History

by Denny Alsop

In 1965 Arlo Guthrie placed the famous 'a half a ton of garbage' in the cellar hole of 'Orchard Hill', formerly of my great grandparents. (may they rest undisturbed by all contentiousness though he was a lawyer) in the Stockbridge Graveyard. But Arlo's genius, was to be persuaded by some 'b&w glossy photographs' to pick the garbage back up, and Stockbridge got 'Alice's restaurant Massacree.'

More recently, just fifty years ago in fact, I worked with Claire Teague at the Senior Center on Castle Street in Great Barrington. I pause to muse, but just for a moment, upon how suddenly I find I am now referred to as a 'septuagenarian''!

One of the GB 'Senior Volunteers', Cleetus Lenahan (retired Principal of Searles High), came in the office upset. 'The Electric Company', he said, 'is dumping all 3 or 400 transformers into Fred Mercer's gravel pit, next to Monument Mountain High School. Cleet and Claire and Ted Coyle 'pressed' me to look.

I drove into the area, where a white flatbed was backed to the pit, which went down 40 feet to the pooling water table. A huge transformer, 300 to 500 gallons, slid off, crashed, broke open and slid and spilled PCB oil down the slope. Another truck arrived with a group of smaller units and did the same.

Pause a minute here to praise the SPD! Smile at the thought of carrying 'the Cop equipment' down to the cellar hole. Why didn't I do that? That I carry to my grave. Well, I was young. I got a phone call at 1 AM which was kind of a death threat. But that phone call made me into, 'oh no', an activist.

Fifty years later, as we plan for a new High School, the leadership of Stockbridge must be 'wary' of buying into polluted groundwater and vapor stage airborne contaminants in the air at the site of Monument Mountain Regional High School.

I am most pleased that our Select Board has appointed Bill Vogt to the BHRSD. And thank you, Bill for stepping forward at this critical time.

Editor's Note: Denny Alsop is a Former Member of BHRSD School Committee

Photo: Lionel Delevingne