WARREN’S ROCKET & THE ART OF RUSSELL RISLEY
By Joseph A. Citro
WARREN’S ROCKET
For me, it was like stepping into an old-time science fiction movie.
I was traveling along Route 25, driving toward Warren, New Hampshire -- a tiny town of about 800 people. The leaves were beginning to turn, working a transformational magic of their own.
Suddenly charged with nostalgia, I anticipated Warren's quaintness, its air of another era. I admired dignified old buildings on the outskirts. Then, getting closer, I saw white colonial houses scattered among lush foliage.
And, true to form, poking through lofty treetops, I could see the pointed tips of stark white church steeples -- beacons of competing congregations offset against an ultra blue sky.
But wait! Something's wrong!
As I get closer I see that one of those steeples isn't a steeple at all. It's -- I can hardly believe it! -- it's the nose-cone of a rocket. A giant spaceship!
What's going on? Have Betty Hill's aliens finally landed?
Stopping at the town green, I see it clearly. It's a rocketship all right. But it isn't alien. It's one of ours. Apparently the village of Warren is defended by a 70-foot missile? Maybe this "Live Free or Die" business has gone a little too far.
It makes no sense. No matter how much I squint, blink and shake my head, it doesn't go away. It's real. It's there.
A towering Jupiter-C rocket standing in Warren's postcard perfect park.
I look up at it -- way, way up. It's identical to the machine that -- in 1961 -- catapulted New Hampshirite Alan Shepard into space.
I soon learn, however, that Warren's rocket has nothing to do with Alan Shepard. It has more to do with Ted Asselin. In 1971 he was stationed in Huntsville, Alabama where disused Redstone missiles are stored.
Authorities gave him permission to cart off his oversized souvenir. Warren authorities were delighted to let him set it up. After all, most towns must settle for a civil war cannon, or if they're lucky, a World War II tank.
But this.... this is overkill.
Today, curious tourists and space junkies can admire Warren's giant pillar of 1950s-style space junk. It's on permanent display.
But don't worry, it won't fall on you. As an on-site marker explains, it's anchored by giant steel beams in eight feet of cement
And it won't fire accidentally. In fact, it isn't even loaded.
...And neither am I.
THE ART OF RUSSELL RISLEY
Once upon a time, anyone traveling along a certain road in Kirby, Vermont would stop and stare in wonder. They’d see a weathered old barn, and lined up in front of it would be a row of ghosts. Barnboards would be visible right through the transparent figures.
Those who dared to examine the tableau more closely would be surprised at what they were really seeing: paintings -- perfect pieces of art rendered with conventional house paint. Art so clear and precise that friends, living and dead, could easily be recognized.
Occasionally people would see themselves.
The scene of this extraordinary strangeness was the Russell Risley farm. In addition to the barn paintings, Mr. Risley carved faces on firewood. Fashioned heads atop fence posts. Transformed ordinary field stones into busts or wildlife. He painted a mermaid hovering above a manure pile and an attractive young woman, perfectly proportioned and perfectly nude.
Apparently Mr. Risley could not stop creating. Every surface inside his farmhouse was covered: Landscapes between pantry shelves. Faces peeking over countertops. Carved animals circling every room.
Russell Risley was born on that farm in 1842. He lived there most of his life with his two sisters Achsah and Hannah. None of them ever married. They were timid people and didn’t care much for visitors or the curiosity seekers that arrived to fuss over Russell’s art.
In an effort to keep the uninvited away, Russ kept a hand-painted sign on the gatepost of the road leading up to his house. Typically taciturn, it said simply “SMALL POX”.
As a consequence of all this, his neighbors judged him “a tad peculiar”. But Mr. Risley was an eccentric genius, a self-taught artist who studied foreign languages in his spare time, and built wild inventions to make farm work easier.
For example, he created a system of pulleys that whisked him back and forth between house and barn. A similar contrivance transported heavy milk pails.
In addition to dairying, his vast sugarbush contained a system of pipes to carry sap to the sugarhouse -- possibly Vermont’s first tubing system.
Alas, today few people remember the Risleys. Nor is there much written history. The few accounts I found suggest the Risleys were quintessential Vermonters: hardworking, thrifty, and loath to venture far from home.
One neighbor -- quoted in an old account -- said, "Russ Risley was a temperamental old codger. Sometimes he would talk and sometimes he wouldn't, but chances were ten minutes after you left his place he would have your face carved on a piece of wood!"
Today I want to recall this extraordinary artist who worked his magic in an era when no-nonsense Vermonters didn’t place much value in such folly. The result is that every single Risley painting and piece of sculpture seems to have vanished from the face of the earth.
But then again, maybe that’s exactly how Russ would have wanted it.
Joseph A. Citro is a Vermont author, folklorist, and longtime collector of New England’s strangest stories, from ghostly happenings to local legends and unexplained curiosities. Known to many as Vermont’s “Bard of the Bizarre,” he has spent decades preserving the tales that linger along back roads, old houses, covered bridges, and quiet hillsides. In Passing Strange, Citro shares folklore with a curious eye, a storyteller’s warmth, and just enough mystery to make you look twice on the ride home.