News & Features
April 2006

SEEDS FOR THOUGHT
'Crumbwood' restoration realizes sense of place
By Ron Couture

Before After

Some of you may have seen the recent Channel 5 “Chronicle” show that featured the area's Boston Post Road. Our own well-known historian, Bob Wilder, showed how the markers have been hidden by brush and told the story of a long-lost marker's return. It was Bob's enthusiasm for this stuff that really got me interested in the many historic features of our town.

The half hour show also featured the new Quaboag Plantation Museum, Salem Cross Inn, and the Asparagus Festival, all in West Brookfield. Included in the broadcast was a bit about the signs that I made for the Post Road markers and a shot or two of my gallery and myself painting our local scenes -- the Quaboag River and a few hillside landscapes. This coverage of the area made us look good, even in the gray doldrums of late winter.

I bring this up because, in many respects, we don't always look around at what we have and just how connected we are to the past and its fragile nuances of history. So much can be swept away in a short second by the blade of a bulldozer.

Twenty years ago, my wife, Sandy, and I bought what was then Hilltop Liquor Store. We were young and it was one of those times when you felt you could tackle the world and come back the next day with the same enthusiasm you started with.

The realtor said, "It's a great buy, just needs a bit of fixing up. Better grab it before it goes!"

Well, I've got to tell you, we'd been looking so long and wanted a place to invest in, and maybe use someday as a possible home, we did just that -- bought it, lock stock and barrel! It was everything you'd ever want in an old house: squeaky floors, drafty windows and over a hundred years of add-ons. The porch was straight-from-the-sawmill rough-sawn boards in blue paint. Layers of asphalt shingles, the roof and walls, and a three-car garage was jimmied under a back porch.

The front yard “lawn ornament” was an ice vending machine, and at least three hand-lettered signs trumpeted the sale of liquor and lotto tickets. The attic was full of all the forgotten junk that no one had looked at in years.

"You have to have vision," I said to Sandy. "Vision is important. If you can't see what it could be like, then you'll never make it work."

Now, let me back up just a bit. I worked, I guess I still work, in the visual arts field. My training and experience has taught me to look for the worst and fix it. Tackling the worst first, gives you immediate enthusiasm and encouragement to continue. It can only get easier as you go on to completion. So, looking for the visually impaired spot has been a real problem with me. I see a spot, and I impulsively want to fix it.

“Crumbwood,” as Sandy dubbed the once stately place, had all the worst problems you could find. But, it also had the best going for it. The neighborhood was looking up with a proposed public park in our back yard, a new school and a country crafts shop next door. Crumbwood itself was the only real blight, “the worst looking place from Worcester to Springfield.” Fixing it would improve the neighborhood and the town, as well. I can't tell you how many people came up to Sandy and I in those early years, thanking us for fixing the place. They'd stop by and give us lots of "good luck" and hope.

Well, like I said, it was 20 years of hard work to complete the task and it still isn't completely done.

During the past eight years, with this philosophy in mind, I've given my thoughts on what the worst spots in town are and have tried to encourage people on the various boards I've served on to improve our town visually.

Some concepts have worked, some haven't. But you have to say that we've definitely improved our environment, be it historical landscape and preservation, the planting of trees along Route 9, the town entrance signs, or the Post Road signs. These concepts work to create a sense of place and that sense of place is Brookfield. A place people want to come back to, a place that makes them feel at home and secure. A sense of place is a subliminal impression, and making our visualizations a reality can only give us all a better place to live.