This is an entry in my Vermont 251 Club series. The main post — which lists all 252 places in Vermont — is here. As I visit each one and write about it, the name will become a live link. Middlebury and Montpelier are both available for free, but most of the series will be paywalled, so if you think you would enjoy reading more of these, consider subscribing. Here’s a coupon.
Huntington isn’t what I expected.
I go there semi-often, because the Huntington Public Library is a nice, cool, quiet place to draw, or think. The drive to get there is long enough to clear my head after therapy, and they have an unusually large collection of books by local authors.
But today I went with a different pair of glasses on, so to speak, trying to see it in a new way for my Vermont 251 adventure, and for this post.
I don’t know what I expected, exactly — but it wasn’t a string of houses arranged like a political sandwich.
I parked down the street from Beaudry’s, the town’s general store, and walked past a stretch of homes that told a story with their front yards.
One house had a bunch of flags hanging from the porch: Ukraine, Pride, Palestinian, American, and Trans, if memory serves. (I didn’t take pictures, not wanting to point my phone at private homes.)
The next house over had a massive U.S. flag and a big, unambiguous sign supporting law enforcement. And the house just past that had a trans flag the size of a small yacht sail, plus a smattering of progressive yard signs.
But it wasn’t a culture war. It was a row of houses.
Nobody had slashed tires or torched flowerbeds. Their gardens were blooming, sometimes in matching hues.
You got the sense that everyone had agreed, maybe not aloud, to keep things basically civil.
You can live next to me, even if your worldview makes me break out in hives.
That’s more Vermont than anything you’ll see on a t-shirt.
Because here’s the thing about Vermont: its reputation for progressive politics isn’t false — if anything, it’s understated — but it’s heavily geographically concentrated.
Burlington, Montpelier, UVM, and the state government centers really are what it feels like to live inside Twitter: shouty, doctrinaire, always virtue-signaling, always way too goddamn proud of itself.
But once you leave that bubble, things shift.
Look at the 2024 election map.
Outside Chittenden County, Vermont isn’t deep blue. It's light blue, or even pink — the Northeast Kingdom had some red counties last time. A lot of towns aren’t 80/20. They’re 53/38.
The place I take walks most often was 53% Harris, 38% Trump, 9% other.
That’s not a monolith.
That’s a family argument with a bake sale afterward.
Which brings me back to Beaudry’s.
It’s an old-fashioned general store in the best way. Wooden floors that desperately need to be redone but that would require closing for a few days, and then what?
The whole town would go feral.
Non-digital gas pumps with the little spinny numbers (does that dial have a name? the analog odometer thing?).
A bulletin board inside where the paper notices have clearly been read. The kind of place where you can buy motor oil, maple syrup, potato chips, a single onion, and a child’s toy from 1996, all in one transaction.
It feels like a center of gravity. Everyone shops there.
There is no Whole Foods alternative in Huntington. No shiny co-op with reclaimed wood shelves and refrigerated kombucha. Beaudry’s is it. It’s even where UPS, FedEx, DHL, and the rest drop off packages all winter.
Which means people have to be civil.
You can’t pick a fight with someone whose kid might end up babysitting your goat. Or worse, teaching your goat bad manners.
In Huntington, the social contract still has a few teeth.
And I wonder if part of that civility comes not just from Vermont tradition, but from something quieter: the legacy of the Deaf.
The rest of the story, plus pictures, after the break.
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