Travels With Becky

Daring deacon

Yankee humor sometimes gets a little bit, you know, spicy. 

I heard this one from a Congregationalist, of all things!

The deacon from Errol, a bachelor, caught the train for Boston in Berlin. His friend saw him off.  

“What’s in your pocket?” the friend said.

The deacon turned a little red. “It’s a bottle of perfume. I heard there’s some pretty women in Boston.”

“What else?” the friend asked.  

The deacon pulled out a Bible and explained, “If it’s true about the pretty women, I might stay through Sunday.”

Written in stone

At White Mountain Community College in Berlin, the stories were like grapes on the vine – ripe for picking. Thanks to many of my old friends, who I met while working on the Telling Our Stories Project in 2007-8, for coming out on a cold drizzly night.

Here’s a story of Yankee practicality and sense of mortality:

Mother was 94 when she died.  Several years earlier, in 1999, she was in her rocking chair on a sunny afternoon. She announced, “I’m gong to die this year.”

“Mother!  Why would you say that?”

“I have to, the 19 is already engraved on my stone.”

In fact, Mother lived until 2005. The 19 was smoothed away and the 20 put in its place. So Mother needn’t have worried.

Speaking of Yankee practicality ...

Old Rufus was checking out. It was his time. His wife, Miriam, asked if there was anything she could get him to make his last days or hours on earth a little more pleasant.

“Miriam,” he said, “I crave tomato juice. If I could have a drink of tomato juice, that would be nice.”

Miriam hurried down to the general store. This was in wartime, so not everything was handy by and in stock the way it is now. She said to the storekeeper, “Clarence, do you have any tomato juice. Rufus is asking for tomato juice.”

“I do,” he said. “I’ve got one gallon left.”

“A gallon?” she asked.

“Yes, Miriam,” he said, “I can sell you this gallon jug.”

She thought it over. “Never mind,” she said. “He’s not going to last long enough to drink a gallon.”

Special delivery

At the Promises To Keep conference center in Derry, I had a great time swapping stories with members of the seniors group from the First Congregational Church of Manchester, including Russ Gagnon and Dick Jarvis. And enjoyed a delicious roast pork lunch, too. Don’t remember who told this story, but it’s a classic:

Becky (not me) and Hiram lived at the end of the road in Weare. When Becky got ready to deliver her first child, Hiram ran to fetch Dr. Backus, and they got back in the nick of time.  Naturally, this would happen during an ice storm, so the electricity was out. Dr. Backus was unruffled. He told Hiram to boil water, which Hiram did on the wood stove. He told Hiram to bring the oil lamp, which Hiram dutifully did.

Skipping to the good part, Dr. Backus said, “Hiram, look here. It’s a beautiful baby girl.”

Hiram leaned in closer with the oil lamp. Sure enough.

“Wait a minute,” Doc says. “Here comes another! It’s a boy.”

Hiram leaned in closer with the lamp. Sure enough. “Look, Becky, we got twins.”

Becky says, “AAAAARGH.”

Doc says, “Oh my gosh, it’s another baby girl.”

Hiram says, “I’m putting out the light.”

“Why?” Doc says.

“I think it’s attracting the little buggers.”

Doggone part in the play

The 6-year-old tried out for the Christmas play at church. Grampa took him to the try-out in the church basement.

When they got in the car to go home, Trevor was all excited. “I got a part Grampa! And it’s a great part!”

“What is it?” Grampa said.

“I’m going to be a dog.”

“A dog?”

“Yup.”

Turns out, as Grampa eventually figured out, Trevor was playing a shepherd.

True story.

RIP Mr. Pillow

Mimi Lisbon sent an e-mail recalling a sightseeing visit to a cemetery in Hebron that yielded more humor than you’d expect in a cemetery. Here ‘tis.

"For many years I worked for AARP and served the Rumney/Hebron/Groton area of New Hampshire among others. One of my favorite things to do in between business appointments at those rural sites, was to "kill time" and visit the local church cemeteries and read the inscriptions. So much history, so many questions? New Hampshire cemeteries yield some unexpected surprises!

"So, I was wandering the rows of stones behind the church in Hebron one sunny afternoon when I was joined by a local member of the historic society. We chatted, and learning of my curiosity about local history, he guided me to a commemorative stone which read "Here lies ... the Pillow of the Community.”

"I wish the heck I could remember the name, but this is what my young companion told me. Seems this fella, this 'pillow of the community,' had a way with the women. In particular he became enamored of the local stonemason's wife! This did not sit well with the stonemason, but being a patient man, he bade his time to get his revenge!

So, as it turned out,  the "pillow" of the community is not a misspelled word after all!   

AND, if you take a closer look, as my guide suggested I do, it's amazing how many ladies are buried close by, all sort of cozied up to the pillow, if you get the picture?   

Dontcha have to wonder who got the last laugh?"

A native, or not?

Visited gorgeous Monroe on the Connecticut River for stories at the town hall. It’s a town of about 800 souls and 90 of them showed up to swap stories. (Well, maybe there were a few outta-towners.) 

It was a rollicking evening and the baked goods plentiful. Here’s a roadside view. Those mountains are in Vermont, but the tiny deer you can barely see grazing in the field are New Hampshire natives. There were twelve of them!

 

Eileen Brown shot me an e-mail a couple of days later. In previous blogs we’ve discussed native status, the pride we take in it, and the technicalities associated with it. (If your mother gave birth in a hospital in Vermont, but she and your dad were living in Monroe at the time, are you still a native? Yes. Just about.)  Elaine got a lesson in nativity at the Monroe Harvest Festival. 

Read on:

"Becky, being from New Jersey – I am not really entitled to tell a NH story, but it did strike me as classic! 

"We had a parade for our Harvest Festival on Saturday morning, and our Grand Marshall was Bernice Blake, Monroe's oldest living citizen. Even though she is currently living in the Grafton County Nursing Home, there she was, all decked out and ready to wave at the head of our parade. Now, I do not make a habit of asking women their age – especially women of a certain age – but seeing as I was going to write the notes for our parade announcer, I thought we should know just how old our oldest citizen was. Turns out, she is 95 and a half. I was very pleased to meet her.   

"Immediately after the parade, I was introduced to Les Ward. Les is the founder of Pete & Gerry's Organic Egg Farm here in town, and his daughter Carol Laflamme, had brought him down to judge the parade. It was quite an honor to meet him. Carol happened to mention that Les was the oldest living citizen in Monroe. Confused, I mentioned I'd just met a woman called Bernice Blake who claimed to be the oldest living citizen. She was 95 and a half, I said, and how old was Les? (It's not quite as bad to ask a man his age, I think, as a woman.)   'I'm 92,' he said proudly. That Blake woman, he said, was not 'native born.' He meant in Monroe. Apparently up here being native born isn't just about New Hampshire born. You have to be TOWN born, too!"  

Darned right.

Jack Russell tales

At the beautifully appointed and restored Peterborough Community Theater, we got to talking about balls. And Michelle Hernandez told about the fox that snuck into her back yard, grabbed the red ball belonging to her Jack Russell terrier and run off with it. Who did that fox think was going to throw the ball for him?  

Another lady told on her Jack Russell terrier. The high-energy boy called Andy Masterson got nosing through the laundry she was sorting. She doesn’t know how he managed it, but he ended up wearing her bra – and couldn’t get it off without help.

How ignominious.

Posted: No hunting

Art Slade gave me this story about why he doesn’t hunt. Never has.

“Great-grandfather gave Grampa a gun for his 12th birthday or so. Grampa went to try it out so as to be a ‘sport’ like Great-grandfather – one of those city types who, in Victorian times, loved to hunt and kill, kill and hunt. Not much was safe when Great-grandfather was in the woods.

“Grampa aimed the gun at a squirrel and blew him to kingdom come, a bloody mess, then spent the afternoon crying over what he had done. (In his distress) he accidently dropped the gun off a cliff, ruining it.

"Great-grandfather was wild. He swore he would never buy his son another gun. So no gun, no hunting has been the rule in the family since that day.

“The squirrel died but (his sacrifice) saved much wildlife, including fish. The family motto is: ‘No hunting. No fishing.' "

'Charlie's helping me out'

Suggestions continue to come in for my new book on New Hampshire-speak. Art Slade suggested the expression “Charlie’s helping me out,” which means receiving aid from an unexpected or unusual source.
 
Here’s the story behind it: In Georges Mills, the storekeeper was surprised when a local widow turned up with the best rhubarb he’d ever seen for barter. When he asked where she’d gotten it, she said, “Charlie’s helping me out.”  Which was strange, because her husband, Charlie, had been dead several years. She added, “Charlie’s family will be helping me soon.”  

Sure enough, when the curious storekeeper put two-and-two together and checked out Edith’s family graveyard, he found the rhubarb growing on Charlie’s grave, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries growing on the others.