Grafton
This was Harold Duefield III, also known as Duffy, also known as Five Buck Duff (for a casual economy in which favors among friends were often valued at five dollars).
Another nickname, Daredevil Duff, seemed most apt in this moment, when Duffy grimly held onto the handle of the pliers, arranging his hand so that another man could swing a leather-covered sap up and into the pliers without hitting Duffy’s fingers.
The no-frills tooth extraction, recorded in a short video posted to YouTube in January 2015, was over quickly. The sap struck the pliers with an audible crack, followed by a clatter as Duffy dropped the pliers, now holding his tooth, among the beer cans and tools littering the table.
“Thanks,” Duffy said, among the cheers of a small group of friends watching. “You’re my favorite dentist, man.”
“Put it under your pillow,” someone called, laughing.
“I know,” Duffy said, then sucked at his mouth, which now held a grand total of one tooth. “Here comes the blood.”
The High Flyers’ Convention
Duffy seemed to have been born with a thirst for adventure, and speed — a hellion, said Duffy’s father, Harold Duefield II, a former sawmill worker.
“He always wanted to have fun,” said his younger brother, Fred Duefield, who served as road agent in Grafton before moving to Woodstock. “He was a free spirit.”
As boys, Duffy and Fred raced sleds down Turnpike Road, gassing each other, talking big and grabbing at the runners in a bid to flip each other over.
Once, while riding down Riddle Hill Road in the back of their grandfather’s pickup, Fred grabbed a fistful of leaves from an apple tree. Not to be outdone, Duffy grabbed a branch, and hung on. They had to stop the pickup to run back and pick him up off the road.
The brothers often stayed overnight at their grandmother’s house, because it was close to Huff Beach, where Duffy liked to dig nightcrawlers and fish in Kilton Pond.
“We grew up as kids there. That’s where our first loves were. It was the ‘60s and girls and the Beach Boys,” said his brother.
When they were teens, a neighbor gave the family an 8-cylinder 1949 Cadillac and the kids learned how to drive on a small, makeshift track that circled the property. Duffy quickly earned a reputation, so wild a driver that other kids wouldn’t ride with him.
As Duffy entered adulthood, he continued to live life, hard. He bought Plymouth muscle cars, a Roadrunner and a Barracuda. His cousin backed him at Canaan Speedways with a racecar, which he promptly smashed up.
Duefield also worked hard, at the sawmill, or hanging from a rope and chiseling loose rock from the walls of Ruggles Mine. He developed chronic back pain, but, young and strong, he shrugged it off.
Every fifth of July, friends celebrated Duffy’s birthday with a weekend bonfire and barbecue event they called the High Flyers Convention, where Duffy consumed legendary amounts of beer, cigarettes and marijuana.
In October 1976, when Duefield was 27, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band came to the Canaan Speedway for the Harvest Fest, the closest thing the region ever had to 1969’s infamous Woodstock festival. More than 30,000 people came, virtually taking over the town.
“I don’t think Duffy remembers much of the concert, but he knows he had fun,” said his brother.
Duefield also loved music, playing spoons with a group of friends in a bluegrass group. They called themselves Couch Full of Spoons and played local events, stopping only after the boot-stomping music degenerated into couch-wrestling. The group stopped making formal appearances when it became illegal to drink in public.
Duefield fell in love with a girl, Ruth Cummings. She liked to garden, and trained to be a CNA. They married, and in 1979, they had a daughter, Amy, followed six years later by a son, Daniel.
Through the ‘80s and ‘90s, Duefield, a loving father, watched and laughed as his children began to develop personalities of their own. Amy cooked and read books. Daniel fished and shot targets. After graduating high school, Amy landed a job as a receptionist at a Ford dealership in Lebanon. In 2005, Daniel joined the army, headed for the first of what would be two tours in Iraq. Amy had a child, a boy named Josh, and Daniel fell in love with a girl from Grafton.
In a life full of shouts, there were also hushes. Duefield always liked fishing, sometimes at Half Moon Pond, or at his childhood haunt, Huff Beach, with a cooler and a skillet, so that he could eat hornpout minutes after pulling them out of the water.
“There are some times that you just don’t realize how lucky you have it,” said his brother. “Those quiet moments. God, I miss them too.”
Real Pain, All the Time
The older Duefield got, the more difficult life became. His back pain intensified, until he was forced to quit his job at the sawmill. He got a job crushing stone, but eventually had to give that up too, and began collecting a disability check. At the same time, his drinking and smoking began to seem less like a party, and more like an addiction.
During public events, he would get wistful for the Couch Full of Spoons days. No matter what the musical act was, he would ask them if he could sit on the side of the stage and play spoons, an unofficial accompaniment. Most said yes.
It was the funerals that first brought Duefield to the attention of Tom Warner, pastor at Millbrook Church in Grafton.
Duefield was tall and solemn, an uncharacteristically quiet presence standing in the background as Warner laid his loved ones to rest, one after another, in a parade of tragedy.
Duefield’s daughter, Amy, developed cervical cancer. In the spring of 2006, she died at New London Hospital, leaving behind her 4-year-old son. Duefield and Ruth separated, then divorced. While Daniel was in Iraq, an explosion caused him to suffer a traumatic brain injury that led to an honorable discharge in 2008. In 2009, there was a moment of brightness, when Ruth and Duefield got back together, but in 2010, a week before Thanksgiving, Daniel died at home, of an overdose. He was 24. Seven months later, Ruth, then 51, died after a brief illness.
The blows, coming one after another, obliterated Duefield’s family life.
“It’s almost like a plane crash,” said his brother. “You send your family off on vacation and nobody comes home.”
In the meantime, his body began to break down.
“He was in real pain, all the time. Other than the mental stuff. The physical stuff, too,” Fred Duefield said.
Duffy Duefield began to suffer memory loss. Lonely and lost, he moved back into the home he grew up in, with his father. But then his father suffered a stroke, and had to be moved into hospice care at a nursing home.
Duefield withdrew into a deep depression, isolating himself in his bedroom for extended periods of time. His brother would knock on the door sometimes.
I’m OK, Duefield would call.
But he wouldn’t come out.
Something Just Kicked In
It’s not clear when, exactly, Duefield began to rise from the depths of his emotional despair. People do know he began spending more time fishing at Huff Beach, where he’d had so many good experiences as a child, but it wasn’t the same. He didn’t like how it looked, overgrown and neglected, with old beer cans rusting away on the ground and weeds sprouting up through a thin screed of sand.
One day Duefield began picking up the trash at Huff Beach. Then he began clearing brush. Eventually, he planted a little flower garden.
“I think it was the garden,” said his brother. “That gave him some kind of hope.”
Duefield began circulating donation jars in local stores, collecting money for mulch and flowers. He put decorations on a wall, odd pots and pans and lawn ornaments that were eclectic, but somehow fit. He convinced a friend to bring down a truckload of clean, white sand and spread it on the ground, obliterating the signs of years of neglect.
When, around 2013, Duefield’s lanky frame appeared during a Sunday service in the cavernous, echoing nave of the Millbrook Church, no one knew exactly what to think. Duefield had a history, and a reputation.
He sat on the aisle, three rows back, listening to the church band warm up the Sunday service. Then, when Warner asked the congregation if they had any prayers to announce, Duefield would pipe up.
He was struggling with urges for cigarettes, he might say. Please pray for him.
Or, he was struggling with his back pain. Please pray for him.
Or, he was struggling with a profound sense of loss. He was lonely without his family. Please pray for him.
“It was very personal, very heartfelt,” Warner said. “It was a refreshing kind of prayer. No so-called ‘God talk.’ It was straight to God, as if he were talking to you or me.”
The churchgoers quickly grew to love Duefield, who began to show up at functions with a smile and a crockpot full of chili, or seafood chowder. He hugged Warner, and kissed his wife, Nancy, on the cheek. Duefield asked Warner to baptize him, not at the traditional brookside baptism spot used by other church members, but at Huff Beach.
The baptism was almost like a party, with people from all walks of life invited. After Warner pulled him from the waters of Kilton Pond, Duefield was flanked on one side by the pastor and his wife, and on the other by a friend wearing a T-shirt that said “Free Dick,” a reference to the jailed owner of Dick’s Store, which used to supply Duefield and others with alcohol and cigarettes to consume while throwing horseshoes at Hippie Hill in Danbury.
Duefield began to rebuild his life. His cousin, Ray, moved into the family home. The two would go fishing sometimes, or play spoons together in the living room. Occasionally, they went to church-sponsored AA meetings. Duefield’s father was still on hospice, but moved home, where a nurse helped to administer his care.
There were trying moments. Once, kids vandalized his beloved garden, pulling up plants and leaving them, broken, in the dirt. The old Duffy would have responded with violence. The new Duffy came to church, visibly riled, but composed.
He was struggling with his anger, he said. Please pray for him.
He asked them to pray for the vandals, too.
“He finally got up,” said Fred Duefield. “He finally pulled himself up, the best he could. Something just kicked in.”
In January, Duefield died of a heart attack while lying on the couch of his home. He was 67 and had been sober for a year.
Duefield’s funeral was a boisterous affair, said his brother. The Couch Full of Spoons guys hauled in a couch, and gave a sendoff performance, first handing out spoons so that the mourners could play along.
“This is the best funeral I’ve ever been at,” someone said, wonderingly.
Later this spring, when the ground thaws, Duefield will be laid to rest in a little plot, with his children. Friends and family will plant and tend his garden, and install a bench and memorial plaque at Huff Beach.
Some have suggested changing the name, to Duff’s Beach.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.