By Guy Page
Two railroad lines ran past John McClaughry’s childhood home in Paris, a loftily-named town of less than 10,000 located in south-central Illinois near the Indiana state line. As a boy, he wondered what it would be like to ride those rails and see the world beyond the farm.
Like so many! But like so few, John McClaughry did something about it. He jumped his first train when he was about 13. In the early 60’s, he “rode the rails through 19 of the 29 states that I was at one time and down and out in,” he told Seven Days reporter Dan Bolles in 2013.
So it comes as no surprise that by far the most gifted and prolific living essayist on the subject of Vermont liberty – no-one else even close, although his Ethan Allen Institute protege Rob Roper has a firm hold on second place – would use a railroad double-entendre to announce in today’s VDC the conclusion of 30 years of bi-weekly commentaries:
Once ‘Feather River John’ (his hobo name) determined to settle down, he looked for a strong rural community in a free-thinking state. He found Kirby, Vermont, where he built a log cabin and became the Town Moderator and legislator, then state senator, with a stint in the Reagan White House for good measure. In 1993 he founded the Ethan Allen Institute because, I suppose, someone had to. Vermont’s fabled free-thinking, love-thy-neighbor-by-leavin’-him-alone ethic had by then been in decline for 30 years. The 1962 election of Gov. Phil Hoff and the landmark elimination of the one-town, one-representative House of Representatives was followed shortly by Act 250. The die was cast and there’s more to come.
So for a generation, John’s been working on the Freedom railroad, all the live-long day. Where has it got him? By one measure – creating a free-market mecca in the Green Mountains – he has failed.
But the prophets of old were not judged by audience response. They were called to be authentic, consistent, faithful, and topical.
Judged by that more righteous yardstick of personal accountability, all Vermonters – even the stiff-necked among his many friends and colleagues – might say of John McClaughry, “well done, thou good and faithful servant.”