Chuck Gundersen is the owner of the Teago General Store in South Pomfret, Vermont, and author of You Never Can Tell, a column which appears every Thursday In The Vermont Standard, Vermont’s oldest weekly Newspaper, in Woodstock, Vt.
It all seems so unlikely sometimes. I grew up on the Jersey Shore in the small town of West Belmar. I learned to read and write, and I learned a whole bunch of other things I didn’t realize I was learning, at West Belmar Elementary School during those grey Jersey Shore winters. In the summer, though; in the sweet summer I spent my time in and around the tidewaters of Shark River, where my friends and I explored the coves, islands, deepwater channels and mudflats; where we learned to swim, sail, row, fish, crab, clam and some of us learned to tell which way the wind was blowing. Now I’m the owner of a small general store in a very small Vermont town, and there are times when I still wonder how I got here.
The sequence of events and the chronology is easy, it goes like this: Wall High School, a brief time at Monmouth College, three years US Army, some time at Ocean County College, a summer job as a title searcher, a few years in the title insurance business, the Culinary Institute of America, The Prince and the Pauper restaurant in Woodstock, VT, Killington Ski Area, The South Royalton House, Teago General Store. Looking at it from here to back there, it’s so logical it seems inevitable. Looking at it from back there to here, it doesn’t seem plausible. Kierkegaard was right: “Livet skal forstås baglaens, men leves forlaens.”
A few other things along the way: first saw my words in print in Seascape, Ocean County College’s literary magazine where a couple of my poems appeared in the spring of 1969. Moonlighted a few years as a disc jockey on WKXE, 95.3 in White River Junction, Vermont, playing rock and roll from eight to midnight on Friday nights while spending my days at the Teago General Store. A few years on the ski patrol at Suicide Six Ski Area. Began writing for the Vermont Standard, 2001. Began weekly column – You Never Can tell – 2005. Elected Justice of the Peace somewhere along the line. Still running store, still marrying people, still writing column, stories, poetry. Living happily ever after.