Lily The Pink - Repost from 2010

I knew, even back in 1969, that the reference was to Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. But I didn't know, until I looked it up for this post, that Elton John, Graham Nash, and Jack Bruce were all in the original UK version, or that the song was based on an older one.



As for Lydia, she was from north of Boston, and there is a well-baby clinic with that name in Salem, founded by her daughter. Her 19th C patent medicine for "female complaints" - presumably menstrual discomfort - contained, among many other useless herbs, gentian root, which gives Moxie its distinctive aftertaste. It was also 20% alcohol.

Thus, Jonathan, Mrs. Pinkham's 19th C herbal concoction was the original Whixie.

Christmas Poetry

Reprinted from 2011.  This came to mind because "The Road Not Taken" came up over at Althouse and I got to complaining about how that poem is misunderstood. Most simply, the roads are equally trod - it's there in the text - but Frost notes that we will say later that we took the less-traveled one and claim it made all the difference.  It is a sad or wry comment about post hoc reasoning and rationalisation, not an encouragement to dare to be different.

But here's another:

Christmas Trees
(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,
“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”
“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”

“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

Robert Frost (1920)  

We bought our Christmas tree about four miles from there this year. We spent more than a dollar.

11th Most-visted post - Lost Nation, NH

Originally published October 2011. I was hoping this one would make the cut when I started counting, and was surprised that it has nearly 5,000 hits. I suppose when people are putting a Bing or a Duck on "Lost Nation," they want to learn more than what's on the map. This attracted good comments over the years from people who were from there.***

 The name has intrigued me since the 1970's.  I fancied at first that it got it's name from being abandoned, some logging or mining small rail destination that got used up - a romantic, even gothic fancy, as might occur to a young poetic type mooning about the landscape.  But people don't name a place as they are going out, only when they are getting established.  Abandoned places only attract names like The Old Mine, or Where Trasker's Farm Used To Be.  You would find a cooler name only in Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys books.

But Lost Nation, I eventually decided, had to have acquired that name in its early days.  A small settlement might have gone for a decade without naming in the 18th or 19th C, but not much longer.  The town histories of Lancaster and Northumberland offer suggestions for the origin - the settlement straddles that border - but neither source seems quite certain.  Both explanations connect it to some vaguely religious idea, but frame it in the negative - that some visiting preacher or local wag called them that because of remoteness or poor church attendance.  I think that's close, but not in the money.  The time of settlement was very early 19th C, a time when British Israelism was a popular idea, especially in the more exotic sects that struck out to settle new areas.  The idea of the Lost Tribes of Israel was still much in the air not long after that when Joseph Smith received his revelations which assured him that there had been great cities and civilizations on the North American continent.  To be a member of a Lost Tribe was not a bad thing, but a good one.  People would take that idea about themselves as a connection to Bible times, and some hope that they might be favored or important.

I have no evidence from any document, yet find it the more persuasive idea that Lost Nation named itself with no irony or humor intended.  Yes, the place is out of the way, but so is everything else up there, frankly.  Even the big places are small and hard to get to. Things are different Above The Notch.

I went up to find it last Friday.  It didn't look too hard on the map, just a longer distance than one might ordinarily travel for such a small errand. I have been to the area a fair number of times over my lifetime, but not this specific place. I was always going somewhere for work or a high school game, and had no time.

It didn't look too hard on the map.  The name of the place is Lost Nation.  Isn't it fairly obvious what's going to happen next?  Sigh.  When will I learn?

The map said to take North Rd out of Lancaster, then take a left on Lost Nation Rd. Many things are left unmentioned in that description. It's not called North Road until it's well out of town. Before that it's called Middle St (or Mechanic St). These signs do not suggest anything to do with North or Middle anything, do they? (click for the amusing embiggen.)

 So after three passes to figure that out, I learned that Lost Nation Rd is called Grange Rd where it meets North Rd. And it's only marked from one direction. So that took three passes. But small problem, really. Just irritating. No question when you get there, though. There's a small church that says Lost Nation on it, only used occasionally now. The border between the towns is well-marked. One little interesting bit there. Town lines nationwide are now marked for drivers, going by quickly, and show the name of the place you are about to enter. But the old line markers reversed this: Lancaster was written on the Lancaster side, and Northumberland (or North'd) on its side. The trend is returning in fashionable places, with engraved initials on stone posts.  Goffstown and Bedford now have them.

 Why move so far up into the mountains to try and scratch out a living? Well, there's paranoia, of course, but I suspect the real reason is that it is so flat. Once you get above the notch, there actually are nice wide patches of farmland. From Ashland to Franconia, not so much. Here and there. If you are  worried about the cold, you really should start looking about 200 miles of here. 

Pretty place.

Clyde Joy, Willie Mae, and Goodnight Homes

Originally published April 2011. Reposted 2019, #21 on my all-time most-visited list, with over 3000 hits. The many hits over the years must come from NH people looking up Clyde Joy for nostalgic reasons.


I was going to launch into my post about anosognosia, apophatic and cataphatic theology, and all belief as epiphenomenon, but got distracted into country music in New Hampshire instead. Really. That is an absolutely true statement.

These rabbit trails result from living somewhat near the place one grew up. I was on the Daniel Webster Highway North tonight, driving by the place I had my first job out of college.

I graduated in the recession of '75, wanted to return to NH, and was willing to take any job I could get. Apparently people who enter the job market during recessions have some tendency to never recover from that, always selling themselves short and never making as much at graduates in other years. That's true in my case, but also a good thing. I was terribly arrogant and needed to be brought down a few - no, several - pegs. I counted myself lucky to get a part-time job at the Goodnight Motel in Hooksett at $3/hr. The owner's name really was Goodnight - first Fred, and then his son Gary - and their main business was selling mobile homes on the other side of the highway. Marlette mobile homes, I'll have you know. The Cadillac of mobile homes. And they were moving into Yankee Homes (very stylish) and doublewides, 24' x 36'.

Hooksett and the DW Hwy had just started to grow then. A K-Mart and a McDonald's had come in down the road, and the town fathers (or more likely, the town mothers) were trying to squeeze the Sky Ray Drive-In out of showing R-rated movies, which were sorta visible driving by. And not artistic R-rated movies, you understand, but things like Can I Do It Till I Need Glasses Tangentially, I learned in searching for this image that it was Robin Williams's first movie.


But at the moment, Hooksett was still pretty much what it had been in my childhood: rural, goofy, poor, uncool. It was definitely culture shock for this North End boy to be working at the no-tell motel attached to the trailer park and mobile home sales lot on the way out of town - way out of town - on old Rte 28, headed toward unimaginably backward places like Suncook and Pittsfield. These were not places where anyone you knew lived, but places you drove through on the way to the Lakes Region for vacation.

So I was a clerk at the Goodnight Motel, renting rooms at $12.60 a night (the waterbed room was $17.85) and collecting rents from the trailer park. Goodnight's was apparently where you rented a room for prom night - I hadn't known that, to show you how naive I was, even though my main girlfriend junior year and my junior prom date (different people) were from Hooksett. Had I known, that second girl...

Ah, another rabbit trail. You are not going to hear that story.

But by 1975 in NH, mobile home sales were on their way down, and chain hotels were pushing out those uh, charming little places along the secondary highways. Fred Goodnight had moved away to Costa Rica*, and his son Gary was trying to keep the various businesses afloat. My knowledge of Goodnight Homes up until that point was that they sponsored the country music show on WMUR every week, with Clyde Joy and Willie Mae. (If you are from NH, I really recommend this link, BTW.) Fred was originally from Georgia, so maybe he liked the music, or maybe he liked Clyde, or maybe he just thought it was good advertising to get on local TV. Whatever, Clyde would sing a song to the tune of "Goodnight Irene" every week that plugged Goodnight Homes.

We didn't call it country music then, but Western, or Country & Western, and it was a cowboy thing, not a southern thing. Rural New England had plenty of fans of fiddle music, and actual folk music like Jimmie Rodgers, not any of this new-fangled Pete Seeger stuff. They did accept the whole Hootenanny and Kingston Trio idea even though that wasn't quite the same, because they could at least find the records or see it on TV. But until then, it was Clyde Joy and Willie Mae.

Those of us in Manchester's north end found this humiliating, interfering with our aspirations to be an intellectual, urbane place like Boston or Newport, RI. Maine and Vermont were considered even more backward than us then, and represented what we were trying to escape from. WMUR was the local station, and embarrassing enough in itself, but this Circle 9 Ranch and cowboy hat stuff - in New Hampshire - was beyond the pale. It lasted along time, though.

Ironically, I had become a bluegrass and modern country fan by 1975, via Stephen Stills, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and John Fogerty, but Clyde and Willie Mae were the old, uncool country music - and they were off the air by then anyway.

And now here I was working for these guys. I didn't tell many people. The main office had a little apartment upstairs, where Fred stayed when he was in town, which was hardly ever. The magazine rack had what we called "naturist" magazines then - photojournals of what life was like at nudist camps, an excuse to show naked people. But it was seedy, not like the full-color girlie magazine Playboy, which was quite open about the idea that they were showing pretty girls with little or no clothing. Naturist magazines - I think these were called "Sundial," or "Sunrise," or something -
similar to this, anyway - were more coy, like they were reporting on news from nudist camps, or discussions about the future of nudism or whatever.

I was warned about Willie Mae calling. She was supposedly always looking for money from Fred, because he owed her, and there was a wink, wink, nod, nod that there was something else to the story. I absolutely believed that then, but now I'm pretty sure whatever story is true is forever lost. I got a call only once, out of the blue and quite angry "I want to speak to Fred!" I had never seen Fred, no one had told me he was expected, and I quite honestly said I had no idea where he was. The woman told me I was lying, she knew he was in town, and I had better tell him that Willie Mae had called. Well, okay then.

Fred showed up that evening, breezed through the entrance, introduced himself, told a few stories and treated me like I was his great pal from years gone by. So Willie Mae had heard something, more than even Fred's son had heard. I told him she had called, and he waved it away, laughing with one of those laughs that "we men knew what those things were all about." I didn't actually, but I laughed knowingly anyway. It seemed the wisest move, as this guy was probably still the owner and my boss. I didn't dare ask him the story about the bullet-hole in the office ceiling, which apparently dated from his time, but I kept looking at it, trying to subtly remind him of more interesting times. He didn't bite. He went upstairs, turned on the TV, and told me not to set the alarms when I left.

*Something to do with extradition, I heard. I was instructed never to tell anyone when Fred was back in the US.

Political Theater

We went out for dinner in Manchester tonight - unusual for us, especially just the two of us, but Tracy had a coupon (she always wins coupons) - and caught Radio Row at the Radisson, Occupy NH Primary across the street, then drove home via the debate at St. A's in our town.  We've been downtown in the height of primary season in many other years, and I'd forgotten how odd it is to see so many people clearly from around here in the restaurants and talking earnestly on the streets - junior movers-and-shakers who wait on the campaign and media people with Important Haircuts.  Nothing objectionable about this crowd, I just can tell at a glance I don't want to talk with them.  These are people who sell ideas, rather than having ideas, and they know more about sales than thinking.  Not that they see themselves that way, of course.  They largely think they have entered a cultural backwater where people don't know What's What and Who's Who.

Which is true, I suppose, in one sense.

But the energy was a bit subdued downtown.  Most of radio row was empty - most folks heading over to St. A's, I imagine.  Across the street, Occupy was poorly attended - though they did have some drumming!  Wouldn't want NH to miss out on the full experience. But the prominent multi-stickered cars had Mass plates...Mass plates...NYYankees decal...Yeah, you folks really didn't do your research, did you?

I think "Occupy" has become a brand name, because it's generic, unofficial.  Every small group with a liberal bent had attached "Occupy" to their posters.  You couldn't do that with Tea Party two years ago, because major media would swoop on you and try to bait you into saying something stupid which they could play nationally, pretending that you represented everyone else.  So the Tea Party got pretty good at enforcing its boundaries.  With Occupy, only independent media tries that.  Though Fox did try a couple of times, quite successfully, I heard.

An Obama group was out at St. A's with trombones and saxophones, playing some bluesy thing - that deserves a little credit.

Just not as big a deal as previous years.  Our own lack of effort may be part of that.

Political writer Walter Shapiro, quoted by James Fallows at The Atlantic. 

As a political reporter, I am prepared to offer a spirited defense of New Hampshire's outsized role in presidential politics. Nowhere else in the nation do voters display such fidelity to old-fashioned civic obligations.... New Hampshire may be a living monument to participatory democracy, but what in God's name is the justification for making the Iowa caucuses the campaign equivalent of the book of Genesis?

Complain all you want, but without NH, the Jon Huntsman's of the world have no chance at all to even attempt to run for president.  Wealth, and/or coming from a big state, already are dominant factors.  You want to make that worse?  Maybe the first primary should just be a single county.

Santorum

Now that he has become an issue in NH, if only because of his strong finish in Iowa, I will weigh in on Rick Santorum.

He is a Big Government Conservative, rather like Gingrich.  If socially conservative issues are your focus, Santorum is your guy, more than Perry, Gingrich, or Paul.  But for hands-off government, Santorum's statements and actions over the years suggest he likes "requiring all schoolchildren to have basic personal economics lessons in school," national service, pro-family teaching (whatever that is), and other nanny-state interventions.  It's just this time, the nanny is a Baptist instead of a Unitarian.

These types of programs are a drop in the bucket in terms of cost, and children don't tend to learn what we force on them anyway, so you may be comfortable with that.  Heck, a really shrewd liberal might be fine with that, reasoning that these showcase legislations are often more symbolic than effective, and it signals a guy they can do business with, trading support for, I don't know, paying schoolkids to learn Arabic* or Chinese* because we're going to need it, or setting up IRA's for five-year-olds, or funding a Motown museum or whatever. 

If Santorum finds a way to cut entitlements, reduce our medical-insurance promises, or wastefraudandabuse, then I suppose all this nanny-state clutter won't matter much.  And truth be told, a lot of it would still happen under Romney or even Ron Paul.  That Washington barge only turns by degrees.  Yet better to have less of this than more.

*And then complaining that it was mostly kids who already had these as family languages, who weren't any more likely to be doing this for patriotic interest as we thought when we envisioned Nebraskan Lutherans populating the State Department in 2025.

Self-Referential

Artists have always been very much taken with other artists, and are self-referential. It is a way of expressing community, I suppose, or paying compliments, as writers and musicians also do. This is a Winslow Homer painting of other artists painting. I wonder if any of them are painting other artists in turn?

Probably not. This is White Mountain School (a subtype of Hudson River School), Conway side, and they usually painted landscapes.

Ron Paul Family Cookbook

One interesting effect of living in NH is getting an up-close look at political advertising every four years. I don’t think there has been anywhere near the fuss this time – perhaps because Iowa and SC have increased importance, perhaps because 24-7 media and instant polling gives the nation much of the information it used to depend on NH for.

But still, the rest of the country may not have received the Ron Paul Cookbook in the mail. Quite the item, and exactly as it says, it has recipes; it’s not using “cookbook” as a metaphor for legislation and attitudes. There are lots of pictures of Ron’s family, and some short essays, including his wife’s about America, but there’s banana bread and brisket as well. Simple, everyday American recipes, including such ingredients as a bottle of catalina dressing for the brisket (only two more ingredients there).

I am trying to imagine when this could have occurred before in American campaigns. I think one would have to go farther back than my parents’ generation (which is Ron’s generation). It looks like something I would have found in my grandmother’s bookcase, kept either because it had a particular recipe worth keeping or because she liked the pol. I can’t imagine who that would be, even then. It wouldn’t be something from the Bass family, or the Greggs, or the Bridges. One of the Straws might have tried something like that as PR for the mills, but not for office-seeking. It’s just not us. Seems like it would go down better with the voters in the Midwest or the South.

OTOH, the styling has a 90’s Rodale Press look about it, which in turn drew some from Grit or Burpee’s seeds from a generation before, so the appeal might intentionally be to a younger audience, hankering for an America that never quite existed in any region but was pretty solidly in the imaginations (and aspirations) of most Americans years ago. Ron Paul apparently does have quite a following among the young, and perhaps that’s why.

I think I’ll keep it. Heck, no other candidate ever sent me a cookbook before. My grandchildren might have a hard time integrating it into history at first glance, though.

"Some Snow In The Higher Elevations..."

We don't always get snow when the foliage is still bright.  It's a nice moment.  I wish I were a better photographer or editor, but the scenes themselves do a lot of the work for me.

Four From Today

I have a more reflective post about Lost Nation, NH that I will post this weekend.  But there were some nice oddments along the way that deserve short comments.

A typical trailhead, if you are hiking in the Whites in the fall.  This is Mt. Starr King trail. Thomas Starr King was a New York UU minister who wrote glowingly about vacationing in the White Mountains.  Even then, those Yankees had an eye for whatever fed the tourist biz.  Not very different from corporate sponsorships of stadiums, is it?(See also, Presidential Range.)

We are supposedly past peak foliage now, but this looks pretty good.  You don't get the sunset luminosity with my poor photography, but perhaps you can fill it in yourself.  I find the foliage just after peak to be more attractive than the declared "peak," which was last weekend.  Fewer reds, but the yellows and oranges are more dominant.

Remember those roadside cabins I wrote about in the Old Route 28 series?  Twin Mountain, NH is chockablock full of 'em.  They are going away slowly.  This batch is for sale now, and who will buy?






This painting on plaster or stucco is the sort of thing I want on my chimney. I haven't remotely go the talent for that, though.

Slebogganing

Never heard of it until today, Friends from our old church sent this along. They presumably know this guy. The site where you can get one of these things. Elkins, NH is near New London. I can't tell how steep this track is, but I'm guessing not very. No, there isn't snow up here yet. We did just pass peak foliage, however, and first snow usually comes soon after. Won't stay, though.

Recent Conversations - Old Route 28

Route 28, a secondary highway in MA and NH, was important in family history, especially above Manchester. I was curious about what the road had looked like in the 30's and the 50's, and put some energy into discovering this.  It was harder than I thought, but quite satisfying in the end.

Interstate 92

I-92 was proposed, but never built. There were (and I suppose, are) several proposed routes from somewhere in NY to somewhere in ME which cut across NH and VT.  The expectation was that it would be a spur to prosperity, especially to the interior of ME, but somehow the numbers never worked out.  I recall hearing years ago that VT increasingly objected, ostensibly for environmental but actually for aesthetic reasons, and this was what had driven the final nails in the idea.

Yet still, if you look at a map of the Northeast, it just makes sense.

I thought the suggestion that the old Yankee joke "you can't get there from here" is based on the absence of E-W routes was silly at first, but on reflection, it might be so.  The whole site at the link is interesting, though more so around Boston roads than NH ones.

The Peopling of New England

Via Josh Kercsmar, This site with numerous maps on the peopling of New England. Apparently this Blake Gumprecht is preparing these for a book. The maps show which ethnic groups are dominant in which NE towns, both recently and by ancestry. Much of this is unremarkable - the Irish Riviera south of Boston, Italians in Rhode Island and in Revere/Saugus. There are some surprises, however. Here's a fun one: In the first map, the lone pink "other" in suburban Boston is Sharon, and thus the dominant ethnicity must be Jewish. And yes, parts of Maine really do belong to Canada.

Victoria Shouldis

A friend of mine has terminal cancer, and there was a nice write-up of her in the Concord Monitor, for which she has written for many years. I mentioned her in a post more than five years ago, which might give you an additional flavor for the sort of person she was.

Rain

According to the radar, the heavy rains have been running about five miles west of us for about two hours, and will continue to miss us for another two. Something similar happened during Hurricane Irene. I have never noticed nor heard described a climate break or pivot point along that line. There is a definite break point between the Upper Connecticut Valley and Central NH that runs through Sunapee, and one can go from one weather to another around Exit 12 on Rte 89 fairly often. But not here, that I know of.

Recent Conversations - Old Route 28

Route 28, a secondary highway in MA and NH, was important in family history, especially above Manchester. I was curious about what the road had looked like in the 30's and the 50's, and put some energy into discovering this.  It was harder than I thought, but quite satisfying in the end.

Getting Around

Old Route 28

What We Look For

For Those Who Like Maps

Suncook Pond

A Different Visual

Old Route 28 - Part 7

Old Route 28 - Sidebar

Old Route 28 - Part 8

This Year's Travel

I am not going to do another "Only On The Map" series as I did last August, but it is that time, and I did look at another section of NH I was unfamiliar with. I believe I have lost the camera, which is a shame, as it is really Tracy's. I took pictures of Chesterfield town center, where the official buildings use stone I don't think is usual for NH. As the NH side of the Connecticut River often looks more like VT to me, I wonder if the is a geological break point once you get over past Mt. Pisgah. Sponge-headed Scienceman will know.

Somewhere around Westmoreland, I lost the camera. I can't figure out how, but it's just not there anymore.

But my journey and mapwork on Old Route 28 put me in good stead. On all the numbered highways today, I would suddenly recognise where the newer road had been cut through in the 1950's, just but the appearance of the forest and the straightness of the road. Checking the telephone lines and the side roads often immediately confirmed that I was on New Rte 10 or 12, with the older version off to the side. I checked the USGS topo maps when I got home just to make sure. It is interesting to be able to see something I did not used to notice.

I went up as far as Charlestown, then cut over to Unity and Goshen, coming back through Washington. With the exception of Westmoreland and parts of Walpole, these are pretty depressed towns. Climbing the ravine out of Hinsdale on Rte 63 I saw those dizzying driveways that suddenly shoot up at a slight angle and even steeper pitch. There are seldom expensive houses up those roads. It's not considered prime building land, and puts one in mind of Appalachia. As these communities were also often settled by Scots-Irish, that may not be suprising.

In poor areas, businesses show up in odd locations, because people are struggling to make a living. A barber pole will be out by the mailbox on a numbered root, the house well back on a long driveway; on a nearly uninhabited back way from one oddly-named village to another - Snumshire to Quaker City in this case - there will be a slightly skewed "Auto Repair" sign, and then another, with cars for sale; produce, or crafts, or cordwood we expect - violin lessons, not so much. Houses are oddly designed as well, as if the owner suddenly thought "I've got some extra wood - why not put another story on top of this?" Or a post-war A-frame that just kept acquiring additions on each side.

The strangest sight was a reflecting garden ball - odd enough in itself these days - what had angel wings attached to its base, looking like some alien robot from a 60's sci-fi film. Perhaps it was ironic.

Old Route 28 - Part 8

Long and wandering, I fear. I'll break it into parts.

I started at the house that was my grandparents from 1934-70, where my mother grew up. It is only 50' or so from Route 28, which runs through Manchester as Maple St.




That's my mom in the first picture, and her sister in the second, my Aunt Cynthia. My estimate is that these were spring of 1946, when they would have been 16 and 17, respectively - both taken at 218 Blodget. They had a brother as well, but somehow his picture got taken far less frequently, at least in my collection. He's a nice-enough looking man, but this level of competition is too much for anyone. As I have previously noted, I didn't get these genes. Or rather, my brother and I got some of them, but somehow didn't do as well with them as our cousins.

Maple Street is more shady now, more elegant. It was a borderland then between a better part of town and the best part of town. My grandfather was a CPA - we think the first in the state - and his wife the socially aspiring sort. She would have preferred to be at least four blocks north, and an equal number west to qualify as true north end.

Route 28 merges with Rte 3, the Daniel Webster Highway coming out of Manchester to the north. From 1930 to 1950 it built up slowly, but after the war, car dealerships, restaurants, supermarkets, and all the trimmings sprang up. People think of NH's population exploding in the 1970's, but it was steady increase from 1950-2000, with just a steeper slope in the middle.

Oh yeah, this is one of several places that my mother almost died - my brother merely wounded and hospitalised for a week in the crash. So for the second time, someone just came and picked me up and told me I was living at my grandparents for awhile. I don't know if I was given much detail - I don't remember worrying, though my mother was away for weeks. Well, hospitalizations were longer then.

Just over the line in Hooksett there used to be a meat market, with a large cow on top of it. They had a delivery van with a life-sized cow wired to the top as well, and a sign that said "Home of Sir Loin." People must have thought those were quite the advertisements in those days, because the numbered routes were strewn with them, at least out here in the east. Forty-foot concrete cacti, Leaning Towers of Pizza, whales, pirates, chickens. Forget Motel of The Mysteries. What would archaeologists have made of this?

We still have leftovers of this in McDonald's golden arches and White Castle burgers. Yes, children, really. It's not just a logo. We didn't have logos then, because we were too poor.

I can't find a picture of Hooksett's Sir Loin, unfortunately. Though Ben and I saw something like it on a van in Michigan a decade ago. And a giant red slipper outside the Wizard of Oz Museum in Indiana. So midwesterners still go in for this sort of thing, maybe.

In the 30's it would have been rural. By 1960 the road would have had the usual collection of Howard Johnsons, Pic-N-Save markets, and used car dealerships that must have been seeded when they widened the number roads. Nothing much to comment on until we get just south of Suncook, where the old narrow road heads on into town, past the large stone lion, and the new 1958 route branches right, wide and straight through the forest. Not much got built along there until later. But there was a boat sales place, (Something) Marina. And amazingly cool to my brother and I in the 60's, there was a fuselage of a crashed jet in a field beside the place. We of course figured the jet had crashed there and been left. (Just missed the fence and those ski-boats - whew!) Or that someone they knew had died in it so they were given the hunk of twisted metal as a memento. A few years later we heard the real story from my mother's boyfriend, and though the story was boring, we were excited. Bob knew the guy who had the jet fuselage. Wow! Amazingly cool! Children are impressed by such things.

It would have been hard for Bob not to know the guy. He also lived in Hooksett, which wasn't so populous. Bob's family owned Indian Head Athletics and he was always skiing or boating or otherwise using first-class equipment. He had very cool dogs - Siberian Huskies; he had a modernistic house; he knew Congressman Wyman well, even though it was we who shared the name; and best of all, he owned an Austin Healey. A lot like this one, I think.


Then he fell out of the picture in early 1966 and my mother married some other guy six months later, who was 12 years older than her and didn't seem anywhere near as cool. I looked Bob up a few years ago, and it seems my mother made the right choice. A fun and entertaining guy, but pretty clearly self-centered with too much teenager in him, even at 70.

Come to think of it, other than knowing the guy with the jet, Bob had no real connection to Route 28 whatsoever. He was strictly a Route 3, 93, and 95 guy. So in retrospect, we can see that it never would have worked. Ken, the guy she did marry, had no previous Route 28 credentials but adjusted beautifully. Excelled at it, really. His finest hour.

Backwards in time.

There are two incidents which must hold some mildly embarrassing story which I don't know. Long after they had divorced, when I was an adult and my parents had not spoken in years, each of them started into a story about Aunt Marian's camp that looked to be amusing, then just fizzled. Both of them were extremely adept at seamless switches in conversation - my mother, her mother and her aunts were simply stunning at it - but then, I was brought up by them, so I had some skill at noting the merest flicker of change in tone myself. I don't think I would have recalled the incident where my mother quickly diverted had my father not done so on the same story at a similar point a decade later. It jogged the memory: Here now. We've heard that before. What was it? Both thought it was going to be a fun story to tell. Each launched into the opening: my father was a new Sigma Chi at UNH, where they met. As part of his hazing, he was taken on a ride - hooded and intentionally confused by the brothers - and dumped off in a dark place at night.

But he had craftily been ready and hidden a $5 bill in his shoe. (I suspect the servicemen on the GI Bill were a good deal more resourceful than the pledges the fraternities were previously used to.) And as they drove off with him left by the side of the road he realised where he was. Near Route 28 and Aunt Marian's camp in Center Barnstead. And so he...

Went to the camp and er, washed up, and hitched quickly back to Durham and went home to Westford for the weekend, making the fraternity brothers nervous that he was really gone and in danger... according to my Dad.

Didn't go to the camp because it was closed up but uh, it was still easier to get back to UNH than it would have been and he bragged about it to her friends all weekend...according to my Mom.

We know memory, of course, that both things could be approximately true and no one fibbing, just remembering differently. I put an er and an uh in there to mark a seam, but they weren't really there. (Both of them were far smoother than that.) I don't know how I can signal to you that there was a bump in the road both times.

Clearly it is something large enough to not want to tell me, even as an adult. But small enough that the entire area of conversation was not strewn with mines three kilometers out in every direction - which, given my father's actions, there were plenty of in my growing up. Whatever this is, it's likely not just one additional piece, because they would have seen that coming easily. Rather, it is some incident which would lead to some other question or speculation, so they veered away.

Sex, alcohol, or accidental destruction of property. Those are my guesses. Exactly what you might remember as entertaining, but suddenly decide not to tell your children.

And now forward in time.

I should have mentioned that from Suncook on, there was an additional growing worry. I had driven this road many times in the last two years of my mother's life, only occasionally since then, and not beyond Wolfeboro Center. The last time there had been my mother's funeral. The time before that, the night she died. The fifty times before that, all visits to watch her die. I am chilly and heartless about most things, but I wondered if this would be different, especially when hungry, grouchy, tired, with the sun creeping down.

Nah. I am still chilly and heartless in regards to the past. I now weep easily considering the smallest troubles of my children and granddaughters. But looking back? Meh. Visiting the past is a fun place to visit and think about. Doubtless I am suppressing some deep feelings and in denial of something-or-other. Which is fine, actually. The idea that it is all going to come and explode on me some day troubles me not. Life isn't really like that, just movies. Oh, and plays by Scandinavians.

I was irritated that I had forgotten that Cricket Hill Rd doesn't go through. I passed another place that my mother went over an embankment and almost died. I went to the house on Maplewood, looked at it and turned around. Not a trace of moisture.

Old Route 28 - Sidebar

My notes contain the remaining scattered bits about the preparation and execution of the trip. Yet when I looked them over, I discovered a theme. The difficult and sad parts of the story were most of what remained. Twenty years ago I would have jumped to the conclusion that I was avoiding these topics in some way, refusing to "deal" with them - a word which has no meaning, BTW. I would have resolved to plunge ahead and discover what important pain I was refusing to embrace, what secret I refused to allow to be told. You know, like the movie reruns they used to have on TV.

A young woman in search of her past returns to her (or her parents'/her great-uncle Wilbur's) home town only to discover a dark (or horrifying/ultimately pointless) secret. Natalie Wood, George Peppard. 1963, Unrated.

I don't think that now. If facing uncomfortable truths about the past needs to be done, I have certainly done enough of it. I have come to believe it is only a way of avoiding uncomfortable truths about the present. Plus, anyone we make a critical observation on is likely to be remembered fondly by another. Hell, I have found that people object if you are not gushing enough about Uncle Wilbur; or, I suppose if you say anything nice about his wife, Aunt Phyllis who they have never quite forgiven for taking the good piecrust table of Gram's. It's a minefield.

So. There are stories about my mother and father before they divorced, and stories of the man my mother almost married, and stories of the man she finally did marry, who never liked me much. That's three swamps to avoid just with Mom alone, without even getting to the parts where she almost died - which she a lot, actually. Usually within spitting distance of Rte 28.

Did I avoid the incidents because they were uncomfortable? Maybe. But the discomfort would come more from the effort it would take to word things correctly to my own satisfaction, for this would be the only record of many events. A few of the stories might be generally interesting. A few more, interesting to the family. Then an equal number of uninteresting stories that beg to be included for completeness' sake, or because they are a counterweight to some other impression I have given.

I don't think there's going to be much in the last post after all. Not interesting enough.