Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (52 page)

And then there’s the smell of the season–a pleasing, pungent aroma that had a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg to it. Right then, in some places, New Hampshire smelled like pumpkin pie. You can’t get that from a picture or a movie. Nor can you get it riding in a car, even if the windows are open. To really experience a New England autumn, you have to get out and let yourself be inundated.

But driving was how most folks were experiencing that autumn. Sometimes the highway was bumper to bumper with motor homes, motorcycles, and automobiles of every description. Often it was like a parade was passing us on the left.

“Leaf peepers!” snarled an old man in Meredith. “Gets worse every year.”

We met him when we stopped to give Della a drink in a parking area adjacent to Lake Winnipesaukee. He was a head shorter than me and wore baggy new blue jeans that were too long for him. The legs were rolled up into high cuffs so they wouldn’t drag on the ground.

He coughed up some phlegm and spit it on the asphalt before he said, “Lived here all my life and seen it happen. When I was growing up, the roads were narrow and steep. It could be pretty rough going around here in those days. Especially in the winter. Back then, we didn’t have all these damn tourists. It was too hard getting in and out of here. But they fixed the roads and built the stinking interstate. Now they can hop on it and zip up here from Boston in no time.”

In his voice was a wheeze. “It’s a dirty shame. Back in those days there were lots of places you and your mule could have camped right next to the lake. But not now. Too many goddam houses!”

Suddenly he was seized with a spasm of coughing that made the veins across his bald head swell. I feared one was going to burst. When the coughing stopped, he spit on the pavement again.

He said, “Ain’t nobody from around here can afford houses like that. It’s all them city folks from down south. Came here to get away from the city, but they brought the damn city with ’em.”

A few minutes after he walked off, a younger man told us, “Problem is, all these big expensive houses have jacked up the property values to where our taxes have gone out the roof. People who’ve lived here all their lives can’t afford it anymore.”

Meredith was conspicuously up scale. The homes, the shops, the cars, the clothes, the whole style of the Lakes Region was chic–but all of that was tempered by the natural beauty around us. The mountains and the forest got more awesome by the mile.

During the two days it took us to walk around that part of the lake, the weather was perfect. The sky was blue with occasional puffy white clouds and the temperatures were ideal for traveling. Warm in the day, but not enough to make you sweat. At night it was cool enough for a blanket and sweet cuddling. But it wasn’t going to last long.

Hurricane Isabelle was tormenting the Carolinas and was about to send storms up over New England. The forecast called for the hurricane to go out to sea, gain strength and possibly come back on land in the northeast. In 1938, New Hampshire was devastated by a hurricane, and Isabelle was behaving exactly like that one.

“Bud, what would we do if a hurricane came through here?” Patricia asked that question as we were setting up camp adjacent to Fuller’s Store and Station west of Moulton Falls on Highway 25. “Have you thought about that? Do you have a plan?”

“Find high ground and hold on.”

Isabelle didn’t come to New Hampshire, but she sent us a lot of rain. Off and on for two days it came down, always as a deluge. We kept our dirty laundry in a plastic bag on the roof of the cart. By the time we got to South Tamworth it was a huge black shiny ball full of soggy clothes and bedding.

“Let me take it to my house and do it for you.”

This was the second time we met Dot. The first was at the South Tamworth Store a mile or so back down the road. We were at a pull-off near the junction of Highway 113 and 25. Dot was a stout woman, in her late fifties with short, salt and pepper hair. She had brought her granddaughters to meet us. One of them had just finished reading us some of her poetry, when Dot offered to do our laundry.

Patricia said, “I can’t let you do that.”

“Why not? I doubt you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before.”

“It’s not that. I just–”

Dot pointed her finger at me. “Get that bag off your roof and put it in my car!”

I had just pulled it down when a Tamworth Police car pulled up next to the cart. We had also met Chief Dan Poirier back at the store. In his
mid-forties, Dan had the looks and presence that befitted a TV personality. He was a horseman and had initially invited us to his place for the night, but he lived too far off the road. Then he offered to get us a couple bales of hay. So when he stopped beside me and the laundry bag, I said, “You don’t have hay in that cruiser do you?”

“No. I’ll get that later. There’s been a change of plans.”

Before we met Dan, we had planned to take Highway 5 to 16 on up to Conway. But he convinced us to take Highway 113 up through the village of Tamworth. “You’ll miss a lot of traffic and it’s a prettier route.”

I asked, “So, what’s the plan now?”

“The town would like to treat you to a night at the Tamworth Inn.”

Dot gasped. “Oh, how wonderful! You will just love it!”

Dan said, “That includes dinner for two and breakfast in the morning.”

“That’s awesome,” the poet granddaughter said. “I love to eat there. It is so cool!”

“And . . .” Dan was beginning to sound like a game show host. “if you’re up for it, after dinner we have two tickets for the show tonight at the Barnstormers Theater.”

Dot yanked open the back hatch of her car and motioned for me to bring the laundry bag over. “They’ve got you set up. I’ll bring your clothes to the Tamworth Inn.”

It was a three mile hike to Tamworth. The sun was out and the trees were full of fall. Both our steps and spirits were lighter than they had been in several days. We were about a mile from the village when Patricia ran up beside me and took my hand. “I can’t believe this. I am so excited! A room in an old historic inn. A night out on the town. It’s almost too good to be true!”

When we traveled, not often did my wife and I get to walk holding hands. Usually she was right behind me, holding onto a strap attached to the cart shaft. Hand-in-hand would put her out in the driving-lane too far. But we did walk that way in a few places where we felt safe to do so. And our walk to Tamworth was on one of those kinds of roads. And like every other time we did it, Della finagled her head up between us. Patricia
thought she did it because Della was jealous of her. I think she did it because she wanted to be sure she was the center of attention. It’s always all about Della.

Tamworth was a tiny village on the Swift River. It had two churches with tall pointed steeples, a few white clap-board stores, a library, post office, the inn and the Barnstormers Theater–the oldest professional summer theater company in America. It began in 1931 in the barn of the Tamworth Inn, which opened a hundred years earlier as a hotel on a stage line.

When we walked into the village, I said, “Isn’t this sweet?”

Besides the quaintness of the buildings and setting, there was the view of the White Mountains and Mt. Chocorua, which was truly something to behold. At 3,475 feet, it had a rugged granite peak with a skirt of evergreens and broadleaf trees in their autumn finery. The mountain was named after a Pequawket Chief who was killed on the summit by a white settler.

Over the years, Tamworth has wooed many notables. A number of authors went there to write, including John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry David Thoreau. President Grover Cleveland owned a summer home in Tamworth, and his son Francis started Barnstormers Theater.

When we turned onto Main Street, at least a dozen people–mostly women and children––were sitting on the curb. They looked like they were waiting for a parade. Then, as we walked down the short street they stood up and began to applaud and cheer.

While we waved back, Patricia said, “Were they waiting for us?”

We were both immediately enchanted by the Tamworth Inn. It’s
the
quintessential New England country inn. A gray wood building with tan trim and red shutters. It had three floors, a pitched roof and dormer windows. The view from the front rooms was Mt. Chocorua. The back ones looked out over the gardens and lawn that led down to crystal clear Swift River. I can’t imagine anyone not being charmed by the Tamworth Inn.

Across the street was a park with a small parking lot that we pulled into. Chief Dan said it was all right to tie Della out in the park to graze.
The Schraders, who owned the Tamworth, gave us a second floor room that overlooked the cart, Della and the mountain.

Our whole experience in Tamworth was delightful. Both meals were tremendous. It was easy to see why famous food critics, like Boston’s Phantom Gourmet, raved about the place. Any room out of the weather, with a hot shower, would have been great. That one was tremendous.

Sunday morning, when Margo Mallur interviewed us for the
Carroll County Independent
, I told her how kind everyone in Tamworth had been. “And when we walked into town yesterday, it was like people were waiting to welcome us.”

“They probably were,” Margo said. “With all the controversy around here lately, Tamworth needs something positive.”

When we walked into the area we saw signs that read “No Zoning.” Chief Dan was the first to explain, “A group of investors want to put a Grand Prix type race track on one of the mountains nearby. A lot of folks don’t want it. So we’re going to vote on a zoning issue.”

Margo said, “Most people don’t want the track, but they don’t want zoning either. New Hampshire people take the state motto to heart. Live Free Or Die!”

In North Conway we did something we had not done on this journey. We rented a room at the Yankee Clipper Motel. The rain was torrential, and the forecast called for it to continue through the next day. It was my birthday, and when Patricia asked me what I wanted, I said “To be dry!”

K
NOWING
W
HY

Yes, there are moments when I wonder, “Why are we doing this?”

Like when it’s raining – and I don’t mean your average soft sweet shower.

But more like it’s being poured from an endless bucket, and it’s cold, and it’s been that way all day.

And that New Hampshire highway has no shoulder.

And everything is leaking from the rain coming down and the traffic splashing up.

And your boots are like wading pools and your body is worn out from lugging them along.

And you curse every driver who comes a little bit too close, which means you’re cursing everyone who splashes you by.

Yes there are moments when I want to cry, “Why in the hell are we doing this?”

“Hi, do you remember me?”

She was pretty. Her name was Mary. She wrote for a local paper. We met her yesterday.

It was dry, way back then. And the rain was not so heavy just now.

“Can I talk to you guys for a moment? It’s kind of important.”

It was a place where we could get off the road. So we did.

Then all of us, in our rain gear, got closer together so we could hear through the rain and the traffic on the road.

“Do you remember me telling you about my brother?”

I did. She had said he was dead.

And as a poet she hadn’t been able to write in the months since it happened.

“But what I didn’t tell you was that he dreamed of doing something like you’re doing.

“He wanted to see the world slowly, softly, sweetly, close up and personal.

“But he didn’t get to do that.”

The showers intensified as she pulled her hand from under her slicker.

When she extended her clenched fist toward us she said,

“If you tell me no, I will understand.”

Right then she opened her fist to reveal a silver locket in her palm.

“In this locket are some of my brother’s ashes.

“Would you take them with you so he can live his dream, too?”

Yes, there have been times when I’ve cried in the rain.

But never have I cried so sweetly as I did right then.

Yes, there are moments when I wonder, “Why are we doing this?”