Travels With Becky

Yup, there's a name for it

Don Hamlin of Hollis was sitting at Panera Bread one day when he saw a near accident caused by one fast, aggressive, horn-tooting driver out in front of the store.

“Massachusetts driver,” said the local, disgusted.

“No,” Don said. “The car had New Hampshire plates.”

“Transplant,” the local said.

What's a hornpouter to do?

In Fremont, it was such fun to meet Ginny Peterson who told a couple of life on the farm stories. She talked a bit about her husband Phillip who “milked cows all his life” on the family farm. One night Phillip noticed some lights down in the field. The lights were pointed straight at the sky and wiggling all around. He was curious, so down he went.

He discovered a couple of hornpouters, who may have had a little something to drink. They’d tucked their flashlights in their back pockets, so the lights pointed straight up and wiggled as they walked.

He stood quietly by, unnoticed, and so happened to overhear one of the pouters say to the other, “That damned Peterson boy. He moved the pond!”

A winter solstice story

Bob Anderson has a brother, with whom he’s kind of competitive, the way brothers are. Bob got married on June 21, the longest day of the year. Pretty romantic, eh?

When his brother announced he was getting married, Bob said he supposed the wedding would also be on June 21, the longest and most romantic day of the year.

No, his brother told him. “We’re getting married on December. 21 -- the longest night of the year.”

You're fired

Norma (or as we say in some parts of New Hampshire, Normer) told about her aunts Rebecker and Aggie.

The house caught fire.

Aggie ran for the door yelling, “Fire! Fire! Help! Help!”

Rebecker, breathless behind her, said: “What’ll I yell, Aggie?”

Buzzing around

Jack Hanover has a place on Winnipesaukee. One of his Yankee neighbors had a porch; he ran a screen between the porch rail and the floor to keep his grandkids from falling off the edge.

But, when the fella from away asked the Yankee how come he had just the bottom half of his porch screened in, the Yankee said, “Around here we have low-flying mosquitos.”

Put that under your hat!

At Hunt’s Community in Nashua, we laughed our bums off. Yup, all bum-free now. My favorite story was about Merle Straw, who often went to Guilford, Maine, to visit his grandparents. Merle and Grampa went fishing one morning. They got hungry and went directly from the trout stream where they were fishing to a local restaurant.

Setting down to lunch, Merle said to Grampa, “Why don’t you take your hat off?”

Grampa did. And there plastered to his bald head were three short trout. He’d hidden them in his hat and, evidently, forgot.

Now that’s a pitcha!

Cold war indeed

Around Veteran’s Day, the third grader came home all excited.  A veteran had visited his class to speak about his experiences in the Vietnam War.  The boy explained to his dad about how the veteran had to parachute from a plane that was shot down and landed in the snow and had to wrap himself in his parachute to stay warm.

Dad gently corrected the boy.  Vietnam is a warm place, he told him.  It doesn’t have snow.

The boy thought a minute.  “Oh,” he said, “it must have been the Cold War.”

Can you spell irony?

As a member of the sandwich generation, with a mother living alone, heating with wood, and a little teetery, and a daughter who has not quite figured out her life path financially speaking -- she’s working on it -- I appreciated this story from Joan  up in Berlin at the Family Caregiver’s Conference.  Her aging Dad lives far away in Florida -- with two of her siblings living nearby in that warm place.  But Joan, a long-distance caregiver -- calls Dad every day just to check in and check up.

So one day she gets a call from a Florida sibling, “Joan, do you know where Dad is? We can’t seem to find him.”

Whipped cream to the rescue

At Emeritus at Spruce Wood in Durham, we got talking about old times.  Janet told the story of her aunts Sadie and Esther on the way to a pot luck dinner, each wearing a pair of lace up shoes with modest heels.  They set the pie on the floor of the car, the car hit a pot hole, and Sadie’s heel went into the top of the pie.  What to do?

No problem whipped cream wouldn’t solve.

But neither Sadie nor Esther indulged in a piece of that particular pie.

Mouths of Babes

Alison fondly remembers her Uncle Leslie Michael Stanton, who lived much of each year on Peaks Island, Casco Bay, Maine.  He was, she said, the last of the dory fisherman and she treasures a photograph of him at the helm, his hands on the wheel.  As a child, she spent summers learning about lobstering and the ways of the sea.  

One of her earliest memories is of her first visit to Peaks.  She played on the beach.  Her mother said, “What do you think of the water, dear?”

She replied, “It’s salty, Mama.”