Travels With Becky

Now that's steep

I received an e-mail from Olive Tardiff who enjoyed reading Live Free and Eat Pie (thank you very much). Olive is the author of They Paved the Way, about notable New Hampshire women of the 18th and 19th centuries.  It’s just been re-released by Publishing Works of Exeter. Her book The Exeter Squamscott: River of Many Uses has also been republished by ERLAC, a river conservation group in Exeter.

Olive writes, “A video was recently made by a young man named Kyle Gowacky, using the ‘river book’ as a resource. It is a source of great satisfaction to have your writings serve a useful purpose, as I am sure you have found.”

She also writes: "Since I was born 93 years ago in Exeter (although I was 'away' for many years) I think I qualify as a 'NewHampsha-rite.'

"I have one story to offer for your collection. While my husband was hiking in the White Mountains (and I was acting as backup, keeping house in our VW Camper), I had occasion to go to a country store for supplies. There I found a few hangers-on near the counter gabbing with the storekeeper. As I waited, a young man, obviously a hiker with a big backpack, came in and said he was about to tackle a nearby mountain. He asked if it was very steep. 'Steep!' replied the storekeeper, 'Why, if anything it leans forward a little!' "

Which reminds me of a story I heard some years ago. Another hiker asked a local if a particular trail up the mountain to Round Pond was steep.

“Ayuh,” the local replied.  “It seemed plenty steep to me last time I climbed it. Then again, I was carrying a canoe.”

This is why I love living in N.H.

Stuck in traffic on I-89 South (accident ahead), I got the chance to photograph wildflowers in the median strip.  Aren’t they pretty?

True story: The family ran a bakery and, in summer, a baitshop. One of the kids was manning the counter. The tourist asked for a dozen crullers, and got a dozen crawlers.

Easy mistake to make.

Pecan or bust

Signed books at Innisfree Book Shop in lovely Meredith on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. (Yup, I learned how to spell it in fourth grade.) It’s part of the Mill Falls Marketplace complex: inns, spas, shops tucked together in a beautiful, walkable plaza with a waterfall in the middle of it. Check it out at www.millfalls.com. 

We saw lots of people all dressed up for a wedding. Jenny from the bookstore said the four inns all hosted weddings so they got lots of wedding party customers, sometimes even brides in gowns.

Jenny and I sat outside and caught people on their way by. Some even bought books! One couple lingered quite a while, swapping stories. Naturally, we got talking about pies. The couple loved to make pies and always provided them for family affairs. And one such affair, Grampa, who loved pecan pie, had to settle for apple. Asked if he wanted seconds, he said:  “Not if you don’t have pecan, I don’t.”  Next time they brought pecan. 

The cream-filled Twinkie

Here’s another Bill Miskoe story. Thanks, Bill!

Carlton Frazer loves junk food. He was heading to South Barnstead to work one day, and along the way bought a hot dog, a soda and a pack of cream-filled Twinkies.

After consuming the dog and part of the soda, he opened the package of Twinkies. Three of them. Two regular sized, and one really big one. He selected the big one. This was a mistake. That Twinkie was entirely oversupplied with filling. He took a bite and the damn thing just exploded. Cream-filled Twinkie spurted everywhere – in his beard, down his neck, all over his shirt front and even drizzling onto his pants. 

And it was still going, like a cream volcano.

So out the truck window it went. 

Carlton started in on damage control. He used up the paper napkins, a couple of rags and a copy of The Suncook Valley Sun. Just about the time he thought he might be presentable enough for public viewing, he heard a siren and saw blue lights behind him. He stopped.

A police officer appeared at the truck’s window and asked for the usual bits of paper, which Carlton handed over.

After the customary delay, while the officer retired to his car and did whatever officers do to keep the motorists waiting for a few sweaty minutes, Carlton was asked to step out of his truck.

“Mr. Frazer, would you please come here and take look at this?”

Carlton looked.

The windshield of the police car was totally besplattered with Cream of Twinkie.

“Do you have a bucket?” the officer asked.

Carlton did. With water from a nearby brook, the windshield was cleaned and Carlton went on his merry way. The officer admitted that this was the funniest thing that ever happened to him on patrol. 

Good thing for Carlton he had a sense of humor.

Speaking of remains

A friend of mine stopped by after having picked her father’s ashes up at the funeral home. 

She asked if I’d like to see them. I said I would.

As she brought the little box through the door, she said: “I just realized. Dad has never been to your house before.”

The remains of Ralph Russell

Bill Miskoe sent me a few true stories he likes to tell. They are keepers! Here’s the blog-shortened version of his tale called:

The Remains of Ralph Russell

"In the late 1990’s the last of the family still living in New Hampshire was Ralph Russell, called Great Uncle Ralph, an accomplished and independent old guy. When age and illness began to chip away at him, Ralph and his family agreed that when he went he’d be cremated within a day, avoiding embalming and viewing and all that stuff. His ashes would be dispersed about the family homestead in West Franklin, known as The Old Place, at the next annual family reunion.

"But none of the family lived anywhere near Franklin, where Ralph died in November, so I agreed to collect the ashes and keep them until the next summer. 

"I got a call from a man at a crematory who asked if I would come over and pick up 'The Remains of Ralph Russell.' Told him I would, and, with an image of a coffin-sized, but a bit toasted, concrete burial vault in mind, asked what size truck I needed to bring.

"After he stopped laughing, he said I could come in any truck I wanted, but that ‘The Remains of Ralph Russell’ would easily sit on the seat beside me.

"Sure enough 'The Remains of Ralph Russell' came packaged in a six-inch cardboard cube.

"I thought about bringing the box up to my house in Bow, but realized that I might not be home when family came to collect Ralph. So I put him in the top drawer of an old wooden file cabinet in my metal shop office, figuring if someone came while I was gone, they could get the box from the fellows who worked with me. Neglected, however, to tell Rick and JR what I had arranged.

"The day came when I was, indeed, away. Got a call on my cellulite phone: 

“ 'This is Rick. There’s a woman here who wants the Remains of Ralph Russell.'

“ 'Oh, yes…'

“ 'You mean there’s dead remains here?'

“ 'In the top drawer of the file cabinet.'

"When I got back to the shop, Rick had a request. He said, 'Bill, don’t never put no dead Remains of Ralph Russell around here again where me and JR work.”

"So I haven’t."

Pronouncing Portsmouth

Ruth went to college in Maine. Over spring break, she headed home to New Hampshire and invited a couple of friends from school to visit, since they lived too far away from Maine to be able to go to their own homes. She gave them directions, but they failed to appear at the appointed time. Around 10 p.m. she got a call. The friends were lost. They couldn’t even find Port Smith on a map.

Ruth lived in Portsmouth.

In a related story, Tony from Dunbarton and his wife were in the back of a plane on a vacation trip. A man in a suit with a distinct military look about him – buff, burly, close-cropped hair – sat near them. “I bet he’s the air marshal,” Tony whispered to his wife.  

Tony then struck up a conversation with the fellow, who turned out to be not too chatty. “We’re from New Hampshire,” Tony told the man. “Where are you from?”

“I’m from New Hampshire, too,” the man said.

“Whereabouts?”

 “Ports - mouth.”

 Busted.

Who knew Portsmouth was so hard to pronounce? And what about that river that separates, New Hampshire and Maine at Portsmouth: The Piss-cah-TAH-qua, as the tourists pronounce it.

Or, my husband just remembered this story from his friend Marty, a Vista volunteer in Fort Kent, Maine, years ago. The people from away asked the way to Press-cue Is-lee. (That’s Presque Isle to some of us.)

Not her turn

Edith was a retired librarian from Wilmot. At 90 years, she old was still driving and was known around town as a “terror on the road.”  

Edith's friend Helen caught a ride with her one day. As they approached the yield sign, Edith going along at a good clip, Helen spotted a car approaching the intersection, also at a good clip. Instead of yielding, Edith kept a-going. 

“Edith, Edith,” Helen yelled, “yield!”

“No,” Edith said.  “I yielded last time!”

After that, Helen and friends referred to that intersection as “Edith’s Alternate Yield.”

Taking care of business

Donna’s neighbor had a golden retriever named Angus. Donna had a terrier named Mickey. Every morning, when Donna was having her coffee about 7:30, through the window, she’d see Angus on her lawn doing his early morning business. Every morning! This went on for years, but, in good Yankee fashion, she never mentioned Angus’s annoying habit to her neighbor.

One day, though, they met in town, and the neighbor said to Donna: “You know, I never mentioned this before, but for years your dog Mickey has been sneaking over to my house and doing his morning business on my lawn.”

Donna said, “I guess we’re even.”

Awww, Woofy

At the Masonic Hall in Potter Place (a suburb of metropolitan Andover), Gracia remembered Woofy, the youngest of seven children, who as a toddler didn’t speak. Just didn’t speak. His folks wondered if there might be something wrong with the little fella. Maybe, though, he didn’t talk because the other kids talked so much and spoke for him.

One day, when the other six kids were in school, Woofy’s mother was stoking the cookstove. She put in some small wood and got that going. Then tried to put a big piece on top. Didn’t fit. She lifted one cast iron lid and tried to shove it in. Then another. Tried different angles. Meanwhile, the small wood started shooting flames and the big wood was wedged stuck, the flames flaring around it and smoke billowing.

Woofy, from his little chair in the corner, said:  “T’won’t go, Ma. Too goddamn big.”