Travels With Becky

Bon Appetet

An old true Yankee trader story from Alexandria, New Hampshire:

Augustus “Gus” Cheney took a mortgage out on a white-faced heifer for $10 from his neighbor Joel Gray, lived up on the hill.   

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’s big dairy farmer hand reached deep in the front pocket of his overalls.  He pulled out a folded paper between his big dairy farmer pointer finger and thumb.  He says: "Ha, Gus, but you didn’t et the mortgage."

Paul Bunyon He Wa’n’t

At the old logging camp on a lake in Lincoln, Maine, the executives from a Massachusetts business got together for a woods retreat.  During the night, Kilby slipped out to the outhouse.  Later, some of his bunkhouse mates noticed that he still hadn’t returned. And it had been a while.  Quite a long while, in fact.

An executive decision was made to investigate what had become of Kilby.

Sure enough, there was Kilby, holed up in the outhouse -- a skunk on guard just outside the door.

Mumma Knows Best

At the family camp ground, little Ike wanted to walk to the beach to go swimming.  “Will you take me swimming, Auntie?” he asked.  “I can’t,” said Auntie.  “I’m busy right now.”

“Will you take me swimming, Gramma?”

“I can’t right now, Ike; I’m in the middle of something.”

Daddy says, “I’ll take you swimming, Ikey.”

“No,” Ikey says, “Mumma told me I needed a responsible adult.”

Dere She Goes

Met up with my friends Dudley and Jacqueline Laufman, great fiddlers, at a history conference on Star Island, Isles of Shoals.  Beautiful day.   Dudley and Jacqueline had got the conferees toe-tapping and dancing the evening before.  I did my talk on writing about place just before lunch. After lunch, waiting for the boat to Rye, Dudley and I sat on the wraparound porch of the conference center swapping yarns.  

Here’s one from Dudley, whose latest book, by the way, is "She Plumb Ned, She More’n Plumb."  I highly recommend it.  It’s stories in poems.

THE  G  FIDDLER

  That’s what he did nighttimes, played for them house dances down the peninsula. Tunes like White Cockade, Larry O’Gaff  and like that. Folks would walk on broken glass to have a bow arm like his.

  Well that’s what he did nights. Had real work daylight hours, what the hippies call a Day Job. Had his own boat and a mate to help him.

  So he’s pulling pots one morning, and a rope snagged, pulled his hand right through, cutting off the tip of a finger. He says to his mate “Dere goes B flat.”

An Icy Dicey Situation

Cleaning my parents’ attic, we’ve found lots of old books including a Macmillan Pocket Classic text book from Andover High School.  It’s "The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life" by Francis Parkman, published in 1935.

A neat little book it is, but the neatest parts for me are the inscriptions at the front and back made by students.  Inside the front cover, some one has written a little poem:

Slippery Ice
Very thin
pretty girl
tumbled in
Boy on bank
Heard her shout
jumped right in
And pulled her out
Now she’s his
very nice
But she had
to break the ice

The second chapter in the book is called “Breaking the Ice,” no doubt the inspiration for the poem.

Inside the back cover, students have made other notes including:

“I am getting sick and tired of talking to you and you may be sick but not tired.  So long _ _ _ _ _ _ _ fill the blanks.”

And, in large print:

“AFTER YOU ARE DONE WITH THIS BOOK, THROW IT.”

Insights into the adolescent mind of the 1930s.  And the book itself looks pretty interesting.  I think I’ll give it a read.

Pot holder prose

Going through a box of vintage pot holders (yes, in my family we collect everything), I discovered a special one -- bright yellow and elaborately embroidered with this profound saying:  "You can't fall out of a well."

That's what I call Yankee optimism.

Appreciate this!

Some soul of diplomacy composed this caution to drivers considering ascending Mount Washington via the auto road. It is a hairy-scary drive -- up and down.  But on a clear day . . . the VIEW!