This story by Virginia Ray was first published in The Commons on August 6.

PUTNEY – Julie Winchester had no interest in getting into the restaurant business.

She wanted to bring her community together and show visitors what her city had to offer.

And their vision was to make Exit 4 on Interstate Highway 91 a destination – maybe even a food truck stand.

After a while, it was Winchester who took the initiative since no one else intervened.

Currently, Rod’s Food Truck Park is open every Friday and Sunday from 4:00 p.m. until dusk or until the stands sell out of their food.

“I didn’t want to be the person who pulled the trigger, but I thought, OK, I guess I have to do it. It was a bit stressful for me because I’ve never worked in the hospitality industry before,” said the seemingly always cheerful Winchester.

Winchester works as a dental hygienist and helps her husband Greg at Rod’s Towing and Repair at 40 Main St., which they purchased from Greg’s father last year.

“People make appointments for these companies,” she said.

She asked herself: “Will people really come?”

They did. “The park has been full the entire time it’s been open for the past two weeks,” she said.

Winchester said several vendors stopped by the garage and asked if they could set up food trucks, but there wasn’t enough room.

“We tried to give them other suggestions, but it always came back to us,” she said.

So in January, the couple bought the ⅔-acre green space between Rod’s and 802 Credit Union.

“We were inspired by what the Retreat (Farm) was doing with its food truck gathering,” Winchester said. “I thought, ‘If Brattleboro can do it, why can’t Putney?’ So we did it.”

Until now, the park was full with a maximum of six trucks each week.

Marcel Maxwell, owner of 802 Soul Kitchen, a pop-up kitchen he opened in February, was the first vendor to say yes to Winchester.

“It meant the world to me that he believed in this vision and in Putney,” Winchester said of Maxwell and his Southern soul food.

“I love the park, it’s fantastic. And it’s going great, it’s probably my second or third biggest attendance since I started,” said Maxwell, who brings his five-year-old son Little Marcel and his best friend every week. “Putney really comes out to support us. It’s just a great place.”

Other vendors in the park are part of Brattleboro’s Afghan refugee community. “Their food is heavenly,” Winchester said.

A new vendor will soon offer Puerto Rican cuisine, she said.

“All of these vendors put their heart and soul into their food,” Winchester said. “The variety of food we offer on site is beautiful.”

According to Winchester, about 600 people came in the first two weeks.

“It was everything I imagined and more,” Winchester said. “I had this vision, saw Exit 4 as the goal, and I didn’t want our town to give up and think Putney had just gone to sleep.”

Winchester and her husband travel to many small towns in New England, and she says she always thinks, “Putney has everything this town has; we just need to tell people more about what’s here.”

The spring solar eclipse showed Winchester that Exit 4 was indeed a “destination on steroids,” as people from all over New England traveled there to see the magnificent eclipse.

“We had never seen so much traffic and so many people,” Winchester said.

Now she said she is excited to see her vision become a reality.

“It was exciting to see family, friends and the community in the park for hours,” she said.

“It’s really a positive gift that Covid has given us that we can come together again, like in the outdoor restaurant. It was beautiful and the food came about quite naturally,” Winchester said.

She said people have told her it’s too late in the season to open the food truck stand. “But sometimes you just can’t believe people,” said Winchester, who measures the park’s success by the success of the vendors and the satisfaction of the vendors and community members.

The park, which is almost completely booked for this season, will close for the winter on October 31, although Winchester has some ideas for a winter solstice ice sculpting event.

In the meantime, “I want everyone here to just relax,” she said.

“I don’t want it to be about politics or all the things that are going wrong in our city,” Winchester said. “I want it to be about the things that are going right in our city.”