Travels With Becky

Laughs in Langdon

In Langdon we talked about our favorite names.  I said my favorite river name was the Cockermouth and my favorite town name in NH was Effingham.  Someone said they particularly liked the name Athol, Massachusetts, which she pronounced very carefully:  Ath-hole.

It was my great pleasure, in Langdon, to meet Royal “Bucket” Holmes and his family and to hear some family stories.

Bucket told this town meeting story as told to him about his own grandfather -- a story that took place in the very hall where we were gathered.

It seems Grampa was moderator at that time and there happened to be a very pressing matter -- the substance of which has been lost to history.  The town was evenly divided on this pressing matter, so proponents of one side went out of their way to collect “Charlie”  and bring him into town to get his vote.  “Charlie” was not too sharp. In fact he needed help filling out his voting card, so a local helped him with the filling out part.  After the vote, the local said to Grampa, the moderator, “Don’t you bother giving him a ride home!”

This beautiful quilt celebrating the architecture of Langdon hangs in the meeting house.  

Priorities

Drove almost two hours through the winding roads of four counties -- Rockingham, Merrimack, Cheshire and Sullivan -- to find Langdon,  a town I don’t believe I ever visited before. It’s snuggled in between Charlestown and Walpole, and, as you can see from the pictures, most everybody in town (population around 600) turned out for the social, raffle, and stories sponsored by the Heritage Commission and NH Humanities Council.

After that long drive to the historic meeting house, where 217 consecutive town meetings have been held (a New Hampshire and possibly a New England Record), I asked where the bathroom was.  They pointed me to a portapotty in the back and explained:  “This is one reason we’re raising money to renovate the meeting house.”

This is a true story from Langdon, told to me by Doug, who hardly ever lies.  When I retell this story, I’ll call it “Priorities.”

Doug happened upon the scene of a car accident one evening about 10 p.m.  He saw that a Ford Escort was upside down in the ditch.  He stopped to help and a guy “who always went to grange meetings” was inside.  “Are you OK?”

"Nope. My shoulder’s hurting real bad.”

Sure enough, the police arrived and the ambulance, just after the granger managed to get himself out of the car.  He said to Doug, “Would you do me a favor?”

"Sure.”

“There’s a watermelon in the back -- would you get it out for me?”

“Sure.”

Doug managed to get the back door open and reached into the back seat of the upside down car when he heard a voice:  “Hello?”

It was the granger’s wife. Still in car, and upside down, too.

Moose, anyone?

Now that I have in my possession a large moose antler, I’ve been bringing it with me to performances.  (It’s about three times the size of my other moose antler -- really impressive.)  Took it to the NH Writers’ Project Writers Day at Southern New Hampshire University.  Took it to a performance at the Manchester City Library.  And to one at town hall in Warner.  Discovered when you walk around with a moose antler under your arm, people notice.  One fellow wanted to know if it was real? (It is.) 

Many people wanted to touch it and heft it (I let them.)  My favorite was when Carla -- from away, I think Australia -- asked if the antlers fall off (No, I said, I ripped it from the side of the moose’s head).   

Naturally, the antler prompts stories, including the one in Warner about a relative who was driving down a logging road, saw a moose in the road ahead but assumed it was passing through and didn’t apply the brakes.  The moose never moved.  By the time the relative realized the moose was going nowhere and braked, he was a little late.  The car slowed but skidded on the gravel and the bumper caught the moose behind the knee.   

Course, when anybody’s stuck behind the knee, they kind of fold up.  Which is what the moose did.  He folded into a sitting position on the hood of the car.  The moose walked away, but the car was scrunched. And the relative had to hike miles back to civilization. 

Hey, at least he got a good story out of the deal. 

Any close encounters of the moose kind?  I’d love to hear the story to add to my collection.  Comment below or e-mail me at [email protected] or [email protected].  

Having a ball

Here's a story from Andy McEvoy about a friend of his. He recalled playing a game with his three sons.  They took turns kicking the football over the roof of the house to him, and he kicked it back.  When he tired of the game, he hid the ball.  The boys complained:  “Kick it back, Dad!”

“I did,” he said.  “I must have kicked it so hard it never landed.”

Later, on a trip to Nantucket, he hid the ball in his in-laws back yard.  The boys discovered it -- and were puzzled.  Dad said, “I told you that was one hell of a kick!”  

Remember to look behind you

I met Andy and Valerie McEvoy in Warner during a story session and we sat a while at the coffee shop across the road from Town Hall to continue swapping stories, just the three of us.

When their two children, Annie and Allison, were small, and Andy and Valerie were in good shape, they decided to get into even better shape by riding bicycles to the White Mountains.  The girls rode in kiddy seats.  The bikes were 3-speed.  The little family set out on an adventure.  

When they got to Boscawen, there were surprised to see people lining the sidewalks.  The further they road, the more people were along the road, waving to them. Strange, they thought, until the heard the band behind them.  They were leading the Bicentennial Parade!  

Resting in Rye

At the Manchester Public Library on Tax Day -- as the Tea Partiers partied on in the park across the street (making parking a wee bit tricky), I got reacquainted with Betty Parnell, who retold a story she’d told me a couple years ago. They’re always better the second time around.

When her father died, Betty and her sister wanted to give him a burial at sea, but when the Navy didn’t cooperate, they took a road trip to New Hampshire. They walked out on the pier (as the tide was going out -- they didn’t want Daddy coming back), and scattered his ashes in the Atlantic.

Afterwards, it struck them both how appropriate his final resting place really was, the ocean at Rye Harbor, since in his lifetime, he’d drunk “an ocean of Rye.”

The Berlin dictionary

Rachelle Beaudoin of Berlin, an amazing teacher, artist and writer, attended Crosscut at the Concord City Auditorium -- which, by the way, was sponsored by the Walker Lecture Series, ongoing since the 1890s. All lectures in the series are free to the public.  More than 500 people attended Crosscut (that’s a lot).  I didn’t even recognize some of them.

During the after-show discussion, Rachelle presented me with a signed copy of The Berlin Dictionary -- which she edited and illustrated.  She collected words from locals for this “participatory dictionary.”  There may be a second edition and she invites new words at [email protected].  You can order the book through Lulu and Amazon. It’s also being sold in the North Country.  You can become a fan of The Berlin Dictionary on Facebook.

I love it!  It tells the story of a culture through words and phrases.  For example:

UBCU Jacket (Noun): A blue wind breaker jacket that was given away for free to members of the United Brotherhood Credit Union.  The item quickly became the most popular article of clothing and could be seen anywhere and everywhere since it is wrong to turn down a free jacket.

“We looked out at the church to a sea of blue; nearly 95 percent of the congregation was wearing a UBCU Jacket.”

“Mike wore his UBCU Jacket every day for three years.”

Question:  Does anyone recall specifics of the Lumberjack Parades?  Someone at the program mentioned that these were once a highlight of the year in Berlin.  I’d love to know more. 

There's something in the air

At the Concord City Auditorium, my show Crosscut: Stories of the Mills, Logging and Life Along the Androscoggin generated loads of discussion. In fact, the audience stories and observations lasted almost as long as the show itself.  My husband, John Rule, projected vintage photos and photos of the folks I interviewed for the piece.  And, guess what, contrary to my expectations, the bulb on the projector didn’t blow!  All went well.

Among the observations, one wry audience member said: “They used to say you can always tell a man from Groveton.  He’s the one with nine fingers.”

Groveton was also a mill town until recently.

A man recalled playing basketball for Berlin High School.  "When we went to away games, fans of the opposing team would hold their noses as we walked into the gym," he said.  For years, he thought they were commenting on his team’s basketball skills, as in, “You stink.”  It was only after he moved away, then returned to town for a visit, that he realized they actually did stink.

True Berliners got so used to the smell that settled on their clothes (and, another person said, even on the money in their wallets) they didn’t smell it.  Little did they know, others could.

In the small surrounding towns, they used to say, “We know when a storm’s coming.  We can smell Berlin.”

Here’s one of my favorite photos from the show.  To see others go to beyondbrownpaper.plymouth.edu. The Plymouth State University library has thousands of pictures from the Brown Company and Berlin Mills in an interactive Web site.

Revenge

Johnny could find only one shoe.  He couldn’t go to kindergarten with just one shoe.  Mother said, “You better get looking.”  He looked and looked.

After a long time, he came to the kitchen, distraught:  “I’ve looked everywhere!”

His little sister, Mary Beth, said:  “Bet you didn’t look in the oven.”
 

Nothin’ Special

Barbara Stevens remembered sending her little boy to the neighbor’s house with a casserole after the new baby came home from the hospital.  The neighbor, Bobby, gratefully accepted the food.  “Would you like to see the baby?” she asked the little boy.

“Naw,” he said, “we get a new one at our house ‘bout every year.”