Travels With Becky

Winter activities

What do you folks do in New Hampshire all winter?”

“Well, mostly we start cars.” (Pronounced staht cahs.)

That’s an old one. But true. Jumper cables are our best friends. We also shovel, knock icicles off the roof and haul wood. They say wood warms you twice, but I think it warms you about five times, in the cutting down, the hauling out of the woods, the splitting, the stacking, the hauling into the house and then the burning. 

My grandfather, Trapper Bill Barker, age 90, got it into his head to cut his firewood on a steep hill at the back of his property. Weekly when we’d visit, he’d inform us of his progress. One week, he was pretty beat up because he slipped on said steep hill and rolled ass over tea kettle to the bottom. Many weeks through the summer and fall, he told of his progress – 10 wheelbarrow loads, 20, 50, whatever it was.  “Don’t kill yourself, Grampa,” we told him.

“Kill myself! (Expletive deleted.) It’s what’s keeping me alive.” He could have cut trees closer to the house, but he wanted the exercise. When he died at 92, the woodpile stretched longer than his house. Course, he lived in a two-room cabin, three if you count the attached outhouse.

Oh, another thing I do in the winter is play djembes and djun djuns with my friends, djust for fun. We have a djolly good time. Here we the other night banging out some tunes.

      

It was chilly. Luckily we’d dressed in layers. The cement floor was especially cold,so our leader, dJen, having removed her boots, used djembe covers for slippers. Yankee chic!

Karma and karmels

Karma, that’s a Sanskrit word for "what goes around comes around."  At the Haverhill City Women’s Club in Haverhill, Massachusetts, the pre-program munchies were mostly chocolate (yum) and the tea and coffee served from silver pots, tres elegant, that’s French for "fancy."  We swapped stories. In fact, the ladies were piping up with stories from the beginning – just the way I like it. 

At a Christmas party at a certain restaurant, Ruth was in charge of reservations for her group. She collected money from everyone, quite a large crowd, but when she received the bill, management had charged more for the roast beef than the chicken. Well, she couldn’t go back to the ladies and ask them to pay extra, so she paid the difference herself. She was not happy.
The next year, she again attended a function at the certain restaurant and accidentally went home with the wrong coat. She realized her mistake when she got home and called the restaurant immediately. They were in a tizzy. It wasn’t just the missing coat, but the car keys in the pocket that had caused a problem. Accommodatingly, she drove right back to the restaurant and returned the coat. Management handed her an envelope with a $50 check for her trouble – just the amount she’d been out the Christmas before. Karma.

Speaking of chocolates, a mother and son developed a clever way of solving the mystery of what lurked within. They’d puncture each chocolate with a toothpick, test the insides, smooth over the holes in the ones they didn’t like. So dad got a lot of fruit-filled, and they ate the caramels, or as we say around here, karmels.

One club member, a descendant of Roger Williams (these things come up in conversation), worked in a resort in New Hampshire as a girl. This was in the days when wealthy folks stayed all summer. She worked as a waitress. One guest, a little old lady, was among her charges for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. This guest never ordered anything off the menu, everything had special instructions, and she required a lot of attention. After a time, the little old lady slipped the waitress a fifty-cent piece and whispered: “You can expect this every month, dear.”

Should I laugh or cry?

Bill F. from Exeter, N.H., received Live Free and Eat Pie for Christmas. He writes that he found the book engaging. He says: “I read far into the night so I could find out who did it.”

Bill wrote a newspaper column for many years and says he picked up a lot of Yankee humor along the way that he included in the column. That’s the idea – hear a story and pass it on.  From Jud Hale of Yankee magazine, he heard this bit of philosophy: “If you don’t attend someone’s funeral, how do you expect them to come to yours?”

I heard the story this way: Mabel says to Dorothy, “Are you going to Henrietta’s funeral?” 

“Course not,” Dorothy replies. “She wouldn’t come to mine.”

Not long ago, someone who hired me to tell stories asked that I not tell any morbid ones.  Evidently some in the group were already depressed enough. As I planned my program, it struck me that most of my stories were morbid in one way or another. That simple and understandable request cut into my repertoire considerable. Morbid stories walk that fine line of humor: Should I laugh or cry? I recommend laughter.

True story: A woman called town hall wondering what the procedure was for purchasing a cemetery plot.  “Well, I can tell you this,” the clerk said. “You can’t just come in cold.”

More on frugality

When is it imfrugal to be frugal?

When to save money, you (by you I mean me) buy in bulk 500 white business-size envelopes.  You proceed to use maybe 50 a year. Summer comes. It’s real hot and muggy. The glue melts. The flaps on the envelopes all stick. That’s year one. So for the next nine years (give or take), you (by you I mean me) have to pry open each flap with your fingernails (or a knife), usually tearing the envelope in the process. Then you insert your letter and tape the flap closed. It’s annoying and time consuming.

I mention this because I’m almost out of envelopes. Down to my last 30 or so. By August, they’ll be gone, and I can buy new ones to lick and stick. Now that’’s  something to look forward to in the new year.

On the other hand, maybe 20 years ago, when my dad still worked for a wholesale food company, he scored me a case of lard, maybe fifty plastic tubs, at a very reasonable wholesale price. I needed the lard to make bread in the tin bread mixer I inherited from my grandmother. Using her recipe, three loaves call for eight tablespoons of lard. Grammie’s bread is delicious. For a while I made bread quite often, but gradually got out of the habit.  Last count, there were 15 tubs of lard waiting their turn in my freezer. This winter, New Year’s resolution, I’m going to make Grammie’s bread once a week. Or so.

And lose weight.

Hmmm. May have to choose one or the other. Grammie’s delicious bread or lose weight? What a conundrum.

Years ago, after the Beans of Egypt, Maine first made a big splash, author Carolyn Chute, then and now a rural Mainer, taught a couple of courses at  the University of New Hampshire, where I was also teaching. I’ll never forget seeing her in the hall with her student papers in her Maine briefcase, which was a large cereal box. And, on an occasion or two, when she dropped me a postcard, the postcard was, in fact, an index card. Clever! And frugal. She’s got a new book out, The School on Heart’s Content Road. Great article about her and the book and her husband and Scottish Terriers in the New York Times. Click here to read it.

 

Bolt blues

The New Year’s starting off great for me. Sure the furnace broke (but John Rule fixed it – thank you, John), and the windshield on the blue Saturn cracked (insurance will cover), and the red Saturn decided not to start this A.M. (too cold), but Kendra Totman sent this true story, so things are looking up. Kendra wrote:

"Back in the early 70s my dad was driving a trailer to Dartmouth where he went to school.  As he was driving, he noticed that the trailer was banging around a lot behind him. He pulled over to the side of the road and noticed that one of the bolts had come out of the trailer and that's why it was shaking around so much. He walked back down the highway and found the bolt, but it was bent and useless.  

"He left the trailer on the side of the road and drove to the next exit. After driving for a couple of miles he came to a small town. There was a country store so my dad stopped there. He looked around but couldn't find anyone to help him. Finally he heard a voice coming from the rocking chair on the front porch. There was a man there that my dad hadn't noticed before.  Turns out he owned the place. 'Can I help you?'  he asked.

"My dad said yes and asked if he had a hardware section in the store. 'Ayuh, back of the store,' the owner replied. (I was very impressed with my dad's imitation of a N.H. accent at this point in the story.) The owner followed my dad inside. 

" 'Do you have some pliers?'  my dad asked. 

" 'Ayuh, here you go,' the owner answered. 

" 'How about a wrench?' Dad then asked. 

" 'Ayuh.' The owner handed him a wrench. 

"  'Do you happen to have any bolts like this one?'  my dad asked holding up the bent bolt from the trailer. 

"The owner studied it for a bit, then replied, 'Well, only straight ones.' "