Travels With Becky

Yankee logic

A woman built a house on a piece of property that included a large field. She wanted to keep the hay mowed and preserve the field, but had no use for the hay herself. She approached a neighbor with haying equipment.

“Will you hay my field?” she said.

“No,” he said. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” 

“The Hendersons been haying that field for a 100 years. It won’t do for me to take over another man’s job. Old Henderson won’t do a very good job though.”

The neighbor would not be persuaded, so the owner went to Old Henderson, and presently he hayed the field.

When she saw the neighbor again, he commented that Old Henderson had done a piss poor job, just as he’d warned her. 

She sputtered. 

He said, “It’s all right. Someone’s got to keep him busy.”

There’s some logic to this somewhere, if you don’t think too hard about it.

A genuine Rhode Island story

My pleasure to tell some lies and true-ish stories to the Past Presidents of the New England Business and Professional Women. What a crew! After a fabulous lunch at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord, we tucked into some stories. A lovely woman from Rhode Island decided I needed some Rhode Island stories (which I do). She recalled the Hurricane of 1938. She was just a little girl. She remembered the trees falling around her house and her mother herding her daughters up the hill to a nearby farm.

 “Where are you going?” a neighbor called. 

“I’m taking my daughters to safety,” Mother replied.

At the farm the farmer’s family hurried them into a spindly looking corncrib, on stilts and full of holes. But the farmer knew something they didn’t, because the farmhouse and barn were flattened; the crib was the only thing that remained standing. And all were saved.

Now that’s a story and a half. Here are a few of the past presidents after the session, all dressed up. The lady in the pink suit with the bright smile is the little girl who survived the hurricane in the corncrib all those years ago.

That'll work, too

True story out of Amherst.  A woman driving home from skiing got as far as Newport. It was dusk and the car was running on fumes.  She had exactly $7.25 on her, so she asked the gas station attendant to put just that much in the tank. This was when attendants used to pump gas for customers. The old guy pumped a little, then stepped as close as he could get to the pump and looked at the tab. Went back, pumped a little more. Put his nose to the glass on the pump and check the tab again. Back and forth, back and forth, until he’d reached $7.25.

“I’ve got problems with my eyesight,” he told the woman, “ and the bulb’s out on the flood light. Can’t read the numbers from any distance.”

“Why don’t you replace the bulb?” the woman suggested.

“No,” he said, “I think I’ll just close up shop a little earlier, while it’s still light out.”

As the wise first grade teacher once told me:  “There is no problem that cannot be solved.”  This story reminds me that a lot of times there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Good times in Greenfield

Thanks to the folks in Greenfield who brought me in for stories, a combined effort of the Women’s Club and the Historical Society, who got a grant from the N.H. Humanities Council. Here they are, some of them:

Look at those faces! So many stories in this old hall. And we threw a good many of them around. As my host said, “If these walls could talk.”

High bush blueberries were invented in Greenfield. True story. Which reminds me of the time I was walking some blueberry barrens in Maine, the low bush blueberries. I spotted two men at a distance. They were looking at the ground and working with something that appeared to be a hockey stick – or maybe a shovel. I was pretty sure they weren’t playing hockey. Thought maybe they were burying a body. But as I walked closer, I saw they weren’t digging. One of them was touching the rag-wrapped end of a pole to tall plants. Very gently. Very slowly. The other was doing the heavy looking-on. I jumped to a conclusion: There was poison in that rag. When I got close enough I said, “Killing weeds, huh?”

“Yup,” they said.

I looked the field over. Twenty or thirty acres of blueberries and weeds. Blueberries and weeds as far as the eye could see. “Gosh,” I said, “Big job.”

The one doing the heavy looking-on said: “We do our best.”

In Maine, that’s what they call a conversation.

Which way and how far?

The "Bert and I" story goes: “Which way to East Vasselboro?” the traveler asks. The native replies: “Don’t you move a goddamn inch.”

This story comes from Neal who grew up in North Vasselboro. At the barbershop the locals used to gather to “palaver,” he said. Fella from away comes in. Points down the road, “How far to Waterville this way?” The barber, not missing a beat or a clip of the scissors, says, “About 24,000 miles.”

More on rabbits

Heard this story in Milan. During the Depression a lot of people raised meat rabbits. When Grandma came to live with the family, she announced: “I’m not fussy, but one thing I will say, Don’t feed me rabbit. I will not eat rabbit.” 

On Sunday Mother would bring the steaming platter from the kitchen. “Chicken again,” she’d announce as the family tucked in.

The little girl always wondered where Mother got all those four-legged chickens.

Too cute to cook

A family story from Linda Drew Nickerson whose folks hail from Dunstable, Mass. Her dad was one of eight brothers, known as the “Drew Boys,” who grew up in town and had a reputation for being rough and tumble. “Rough tough cream puffs,” she called them. They grew into big strong men, each bigger and stronger than the next. Her dad was 6 foot 4, 240 pounds, and he was the puny one.

She recalled the time her mother was given some meat rabbits. Four of them, three boys and a girl, the giver told her. Mother asked Dad to dispatch them. He said fine, but then when he saw them, said: “Gosh, they’re awful cute.” He decided maybe his big brother Russell ought to have those meat rabbits, since Russell enjoyed rabbit pie so much.
Russell, Linda explained, had just one tooth and usually traveled with a can of beer in his pocket. So the three boys and one girl meat rabbits were passed on to big tough Russell.

Two months passed. Russell’s wife, Eleanor, informed Mother, “You cost me $500.”  Evidently, when Russell saw those meat rabbits he thought they were “awful cute.” Turns out the three boys and a girl were three girls and a boy. The $500 went to hutches and feed for the originals and their many offspring.

In Dunstable, Linda added, folks marry in alphabetical order. In school the kids sat in alphabetical rows, so the boys and girls got to know each other through the grades, and the boy married the girl in front of him or behind him, and vice versa. Worked out nice for many couples.

All in a name, I guess: The lady says, “My maiden name was Coffee and I married a Sleeper. I always said I was his wake-up call.”

Yankee mischief

In Wilton, Maureen had a bit of a rivalry with her neighbor. One might call it a Yankee feud. Nothing said, just some back and forth irritations. One day after the neighbor had hung his laundry and gone to town, Maureen took down all his underwear, sewed it together side by side, then hung it back up.

He never bothered her again.

On a friendlier front, true story, Pat’s neighbor planted his seeds neatly in rows. She sneaked over when he was gone to town, and replaced the seeds with little plants. 

Wa’n’t he surprised. Miracle seeds. He’d buy that brand from now on!

Thanks, Mr. Mack

In Amherst at the Historical Society, 72 people (we counted) turned out on a recent Monday evening for stories. Among them, Ernest Mack, who heard me talk about David Griffin of Auburn and remembered a story. He said:

“I knew David Griffin. In fact my cousin married his sister, so she was an aunt by marriage. They had two daughters, Bernice and Persis, a willing team.  Bernice was willing to do all the work, and Persis was willing to let her.”

One more from Ernest:

“There was a lawyer from Milford who was so crooked he couldn’t fall down a straight flight of stairs.” 

There’s a picture for you. Thanks Ernest, for the stories. Everybody in the room loved them. All 72 of us. 73, counting me.

Ouch

At the Newmarket construction site, the scaffolding collapsed. It was all the talk at the diner. “Yup,” says Mel, “a bunch of bricks landed on Billy Bogg’s head.”

“Oh no. That’s awful.”

“No. He had group insurance.”

And, true story, Jinny from Easton, hospitalized at Littleton Hospital, awoke in the night to find that her roommate had fallen out of bed.

So she called 911.