{"id":32,"date":"2009-11-03T13:32:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T13:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/the-putney-general-store-fires-a-death-in-the-family\/"},"modified":"2013-04-22T22:15:25","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T22:15:25","slug":"the-putney-general-store-fires-a-death-in-the-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/the-putney-general-store-fires-a-death-in-the-family\/","title":{"rendered":"The Putney General Store Fires – A death in the family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I got the news that the Putney General Store\u00a0had burned down – again.<\/p>\n

The Putney General Store (PGS)\u00a0is literally in the center of Putney at the intersections of the two main roads: Route 5\/Main St and Kimball Hill.\u00a0 It has been a general store since 1796 and was the longest continually operating general store in the state of Vermont until May 3, 2008 when a fire destroyed the roof and attic of the building and left the two main floors extensively damaged.\u00a0 The first fire was a huge shock to everyone in town and when the owners of the PGS said they could not afford to rebuild it\u00a0the Putney Historical Society decided to buy the property and rebuild it, raising the funds through donations and grants.\u00a0The response to this\u00a0from the townspeople of\u00a0Putney and various State agencies\u00a0was very enthusiastic and\u00a0as of November 1, 2009 a new roof slate roof had been\u00a0built and the interior had been\u00a0gutted and restored to the point where\u00a0the reopening of the PGS was slated for May of 2010.\u00a0\u00a0I know everyone in my family was really looking forward to the PGS reopening and I’m sure just about everyone else in Putney was too.<\/p>\n

And then\u00a0my son called from Burlington, VT yesterday morning to tell me he’d just heard from a friend that the PGS had burned to the ground. “What?!”\u00a0 I was in shock.\u00a0 I couldn’t believe it.\u00a0 While on the phone with my son, my wife called from work saying she had just heard the news.\u00a0 I was heading out to buy lumber yesterday and\u00a0drove by the PGS which is now just a pile of charred timbers in a cellar hole.\u00a0 It is hard to look at and I haven’t been able to bring myself to take a picture of it.\u00a0 It really feels like a death in the family.<\/p>\n

I can’t imagine what\u00a0all the people\u00a0who have worked so hard on rebuilding it\u00a0are going through.\u00a0 All that hard work\u00a0destroyed in minutes.\u00a0 The initial indications are that the second fire was intentional set which I find unfathomable.\u00a0 Who would do such a thing and why?\u00a0 And what happens now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I got the news that the Putney General Store\u00a0had burned down – again. The Putney General Store (PGS)\u00a0is literally in the center of Putney at the intersections of the two main roads: Route 5\/Main St and Kimball Hill.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pgLw-w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bissellwoodworking.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}