Travels With Becky

Anyone listening?

At a conference on the Arts and the Law at the UNH School of Law (formerly Franklin Pierce), former NH Supreme Court Judge John Broderick gave a charming welcome speech to participants.  He’s a funny guy with a wry and self-deprecating sense of humor.  No wonder he was a good judge. His new job is running the law school. 

I loved this anecdote.  He said being dean of a law school is like being grounds keeper at a cemetery -- there are a lot of people below you but no one’s listening.

Reminded me of a story my dad used to tell.  A new guy swaggered into dad’s office (he was a salesman for a food company), and announced that he was Dad’s new boss.  “That’s nothing to brag about,” Dad said.  “Everybody’s my g.d. boss.”

There's poetry everywhere

Always on the lookout for poetry -- found poetry, the poets call it.  Words not intended as poems but that shape themselves into poetry.  Sometimes it’s a sign beside the road, like this one I saw in Maine:

Wicked good
Campfire wood.

It rhymes and everything.

Potatoes are people too

Brian Taylor told the story of Percy, brother to Gilbert, who owned a farm in Freedom.  He sold hay, eggs, and vegetables from a farm stand by the road.  He had the eggs in cartons -- large, medium, small. The potatoes had come in and he’d separated them into bins -- big ones, medium ones, and one bin of mixed sizes, ungraded.

A lady from New Jersey commented that the eggs and  potatoes looked pretty, except for that one bin of mixed size potatoes.  

Percy explained:  “Ma’am, those are family potatoes -- parents and little kids. I refuse to separate ‘em.”

Lies Expand, Popple Shrinks

Two Warren Angus Wilbur stories for your reading pleasure.  

Story One:

I was on a hunting trip in Maine some years ago and listening to some tall tales by the folks present and one particularly unlikely story by a native of the state. I said, “Paul, this is a compliment.  No doubt you are the biggest liar in the State of Maine.”

He considered this for a minute, and he replied: “No, as a matter of fact I’m not. But just as soon as you go back to New Hampshire, I will be.”

Story Two:

One night the talk turned to lumbering and the poor quality of lumber, not properly seasoned and subject to shrinkage and so forth.  The question came up as to what kind of wood would shrink the most. 
One fellow said, “Now, I don’t vouch for this but I know a man who claimed he had an uncle who owned a small farm, did some carpenter work, and worked in the woods cutting pulpwood for winter.  One spring he decided to build himself a hay barn. He had enough lumber laying around to put up the building with the exception of the back.  He needed two more boards to board that in.  He had a pile of popple logs, each a foot or more in thickness, so he decided to take them to the mill and have them sawed up into boards. He got a fine load of boards all right, each one foot wide and used them to board up the back.”

Someone asked, “Did they shrink?”

“I guess they did. Those goldarned boards shrunk an inch a year for thirteen years.”

One or t'other

A story from Warren Angus Wilbur, told circa 1973, when Warren was in his 90s and caught on audio tape.  Just as he told it:

This concerns a lad down to Seabrook.  Played hooky and his mother found out.  Father came home that night, she told him about it.  Father let him eat his supper then sent him up to bed.  Boy waited til it got dark, quieted down. He climbed out on the shed built on the back of the house, dropped out onto the ground. His father heard him, come out the front door and around the house.  

This shed stood up on posts probably two and a half, three feet above the ground.  Boy ducked in under there to hide.  Father come around. Didn’t see him. He says, “Sid.” No answer.  “Sid.” Still no answer.  He says, “Sid, if you’re under there say so. If you ain’t, come out."

Once you get talkin'

Dagne Goodwin sent me this little story about Yankee trading and one Yankee trader in particular name of Ed.  It sure rings true.  Dagne wrote:

I sell jams and jellies for a living and I have one very small farm stand in Stratham that sells a whole bunch of stuff so one day I asked ,"Ed , how do you sell so much of my stuff?" Ed replied "Well, see I just get them to talkin’. T'other day I had a turist come here and ask me if I could change a hundred dolla bill and I said sure. Well, by the time I got done with her she'd spent $86 dolla's and it weren't that haard."

You go, Ed!