid Epson Salts has passed on. Nobody has been arrested for jack-lighting deer in two weeks and the ice on Twin Lakes is too thick for easy fishing. Abe said the hog kill was chunky but folks didn't smoke as many hams as usual and that's a bad sign. Pork eaten fresh has to be well-cooked and sometimes people are careless about it. Hams and bacon are the safest rations. Abe has twenty people on w. P. A. Abe Martin gained transient fame when he swung sign on a road job in Salisbury that read, "This is not a government job. We're paying for it ourselves"
 Salisbury is perhaps a little jealous of SOuthbury. Years ago, over in Lakeville, somebody ran a school for mental detectives and enjoyed a lively patronage. The State farmed out 8 few cases to the Salisbury facility, but when ever one of our mental defectives got loose and wandered over the line into York State, it required a lot of detective work to sepa- rate him from the natives and get him back here with his own folks. The LakevilIe school final ly shut up shop. Now SOuthbury has the edge on Salisbury.
 Watertown visitors who inspect the new State School are likewise. just a little regretful. According to rulnor, Watertown once had a chance to secure the school but local opinion was against it. Now tl.iS plant here is a lot more mod ern than Taft School and the school farm has it over Water town stock plants like a tent.
 The oldest house i'm South Brit ain is the least visited. Tucked under the mountain on . lane leading off the Pierce Hollow Road into the Lautenschlager Es- tate, this dwelling is half stone and half wood. The stone half is replete with old paneling. 8 stone chimney, fireplaces and heavy timbering. Somebody took the top off the great chimney and built the shinEIed roof over it, but it is largely in original condition. We once heard that . W.P.A. archi- techt surveyed" this unusual