Travels With Becky

No snow job

True town meeting story.

The road agent put in a plea for a new snowplow. Yup, it was needed. No sense putting it off. But one old-timer had his thinking cap on. “Don't we have the same snowplow we had last year?”

“Yup.” 

“And wa’n’t last winter the winter we didn’t get any snow?”

“Yup.”

“If it was good enough last year, and we never used it, why ain’t it good enough this year?”

Motion for a new snowplow defeated.

Town meeting: The one day a year when, according to road agents, everybody thinks they’re a road agent.

Town meeting de rigueur

Sarah moved from California to retire in Unity. She was excited to attend her first town meeting, but surprised to see tables laden with food and drink at the back of the hall – at 9 a.m. “Who’s going to eat all that food,” she wondered. She thought the meeting would last maybe an hour.

Six hours later she, herself, had consumed quite a lot of that food and the tables were looking empty.

Speaking of Unity – I heard this story in Plainfield. Martha and Enoch were in their 70s when they tied the knot. The preacher read the vows, “Repeat after me. I, Enoch, vow to live with Martha in peace and unity.”

Enoch says: “I’ll agree to live in peace but damned if I’ll live in Unity.”

Many people have told me that upon attending their first town meetings they were surprised at, let’s call it, the heat of discourse – neighbors yelling at neighbors, the occasional “Shall we settle this outside?!!” It takes three or four town meetings for them to realize this is not the exception but the rule. Hey, it’s spring. Almost. We've been cooped up all winter. What better place to let off just a little steam and call it communication?

Gordie walks in late to town meeting. There’s a fellow at the mic with a Stetson.  Gordie pokes his buddy Sam. “What’s up with the cowboy?”

Sam says: “He’s been talking for 10 minutes.”

Gordie says: “What’s he talking about?”

Sam says: “He ain’t said yet.”

A few from you

Thanks for the comments and e-mails you’re sending in. Nothing much tickles me more! 

James Cummings offered this dry response to “How you doing?”
“I’m fine as long as you don’t want the details.”

In the Town Meeting language department “Oldeman” cited, “We’ll take it under advisement,”  and translated it as “You’ll get a reply when hell freezes over.”

Ain’t it the truth?

A fellow in Goshen told the following story. It’s a beaut.

The Slippery Hill

    My wife and I had been driving for eight hours to get to her folk’s home in Acworth, much of the way through a big snowstorm.  Finally, we got to within two miles of the house on Charlestown Road and breathed sighs of relief – almost there. Started up the big hill and the car began to slip and slide and then to a halt. She just wouldn’t go anymore. Hill too steep and slippery. So I got out to push and told my wife to gun it. After much grunting, groaning and strain, I finally managed to push hard enough for the car to go and the wife took off up the hill.

    Then I saw the brake lights. She’d stopped fifty yards ahead – so I could get back in. She didn’t want to leave me behind. Now the car was stuck again. So I trudged up to do some more pushing. Put my shoulder to the trunk and really put my back into it.

    In the midst of this debacle, my mother-in-law came spinning up the hill in a four-wheel-drive. Didn’t recognize us. Drove right on by.

Land o' Goshen

John Rule and I took the windy and frost-heaved 103 through the woods of the Heart of Darkness to beautiful downtown Goshen to tell stories and hear some.

My friend Art the Ridgerunner recalled the saying: “Goshen, not by the ocean.”  But locals tell me there is now a Goshen Ocean, aka Gunnison Lake, born in 1983, manmade, that is. Go here and click on the "articles" section for pictures and an article by Jane White on the Goshen Ocean, which looks to me like fine pickerel fishing.

We gathered at Town Hall and swapped lies, among them, this tale of cultural differences. “Paul” from the Midwest married into New England. He and his wife were visiting Mount Holly, Vt., checking out wood stoves. They parked on the main street and walked to the wood stove store, but alas it was closed. As they returned to the sidewalk, a local said, “Do you have a good battery?”

Being a Midwesterner, Paul waxed friendly. He sure did, and jumper cables too, if the  local needed a jump.

“No,” the local said, “you left your lights on.”

Here’s a picture of some of the cheery folks from Goshen. They’re not letting this long winter get them down. The lady in the red checked flannel is my friend Ellen. She wore flannel special for the occasion and brought a mooselook warbler with her in case I told my mooselook warbler story, which I did, just for her.

How you doing?

Don Dollard of Auburn sent this old saying that strikes me as Yankee to the core. It answers the question, “How you doing?”

“If I felt any better, I couldn’t stand it.”

Kind of goes along with the saying: “The maple sugaring season wasn’t as good as expected.  Then again, we didn’t think it would be.”

Or, as the woman in the wheelchair at the assisted living facility said to me when I asked how she was doing: “Can’t complain. Nobody listens.”

Oh, and what about:  

“How you doing, Elwood?”  

“Right side of the grass.”

It’s good to be on the right side of the grass. If we had any grass in this time of year. 

Breaking news though, my Christmas cactus is in bloom.  About time.

One more response to “How you doing?”  This from my friend Stanley.

“How you doing, Stanley?”

“Pretty good, considering what I been through.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

“Well, the last thing was a set of stairs.”