October 30, 2024 • 14 mins
In episode 1, Anthony explains how he first heard about the things that are alleged to have happened on his street, in his house, and in the house next door in the decades before his family moved there. Meet the neighbors and community members who experienced everything themselves and learn more about exactly what happened.
Please feel free to contact me at @dellitweets on Twitter or at ciardellia@gmail.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
When you find yourself traveling along an old dirt road in your town, or even in a place
(00:14):
you've never been, try to imagine the things that have happened there and who might have
lived there.
The dirt road you're thinking of might be treeline, bordered by thick forests and hills
with swamps on either side.
Or maybe it stretches off forever in a straight line through a dusty desert.
Your imagination probably doesn't take you to actors, rock stars, and even drug traffickers.
(00:35):
But there's a reason they say truth is stranger than fiction.
My name is Anthony Cerdelli.
I'm a journalist.
Well, a sports journalist living in Southern California.
I'm about to tell you a story about the dirt road in Vermont that I grew up on.
When I found out the truth behind the urban legends about this small part of Sharon, Vermont,
(00:56):
the place where I spent a lot of my childhood, my mind was blown.
This is True Stories from an Old Dirt Road.
In a country as expansive as the United States, it's not hard to find someone who grew up
in a small town.
(01:17):
We might be from small towns on opposite sides of the country, but there are some things
we both experienced.
A slower pace to life, the benefit of having more space and solitude, and most definitely
extreme bouts of boredom.
(01:37):
As a kid, you might have run out of ways to entertain yourself at some point.
You had to make your own fun.
When you wanted to hang out with friends or even go to school, your parents would probably
have to drive you.
Sometimes you could just get on your bike and go, but not always.
Here's how I felt about my hometown.
I grew up on a rural dirt road in Sharon, Vermont.
I lived next to a pond and a small brook surrounded by woods.
(02:02):
I had a fun childhood, catching creatures, experiencing wildlife, collecting rocks, and
playing in the snow in the winter.
But as I got older, I started to get bored.
When I was 11, we moved a few towns over to Hanover, New Hampshire, home of Dartmouth
College and around 10,000 people.
Compared to the 1500 people or so in Sharon, it felt like Metropolis, and I loved it.
(02:24):
But even Hanover grew old when I was ready to graduate from high school.
So I left.
For college in Los Angeles, then back east, then back to LA again.
But I could never forget some of the stories that I'd heard about my neighborhood in Sharon.
And when I became a journalist, I started to investigate those urban, uh, you know what,
maybe rural legends.
(02:45):
The stories were about things you'd be more likely to hear happening in Los Angeles, New
York, Nashville, or Miami.
Not a dusty, sometimes muddy, sometimes icy, rural dirt road in Vermont.
We started to buy all this stuff, like there's no other store.
(03:07):
And we needed some provisions.
We needed to eat some food.
And we had Lorie's parents with us.
So we bought a bunch of stuff, like sort of more stuff than someone would normally buy
at the trading post back in the day.
So she just couldn't.
She just, oh, you're moving to the area?
Oh, that's great.
And you know, sitting near, yeah, oh, it's on Queenby Mountain Road.
(03:28):
Oh, the drug bust house.
Apparently it was the springtime, if the story we were told is correct.
And there were pink Cadillacs going up and down the road.
Oh, really?
Yeah, and the neighbors were really suspicious.
But they're Vermonters.
They're New Englanders, right?
They started talking about it amongst themselves, but it wasn't like anything they called the
(03:50):
cops on.
So the place was really quite famous.
And everybody in town knew about it.
And I remember running along the back little path one day and practically tripping over
this piece of plastic that sort of materialized.
It got nowhere out of the ground.
And I remember getting a shovel and digging it up because the story was they didn't think
(04:12):
they'd gotten everything.
So at one point, a guy pulled in the driveway, parked up next to the garage, put garbage
bags on his feet and disappeared into the woods.
And in the panic, I called Barry and said some guy just put garbage bags on his feet
and went into the woods.
(04:33):
And he said, well, go look in the car.
I said, there's no way I'm going to go look at the car.
There's going to be a dead body in the car.
A little bit later on, some people, I think they rented it.
They're from Creechie.
They were the drug dealers.
And they had a U-Haul truck that they carried their products around in.
(04:54):
They said they were into antiques.
He was telling us a story about the old recording studio.
And the story he told was that the Beach Boys were in town and they stayed at his hotel.
And he had a teenage daughter at the time.
(05:16):
And the way we remember it was she was just kind of wide-eyed and freaking out that the
Beach Boys were staying at their little tiny hotel.
There's a story that former President William Howard Taft had to be rescued from one of
the bathtubs because of his surplus of weight causing him to get stuck in the tub and not
(05:41):
be able to get out.
We didn't know initially any of it until we met our neighbors down the road, the Masons,
just after we bought it.
And they told us a couple of stories, one about the drug bust and one about a Hollywood
child actor who once lived there.
(06:05):
I told you they're pretty wild.
I wouldn't be shocked if you were as skeptical as I was about them.
There's probably a version of one of these stories from your small town.
Something like, see that old house up on the hill?
Some lady was murdered there a while back and now people say it's haunted.
Or a bank robber hid some money in a hole behind that old barn a few decades ago.
But beyond going on a treasure hunt as kids or sneak into that old haunted house, did
(06:29):
you ever actually dig into the stories or investigate them to see if they really were
inspired by true events?
I did.
And what I found was absolutely mind blowing.
But first I need to explain just how rural this place was.
Let's take a quick imaginary road trip, starting in Boston, New England's biggest city.
(06:53):
Drive north, out of Boston a couple hours, up I-93, then to I-89.
After about two hours, you're going to hang a right at exit 2.
When you drive off the ramp, you're going to enter a picturesque Vermont town that you
might have seen on a postcard.
Welcome to Sharon, Vermont.
After a quick drive along the White River and a left turn, the road's going to turn
(07:15):
from pavement to dirt.
In a minute or two, Google Maps is probably going to stop working.
Now the houses are really far apart.
Some you can't even see from the road.
Actually, you're more likely to see a deer or a snapping turtle in the road, maybe even
a moose, instead of another car.
In the winter, you might have to wait for the plow to come through.
(07:37):
In the spring, or what we call mud season, you might get stuck in the mud.
On the left side of the road, you're going to see a house facing a pond.
This is the house I grew up in.
This house and the dirt road it's on is where the story begins.
It's sort of interesting to think about this crazy street and all the stuff that's happened
on this road.
(08:06):
During this podcast, I'm going to introduce you to a few old neighbors of mine and some
people who still live in the neighborhood.
The guy you just heard is Michael Livingston.
Mike and his family lived down the road from me probably about a mile, but before he lived
there he actually rented the house that I grew up in before my family bought it.
Mike is originally from Northern California.
(08:26):
He moved to Sharon with his wife Lori in the winter of 1981.
Mike would go on to become the head of school at Sharon's private school, Sharon Academy,
and later principal at Tunbridge Central School in neighboring Tunbridge, Vermont.
You'll hear from Michael more in a bit, but for now it's time to unpack the first story,
which happened at the house I grew up in.
(08:51):
Remember that urban legend about the child actor who owned our house?
I looked into it by checking the deed in the town records.
It turned out to be true.
Okay, sorry, you probably assumed this, but he wasn't a child when he bought the place.
In 1964, a young newlywed named Brandon DeWilda bought the house.
You probably don't recognize that name, but your mom or dad might, maybe even your grandma
(09:13):
or granddad, especially if they're a boomer.
In 1965 and 66, general area, very close, there was a man that lived here.
His name was Brandon DeWild, the movie actor.
(09:35):
And he was only part time.
He was only here occasionally.
He started in the movie Shane.
Yeah.
That was a good movie for young people interested in the wild and the wilderness.
Like my son there.
Oh, he liked that movie.
When he came along, because Tyler was, he wasn't born in, he was born in 64, if I guess
(09:57):
Tyler was.
He just had a birthday the other day.
Oh wow.
God, he was 57.
Oh wow.
Tell him happy birthday for me.
I don't yet.
That was another neighbor, Dennis Mason.
Dennis has known me since I was a baby.
His mother was my first babysitter.
Dennis is a Vermonter born and raised, which you could probably tell from his accent.
(10:22):
You're also going to hear about his mother, who we refer to as Mrs. Mason and his father,
who people call Bob or Mr. Mason in this podcast.
Dennis lived on the street going back to the Truman administration and remembers most of
his neighbors, including DeWilda.
Okay, remember the rumors about the Beach Boys staying at a local hotel and the drug
bust with the pink Cadillacs driving around?
(10:44):
I looked into those too.
More on the drug bust in a bit, but the Beach Boys legend and the Cadillac story originated
from the same spot.
Take a left out of my old driveway and walk down the road about a quarter mile.
Across the street, you'll see a driveway snaking up into the woods.
It looks just like it did in 1974.
But back then, that driveway led to a recording studio by the name of Sun Treader Studios.
(11:09):
I was able to conclusively disprove that the Beach Boys had visited Sharon and recorded
music there, but the truth about Sun Treader is actually much more interesting.
That's because it wasn't the Beach Boys that recorded at Sun Treader and stayed at the
local hotel.
It was Fog Hat, who recorded their iconic song, Slow Ride, at the studio.
Slow ride, take it easy.
(11:37):
Sun Treader also hosted some other famous musicians, but not without catching the ear
and the ire of one neighbor.
A classmate of mine, Bruce Jager, was over there and he was a technician type musician.
And they put the speaker on the end of the house, on the gable end, looking right this
(12:00):
way.
And my dad liked to speak some quiet in the little yellow house.
And they had it on at night because they'd be partying and drinking, smoking, whatever
they did.
And he'd go over and he says, you guys better find a quieter pastime than that.
And they said, well, no, it's pretty tough.
And he says, telling you, keep it down or I'll be over with my hunting rifle.
(12:26):
Oh, boy.
Oh, whatever he said.
Yeah.
It was probably kind of a smooth blend.
So they got the idea.
Yeah, more Ville Threat.
And I guess they changed their pitch.
They sent the music another way.
You'll hear more about Sun Treader next episode.
If you turn and head back to my house, you're now standing at the location of one of the
(12:48):
biggest drug busts in Vermont history.
That's right.
That story was also true.
In 1979, the Vermont State Police busted a drug trafficking operation worth millions
of dollars at the house my parents would buy six years later.
It was it was terrifying.
You know, I was what, 24?
(13:08):
And as I say, quite pregnant and with a little baby and all these bizarre people kept showing
up.
And that's, of course, when we found out from the police that there had been at that point
it was the largest drug bust in the history of the state of Vermont.
That was Sarah Clark.
She and her husband Barry were the first tenants to rent the house after the drug bust.
You'll hear more about that in future episodes.
(13:33):
My name is Anthony Ciardelli.
As you heard, I grew up in the house where the drug bust happened and that Brandon DeWilda
used to own on that old dirt road.
In the following episodes, my old neighbors and some of the people involved in the stories
are going to tell you the truths about what happened.
I'm going to show you how a small town processes its history and how you can dig into your
(13:55):
neighborhood's past to discover some potentially amazing events and people.
Hopefully, it'll give you a new perspective on the place you grew up.
I know it did for me.
You can find true stories from an old dirt road on every major podcast hosting site,
like Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.
If you like it, please share it with others.
(14:16):
It's a story I'm very passionate about telling and I'd love as many people to hear it as
possible.
Finally, if you can, please give it a good rating so that more people can discover it.
Until next time, this is Anthony Ciardelli.
When you find yourself traveling along an old dirt road in your town, or even in a place
(00:14):
you've never been, try to imagine the things that have happened there and who might have
lived there.
The dirt road you're thinking of might be treeline, bordered by thick forests and hills
with swamps on either side.
Or maybe it stretches off forever in a straight line through a dusty desert.
Your imagination probably doesn't take you to actors, rock stars, and even drug traffickers.
(00:35):
But there's a reason they say truth is stranger than fiction.
My name is Anthony Cerdelli.
I'm a journalist.
Well, a sports journalist living in Southern California.
I'm about to tell you a story about the dirt road in Vermont that I grew up on.
When I found out the truth behind the urban legends about this small part of Sharon, Vermont,
(00:56):
the place where I spent a lot of my childhood, my mind was blown.
This is True Stories from an Old Dirt Road.
In a country as expansive as the United States, it's not hard to find someone who grew up
in a small town.
(01:17):
We might be from small towns on opposite sides of the country, but there are some things
we both experienced.
A slower pace to life, the benefit of having more space and solitude, and most definitely
extreme bouts of boredom.
(01:37):
As a kid, you might have run out of ways to entertain yourself at some point.
You had to make your own fun.
When you wanted to hang out with friends or even go to school, your parents would probably
have to drive you.
Sometimes you could just get on your bike and go, but not always.
Here's how I felt about my hometown.
I grew up on a rural dirt road in Sharon, Vermont.
I lived next to a pond and a small brook surrounded by woods.
(02:02):
I had a fun childhood, catching creatures, experiencing wildlife, collecting rocks, and
playing in the snow in the winter.
But as I got older, I started to get bored.
When I was 11, we moved a few towns over to Hanover, New Hampshire, home of Dartmouth
College and around 10,000 people.
Compared to the 1500 people or so in Sharon, it felt like Metropolis, and I loved it.
(02:24):
But even Hanover grew old when I was ready to graduate from high school.
So I left.
For college in Los Angeles, then back east, then back to LA again.
But I could never forget some of the stories that I'd heard about my neighborhood in Sharon.
And when I became a journalist, I started to investigate those urban, uh, you know what,
maybe rural legends.
(02:45):
The stories were about things you'd be more likely to hear happening in Los Angeles, New
York, Nashville, or Miami.
Not a dusty, sometimes muddy, sometimes icy, rural dirt road in Vermont.
We started to buy all this stuff, like there's no other store.
(03:07):
And we needed some provisions.
We needed to eat some food.
And we had Lorie's parents with us.
So we bought a bunch of stuff, like sort of more stuff than someone would normally buy
at the trading post back in the day.
So she just couldn't.
She just, oh, you're moving to the area?
Oh, that's great.
And you know, sitting near, yeah, oh, it's on Queenby Mountain Road.
(03:28):
Oh, the drug bust house.
Apparently it was the springtime, if the story we were told is correct.
And there were pink Cadillacs going up and down the road.
Oh, really?
Yeah, and the neighbors were really suspicious.
But they're Vermonters.
They're New Englanders, right?
They started talking about it amongst themselves, but it wasn't like anything they called the
(03:50):
cops on.
So the place was really quite famous.
And everybody in town knew about it.
And I remember running along the back little path one day and practically tripping over
this piece of plastic that sort of materialized.
It got nowhere out of the ground.
And I remember getting a shovel and digging it up because the story was they didn't think
(04:12):
they'd gotten everything.
So at one point, a guy pulled in the driveway, parked up next to the garage, put garbage
bags on his feet and disappeared into the woods.
And in the panic, I called Barry and said some guy just put garbage bags on his feet
and went into the woods.
(04:33):
And he said, well, go look in the car.
I said, there's no way I'm going to go look at the car.
There's going to be a dead body in the car.
A little bit later on, some people, I think they rented it.
They're from Creechie.
They were the drug dealers.
And they had a U-Haul truck that they carried their products around in.
(04:54):
They said they were into antiques.
He was telling us a story about the old recording studio.
And the story he told was that the Beach Boys were in town and they stayed at his hotel.
And he had a teenage daughter at the time.
(05:16):
And the way we remember it was she was just kind of wide-eyed and freaking out that the
Beach Boys were staying at their little tiny hotel.
There's a story that former President William Howard Taft had to be rescued from one of
the bathtubs because of his surplus of weight causing him to get stuck in the tub and not
(05:41):
be able to get out.
We didn't know initially any of it until we met our neighbors down the road, the Masons,
just after we bought it.
And they told us a couple of stories, one about the drug bust and one about a Hollywood
child actor who once lived there.
(06:05):
I told you they're pretty wild.
I wouldn't be shocked if you were as skeptical as I was about them.
There's probably a version of one of these stories from your small town.
Something like, see that old house up on the hill?
Some lady was murdered there a while back and now people say it's haunted.
Or a bank robber hid some money in a hole behind that old barn a few decades ago.
But beyond going on a treasure hunt as kids or sneak into that old haunted house, did
(06:29):
you ever actually dig into the stories or investigate them to see if they really were
inspired by true events?
I did.
And what I found was absolutely mind blowing.
But first I need to explain just how rural this place was.
Let's take a quick imaginary road trip, starting in Boston, New England's biggest city.
(06:53):
Drive north, out of Boston a couple hours, up I-93, then to I-89.
After about two hours, you're going to hang a right at exit 2.
When you drive off the ramp, you're going to enter a picturesque Vermont town that you
might have seen on a postcard.
Welcome to Sharon, Vermont.
After a quick drive along the White River and a left turn, the road's going to turn
(07:15):
from pavement to dirt.
In a minute or two, Google Maps is probably going to stop working.
Now the houses are really far apart.
Some you can't even see from the road.
Actually, you're more likely to see a deer or a snapping turtle in the road, maybe even
a moose, instead of another car.
In the winter, you might have to wait for the plow to come through.
(07:37):
In the spring, or what we call mud season, you might get stuck in the mud.
On the left side of the road, you're going to see a house facing a pond.
This is the house I grew up in.
This house and the dirt road it's on is where the story begins.
It's sort of interesting to think about this crazy street and all the stuff that's happened
on this road.
(08:06):
During this podcast, I'm going to introduce you to a few old neighbors of mine and some
people who still live in the neighborhood.
The guy you just heard is Michael Livingston.
Mike and his family lived down the road from me probably about a mile, but before he lived
there he actually rented the house that I grew up in before my family bought it.
Mike is originally from Northern California.
(08:26):
He moved to Sharon with his wife Lori in the winter of 1981.
Mike would go on to become the head of school at Sharon's private school, Sharon Academy,
and later principal at Tunbridge Central School in neighboring Tunbridge, Vermont.
You'll hear from Michael more in a bit, but for now it's time to unpack the first story,
which happened at the house I grew up in.
(08:51):
Remember that urban legend about the child actor who owned our house?
I looked into it by checking the deed in the town records.
It turned out to be true.
Okay, sorry, you probably assumed this, but he wasn't a child when he bought the place.
In 1964, a young newlywed named Brandon DeWilda bought the house.
You probably don't recognize that name, but your mom or dad might, maybe even your grandma
(09:13):
or granddad, especially if they're a boomer.
In 1965 and 66, general area, very close, there was a man that lived here.
His name was Brandon DeWild, the movie actor.
(09:35):
And he was only part time.
He was only here occasionally.
He started in the movie Shane.
Yeah.
That was a good movie for young people interested in the wild and the wilderness.
Like my son there.
Oh, he liked that movie.
When he came along, because Tyler was, he wasn't born in, he was born in 64, if I guess
(09:57):
Tyler was.
He just had a birthday the other day.
Oh wow.
God, he was 57.
Oh wow.
Tell him happy birthday for me.
I don't yet.
That was another neighbor, Dennis Mason.
Dennis has known me since I was a baby.
His mother was my first babysitter.
Dennis is a Vermonter born and raised, which you could probably tell from his accent.
(10:22):
You're also going to hear about his mother, who we refer to as Mrs. Mason and his father,
who people call Bob or Mr. Mason in this podcast.
Dennis lived on the street going back to the Truman administration and remembers most of
his neighbors, including DeWilda.
Okay, remember the rumors about the Beach Boys staying at a local hotel and the drug
bust with the pink Cadillacs driving around?
(10:44):
I looked into those too.
More on the drug bust in a bit, but the Beach Boys legend and the Cadillac story originated
from the same spot.
Take a left out of my old driveway and walk down the road about a quarter mile.
Across the street, you'll see a driveway snaking up into the woods.
It looks just like it did in 1974.
But back then, that driveway led to a recording studio by the name of Sun Treader Studios.
(11:09):
I was able to conclusively disprove that the Beach Boys had visited Sharon and recorded
music there, but the truth about Sun Treader is actually much more interesting.
That's because it wasn't the Beach Boys that recorded at Sun Treader and stayed at the
local hotel.
It was Fog Hat, who recorded their iconic song, Slow Ride, at the studio.
Slow ride, take it easy.
(11:37):
Sun Treader also hosted some other famous musicians, but not without catching the ear
and the ire of one neighbor.
A classmate of mine, Bruce Jager, was over there and he was a technician type musician.
And they put the speaker on the end of the house, on the gable end, looking right this
(12:00):
way.
And my dad liked to speak some quiet in the little yellow house.
And they had it on at night because they'd be partying and drinking, smoking, whatever
they did.
And he'd go over and he says, you guys better find a quieter pastime than that.
And they said, well, no, it's pretty tough.
And he says, telling you, keep it down or I'll be over with my hunting rifle.
(12:26):
Oh, boy.
Oh, whatever he said.
Yeah.
It was probably kind of a smooth blend.
So they got the idea.
Yeah, more Ville Threat.
And I guess they changed their pitch.
They sent the music another way.
You'll hear more about Sun Treader next episode.
If you turn and head back to my house, you're now standing at the location of one of the
(12:48):
biggest drug busts in Vermont history.
That's right.
That story was also true.
In 1979, the Vermont State Police busted a drug trafficking operation worth millions
of dollars at the house my parents would buy six years later.
It was it was terrifying.
You know, I was what, 24?
(13:08):
And as I say, quite pregnant and with a little baby and all these bizarre people kept showing
up.
And that's, of course, when we found out from the police that there had been at that point
it was the largest drug bust in the history of the state of Vermont.
That was Sarah Clark.
She and her husband Barry were the first tenants to rent the house after the drug bust.
You'll hear more about that in future episodes.
(13:33):
My name is Anthony Ciardelli.
As you heard, I grew up in the house where the drug bust happened and that Brandon DeWilda
used to own on that old dirt road.
In the following episodes, my old neighbors and some of the people involved in the stories
are going to tell you the truths about what happened.
I'm going to show you how a small town processes its history and how you can dig into your
(13:55):
neighborhood's past to discover some potentially amazing events and people.
Hopefully, it'll give you a new perspective on the place you grew up.
I know it did for me.
You can find true stories from an old dirt road on every major podcast hosting site,
like Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.
If you like it, please share it with others.
(14:16):
It's a story I'm very passionate about telling and I'd love as many people to hear it as
possible.
Finally, if you can, please give it a good rating so that more people can discover it.
Until next time, this is Anthony Ciardelli.
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