Charles Morris Cobb grew up on the road he called Rum Street in a hardscrabble hill farm community just two miles, but worlds away from the prosperous village of Woodstock, Vermont. For 13 years he recorded the stories of his neighborhood, providing a rarely seen look at the food, work, avocations, spiritual life, and struggles of a group of people whose story is seldom told. This book is an authentic look at life in 1850s Vermont, told from the point of view of a sensitive teenage boy as he struggled to make a life for himself in New England's world of 19th century music.