Rick Nichols: In a Vermont village, reliability and change

WEST GLOVER, Vt. - You can expect certain things here each summer - that Phil Brown down at the rabbitry will insist on undercharging you for rabbit rather than make change from a $20 bill (which compels you to bring him a gift bottle of wine, which he thanks you for before telling you he doesn't drink the stuff much anymore), and that the bags of tender salad greens at Lake Parker Country Store will be stored as inconspicuously as possible on the bottom shelf of the glass-doored cooler, and, if you go a bit late to the BBQ chicken dinner in the Congregational church basement, the 5-year-old cleanup girl will station herself intently at the table's edge as you finish, waiting to snatch up the plastic salt and pepper shakers.

This village is in the northeastern corner of Vermont, cottages sprinkled around a modest lake, dairy farms hanging in the balance, the woods traced with dirt roads well-suited to heavy tractors and logging vehicles.

And if Jay Peak, the ski resort to the northwest, and Newport, the city straddling the Canadian border 25 minutes north, can seem poised on occasion for overhaul or makeover, the town of Glover (of which West Glover is a part) seems more about continuity, and for returning summer people, soothing immutability.

This is, of course, a mirage. Wishful thinking. As August settled in, first the raspberries and then the blackberries ripened, easy picking up the hill from the old Borland farm (where the dairy herd was sold off last year).

You could still fetch fresh-laid eggs from the hens' roosts at Lilygate Farm (but there was no grass-fed beef for sale in the barn's freezer).

And at the mouth of Stevens Road across from the store, the wages of progress would soon be the subject of prickly debate. A stout, hand-lettered sign pounded into the ground was the first shot: "No Parking," it said.

Parking is not among the problems that leap to mind as you round the curve that sweeps into West Glover's center - a cluster of fewer than a dozen houses, the rescue squad's garage, a steepled church, Merle Young's blue dairy barn - and an idiosyncratic country store where you're advised that, yes, they have no bread crumbs: "But over there we've got panko."

Ah, but in the back of the country store a down-home pub arose five years ago, featuring an impressive roster of craft beers on tap (the Allagash Tripel doesn't last long), and astonishingly well-made pizzas (one topped, in tribute to the terroir, with sliced apple, cheddar, smoked bacon, and maple syrup from Deep Mountain Maple, a nearby sugarhouse).

It's called Parker Pie Co., and on a big night - especially with music or a special menu - it reels 'em in; upward of 90 or so at a time.

In fact, it reels so many in that the owners are remodeling the barn space next door, turning it into a music loft with a second pub, news of which set off a mild stampede months ago when a rock radio station promoted its sneak-peek preview night.

Things got touchy fairly quick. The local weekly in Barton, the Chronicle, reported on Parker Pie's "excess success," an uncustomary problem in this economically stressed slice of Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom.

And a town meeting echoed with complaints about reckless traffic, urinating in the back field, and parked cars that made farm-equipment navigation difficult; in tone, at least, grumblings more familiarly heard after a rough weekend on South Street.

Soul-searching set in. Farmers cited the threat to agricultural imperatives. The Glover moderator, who referees town meetings, countered with a letter to the Chronicle, pointing out that the dairy barn on Stevens Road across from the country store had itself expanded exponentially, taking on more the aspect of an unnatural "factory farm" than a picturesque Vermont hillside dotted with black-and-white Holsteins. (And why, he asked, aren't we talking about cracking down on supersized cottages chewing up the gentle shoreline of Lake Parker?)

The temperature cooled a bit after that. Parking-space lines were chalked on Parker Pie's gravel lot, and an enforcer in dreadlocks patrolled to keep cars off the shoulders. Once-peeved neighbors talked about selling the Pie some excess acreage. Then came the deluge - storms that doused West Glover with more than three inches of rain in 36 hours, washing gullies in dirt roads, and threatening to float docks over the spillway and down Roaring Brook.

It was a sobering moment, shifting thoughts to more urgent concerns - getting in the hay, canning the syrup, soaking up the returning sun.

In Craftsbury, Pete Johnson, the produce farmer, gazed at the rippling pond that only hours before had been his broccoli crop, an accidental swimming hole now, and fresh proof that change can come when you least expect it - and straight out of left field.

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