Travels With Becky

Some good stuff

Family story from Vermont. Carolyn said, “At our house we enjoy eating ‘stuff.’”

“Stuff?”

The family story goes like this:  Nana liked to experiment with cooking.  She mixed flour and hamburg, cooked it up and put it on Pop’s plate.  He took one look: “What’s this stuff?”

She called it stroganoff.  But since that day, any kind of mystery meal is referred to as ‘stuff.’  Some ‘stuff’ tastes better than other ‘stuff.’

Laura was reminded of her first attempt to bake lebkuken, a thin, light cookie.  The first one to bite her lebkuken nearly broke a tooth -- and her husband pronounced them suitable only for air hockey.  She’s since mastered the art of baking airy and delicious lebkuken.

Which reminded me of a family story. The first time my mother, newly married, made biscuits, my father made the mistake of saying they’d be good for skeet.  It was a long time before he got any home made biscuits again.

 

Cracking up in Vermont

Invited by the Vermont Association of Certified Public Accountants to the Hilton in Burlington, Vermont, I wondered how New Hampshire humor would translate.  Especially in light of Vermonters’ reputation for holding-back.  It’s the old Mark Twain story:  He told his funniest stories at a hall in a small Vermont town.  Nobody laughed.  He crept out the back door and sneaked around the corner of the building to hear what people said on the way out.  (Evidently Mark Twain was a masochist.)  He heard a husband say to his wife, “Wa’n’t he funny!”  “Yes,” she said.  “It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud.”

I had a similar encounter. I asked a fella, years ago, why he’d sat through two of my humor programs with his arms crossed, never cracking a smile.  “How come you never cracked a smile?” I said.  “I’m a fifth-generation Vermonter,” he said.  “We don’t.”

Upshot of this latest trip to Vermont:  Vermonters do crack smiles.  And laugh aloud, even at the end of a long day of learning C.P.A. stuff.  One C.P.A told of selling an A-frame house on his property and enlisting a local to move it to a new location down the road.  Stanley and his bulldozer were in the process of getting ‘er done -- the house moving slowly down the road to its new setting -- when a crowd gathered to watch.  Among the crowd happened to be a state trooper who inquired about permits.

Stanley, lying, told the trooper that the owner indeed had all the permits required.  The trooper said, “In that case, Stanley, I’ll take your word for it.”

Stanley said to the trooper, “That, sir, is an exercise of pretty damned good judgment.”

The house continued on its journey and soon the road was clear again.

After the stories, John Rule and I explored downtown Burlington.  What a gorgeous waterfront!  We stopped in for supper at the ice House Restaurant -- sat on a porch overlooking Lake Champlain.  Here we are enjoying delicious beverages with the lake reflected in the window behind us.  Oh -- and the food was excellent!  I had the duck.  John had cod.  Yummy yum.




Another view of the waterfront.




 

"If Rocks Could Talk" rocks

Rochester Arts Esprit “If Rocks Could Talk” is a story in itself.  The public arts exhibit runs through October.  The kickoff was on June 4, 5, and 6.  Local visual artists and poets have collaborated on pyramid-shaped sculptures incorporating rocks and stories -- in poems -- of New Hampshire.  These are spread all over downtown, a surprise on every corner.   This one (below) is called “Remnants of the Old Man,’ by artist Adam Pearson and poet Andrew Periale. The small rocks around the base were painted by school children.  I know, because I heard a couple of the children who’d spotted their own work.



But that’s not all.  I got to hear and see the Super Secret Project perform the viral (that’s a good thing -- it means a lot of people on the internet are clicking on it) Jay-Z parody “Granite State of Mind,”  a lively tribute to all things New Hampshire, from the Old Man to Adam Sandler. How the audience cheered!   

The performers posed for pictures with groupies.  Here’s me and Neil English, rock splitter, between the two members of Super Secret Project (below). Ain’t we just a-beaming?


More on Neil English, rock splitter, coming soon on this blog.  Wait for it . . . .

 

Every quilt teaches you something

It was a privilege to join the Hannah Dustin Quilters Guild for their last meeting before summer break at the Hudson Community Center. About 150 lady quilters and one male quilter gathered for guild business, show and tell, the unveiling of next year’s raffle quilt, and a luncheon. Oh -- and stories. Some things I learned:

Value makes the difference; color gets the credit.

Every quilt teaches you something.

As does, I would add, every story heard or told. Especially those heard and told.

One of my books is called The Best Revenge. Here’s a story on that line. Glennie told of working for just two weeks for a sour puss in Pelham at a diner. With the race track nearby, many patrons were winners or losers -- and in either case, tended to give young, smiling Glennie hefty tips. Sour Puss got few if any tips, but insisted all tips go into the tip jar and to be split between the two of them.

Glennie did not appreciate the unfairness of the situation. She figured over the two weeks she’d been cheated of about $30 in tips. Sour Puss’s husband ran a gas station next door. So on Glennie’s last day of employment, she had him fill her tank. Then asked him to check the oil. When he came back to collect the money, she rolled her window down a crack, said, “Leo, get the money from your wife!” and drove away.

She’s still laughing 50 years later.

During a break in the festivities, the ladies chatted. Look closely at the hats, quilted bags, quilted accessories -- and the beautiful blue and white quilt set to be raffled off as a fundraiser. This was a fabric fiesta! (I hope they invite me back again, hint, hint.)

Lessons learned from artistic journeys

The conference Follow the Passion held at Kearsarge Regional High School in North Sutton featured one of my favorite poets, Wesley McNair (author of The Ghosts of You and Me among many other books), and an amazing writer/dancer/quilter/philosopher, Katherine Ferrier (www.katherineferrier.net).  Wes and Katherine each gave talks -- with Powerpoint slides and, in Katherine’s case, dances -- about their artistic journeys.  Then they talked to each other. (I sat in the middle “facilitating,” which mainly meant nodding and turning my head to listen to one or the other.)

Among those things I learned:

From Wes:
Artists live their lives outside the social mainstream. (Tell me about it!)
Day dreams and a stubborn streak are assets.
We learn from failure.
Writers are menders of broken things.
Writing heals.
If I can tell you my story, I can tell it to myself.

From Katherine:
Pauses matter.  As do absences.
Patience is a practice.
Paying attention changes the something and it changes you.
Notice what you notice. Notice how you notice. Notice that you are noticing.

And:  BEGIN ANYWHERE!

Thanks to Catherine O’Brian and Frumie Selchen for organizing this conference, sponsored by the NH State Council on the Arts.  It was a winnah.  

Here’s a picture of Wesley McNair (right) with his old friend Jody Wells, also a poet, enjoying their bagged lunches.
 

Some big pants indeed

Among the many wonders displayed at the Meredith Historical Society Museum, Caleb Towle’s trousers take center stage.  A sign explaining the significance of the pants reads:

Caleb Towle’s (1767-1822) home made pants of homespun with a waist of 67 inches.  Probably dyed with butternut stain which ran in recent washings.

The pants came from the Towle homestead (on Rte 25 N), when Caleb’s great great grandson John Tuttle lived there.  John Tuttle died in 1927.  

Some big pants!

 

Kids will be kids

On the subject of What’s the Matter With Kids Today, kids is kids and always have been.  A retired teacher -- fifth grade, I think -- taught in an old building with big windows.  It was a hot day, and the windows wide open.  Jake bet Louis he wouldn’t jump out the window.  A second story window.

Louis jumped.  Landed on an overhang jutting out from the first floor, unhurt.  “Damn,” Jake said.  “That’s gonna cost me a quarter.”

 

Childhood memories

At the Androscoggin Valley Retired Teachers Association Meeting, held at the Town & Country Inn in Gorham, I met some lovely people and heard some delightful stories.

Virginia Flint, retired first grade teacher, recalled the Hurricane of 1938.  She was in college at Keene State during the big blow.  On the Napian Way, all the big beautiful elm trees blew over.  The college was without electricity or water, so the students were told go get home the best way they could.  Virginia and some other students found their way to Concord in a bread truck -- where her parents picked her up and fetched her home to Franklin.

Virginia has a great memory.  It’s funny what things stick with you from childhood.  She remembered taking the trolley to Manchester -- the big city.  Her father, who was deaf, preceded her through a revolving door.  She’d never seen a revolving door before and “didn’t dare go in.”  She saw her father walking away and “set up a howl”  on the street.  He may not have heard her, but eventually noticed that a little someone was not at his heel and returned for her. 

A vivid memory from her teaching:  The janitor popped his head into the classroom and said, “Watch out. A pipe has broken and there’s a puddle on the floor in the hallway.”

One of the first graders asked, just as nice, “Mrs. Flint, could we go and see the puddle?  I’ve never seen a puddle on the floor before.”

She said the children could go, if they were very quiet and didn’t bother anyone.  So out they marched.  Stood around the puddle.  Looked it over.  And were satisfied.

I love that story.  Not sure why, but I love it.

 

Can you eat a mortgage?

I stumbled across this story in the archives.  It was told to me several years ago by Bob Ramsay of Alexandria, a fine raconteur. Seems dairy farmer Augustus “Gus”  Cheney took a mortgage out on a heifer for $10 from his neighbor Joel Gray, lived up on the hill.   Some time passed and one day old Joel came down by Gus’s farm.  He said “Gus, you owe me $10 on that mortgage on that white-faced heifer.  Gus said: “Ha, I done fooled you.  I et that heifer.”

Joel reached his big farmer handed into the chest pocket of his overalls and pulled out a little paper.  He said, ”Ha! But you didn’t et the mortgage.”