The Real Deal

A clichéd term, granted, but one that applies so well to something I mentioned I would talk about at some point – our local movie theatre, housed in the historic Town Hall building. The theatre was originally used for showing vaudeville shows and other live entertainment, and switched over to showing silent films in the early 1900’s. It has been showing movies ever since. You climb a very old wooden staircase to the second floor, where you are confronted with an informal counter selling tickets, popcorn, candy, lemonade, and soda water with fresh cut lemon or lime. Popcorn refills are .25 cents. There is a movie trivia contest posted – you whisper or write down your answer on a piece of paper, and if correct, you get to buy two tickets for the price of one. Even though one could cheat by reading the question in advance and looking up the answer, no one ever does. In fact, I feel guilty whenever I use my free tickets – when I do, I buy extra popcorn to make up for it.

There are actually two theatres -- the larger one has the original stage, curtain, and a balcony. The smaller “screening room” is a lot more intimate. The theatre is known in the area for showing foreign language films (with subtitles – no dubbing, please!), small independent films, and other quirky movies you can’t find at the local Cineplex. But they also get many of the first-run, block-buster films as well, although one year there was a sign out in front of the theatre that simply said; “Not Coming, Not Ever, Rambo III”. Can’t argue with that. The overall experience of going to the Town Hall theatre is so perfect, that I am loathed at this point to ever go anywhere else – I try to wait for the movie to show up there, and if not, I’ll wait for it on DVD. It doesn’t hurt that it is a 5-minute drive away.

But by far the most wonderful thing about our theatre is the gentleman who runs it. He is always running free movie benefits on weekend afternoons for the boy scouts, the women’s club, etc and he lets various town associations and groups put up donation buckets. He is always first in line to make donations of free tickets for raffles, penny sales, and the like. He also runs the projector, and maintains the town clock up in the historic clock tower of the town hall. A remarkable man, and a remarkable asset to our small town.

Punkin Chunkin

For those of you who were able to rouse yourself from a Thanksgiving Day food coma, you might have seen on television the annual 2008 Punkin Chunkin World Championship, this year held in Delaware. Yes, that is punkin chunkin (and not pumpkin chunking), for reasons known only to the organizers and participants. This competition includes four major classes of devices – catapult, centrifugal, trebuchet, and air cannon – which are used to hurl pumpkins or other assorted gourds as far as they can. The world record for the air canon is just under one mile, which is pretty impressive, but the class I am the most interested in is the trebuchet. For the uninitiated, a trebuchet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet) was used in the Middle Ages as a weapon to smash walls or hurl items over them. What is most amazing is that the trebuchet that won this year’s world championship (with a world record 1,897 feet), and the five previous ones, is the Yankee Siege from our very own neighboring town of Greenfield. They have built a 5-story tall, 55,000 pound replica of an original trebuchet, and every weekend during the fall season you can go to their field opposite the Yankee Farmer farm stand (http://www.yankeesiege.com/) and watch an afternoon of pumpkin hurling. What is cooler than traveling down a 2-lane, winding back road and coming upon a field with a ersatz moat and castle with a huge punkin chunkin trebuchet? Only in N.H….

The Lives We Lead

It is often said that you know you are getting old when you read the obituaries just to make sure you aren’t dead yet. However, I find the obituaries in small town newspapers to be fascinating narratives about the interesting people that have lived, sometime their whole lives, in our towns. I especially love how our local paper sums up a person’s life right below their name. Here are the ones from a recent weekly obit column:

~ Raised short-horn cattle after retirement ~
~ Avid reader, enjoyed taking long walks ~
~ Talented cook, loved spending time with grandkids ~
~ Loved to travel, worked with local Girl Scouts ~
~ Was technical writer, enjoyed gardening ~

Some may find it a little sad to have a life summed up in a few words like this, or think that it is shows a lack of the formal “accomplishments” typically outlined in an obit in the New York Times, but I find myself charmed by the lives they’ve led. I don’t know what the one-line summary of my life will be, but one could do a whole lot worse than “Talented cook, loved spending time with grandkids”.

And Now for Something Completely Different

With this post I am diverging somewhat from the theme of this blog in order to talk about a wonderfully funny and (dare I say) touching website my daughter clued me into – Postcards from Yo Momma at http://www.postcardsfromyomomma.com/. This site has an amazing and hilarious set of snippets from real e-mail and IM conversations between mothers and daughters. While the subjects may vary, the tone of these conversations is absolutely, completely identical to what my daughter and I sound like. I am tempted to include here some examples, but there are SO many that ring true and make me laugh hysterically that it is impossible to pick. Suffice to say that if you are a mother with a daughter (or vice-versa) who has ever e-mailed or IM’d the other, be prepared to get so caught up reading these that you will have to force yourself to stop and get back to whatever it was you were supposed to be doing at the time. Enjoy!

When Local Isn't Local

Last week we went to eat at a brand new diner that opened recently in a neighboring town. It is the second location for a famous diner located in our state’s largest city. While I had never eaten at the original, I had seen it profiled on one of my favorite Food Network shows, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and it seemed like a great, classic, old-style diner. We went fairly early on a Friday night, but it was packed -- a good sign. The décor was very diner-like, albeit a bit kitschy. I looked at the menu, and found at the end a full page of logo souvenirs for sale – not a good sign. Then, while waiting for our food, I read a history of the original diner and learned that they were actively franchising the “brand” and looking to open many more. Definitely not a good sign. But all this could be forgiven if the food was good, so I ordered two dishes that I thought would be a great test of the diner – meatloaf with gravy and a side of mac & cheese. At the risk of turning this blog into a restaurant review, let me say that the food was a huge disappointment – crumbled ground beef that didn’t even hold together in slices, awful gravy, and bare elbow macaroni with some cheese sauce ladled on top. I can’t help but think that something was lost in translation from a great local favorite in business for 50+ years to this new incarnation of the “brand”. Local is almost always better. We had a wonderful diner in our town for many, many years which finally closed, and the empty lot is now destined to be future expansion space for our fire department. I missed our diner when it closed, but hadn’t realized how much until last week.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

It is often seen as both a blessing and a curse that in a small town, everybody knows your business. It is certainly true that it would be well nigh impossible to carry on in secret any kind of activity that one wanted to hide from one’s spouse! People are always mentioning to me somewhere they have seen my husband. My husband knows everyone in town, he’s always saying hi to people that I’m not sure I even recognize, no less know who they are. And as he points out, his knowledge is nothing compared to many old-timers in town. I am kind of envious of this, because my job tends to keep me buy away from town so I get out and around a lot less. So, it was with great pleasure that when as I went to vote on this historic Election Day, the folks at the tables greeted me and had already flipped the pages open to my name to check me in. When I then went across the street into our local store, the owner saw me and immediately put my New York Times on the counter, asking me where my husband was (of course!)….I felt like a regular! On top of that, he left the store and followed me half-way down the street to return the coffee mug I had left on the counter. So even though I am sometimes only known by the name of “Michael’s wife”, I do love the feeling of belongingness that comes from living in a small own – in my opinion, privacy is over-rated!

Democracy in Action

Yesterday I went to see the award-winning documentary Holler Back, http://www.hollerbackfilm.com/NonVote.html. I saw it at our wonderful local theatre which is housed in the Town Hall – more about that in another blog entry. The movie explores the voting process in America and in particular why people don’t vote – a very timely topic given that tomorrow is Election Day. One of the reasons given is that people don’t trust the voting system and don’t even believe that their vote will be counted properly. One segment in the film details how voting is conducted in our own small town. Of course, we use paper ballots like the rest of New Hampshire, but unlike most, we hand-count the votes. It is done by teams of four people (with both Democrats and Republicans represented) – the first person reads out a vote, a second person verifies they read it correctly, a third person marks a tally sheet, and the fourth makes sure they marked it right. My husband volunteers every year to be a vote-counter, and once took our daughter along to show her democracy in action. They even open the polling place (our Town Hall, ‘natch, the same building that houses the aforementioned movie theatre) by opening the actual ballot box and showing to all assembled that there is nothing in there – no stuffing the ballot box, if you will. You really have to love the process, and it is just one of the myriad of things I love about a small town that I wish could be perpetuated on a grand scale. No hanging chads for us!

The beginning....

I guess the idea for this blog came about right after I heard that they had shot Edna out of a cannon. Well, not exactly all of Edna, but her ashes. A long-time resident of our neighboring town, Edna had always been interested and involved with the Lafayette Artillery, and she made it clear that when she died she wanted her ashes fired from their circa 1860's-era cannon. After her death, the Artillery duly complied with her wishes and fired her ashes out into a field in the center of town.

There are so many remarkable things about this story. First, that a person as remarkable and interesting as Edna wound up in town. Second, that the town even owned a working cannon. And lastly, that this all happened in such a matter-of-fact way, as if these kinds of things are to be expected, or at the very least, understood.

So, with this initial tribute to Edna, I am inaugurating my Small Town Tales blog. I hope to convey through my semi-regular posts all the wonderful things that happen in small towns like mine, and would encourage other small-towners out there to comment in return.