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years to really dry hardwood. They had two woodsheds, each with a hundred or so cords, and they filled one each year.” Bruce could have been describing the farm he grew up on.
    They looked at tubing and fittings, and they talked about evaporators. They wanted to know about boiling times. “Most people can boil six hours,” Bruce said. “They don’t want to boil for twelve.”
    He told the family that Bascom’s was hosting a boiling seminar the next week and invited them. While they were looking at the evaporators Bruce came to me and mentioned the Tom Zaffis proposal, saying, “There’s been a new development. It will result in a major change in the industry.”
    The winter of 2012 was looking promising after three feet of snow fell in late October. On the day of the boiling seminar the trucks and cars were streaming up the hill early in the morning. A worker was moved from the warehouse to direct the cars into the cornfield. Women from the office and the sugar-making section were moved to the new buildingto serve lunch. The guys in the Cooler were ready to take in the syrup that some of the attendees were bringing in to sell. Bruce and David Bascom had estimated that about 250 people would attend, but they rented 400 chairs to be on the safe side. As the talk began, Bruce noticed there were no empty chairs.
    The seminar was held in the new building, and crates and pallets were moved to make room for the chairs and the speaker. Brad Gillian was a young sales representative at Leader Evaporator and a talented speaker and storyteller. He began by talking about his grandfather, who, he said, was an old-time Vermont sugarmaker. “He made better syrup than you could today, on a flat pan over an open fire on a brick arch.” Gillian said he had been the taste-tester in the sugarhouse, a job that often fell to children. His grandfather had no electricity in that sugarhouse and boiled by the light of a wood fire. Doing that caused you to listen to the boil, Gillian said. “My grandfather said the evaporator will talk to you. You just have to listen.”
    He asked for a show of hands. “How many of you are burning wood?” About half the people raised their hands. They were an old-fashioned woodsy crowd, but there were many among them who wanted to expand.
    I had been up late the night before, and went to get some coffee at the stand set up in the new bottling room. What a room it was—open and spacious with plenty of light and a view of the distant mountains. The conveyors, the fillers, the packing tables—all were fresh and new and promising.
    I walked out, sipped the coffee, and looked at the crowd. It seemed to me that these seminars and also the open house Bascom’s held in the spring were an outgrowth of thesugar parties I had heard about, the parties Ken and Ruth Bascom had hosted during the sugar season each year. During those times cars were lined up all along the road. The visitors drank coffee and ate pastries, sampled the new syrup, and talked to Ken Bascom at the evaporator. There was no evaporator on this day, but the event brought people together, and Bruce was roaming about, talking to this one and that.
    I saw Bruce walking my way. I didn’t know whether he wanted to talk to me, and it seemed he didn’t because he walked past me, but then he turned and said something. Tom Zaffis was “sixty-forty,” he said. Maybe he would come, maybe not. In time, for personal reasons, the Zaffis proposal would fade away. But Bruce’s excitement was still fresh on this day, and the success of the boiling seminar had intensified his feelings.
    He said, while looking at the crowd, “This is why he wants to come here! This is the value of the name!”

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    T HE FIRST FULL-TIME SUGARMAKER
    T O BRUCE’S RECOLLECTION Ken Bascom never said one way or the other whether he wanted Bruce to return to the farm. One day I asked Bruce, “If your father was silent about your return and your mother begged you not to do it, why