Grandpy's Lincoln

My maternal great-grandfather was a stone carver who left the old Kingdom of Italy hoping to find opportunity in the granite industry of my hometown, Barre, Vermont. He succeeded, eventually establishing his own business and buying one of the nice new homes “up the hill.” There—in that three-bedroom house on the corner of Tremont and Currier—he raised seven children. The youngest was my grandfather: Egidio Nicola Sanguinetti. I arrived on the scene and grew up in the same house, decades later. By then he was Nick to his buddies and Grandpy to me.

But this story begins long before that, when my grandfather was known as “Little Nicky,” listening wide-eyed to his older brothers’ stories—especially the ones about their Prohibition-era smuggling operation. Those sorts of adventures are part of established Vermont history, regardless of my family’s specific role. So whether the details are fact or folklore, the setting remains steady. And that setting serves as a bookend to a much longer tale.

There are two large bodies of water spanning the U.S.-Canadian border: Lake Champlain to the northwest, and Lake Memphremagog to the northeast. In winter, both lakes can freeze thick enough to carry a vehicle. And Lake Memphremagog—or Magog—still does. But today, a trip across that frozen border would end quickly. In the 1920s, not so much. Back then, the lake didn’t just freeze; it turned geography into a kind of invitation.

During Prohibition, Lake Champlain drew most of the attention from federal authorities, while Magog was largely ignored. Bootleggers seized the opportunity, running booze across the maritime border by boat during the warmer months, and by car once the ice was thick enough. By all accounts, my great-uncles enrolled themselves in the winter trade. They’d drive the roads north into Canada, load up with cases of liquor, and make their run home across the lake under cover of darkness.

It’s romantic right up until you picture the cars. No all-wheel drive. No antilock brakes. No heaters. You started those engines with a crank, dressed as warmly as you could, and prayed there was just enough suspension to keep the bottles from shattering along the way. I’ve driven on that lake more times than I can count, and trust me—it’s not a smooth ride. People who’ve lived in these parts for generations still go through the ice every year. These days, your main concern is the ice. Back then, you had to contend with nature and the distinct possibility that your car wouldn’t survive the journey.

Those winter smuggling adventures were risky business, but they made for stories that have stuck around for a century. And I can picture the first tellings at the kitchen table on Currier Street, where little Nicky watched his brothers spin their tales over glasses of cherished contraband. I heard those stories too, but I received a more “immersive” experience.

On many winter Saturdays, Grandpy would head up to Magog—not to smuggle, but to fish. The days I joined him had a predictable rhythm. I’d get loaded into his Lincoln with a few of his buddies—and a healthy supply of Canadian Club whiskey. It was a two-hour trip from Barre to the lake, and I’d spend it perched, seatbelt-free, on the center armrest. I’d watch Grandpy through the smoke-filled cabin as he navigated the crooked roads and eventually the lake itself. His majestic Lincoln Town Car seemed nonplussed rolling across two-foot-thick ice, then parking next to a ramshackle shack, one among many in a colorful lake-top village.

It’s easy to think those trips were an excuse for grown men to go drinking, which, from my perspective, was hardly the case. First of all, no excuse was needed. Second, there was a significant effort to catch fish, with dozens of holes stretched across the lake. Yes, we sat in the shack and fished through holes cut into the floor, but this was more of a survival strategy in a place where a “warm” day was one where the temperature ticked above zero. As a result, a ride home without a trunk full of fish was rare. So while long days stuck in a shack with old men got pretty dull, the fish dinner served less than an hour after getting home was worth it.

I also felt like a little grownup, but I was more like a mascot. I remember those days fondly. The grownups had their thermoses—whiskey with a splash of coffee—while I had mine: cream and sugar with a splash of coffee. My adult brain still can’t reconcile our survival with the quantities of alcohol consumed, but that wasn’t on my mind then. After all, little Piero thought Canadian Club was more commonly added to coffee than cream, so I felt lucky to be on an adventure. And for a kid who hadn’t yet reached ten, those trips felt epic—especially when we’d point the car north for lunch.

Back in the day you could drive into Canada without checking in at the border. So if you wanted to, you could reverse my great-uncles’ trip and pull up onto the Canadian shore. Grandpy’s friend Romeo Sironi would insist on these trips to the tiny French-Canadian village of Magog, Quebec. In those exotic environs, escargot, beef tartare, and poutine were always on the menu, and the language barrier led to a lot of furtive pointing and raised eyebrows. That might have been the most entertaining part for a kid my age, and I loved it, despite never knowing what I might end up having for lunch.

On one of our last adventures, I’d reached the point where I’d started taking French in school, and Grandpy thought to send me into a store to buy fish. It was an epic fail, since I couldn’t convince them that the “poisson” I wanted was for humans to eat, and not for bait. There were, needless to say, a lot of laughs at my expense. But hey—put a bunch of drunk Italians in a small space and ball-busting is guaranteed.

I suppose that was the beginning of the end. As I got older, I found it all tedious and stupid. I remember thinking that living in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom would be a fate worse than death, and that opinion stuck with me long after many of my teenage certainties slipped away. I was convinced my life was destined for bigger things, and over time I forgot about most of it altogether. Nevertheless, here I am, fifty years later, waking up to a view of the lake at the heart of this story, living in a part of the world I assumed was beneath my ambition. I’d have never guessed that this spot would find me happier than I’ve ever been.

It all reminds me of that old line: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” That saying made sense the first time I heard it, but then it was a concept I applied to other people’s history, never my own. Now I see my life as part of that larger pattern, going back to the first stanza: an Italian immigrant bought a house, raised a family, and set the stage for his little Nicky to listen to his brothers. Fifty years later, little Piero would hear those same stories as he bounced across that very lake in his Grandpy’s Lincoln. And another fifty years on, I find myself skiing with my dogs past this generation’s ice-bound village of fishermen. That same resonance finds its home when friends ask if we’re prepared to rekindle the family smuggling operation—this time with people trying to slip quietly north.

I’m even starting to see patterns in the things that have changed. We live in a place most would consider “the middle of nowhere,” but remote doesn’t mean what it used to. The world has changed, and now we can live close to the land without sacrificing our line to the rest of the world. So in our modern way, we’re a bit like immigrants in search of a life different from what came before. For us, that’s a gift. For others, it can feel like an imposition. I have the sense that I’ve just cracked the surface of a much larger story. I’m not sure what it is yet—but I’m glad to be able to live through it here.