Travels With Becky

A Rainy Day Tale

A story told by Paul Currier of Enfield:

   Eldon and Alden were out duck hunting on a drizzly day. They set out fifteen decoys, slid their eight-foot skiff up tight to the weeds, erected a camouflage tarp. The plan was that one would steady the boat while the other took the shot.

After a bit, they counted decoys and somehow now there were sixteen. One took off, they forgot the plan, and both let go with four barrels, knocking them back. The aft end of that little boat went under. The boat began to fill and kept on filling. They were only in about three feet of water, so they stood in the pond and tipped the water out.

  As they held the boat aloft between them they noticed onshore a line of kids from the Cardigan Mountain Camp.  Hiking.  One kid says, “Why you got that boat over your head?”

Eldon says, “Cause it’s raining.”

Politics as usual

Connie Roedder of Belmont sent me two stories about her father, Dr. Nathan Brody, that illustrate: (1) what a small state New Hampshire is in so many good ways; (2) the power of connections and standing up for what you believe in; and (3) how our political system works.

She writes: 

  In the mid 1950s the state decided to widen what is now Old North Main Street in Laconia to a four-lane highway. That would have involved buying a lot of people’s property and going through some bedrooms. My father, who had done a lot of politicing for many republicans over the years, called Senator Norris Cotton, who happened to be on the funding comittee. All of a sudden there wasn't any funding for the project.  

So they decided to reroute the project through the woods -- dah! Where the road exists now.

In addition to widening North Main Street, they thought that they would do away with Pearly Pond and the old oak.  Well, that didn't set well with the neighborhood.  So on the day that the tree was going to be cut down, all the men in the neighborhood surrounded the tree holding shot guns. 

I used to think that it was the guns that changed their minds, but since my father was one of them, they probably though that they would lose their funding again.

So they just did some re-engineering of the pond so it wouldn't flood and left the old oak alone.

By Hook or Crook

I’m told a well-dressed man in a big car with New York license plates pulled into the driveway of a Maine farmhouse.  Marched up to the door big as brass and knocked.  He asked the farmer:  “Does your wife hook rugs?”

“She does.”

“May I see them?”

“Why not.”

The New Yorker walks room to room scrutinizing the beautiful hand-hooked rugs.  “I’ll buy all you have,” he told the farmer.

Farmer said:  “You got a wife?”

“Yes.”

“She ain’t crippled up?”

“No.”

“Get her to hook you some.”

Big Difference

At the Margaret and H.A. Rey Center in Waterville Valley (the Reys wrote the Curious George books; I love me some Curious George), I met many nice folks and reconnected with some old friends.

Among the new friends were Sue and Lisa from Harmon’s Cheese in Sugar Hill.  They told the story of their boss, the indomitable Maxine Aldridge.  When a tourist asked Maxine what the difference was between Vermont and New Hampshire maple syrup, Maxine quipped, “The Connecticut River.”

Even the Comics

True story from Sue of Sugar Hill.  Her parents are in assisted living.  One day Mom noticed that a neighbor had the paper delivered each day and expressed the notion that she maybe should subscribe, too.  “Oh no,” the neighbor said.  “I get up very early and read the paper right off.  I’ll just drop it off at your door when I’m finished.”

The plan worked well until the neighbor came down with the epizudic* and was bed bound for a few days.  When she felt a little better, she delivered a stack of papers to Mom.  “These are old news,” she said. “Maybe you don’t want them.”

Oh, Mom said, “I don’t read them.  I spread them out around the toilet bowl.  Bill has a poor aim.”

(* a Yankee word for being sick-a-bed. Kind of like a flu.)

Lambzydoats, Chucks Chuck Wood, But What’s Up with the Eels?

It was my pleasure to swap stories with Bobby and Lorna Willette in Marlborough.  Lorna, after the story session, passed me a little piece of paper with some cleverness on it.  First, she wrote “repeat this rapidly.”

Here tis:

“In mud eels is. In clay nun is.”

I’ve been repeating it repeatedly but all I can figure out is that eels live in mud not clay.  And I’m darned if I can figure out what the nun has to do with it.  Any ideas?

She also offered this ditty, which makes perfect sense, properly parsed.

“Owen Moore went away one day Owen Moore Owen Moore came back one day Owen Moore.”

And finally, we talked about the warmest place in the house being the wood box by the Glenwood kitchen stove, hence the saying:  “Sick a bed in the wood box.”  Lorna knew a twist on that expression: “Sick a bed on two chairs.”

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."

Ed, You’re a Doll

Visited the Marlborough Historical Society and the stories were abundant among the membership and visitors at the Community Center, more than 50 of us, I’d guess, all told. 

Started off on the right foot with a well-delivered reading of the minutes of the previous meeting (from April) followed by the treasurer’s report.  Philip Clark delivered his report with true Yankee succinctness:  “We’ve got $2,658.65 in the bank.  I didn’t delineate how I came up with it.”

Richard Butler, president, delivered the news on the Historical Society booth at the recent Marlborough Madness Day.  Thirty-five years ago for the Bicentennial, a local family had donated mugs.  He was pleased to report that on Marlborough Madness Day all but one of those old mugs sold for a tidy profit. (He didn’t delineate how much.)

Ed told the story of how he happened to be born on September 9, 1938.  And we all knew what happened just a couple weeks later on September 23 -- the Hurricane of ‘38.  According to the family story (Ed, of course, has no memory of this), the river rose to the point that their house was threatened, so Mother held the infant Ed in her arms, Father held onto Mother, and the family crossed fast-moving water to climb to the neighbors’ house belonging to two ladies who lived on higher ground.

The wind blew so hard that they worried the center chimney would blow over, so -- to be safe -- infant Ed was tucked in a wicker doll carriage, which was placed under the grand piano. 

The center chimney did not blow over.

To this day, when Ed sees one of those ladies around town, she’ll say:  “Have you slept in my doll carriage lately?”

Here's a tumbling blocks quilt some of the women of Marlborough are working on for the Church Fair.  They sew and raffle one every year. Isn't it gorgeous?

Kitchen Aid

Turn out for this great cause. The old kitchen burned down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Click on the picture for a bigger version)

 

Helen’s Doll House

So happy to return to the Salem Historical Society.  I was last there telling tales in 2005 -- not much has changed, as it should be with historical societies.  

We got talking about the Hurricane of ‘38, and how the recent Irene wasn’t anything like it, despite comparisons in the media.  Helen Kenison weathered the ‘38 storm, but her family’s cottage by the lake was blown away.  She remembered that she had a doll house in that cottage -- handmade with little curtains in all the windows.  When the family went back to view the wreckage after the big blow, Helen found a small piece of one of the windows from that doll house.  She said, “I forgot about losing the cottage; my doll house was gone!”  She still misses that doll house.

Here’s Helen with the rainbow Jello treats she made for the food table at the meeting.  It takes a long time to make the treats because each layer has to set before you can pour on the next.  She doesn’t mind though. She can putter around doing other things while each layer sets. She invented rainbow squares when her daughters were members of the Rainbow Girls.

May I say:  Delicious!