Travels With Becky

Dead-eye Elmer

Dick Wakefield told this story -- of long ago -- about a buddy of his dad’s whom we’ll call Elmer Berry.

Hunting Ossipee Mountain, Elmer came upon a hemlock blow down.  A doe looked at him over the top. He fired and she went out of sight.  Elmer lit a cigarette -- knowing it wasn’t a good idea to rush right over in case the dead wasn’t dead yet.  

He looked again -- there she was, just staring at him.  He fired a second time.  He said, “I calculated I was reasonable close.”

Sure enough, she pops her head up again. This time he leans against a tree for stability -- fires -- and sees the hair flying.

He makes his way to the blow down, where he finds . . . three dead does.

How thin do you like it sliced?

To my delight, Dick and Sammie Wakefield shared stories with my husband and me over lunch at Uno’s in Concord.  We were there for 2 and 1/2 hours, but the waitress didn’t seem too annoyed.  Lots of stories. Lots of laughing. We started by talking about Dick’s experiences in town government. He’d served as a library trustee for 17 years, also a moderator for school and town, and one term as selectman.  Why one term? I asked.  Well, he said, the job of selectman in Moultonboro pays $2000, gives you functional indigestion, and piles upon a person all the abuse he can handle. Which reminded me of why I lasted only one term on the school board in Northwood (in the olden days of the 1980s).  What I learned was:  I didn’t know nuthin’ and couldn’t do anything right.  A good lesson for that time of my life, as it turned out. 

‘Nough said on that subject.

As moderator, Dick said, “My job is to extract from the group indicative of what the group wants that will stand up to legal challenges.”  Simple enough -- in theory.  I asked about his philosophy as moderator concerning how a meeting ought to go.  He said, “Let’s be nice to one another.  While it’s true that people who disagree with me are generally wrong, sometimes they’re not.”

But my favorite piece of town meeting wisdom was one Dick gleaned from Horace Richardson, who served as selectman for many terms.  Horace always said: “You have to slice something awfully thin before there aren’t two sides to it.”

Ain’t that the truth.  Going into town meeting season, it would serve us all well to keep that thin slice in mind.

Let the wild rumpus begin!

Yankee Frugality Tests the Law

At the Cornerhouse Inn in Center Sandwich -- where most every Thursday is a storytelling night -- I told some stories and heard some.  One fellow told of being new in a family and new to New Hampshire, when his new father-in-law sent him to the gas station to pick up a gallon of gas for the lawn mover.  

The son-in-law was dubious. Dad-in-law handed him a red, one-gallon container, but it wasn’t a gas can, it was a maple syrup jug painted red.  At the gas station, the son-in-law explained to the old-timer who ran the place that although this was the container he’d been given, he wasn’t sure it was legal. The old-time took the red maple-syrup jug to the pump. The old-timer filled the jug. The son-in-law explained that his father-in-law was quite frugal, like most Yankees he guessed.  

The old-timer said, “Ayuh.”

And that was the end of that conversation.

All the news that's fit to print

Overheard at Friendly’s in Concord by a woman new to New Hampshire:

First Yankee: “I see Ezra Bartlett got his name in the paper.”

Second Yankee:  “Oh, yuh. What for?”

First Yankee:  “He died.”

What to Do About Snow

The man from Massachusetts told about James Curley, a former Boston mayor known for his fiscal conservatism.  As for snow removal in the city, Mayor Curley took this stance:  “The lord brought it and the lord can take it away.”

The Definition of Overkill

Don told the story of Robin the logger, who worked with Don’s brother, a forester.  Robin was a big strong guy, over six feet tall and 300 pounds.  He meant well but he was hard on equipment.  Each day, Robin would leave his bag lunch on the seat of the truck while he worked for consumption later.  

One day a mouse got into the truck and was seen eating Robin’s lunch.  The forester said, “Robin, don’t leave your lunch in the truck.  Mice’ll get in there and the next thing you know they’ll be chewing the wires.”

Robin meant well, but he forgot.  Left his lunch in the truck, and when he went to grab it, the mouse was in the bag.  Before Robin could grab the mouse, the mouse ran off.  Robin vowed to get the little bugger (only he didn’t say little bugger).   

Later that afternoon, Robin was running the crane and he spotted the mouse sitting on top of a pile of logs, looking proud of himself.  Robin grabbed a claw full of logs, swung them around, dropped them on the mouse.

But the mouse ran off.  Again.

Some say the mouse was smarter than Robin.  Some say dropping a claw load of logs on a mouse is the definition of overkill.

Six of One

Crosby told the story of taking his car to Danny Jones, the local mechanic.  His blinker wasn’t blinking right.  Danny determined that the wires were being chewed by mice and recommended a coating of rat poison.  Turns out, the main ingredient in the rat poison was a minor ingredient in Crosby’s wife’s blood clot medicine.

Danny says, “If your wife starts chewing on the wires, you’ll know you made a mistake.”

Never Know When You Might Need an Extra

Heather Pike sent a story about her mom. It confirms that we are who we are from beginning to end. And in the tradition of Yankee humor, it’s both morbid and funny.   Heather describes her mom as “old school French Canadian from Manchester.” (My husband has a few of those old school French Canadians in my family -- so I know what she’s talking about.)  She was a pack rat with “a sense of duty like nobody’s business.”  Every nook, cranny, cupboard, drawer in her house was stuffed with “eyeglasses from us kids from the 60s and 70s and old staplers and recipes, twenty year old seed packets, soap out of the package so it would dry out and last longer, and socks with holes, and crafts and candles and flashlights, mismatched knitting needles and pruning shears, minutes from various meetings, market bulletins and cut out pages from a horticultural magazine when that magazine was a beefy tome of wisdom and meant to last . . . I bet you know exactly how it was. Clean and full to the gills of stuff from a life.”

I do know exactly how it was. My parents' house is the same.  I call it the cave.  And have been known to refer to them as hobbits.  If they don’t have two or three of something (anything), they don’t have enough. One or two of the thing might break or be lost, and then where would they be?

Heather continues: 

Mom spent her last two winters in Florida with her sister. She had cancer and  finally it got the best of her and she came home to die.  Her sister flew up here and had to go home that night by plane.  My mom hadn’t spoken to anyone in a day of just lying in her bed in a sleep and with a lot of heavy duty pain killers the hospice brings. 

So we are all sitting around her bed in a vigil and a state of numb shock and Aunt Nadine stuck her head in the door and said, “Kids, I need to get up early for the flight. Do you know where there is an alarm clock?”

We all started murmuring amongst ourselves saying the usual kid stuff like “I imagine there is one here somewhere. I’ll go look and see. She must have one stashed around here.”  All of a sudden, my mom’s ice blue eyes flew open. She sat bolt upright in bed, and said: “In the night stand at the end of the hall, in the top drawer under the phone book,” just as clear-headed and directive as she ever was. Then she lay back down and shut her eyes.

That was the last sentence she spoke. She passed away two days later.

Historical humor in Nottingham

I’m deep into researching the book that Susan Bruce and I are writing on New Hampshire town meeting. One of the reasons I love town meeting (besides it being the purest form of democracy) is the humor.  Then and now.  Here’s an example of then: 1778. I’m not positive that wry humor was the intention of the the composers of this warning to out-of-towners , but more than 200 years later, it makes me smile.

Whereas it has been practised for a number of years past for persons not living in the Town of Nottingham to turn out in the woods, and on the commons in said Town a large number of Cattel and horses and Etc., by which cattle and horses the inhabitants of sd. Town are very much ingured therefore voted in a Legal Town Meeting in sd. Town on the 1 day of June 1778 that all persons having any Cattel, Horses or Swine turned out in the Town of Nottingham are hereby immediately for to take care of them or they may depend on meeting with trouble in find them where they have turned them out in sd. woods and commons in sd. Town.

I found this in a wonderful publication being sold by the Nottingham Historical Society for $2 a copy -- it’s a reproduction of a newspaper published in 1972 to celebrate Nottingham’s 250th anniversary.  Full of information, not only about town meeting, but about clubs, colonists, weather, industries, slavery, Native Americans, churches, famous families, New Hampshire history, wars,celebrations, and everyday life between 1722 and 1972.

The commemorative newspaper is available from Historical Society president Peter Corriveau at Jenness Farm in Nottingham.  Their goat milk soap is totally worth the trip from anywhere -- although they also sell it online. Visit the Jenness Farm web site to see wicked cute goat pictures and learn about  all the good goat things Peter and his family do there.

Well Said!

Jack Hutchinson of Deerfield passed this story on to me -- and he got it from Richard Gale, a witness!  It goes back a number of years to a cold February evening when things got tense at a School District Hearing. The president of the PTA posed this question to the school board chair:  “Madam Chairman, the PTA wants to know if the Board of Education appreciates the PTA.”  

The crowd rumbled, then erupted into pandemonium (which in Yankee terms means chatter, a snort or two of laughter, and maybe a burst of applause.) The school board chair looked to the moderator.  The PTA president persisted:  “Madam Chairman, I want an answer.”

The school board chair whispered something in the moderator’s ear, then announced, “ I’ve asked the moderator for a short recess.  I want to confer with the board.”

The PTA president responded:  “I want the moderator to promise that when we reconvene I will have the floor.”  It’s agreed. Short recess. Reconvene.   The PTA president reiterates:  “Madam Chairman, the PTA wants to know if the Board of Education appreciates the PTA.”  Uproar.  Applause.

The chair responds: “Sir, I’ve conferred with the school board.  Their message to you  is that the Board of Education appreciates the PTA just about as much as the PTA appreciates the School Board.”

Oh, snap! I’m going to remember that phrasing for future use.  For example:  “Does Aunt Poo appreciate Uncle Nub’s new hound dog?” “Ayuh.  She appreciates that hound dog about as much as that hound dog appreciates her.”