There are some weeks at this job that stand out more than others. It might have been because of the wondrous, fluffy snow falling outside my bank window almost every day this week, delighting skiers, snowmobilers and children alike. Or was it the mountains of paperwork I pushed this week, certain to lighten my load after the holidays. The truth is that my week changed for the better on Tuesday morning when my phone rang and I chatted with a delightful gentleman from Virginia.
If anybody has ever been on the receiving end of my phone greeting, you will know that I always state, "Northeast Kingdom Chamber; may I help you?" This particular day, the first words I heard were, "I’m not sure if you can." Sensing that this request might be a challenge, I listened as this man told me his story.
The gentleman told me that he was staring at a can of soup, one that had been collecting dust on his desk for the past 10 years. Although I could not tell for sure, by the tales he told about St. Johnsbury during the depression, this man must have been in his mid 80s. During our conversation, he spoke of the whistle of the trains when they roared into the depot. You could hear the twinkle in his voice when he described the bar he frequented right next to the station. He regaled me with stories of a time past, of where his life had brought him since his days in the Kingdom. And, yes, the conversation ventured back to the elusive soup.
Mr. String asked, with some level of hope in his voice, whether French & Bean, a noted purveyor of specialty foods back in the day, might still be in business. He explained that the best soup he had ever tasted, a hearty pea soup made in Canada, had sent him on a 10-year search to find more. Surely, French & Bean, he surmised, would have some in stock (no pun intended) and end his search.
You can’t imagine the sorrow I felt when I had to tell this poor man that French & Bean had been out of business for some time. But, craving a challenge, I asked him to tell me more about the soup. As he told me the soup manufacturer and explained how tasty each spoonful was, my fingers took over and I started typing search terms into the computer. Could it be this easy, I wondered, that I could find this man’s blessed soup as he waxed poetic about its taste?
This was not a man who spent much time on a computer. He admitted that his vision was poor and that his search had been slowed by his deteriorating eyesight. I am not sure he could understand what I was doing on the computer as he talked, so I let him chat as my search progressed.
My first Google search came up empty but on the second I hit pay dirt. As I described the can he was holding in his hand, he seemed amazed. Was this a 14-ounce can of Habitant pea soup, I asked. "Yes," he answered. "Well, I may be able to help you," I countered. Could this quest have ended any more magical? Why, even the store that sold the soup was located in Vermont! You could not write a better ending to this story.
As Mr. String slowly wrote down the store information, I could sense how excited he was. This octogenarian sounded like a little boy. His 10-year search had ended where it started, the very town where he sipped those first luscious gulps.
"I need your name," said Mr. String. "I want to write the chamber to tell them about you. You have no idea what this means to me."
No, Mr. String, you have no idea what this means to me. I smiled for the rest of the week, all due to a phone call out of the blue. I realized as I hung up the phone that I had taken this season and its meaning for granted. A simple action, a few minutes on the phone on a blustery winter morn, made me remember why I love this job.
(Darcie McCann has served as the executive director of the Northeast Kingdom Chamber for the past 12 years. Ironically, she is not a big fan of pea soup.)
