ABSTRACT
Let me begin my chapter by discussing a children’s story called Shaker Lane (Provensen and Provensen 1991), which tells of some changes that affected a small community living in and around Shaker Lane, an imaginary place located in the rural United States. According to the story, this place had first been settled by Shakers, members of an unusual religious sect that I will mention again shortly, and we are told that a Shaker Meeting House had once stood at the crossroads of Shaker Lane and School House Road. The Shakers had long departed this place, though, and in their wake a new and in some respects equally curious collection of people had arrived to settle and to shape a new rural landscape. In the big house on the hill lived two elderly women, Abigail and Priscilla Herkheimer, who owned much of the local land but were having to sell it piece by piece; and gradually, as the lots were sold, a row of houses had grown up along the lane supporting a tiny community. There was Virgil Oates and his wife, Sue Ann, their five children and Sue Ann’s brother, Wayne; and there was Sam Kulick next door, with Norbert Le Rose and his wife and children and animals across the road; and there was Old Man Van Sloop with his dogs, goats, chickens and bottles of this and that; and there were the Whipple twins who did everyone’s gardening; and there was the Peach place, with Big Jake Van der Loon who could do anything (he dug wells, moved barns, put up fences); and then there were quite a few other folk besides.
