I actually got to open this week’s Addy Indy promptly this Saturday morning, instead of my usual three weeks later as I dig it out of the stack of books, newspapers, newsletters, and iPads on my side table. As is my wont, (wont is a silly word, but this is a silly letter,) I flipped immediately to the Opinion section, glancing past Angelo’s usual polemic, (he got Trump AND Scott in the headline this week!) I was initially confused and disappointed to see “Ways of Seeing” in Jessie Raymond’s usual place at the bottom of the page. I’m sure I’ll enjoy Becky Dayton’s piece about… books, I suppose? when I get around to it in three weeks, but isn’t this Jessie’s week, I thought?

Perhaps my triple-week reading stack time-keeping system could use improvement. Of course, then I noticed Jessie’s column had moved up a position on the page, to right below the dog ignobly photographed on his way home from having been snipped. What a classy paper. A bargain for only $120 a year!

I smiled as I began reading, wondering what amusing foibles of modern life Jessie and her chickens would reveal to me this week. Despite imagining myself a stoic and capable handyman like her husband Mark, I know deep down that I definitely relate far more to Jessie and her zany sense of humor. I suspect Mark and my wife Esther could go toe to toe in an eye-rolling competition. (Good grief. Mixing toe and eyeball metaphors, Kris? What are you thinking? See, this is why Jessie’s the professional.) The column this week was titled “Around the Bend and into the sunset.” Wait a minute. This can’t mean….? Can it?? As I quickly scanned the rest of the piece, I uttered a forlorn “Oh no!” When my wife entered the room, I said it again in case she hadn’t heard me.

“What?” she said, glancing at me, and then back at her phone.

“Jessie Raymond is ending her column!” I wailed.

With a grimace, my wife sighed and said, “Oh no,” too. It’s the little moments like these, where spouses meet at a crossroads of thought, that strengthen marital bonds and make me think maybe we are figuring out this lifelong partnership thing after all. “The weather says it’s going to rain,” she finished.

Always on the same page, that’s us.

Many times over the years, I’ve stopped Esther on her way to check the weather, exclaiming “Hun, hold on, you’ve got to hear this,” waving the Addy Indy at her like a NASCAR flagman. “Okay, remember how Jessie’s always struggling with gardening…? What? No, Jessie RAYMOND. How many other Jessie’s do we know? Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t actually KNOW her, know her, but — God, you’re such a Mark. What’s that? Yes, I’ll close the windows before it rains.” I’ve always been happy to be able to share the joy Jessie brings me with others.

Working at the EastView retirement community last week, I was doing a reading from a bound collection of Erma Bombeck, and funny as she was, I found myself just wishing I was reading Jessie instead. (For readers under 50, Erma Bombeck was a hugely successful mid-twentieth century humor columnist, not entirely unlike Jessie Raymond, for example.) Erma was great, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think she ever had chickens. And when I’m reading jokes to elderly Vermonters, a lack of chickens is a serious detriment.

All this is to say, Jessie, I doubt I’m alone in saying we will miss you terribly. (And by “we” I mean myself and the rest of the Addison County reading public, not necessarily myself and Esther.) I have a hunch I’ll be pulling up a lot of your old columns on my iPad to read at EastView, but if you ever wanted to publish a collection, I’ll be first in line at your book signing! Maybe Becky Dayton will even write about it!

With sincere fondness,

Kris Diehl

Middlebury