Why I love my job, such as it is.
Nancy Dodge, the Cemetery Lady of Stewartstown, sent this story out of the blue, and the Great New Hampshire North. She prefaces it with: “These are all real people and I’m using their real names, or I’d get mixed up.” Me, too. If I try to change names, I get muddled. Here ‘tis. A Vermont story:
"Great Aunt Iva and Uncle Hub lived in Canaan, Vt. Uncle Hub was an engineer for the Grand Trunk and Aunt Iva was a homebody. Uncle Hub did 'the loop' up here – Beecher Falls to Island Pond to Stratford and back, and I have fond childhood memories of him taking me in the engine with him on the loop. (I'm sure it wasn't kosher for him to do that, but I was – and am – a train lover.)
"Hub loved venison. Iva didn't, and didn't like to cook it, either, but when Hub asked for it she did it. Somewhere along the way, he stopped asking for venison, and in fear of reminding him about it, Iva never asked why.
"The mystery was solved YEARS later: There was an old fellow named Malcolm, a friend of mine, who lived up on a hill in Bloomfield and had no car. Apparently once in a while he'd decide he wanted to get to town, and he'd go down and stand by the tracks and Uncle Hub would pick him up. Back in those days they had a little coal-fired potbellied stove to warm the engineer, and Malcolm used to pass Hub a paper bag as his "fare.” In the bag was venison, which they'd cook on the stove en route.
"And THAT's why Iva never got asked to cook venison again.
"Uncle Hub was long gone before I heard about Malcolm's bag, and Iva was ancient, but she laughed so hard she almost cried.
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