Travels With Becky

Ever Frugal

At Hugh’s 80th birthday party, I told stories and elicited stories from the well-wishers.  Jim told this one.  (He told the long version; I’ll opt for the short one.)

The boat had been to the Grand Banks and the fishing expedition had been wicked successful. The captain ordered the boat home to Maine.  But halfway there, they hit the doldrums. Days passed and no wind at all. The ice was melting in the down-below and the fish were in danger of spoiling; all for naught in that case.  

The captain cursed his bad luck. The cook, a religious man, noted that a prayer and/or offering to God might work better than cursing.  Well, the captain said, probably worth a try.  So he prayed for wind and threw a silver dollar in to the water.

No sooner had he done that than a gale broke loose.  Gale!  I guess.  More like a hurricane (or as my mom says, a hurristorm).  The waves whipped up, the boat bounced on the bounding main.  The mast snapped and the boat, its crew, and cargo washed up on a shoal.  

“Jeesh,” the captain said to the cook as they gathered themselves and their fish and what was left of the boat, “if I’d known wind was so cheap, I’d have thrown a quarter.”

The Willies

At the  Cornerhouse Inn and Restaurant in Center Sandwich, NH, (highly recommended, especially their Thursday Storytelling Dinners), Willie told about accompanying his father Old Willie and Uncle Tommy, who’d had a stroke and couldn’t use his right arm or leg. The three went fishing in the stream, early April, ice barely out. Sure enough, poor Tommy lost his balance on account of his weak right side, and down he went into the rushing water.

He lay on his back, floating as best he could, yelling, “Help me, Willie.  I can’t swim.”

Willie yelled back, “Tommy, stand up.”

Seems the stream was only about two feet deep.

When Tommy stood and clambered out of the stream, he was some cold.  Old Willie told Young Willie to run back to the camp and get some matches, so Tommy could warm himself at a campfire before he caught his death of cold.

Young Willie started for the road, but Old Willie called, “Go through the woods.  The camp’s only about 350 yards away as the crow flies.”  And he pointed out the direction.

Young Willie run into the woods; he run and run.  He slowed down when things began to look kinda the same.  This went on for some time. Finally, he began to yell, and followed the whistle of his father back down to the stream.

Old Willie says, “Where’s the matches?”

Young Willie points: “350 yards in that direction.”

Been doin' some thinking

January is a quiet time for a storyteller -- for this one anyhow.  Somehow folks aren’t inclined to schedule a lot of entertainment in the month of January.  Let’s face it, we’re most of us in one form of hibernation or another. This is the time of year when I have time to think about stuff.  In our bathroom there’s a lovely cross stitch done by my cousin Sheree (she’s talented) that reads:  “Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.”  Most of the year I just sits.  But come January ...

Two thoughts I’ve been contemplating.  One from my mother.  The other day when I suggested a game of Trouble (We play Yahtzee, Farkle, Nine Hands, and/or Trouble ‘bout every day.  And we’ve been keeping track for the last year or so.  So far she’s won 117 games, but I’m hard on her heels at, last count, 109!  Not that we’re competitive or anything.)  So I said, “How about I beat you at a game of Trouble?”  And she said, “Don’t trouble trouble unless trouble troubles you.”

And I thought: Good idea.

Second thing I’ve been ruminating on, a quote attributed to Warner’s famous Yankee wit, Fred Courser.  Evidently Fred, some years ago, joined in on a discussion of growing local, buying local,  local produce and products, all that good local stuff that we embrace in this day and age. Fred said:  “Just ‘cause it’s local don’t mean it’s any good.”

Which reminds me of the time at a school bake sale, I had my eye on some good-looking whoopie pies.  My friend whispered:  “I wouldn’t. I know who made those.  I’ve been in her kitchen.”

Just cause those whoopie pies are home made, don’t mean they’re edible.

Which reminds me of the time I made a nice chicken and rice casserole.   Evidently, I hadn’t rinsed the dish detergent entirely from the casserole dish.  So it was chicken, rice, and Palmolive.  It looked delicious.

The Stoutest Man My Father Ever Saw

Back in November, it was my privilege to sit for a few hours with Mr. Harry Prouty of Asuelot and his wife Millie.  This is one of Harry’s many stories of growing up in a logging family.  He said:

"My Uncle Ray taught me a lot. He had a team of horses.  My father, he’d build his own sleds.  At night he’d be out in the barn making a sled or fixing a harness.  He had some awful big horses.  Yuh.

"My father, he’d set there at night and hone that ax.  Razor sharp.  So sharp you could cut your beard with it.  He’d say, 'You stay away from my ax, boy.'  He’d set around in the evening honing that ax. No computers like modern society today.  He had to have that ax sharp for morning.  They were quite a bunch of chaps those boys were.  I’ve seen them get drunk, get in fights.  

"Here’s a true story:  I was a kid, probably, I’m going to kick it around nine years old.  This old timer that worked for my father was back in the twenties, his name was Fred Gibbs. He was one of the stoutest men, my father said, he ever knew.  His hand would make my father’s hand look like a baby’s hand.  Fingers like gun barrels.  They were huge.

"My father was shoeing a horse one day there in the door yard. He had the anvil setting there.  Weighed about 150 pounds, that anvil. I was around there, you know, just being a kid. Getting into things. Fred said, 'Boy, I’m gonna tell you something. I’m gonna show you something.  Only once.  But you always remember it.  You see that anvil.  I’m gonna take that anvil by the horn and I’m gonna hold it right out straight. Then I’m gonna swing it over my head. And set it right back.'

"Away he went. He clamped onto that sucker.  He done just what he said.  He held it right out straight, swung it over his head and set it right back down.  Then that big gun barrel finger pointed right at me.  I was looking up at him.  He said, 'Boy, when you are able to do that, you’re gonna be a man.'

"I never forgot that.

"When I was 23, I used to take a 20 pound sledge hammer, hold it right out straight. Then  bring it back and touch my nose with it.  So I was pretty stout.  But  I never tackled the anvil. That was a little too much for me."