Weathered barnboard shacks have gone up at intervals along I-89 and I-91, and existing visitors centers are getting retro-fitted for the purpose. A prolific sugaring season left the state government with ample stores of maple syrup to stock the shelves. And the Department of Transportation has started to auction off much of its mowing equipment. The recently introduced flocks of sheep roaming the medians and margins, as promised, rendered such technology obsolete.
The children, without school until September, have assumed their new summer jobs: Instagram celebrities — boys clad in lederhosen, girls in Little Bo Peep outfits — for tourists who pull over to capture the idyllic scenes.
“And then when we get them on the side,” explains Vermont’s first Liberty Union governor, “we’re going to pick them up — we’ll have a machine that picks them up by the ankles — and shakes all the loose change out of their pockets. That way we don’t have to have toll roads.”
Welcome to Bill Lee’s Vermont.
“It’ll be something like that,” he says through a laugh. “Oh, God, that’ll be fun.”
