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November 30, 1995 - Winnie Billard: Teacher, Poet, FriendGA • The SUffolk Tknes' • November 30:1995 "' Winnie Billard: Teacher, Poet, Friend When we were first married we lived f with my dad in his house. After five t years, as with most young couples with kids, we longed for a place of our own. t Luckily during my high school years I had bought an old Model A Ford for 1 $25 from Mr. Barteau, who lived at the i head of our lane, and from that first day of having "wheels" every road, back road and anything that looked like a road was explored. And so when it came to look- ing for a place to build our dream house, I O remembered one of those "anything that looked like Nat a road" places that led up into a woods that over - by P looked a farm. It was stouten washed down and worked out through years of horse - and -wagon travel. It later became our driveway 300 feet off the regular traveled road. The farmer who owned the "wood lot" was Clayton Billard, a small man with a special greeting that let you know here was a wholesome, sincere person. Retired from farming, he rented his land, built some flat - bottom rowboats for sale in his spare time and in general puttered about the homestead, keeping it in typical clean, trim Yankee fashion. Always wanting to live off the road and in the woods `We'll all where I could look out over fields and miss this open spaces, I felt this location was wonder just about perfect worker, and so with a little dickering we but the bought two acres of woodland with memories the provision that of of her the sliver of woods next to the will linger driveway leading up to the farm long and fields never be riends. She always had an interest in he world about her. She told us of the path through what is now our woods hat she and her sister, Lois, once played along and hunted out the arbutus and ady slippers. I can well imagine the joy t must have been in those uncluttered days to wander about the farm edges and woods when our East End was still undiscovered. She would tell of her dad, after plowing in the spring, picking up arrow - V$ heads in the back lots and seeing dark circles of earth n that she was told were Indian sites. use The woods she remem- 8111 bered was not the woods burgh of today. No, that ancient woods with its monarch oak trees went down dur- ing the '38 hurricane and the great clumps of earth wrenched out with the trees still mark where they were blown down. In their place today grow mostly hickory trees. It's interesting to note that hickory trees in contrast to oak trees have a much different root sys- tem. Hickories will hardly ever be blown over for they have a tap root much like a carrot. We found this out when we dug our cellar. How Angelo, our excavator, cussed those stubborn stumps! cleared. Nothing true for could be more to many of us.' my liking and so we built a small house where we brought up our family. Later we'd buy additional pieces of land as they became available, but our purchase of land from Clayton Billard introduced us to Winnie, one of his two daughters. After her dad died Winnie lived for years in their two -story trim farmhouse next to us and we all became great A Fitting Memorial When Winnie's dad died of a heart at- tack he was walking across his back lawn. Some time after his death Winnie asked me if I could dig a small tree from "the woods" and plant it where he fell. "Why sure," was my reply but what kind of a tree would she want? A native cedar would be nice seeing it's an.evergreen, but they are short - lived. We had plenty of hickory but they were so commonplace I thought them in- appropriate. Perhaps I could find a white oak sapling. There were only two big white oaks left after the hurricane in the woods. They are king of the oaks and besides, I'm sure when her dad built those rowboats he probably used white oak for the ribs. So I searched around the area where the white oaks grew and found a young sapling that would do fine. That was more than 30 years ago. Winnie was a storehouse of informa- tion on local history. She was the one who told of how the road along the front of our property got its name, Skunk Lane. Seems there were groups of farm- Good things come in small packages. It • 765 -1489 ;rAwa s«r a y *.s' Photo by raw btou[enuuiy,i LOPPED TREE —These unique bent trees can be found along many roads and land boundaries. This particular one bounded the Billard proper- ty on Skunk Lane, Cutchogue. ers who would go down to the causeway (that leads to Nassau Point) and haul seine for bunkers each spring. The bunkers swam in great schools in our bays in those days and thousands were brought ashore by the fishermen encir- cling them with long nets. They'd be loaded into wagons and put on the fields for fertilizer. Each of these groups of farmer - fishermen had a different name and the ones that lived on or near the road in front of our place that led to the bay were called the Skunks, therefore the name Skunk Lane. Another group were called the Crows and they were from another part of town, etc. Winnie knew about lopped trees that once lined the road down front. In olden days a tree was bent over when young and tied or held in some way so that as the tree grew it held the bent shape. I pho- tographed one such tree and she wrote a poem about it. She also told about how land was often fenced off by digging they are more easily seen. Winnie was a teacher in many ways from her early days almost up to the time she died. She taught in Southold for many years and after her retirement entered the Peace Corps to serve in Malasia. She taught English there and we all remember the picture of her on a motorcycle going to work in the back country. We'll all miss this wonder worker but the memories of her will linger long and true for many of us. The woods where she and her sister LAMENT TO A TREE I wonder what he thought that man who lopped an oak beside the marsh To make a hedge? 'T will keep the cattle ditches around the property. It not only marked the boundaries of certain plots but also kept the cows from wandering off. There is still a section of our land that shows traces of old dug boundary lines. Another place I've seen these boundary lines is on Robins Island. There, where man has not maneuvered I. I d as much as on the mainland, t e an walked the path and where her dad cut his wood are still there. The farm fields her dad plowed are still there but now lay fallow. The still -trim farmhouse I can see from our bedroom window has a new tenant and the white oak she asked to have planted is growing strong and straight. The world goes on but we all know it's a better world because in her own way she set the standards for what was good and helped to make it that way. P.S. — As the Christmas season ap- proaches there are many who will miss Winnie's homemade coffee cake with the red cherries on top and we'll miss those little surprises like her dad's pitch- fork with a big red ribbon on it we found standing in the snow early one Christmas morning. It's still used in the stable today.