Travels With Becky

The Sinking of the Stone Wall

As I listen to the rain pounding down (a welcome relief from all this heat and humidity), I’m reminded of the old saying: “It’s raining so hard it’s like a cow pissing on a flat rock.” Those old timers sure could turn a phrase.

Meanwhile, I’ve been indulging in little books with lots of New England stories, many of them short runs (the books that is) and published some years ago. I Remember: Short, Short, True Stories of the North Country was published in a slim paperback volume in 1975. It’s a treasure.  

I don’t want to infringe on anybody’s copyright, but I will paraphrase one of my favorites—“The Sinking of the Stone Wall.” It seems folks in Lancaster liked to cut across the grumpy fellow’s land to get to the Congregational Church, circa 1860. Former owners of the field had never been disturbed by the parade of church goers crossing the corner of it on a Sunday morning—but new owner, Mr. Sam Twombly, vowed to put a stop to the practice. It was his land, after all. So he put up a wooden fence. 

Which subsequently went down the river one night, posts and all.

So Sam built a six foot wall over two rods long from “great boulders drawn by six oxen from Bunker Hill.”

Over the winter, the boys discussed how to get rid of the wall. They decided to sink it. Come spring when the ground was soft and in the dead of night, a fair number of them “assembled at the old engine house armed with shovels and iron bars and a keg of ale in a wheelbarrow.”

They dug a trench the length of the wall and deep enough to contain the stones—and then the wall was pushed in.

Arriving for services the next day, the congregation walked easily across the now level ground. Parson Fay announced the first hymn, “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”

The new owner of the field had no problems with churchgoers cutting across the property.

The Schoolhouse That Moved in the Night

Woodstock at one time had five school districts and five school houses. Each schoolhouse was supposed to be build exactly in the center of the district.

But something went horribly wrong in District 4. By some miscalculation, the structure ended up 47 and a half rods north of center. So southend children had to walk an extra 47 and a half rods to get to school.

This went on for years, until a southender decided enough was enough and petitioned a warrant article “To see if the district will vote to move the schoolhouse south 47 and a half rods to the centre of the district.”

This caused a ruckus. But in the end the southenders got their way and the article passed, and a “committee” of one was appointed to move the building.

Uncowed, the northenders circulated a petition among themselves calling for another meeting. When the wife of the “moving committee” got wind of the petition, she walked 15 miles to the Profile House where her husband was working to inform him of the mischief afoot. The two walked 15 miles back—without even stopping to look at the Old Man or the Flume.  

They did some organizing of their own and in the dead of night, a group of southenders and their oxen moved the school 47 and a half rods south.

In the morning, when the petitioner for the new meeting arrived at the school to post the petition on the schoolhouse door—both the door and the schoolhouse were gone. And 47 and a half rods south of its original position is where it stayed.

Justus Conrad aka Elmer E. Woodbury wrote about the incident for the Plymouth record in 1919 and it was recounted in Ida Sawyer's chapter on Schools in her history of Woodstock. Conrad added: “The chief directors of the midnight ride of the old building were relatives of the writer.” 

Uncle Oscar

My friend Susan Carr, who grew up in Northwood, knows how much I love a good story—especially a historical tale about a real person from New Hampshire. She wrote about Oscar Leighton. If you’re ever taken the Uncle Oscar from Rye to the Isles of Shoals, the boat is named after him.

She writes that Oscar Leighton was Celia Thaxter's brother and the son of Thomas Leighton.  Oscar piloted the boat going out to the shoals.  

Susan’s parents, innkeepers, knew him very well, because when they were running the Hobkirk Inn in Camden, South Carolina, during the winters, Oscar, known to them as "Uncle Oscar" used to winter with them.


  

He didn’t learn to drive a car until he was ninety—so he had some age to him during those visits as he would drive all the way from Portsmouth to Camden on his own.  

Having spent his life piloting boats, Uncle Oscar, had a mariner’s approach to parking (docking, so to speak). He never used the brakes on the car. When he would arrive at the Hobkirk, he’d shift the car's gears down as far as it would go to slow it, and then either aim for the front steps of the building or for the big tree near them—and pull into dock safely.

Uncle Oscar wanted to live to be 100 years old, but he died in an accident just shy of his 100th birthday. It wasn't a car accident, and he was lively and all up to the end. He fell on a space heater, set his beard on fire, and that was the sad end to a long, full life.  

In this postcard of the Hobkirk Inn you can see the steps and the big tree where Uncle Oscar docked his car.

Use it up, Wear it out

Elizabeth’s father dressed rough around the house and around town. He was apt to be seen in a raggedy flannel shirt and jeans strung up with bailing twine.

When her brother and his wife were closing on a house, Dad went along to meet the realtor.  They sat around a table and Dad peppered the realtor with questions. Making a joke (kind of) the realtor said, “Who does this guy think he is, a lawyer?”

There was an awkward pause.  “Actually,” the brother said, “he’s a judge.”

Which goes along with the notion that in New Hampshire the guy driving the most decrepit old truck is probably the richest man in town. Yankees who happen to have money don’t advertise it. I suspect (though I can’t say from experience) they’re a little embarrassed by it. Hence, the stories of the maiden lady who died in the same little old house she’d grown up in leaving half a million dollars to the library—or the “Fairy Godmother” paying the freight for the new fire station just because the town needed one. These are folks who live well within their means, spend as they need, and have modest needs to begin with. They live the adage: “Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.”