OutTakes: The Summer of Walter Hacks
by Edd Merritt,
November 4, 2010, page 15.....

Just Another Day Rakin’ Hay
You’ll lay rest where you passed, ten thousand times in the past.
This is your final time passing this way.

What’s been a short time comin’
Will be a long time gone
Your long time started today.
-Rusty DeWees, Farmer’s Stone

So, friend, how did you pass your summer days this year?

Lake boating? Woods cycling? Camel’s Humping?

Maybe tending vegetable gardens or cruising Church Street or driving Kwiniaska. Town beach beckoned a couple of hot days. And I found refuge at the Creemee Stand.

That’s not how Walter Hacks spent his summer 58 years ago.

It was 1952, and Walter was 11 years old. He and his older brother, Clifford, helped dad run a remote dairy farm in Vermont. But like most brothers, they were beginning to get on each other’s nerves. Then dad was found dead under the hay rake.

We learn what happened that summer through a black-and-white film by Waterbury farmer George Woodard entitled – appropriately – The Summer of Walter Hacks. It’s a more complex and compelling story than the simple title suggests, and it doesn’t exactly depict the way I’d like to pass those warm July days.

Shown recently in the Vermont International Film Festival at the Palace Theater in South Burlington, it was one of 17 Vermont-made films on the list.

I think it’s worth a word or two, and I encourage you to see it when you get the chance.

Here are general observations. There is enough action to quell anyone’s urge for more. The characterization is rich and well-linked to the plot. It features local actors. Much of it was shot in the area, on Woodard’s own farm, with pieces in Charlotte. I recognize the overpass and Quinlan School.

John Kiedaisch, who in his pre-actor architect phase designed the Charlotte Library, plays a major part in Walter’s summer. Without divulging too much, Kiedaisch is not always Mr. Nice Guy. Having known him since our sons were CVU classmates almost 20 years ago, I now want to shiver just a bit whenever I see him and am glad he’s not behind me in a pick-up. A part of my psyche continues to suspend my disbelief, John, and it doesn’t help me that your character name is also your real name.

Two other local actors stand out. They are mother and daughter in real life as well as in the movie. Jennifer Blanchard plays the manager of the local diner and her daughter Francesca plays Walter’s sidekick, protector and confidant as he mixes the naiveté of adolescence with the adult responsibility to maintain the farm. Even his delight at fiddle playing takes a turn for the necessary when he learns that by winning a local contest he could earn $150 for cattle feed. He’s cheered by the audience but loses the contest because he adds lyrics to his bowing. No singing, he’s told. He and Margaret (Francesca) desert the crowd, heart broken and unaware a local DJ hoped to get Walter on the radio. The hope lingers at film’s end – maybe a sequel, “Summer Two,” will highlight his musical conquests.

Director George Woodard plays Walter’s father in the movie and in real life. One cannot help but wonder how much of himself we see in the Walter he’s created on screen.
Walter mixes farming with music and crises of adolescent development (he shoots a mean slingshot), things George mentioned as parts of his own upbringing as he met with the audience afterward.

One particularly funny and poignant scene occurs in and around the Quinlan School. Walter earnestly shares the wonders of “three-titted” udders on his cows with teacher and classmates. Teacher is recently arrived from the city and is shocked by the language, which seems perfectly natural to everyone else, including Margaret who grins knowingly. He is ordered to stay after school and clean up his language. With a mix of embarrassment and naïve curiosity, he shares the experience with his sympathetic father who then blames himself for Walter’s innocence.

Pete Sutherland’s musical score features classic country tunes played with help from members of the Vermont Symphony who nobly responded to the call for musicians (Well, it may be hard to describe country and western music as noble – but you know what I mean.).

Suffice it to say that one of the characters who – up to a heart-pounding chase with Walter pedaling his bike through woods, down train tracks, over a local overpass and on to a hay wagon – shows an interesting mix of gritty decency underlain by a hidden dislike for a recent bent to his life. Near the end, though, his evil mark emerges and doesn’t disappear until the great hayfork in the sky (barn, in this case) pierces his chest, sending his soul where the maker intends it.
According to an earlier review, Woodard wrote some of his script on paper towels that he subsequently used to wipe his cow’s udders at milking.

I admire his ability to delve into the transition from old agriculture to new through his young characters who are caught smack dab in the middle of the change.
I really enjoyed the movie. I urge others to flick-out on it as I did.