Travels With Becky

Just a Technicality, But . . .

The tourist said to the local:  “Do I go over the covered bridge to get to Walpole?”   

The local says:  “If I were you, I’d go through it..”

A Tale of Family Dynamics

From Warren Angus Wilber via Heather Pike:

The Spoon Story

Ed Perkins was working out in the garden.  His wife shouts from the house: “Ed Perkins, when I married you I had half a dozen silver spoons.  Now, you old bastard, I ain’t got but six.”

Who Knows Where We Be?

Louise Pryor is program coordinator for the Hampstead Library and, as one whose program she coordinated, I can attest that she’s darned good at her job.  She sent this true story from the 1970s.

Louise’s then-husband was visiting family in the North Country.  While there, he had to make a quick, unexpected trip to Nashua.  To keep him company down and back, he invited Jed from West Stewartstown.  Jed was happy to come along for the ride, though he had never been farther from home than Colebrook.

Jed was in his nineties, wizened but alert.  All during the trip down to Nashua and back, he kept looking from side to side, taking in all the sights, not commenting much.  He looked and looked, and listened with interest as Louise’s husband pointed out special sights.

Finally, about 20 miles from home, Jed spoke:  “I know where I be!”

“Where be ye, Jed?” asked Louise’s husband.

“I be lost,” said Jed.

Testy

Dick Wakefield of Moultonborough sent me this story this morning. It made my day! It’s a classic look into the mind of the quintessential Yankee. The  story anticipates spring and the running of the smelt in the big lake (and smaller ones, too).  He wrote:  

My father`s youngest sister Dot was married to Fred Davis, another Moultonborough native.  One of his sisters married a local store owner named Herbert Tilton.  One evening Uncle Fred stopped at Herb`s store for the usual milk, bread and paper.  Herb said, "Davis!  When you bringing back my smelt net?"  

Fred, a little grumpy, said, "I ain`t got your damn smelt net."  

Herb replied, "You don`t need to get testy. I`m asking everybody."  

Two Cases of Slightly Mistaken Identity

Ann Grobe of Plainfield sent me a couple of cute true stories. One was in the form of a newspaper article by Clint Goodwin, then a freshman at Lebanon High School. He interviewed Plainfield police chief Gordon Gillens. Clint asked the chief what was the weirdest story he could think of.  The chief said a call came in one night from a frightened woman who could hear a peg-legged person walking around on her porch.

Gillens responded. When he got to the house, he found a skunk with his head stuck in a mayonnaise jar.  The chief stepped on the jar. The skunk backed out.  And the ingrate proceeded to spray the chief.

Ann also sent the story of the little boy, Matt, who arrived home from Plainfield Elementary School with exciting news.  Two new boys had joined his class. “They have different shirts and the same head.”  He’d never before encountered identical twins.

Some Questions Ought Not to be Posed

At Green’s corner store, a college student ran the cash register.  He was a wise guy.  A local came into the store, looking rough.  The kid (did I mention he was a wise guy?) posed a question: “What stands between you and a damn fool?”

The local says, “Just a counter.”

Just Walk Single File

Story told in Henniker by Bruce Tribolini:

When Bruce and his wife Marilyn moved to New Hampshire from Chicago, they were excited to attend their first town meeting, but somewhat abashed by their first encounter there.

The topic was widening the sidewalks and the voter preceding them into the meeting had brought a ten foot length of pipe -- to demonstrate how wide ten feet was, and to “beat this resolution down.”

In Chicago, Bruce said, carrying around a pipe had an entirely different connotation.

A True Story of Razor True

Heather Pike recalls that her great-grandfather, Warren Angus Wilbur, had a true Seabrook accent and vernacular.  Pa, or Doc, as his friends called him, was a machinist at United Shoe and an avid outdoorsman, hunter, fisher, and storyteller.  Heather writes that he “used to say to me as a kid, “don’t say “huh?,” say “whatsa?”  He often used the word “shan’t” and his worst curse word was “mygolrifus.”

This is a Razor True story as told by Warren Angus Wilber, recorded in 1973 when Warren was in his eighties. 

Razor True and Warren Angus Wilbur were fishing up in the north country, pickerel fishing.  

There’s a little pond up there near camp.  They’d logged the land, then it had been dammed up afterwards.  Since they chopped the trees down in the winter, the stumps stood high as that or more.  Come off cold and the pond froze over. Then they opened the dam up and drew off the water and of course those high stumps held the ice up.

We went over to go pickerel fishing.  Chopped down through the ice and there weren’t any water under it.

Razor went through the hole and got under the ice. A couple fellas come down a ways. They saw us chopping through the ice so they chopped a hole.  Razor  done heard ‘em.  He went along and popped his head up through their hole.  “Where’d you come from?” they said.

Razor said, “I  was swimming here last summer.  I couldn’t get out and I drownded.  It froze over and this was the first chance I had.”