North Hero s Winston Way, an oral history

NORTH HERO — What was it like to grow up here in the 1920s and ’30s? Winston Way, 88, has fond memories of his free-range childhood.

Way retired in 1985 after a long career as agronomist for the University of Vermont Extension and has lived here much of his life. He was brought up in the town’s hotel (now the North Hero House), built by his grandfather and managed by his mother. His father had the town’s only garage, where he learned all about cars, and his uncle owned a farm nearby, where he worked during the summer:

Winston Way: “Up until World War II around here, a hired man was paid a dollar a day, room and board. That’s what I got paid working for my uncle. I didn’t know what it was like to be poor, because at a very young age I could pull worms out after rain at night time, with a flashlight, and I’d box a quart of worms and sell them to the fishermen. I had special boxes, I kept them down in the ice house where it was cool. ...

“At the age of 9, I became a fishing guide. My father was in the garage one day when two men came in and said they wanted to go fishing, they didn’t know the fishing spots and where could he suggest they get a guide? ... My father said, well, the guides are all busy, we don’t have enough of them. I’ve got a son who goes fishing all the time, he knows where to go. I knew where edge of the reef was. ... I took them out there and they caught their limit and gave me $10. That’s what guides were getting, $10 a day, real money. ...

“I had muskrat traps when I was still in grade school. Before school I’d get up early to check my traps. I went from here over to Pelot’s Bay. I might get three muskrats a day. I’d set maybe a dozen traps. My father taught me how to skin a muskrat, how to put them on a shingle, stretch them out. A guy came around a bought the pelts for $3 to $6 a piece.”

Burlington Free Press: What about school in those days?

WW: “We had four schools — the south end school, the village school, the Jerusalem school, and the north end school. I went to the village school, which is now the library. It had eight grades, one teacher. About 30 of us in the school, eight of us in the eighth grade when we graduated, the largest class they had had in some time. It was a two-room school. One room we used only to keep coats in, and we used it to get lunch. We didn’t have school lunches in those days. Each person, a lot of days, would bring a potato, you’d put your initial