GET WELL WISHES TO 101 YEAR OLD PHILLIP ROOD WHEELER, BORN IN BUCK HOLLOW, VERMONT.
FRIENDS CAN SEND CARDS AND LETTERS TO PHIL WHEELER, 209 PINE STREET, ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA 22305.

Vermonters who attended his 100th Birthday Party know that he was in excellent health then, and stood and spoke at his party.

Phil's third wife, Minh, hopes he'll be home from the hospital soon after having had a fall.

Phil out-lived his first two wives ( he was married to my great Aunt Annie for 65 years).

Phil was born in Buck Hollow, Vermont.
I have a four page description of life in Buck Hollow by his Uncle Fred Wheeler, which Fred wrote for his own 100th birthday in 1969. Here is a short excerpt:

"Most of the folks living in the Hollow were farmers. They kept summer dairies and made butter. Their cows dropped their calves in the spring, gave milk during the summer, and went dry in the late fall. Dairies varied in size from 8 or 10, possibly 40 cows. My father normally milked about 15. The farmer's chief income came from the butter he sold.

Another source of income was maple sugar or syrup. Every farm had its sugar bush. Father tapped from six to eight hundred trees, and in good season sugar would make upwards of 3000 pounds of sugar or its equivalent in syrup. The sugar season came in March and April. Maple sugar was used daily for cooking and sweetening, but when company came, Mother would put the white sugar bowl on the table.

While butter and sugar were his chief sources of income, the farmer's pocket book did have other what might be called fringe benefits. He might sell an old cow, some fat hogs, calf skins, some potatoes, and so on. All helped out.

During the winter months, with neither butter nor sugar money coming in, it was sometimes hard sledding. We found it so. But with a shed full of fire wood, bins of potatoes and apples, a barrel of salt pork, a barrel of corned beef, and two barrels of soft soap in the cellar, we always made it. We would do the barn chores, draw out the manure, get up the wood pile, and wait for spring."