Posted on 12/31/2007 6:41:26 AM PST by Hildy
A former home of poet Robert Frost has been vandalized, with intruders destroying dozens of items and setting fire to furniture in what police say was an underage drinking party.
Homer Noble Farm, a former Frost residence that's now a historic landmark, was ransacked late Friday night during a party attended by up to 50 people, Sgt. Lee Hodsden said Monday. a.m. Friday, police said.
The intruders broke a window to get into the two-story wood frame building — a furnished residence open in the summer — before destroying tables and chairs, pictures, windows, light fixtures and dishes. Wicker furniture and dressers were smashed and thrown into a fireplace and burned, apparently to provide heat in the unheated building, he said.
Empty beer bottles and cans, plastic cups and cellophane apparently used to hold marijuana were also found, according to Hodsden. The vandals vomited in the living room and discharged two fire extinguishers inside the building, located on a dead-end road off Route 125.
No arrests have been made, Hodsden said, adding that they've tracked down some partygoers and believe they are minors.
The damage was discovered Saturday by a hiker who notified police at Middlebury College, which maintains the site. The cabin's caretaker was last there at 10 a.m. Friday, police said.
Frost, a celebrated New England poet known for such verse as "The Road Not Taken" and "The Gift Outright," died in 1963. He summered at the home from 1939 to 1963.
Someone chose the wrong fork to follow
There is lots of evidence there. All the offenders should be made to provide restitution.
As for punishment, caning strikes me as very reasonable.
Fifty crazed drunken dope-smoking underage intruders “stopping by the woods on a snowy evening”.
When I was 12 years old, I stood in the middle of the street screaming at a friend of mine cause she had toilet papered and egged homes the night before (Halloween). I couldn’t understand how she could do something so irresponsible and stupid.
I’m just a few months shy of 51 and I STILL don’t understand vandalism.
Back in the 70’s when I was in high school, there were plenty of “not very responsible parents” who would let their kids throw parties at their lake cabins or hunting camps. We never had a need to break into someones property to have fun on a Friday or Saturday night. I guess those kind of parents are not found in that part of Vermont.
Who trashed this place, we don’t yet know.
They’ll soon be apprehended, though.
He must have moved around a lot. There are two Robert Frost places here in NH.
Actually, I was taught that Frost poem was railing :) against fences. If so, I wonder what Frost might think now about barbed and razor wire around his summer home.
>>by a hiker who notified police at Middlebury College, which maintains the site
at first I thought this was the farm/home just north of
Bennington, which I visited a couple years ago, but maybe this one is up near, or in, Ripton VT (nr Middlebury). Also
near Middlebury is the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail,
a place where you can take a walk through the woods and
read some of his poems posted at various places.
Did search: it’s this place.
http://www.frostfriends.org/ripton.html
My little horse must think it queer
to see fifty vandals chugging beer
Or perhaps this group had already trashed all of those homes and so went in search of new digs.
susie
Wasn’t me.
Especially in Vermont! Doesn't everybody there work for Pottery Barn and run a B&B on the side?
This is what happens when it's too cold to scoop ice cream for Ben & Jerry.
“The things not taken?”
As my favorite Yogi once said, "When you come to the fork in teh road, take it."
Of course he was making a poetic point about artificial boundaries more than just fences. But his “neighbor” in that poem was the practical thinker. Good boundaries make for good relationships, usually. Good fences just make good sense.
:o)
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