Travels With Becky

Farm report

Last evening, John and I drove to the Inn at East Hill Farm in Troy. East Hill Farm is a working farm that hosts Family Farm vacations. You can rise at the crack of dawn and gather eggs for breakfast. You can milk a cow or a goat and churn your own butter with Farmer Dave. I don’t know if you can shovel your own manure, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a beautiful farm which, annually, hosts the Cheshire County Farm Bureau annual meeting. Three years ago I told some stories there, and, guess what, they invited me back!

Which reminds of me of a story. The little boy from the city sat on the stool and put his hand on the cow’s udder, prepared to milk. After about five minutes of no activity, he asked the farmer: “How do you turn it on?”

Perry Sawyer told this story. It’s kinda deep. He said his brother entered his team of oxen in the pulling contest at the fair. When he got home, Father said, “How’d you do?” 

“We come in next to top.”

The neighbor, Hugh Dunning, also had a team of oxen. “How’d Hugh do?” Father asked.

“He come in next to last.”

“How many teams in the contest?”  Father said.

“Two.”

On the way to Troy, John and I drove through Jaffrey, just at dusk. The folks of Jaffrey have a weird sense of humor. All up and down Main Street – in front of the McDonald’s, the drug store, the fire station, the police station, library, town hall – they’ve set up scarecrows. Hundreds of them. Must be a contest because they’re all numbered. It’s startling driving through at dusk, worse on the way home after dark. Looks like people lining the street. Nobody moving. Looks for all the world like “Night of the Living Dead.” 

Her first moose

The resident moose in the lobby of the Mount Washington Hotel, reminded me of Grace Enman’s story of seeing her first moose.

She was just a little girl, maybe four years old, in downtown Berlin. She held her father’s hand tightly as they walked up several flights of stairs to a lawyer’s office in one of the big buildings on Main Street.

Her father sat her down in a big chair – it was so big and she was so small, her legs dangled.

Then she looked across the room, and there it was: “My first moose!” Just the head and rack, of course.  She said, “I thought the rest of it was in the other room.”

It's posh at the Wash

Saturday night I told stories at the opulent Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods.  At night, it looks like a cruise ship all lit up.  It’s a beautiful sight tucked in among the mountains. John and I arrived about 7:30 for an 8:30 program.  Too late to have dinner (we usually eat around 5:00) – which I would have got for FREE.  Too bad, too, since the hotel is known for its haute cuisine (pronounced hotty quizine – which is French for good eats.) Yup, I was singing for my supper and the chance to stay overnight at the grand hotel. Well, not singing, but storytelling.  Twin sisters Angel and Cathy from Dalton came out of the hills for stories, as did Esther Leiper and her husband Peter Esterbrook. Esther is the Poet Laureate of the North Country. Last time I was at the Wash (as locals call it), these same faithful folks showed up to hear stories, so I appreciate their loyalty. Also in the crowd were a few hotel guests, one couple from Utah and another from Ohio.  So it was, what you’d call, a diverse group.

A year ago, when I visited the Wash, Angel and told me a story, which I retold on Saturday.  “Did I get it right?” I asked her. (Stories tend to evolve over time. Mine do, anyway.)  “Well,” Angel said, “you got the gist.”

Here’s the story, or at least the gist of it:

When Angel and Cathy retired, they moved into the old family camp in Dalton. That first spring, they tried out the lawnmower, but it didn’t start.  They asked their neighbor, who was handy, what to do. He said:  “All you need is some dragass.”

“Dragass?”

“Yuh, go down the hardware store and pick up some dragass.”

“Dragass?”

“Right.”

“How do you spell it?”

“D-R-Y-G-A-S. Dragass.”

So they bought some, put it in the tank, and sure enough, the neighbor was right.  All that lawnmower needed was a touch of dragass.

I took this picture of the Wash, below, at 7:00 in the morning as we were leaving for a teacherworkshop I was running at White Mountain College in Berlin. The serving of breakfast started at 7:00, but we couldn’t stay for it. Had to hit the road to get to the workshop in time. Which is too bad because breakfast would have been FREE. Next time I sing, or sign, for my supper at the Wash, I’m going to have to do a better job with scheduling. 

Fun at the Fox Tale

Fox Tale Books in New Durham may be the cutest little bookstore in New Hampshire. It’s certainly a contender, with a cheerful staff of two and a feeling of spaciousness in a small space. Mary the proprietress invited me to tell a few stories on Saturday morning. It was standing room only, on account of more people than chairs. Always a good sign.

Elise and Thom Conlon stopped by. They run the Dudley House Bed & Breakfast just down the road and had slipped away from their guests for stories. Thom wore a classic New Hampshire Live Free or Die sweatshirt that he’d bought at the Deerfield Fair. It was a beauty!  For a joke he said, “Can you change the die to pie?” A reference, of course, to my book. I said I could, and presented him with a Live Free and Eat Pie T-shirt.  He was tickled! (See him being tickled in photograph below.) 

The Conlon’s told a story that gave us all goosebumps. They had been searching small towns for a B&B to buy. When they walked into the Dudley House, Elise said, it felt like home. They knew immediately it was the one and snapped it up. The owners left them a history of the place. Going through it, Thom noticed something strange about the family tree. Back a few generations, the Dudley family tree had a lot in common with Elise’s family tree – that is, the same people. Unwittingly, Elise and Thom had indeed come home.

Cue ghost music.

He didn't really mean it, did he?

This story comes out of Brownfield, Maine. This young couple bought an old farmhouse decorated, the teller said, like it had been “done by committee,” complete with blue and red shag carpeting. The husband got talking with an old-timer down street. “So where you from?” the old timer said.

“Connecticut.”

“Where you living?”

“The old Perkins house. We’re fixing it up. My wife likes to decorate.”

“Tell you what you do,” the old timer said.  “You take her out back and you shoot her.”

Meanwhile, at the New England Environmental Educators Association Meeting in Hancock last  Friday, I learned what a clinker was. As you may know, one of my favorite expressions is “s--t a clinker.” Turns out, clinker is an old railroad term. When the coal gets low, the clinking starts and the fireman knows to refill. Clinkers are the dust and detritus from the coal that doesn’t burn and fuses together. You can find these pocked, stony objects along railroad tracks. Think of them as coal hairballs.

But what did she think of his lattes?

Deb Tuck sent me this story.  Much appreciated!  She wrote:

"My mom is 84-years young and really in great shape. She is a bit hard-of-hearing, something that she absolutely denies. My daughter, Amy, and I were taking her to North Conway to meet my sister, Beth, who is from Casco, Maine. We often meet in North Conway to have lunch because it is about halfway for both of us.

"As we were driving through North Conway, I noticed a very small coffee shop and remarked to my daughter, 'Oh, look Amy, a small coffee shop and they called it The Teeny Bean.' Mom, in the back seat, leaned forward and said, 'I never did like his sausage.' Amy and I both looked at each other in bewilderment for a brief second and then burst out laughing, as mom thought we said something about Jimmy Dean."

Good thing she never had implants

Slipped over to York, Maine, yesterday for a “laughing lunch” at a retreat for a nonprofit organization. There were 14 of us, all women, so I told the story of Priscilla in Haverhill.  Priscilla asked if I’d like to hear the story of the time she got her foot stuck in her bra. I said, indeed I would. 

“Well,” she said, “when I get home from shopping or doctor visits or anything, the first thing I do is take my bra off and hang it on the knob of the bedroom door. I was in the kitchen having coffee with my daughter and she wanted me to read something in the newspaper. So I took my coffee and went to the bedroom to get my reading glasses off the night stand. On the way out, coffee in one hand, reading glasses in the other, I went to kick the bedroom door closed.  And that’s when I got my foot stuck in my bra.”
   
Then she added:  “If I was a 42D instead of a 34B, I’d still be swinging.”