We had a terrific time with H, A, and sweet B this weekend. They continue gradually to move their belongings out of their apartment and into their new house. A colleague of H’s is organizing a “welcome to the neighborhood” party for them next Sunday, most of the painting, refinishing, and plasterwork has been finished, and the ultimate move is seemingly imminent. They will be what a friend of mine used to call “estatic” to be back in a house of their own.
Next week, H, sweet B, and I will be day-walking up in their neck of the woods, with, we all hope, at least a few days with A.
B is signing away like crazy, dancing whenever she gets a beat, naturally demonstrating stunning intellectual and creative powers, and, as you can see, is developing into a jolly gourmand.
Woodbury dates its founding to an initial purchase of land from its original inhabitants (who had no idea what they were letting themselves in for) in 1659. I remember vividly the massive celebration of the town’s 300th birthday in 1959. (Fifth graders are supposed to study American History. We did...Woodbury is in America, and we spent the whole year learning about our town. I’m actually very glad we did.) This weekend we celebrated its 350th. A half-mile of Main Street was blocked off on Saturday, and the party played itself out right in front of our house. Great weather, high spirits, lots of old friends back for the event. I got a sticker!
(This put me in the middle rank. One gent was wandering effortlessly around wearing one that had “90” on it, and our oldest resident, 98, father of an old baseball teammate, has lived here all his life.)
Sunday morning we attended an ecumenical service held at Bethel Rock, a spot the Puritan settlers used for worship because the massive outcrop provided safety and a spot upon which guards could stand. A drummer beat a tattoo from Drum Rock as a call to worship.
Later, I sat on the south green for a ceremony with a dozen or so other former selectmen. In this context, at least, superannuation suits me to a T.
We had the Revolution...
...and the Civil War.
And, of course, lots of patting ourselves on the back for our old town’s historic wonderfulness, in all its nostalgic, funny stories, school pranks, good-place-to-raise-a-family glory. I must admit I favor the tales of murder, arson, runaway wives, disgraced clergy, and ancient Town Meeting brawls over who should pay for weeding the cemetery and whether the town should come up with the $300 bounty to keep its sons out of the Union Army, or force the lads to pay it themselves. (The boys had to pay it themselves...this is Woodbury.)
I’m still scuffling around in the back-back, and I’ve decided to completely finish the east side, right down to raking and reseeding, before continuing on to each of the other sides in turn.
Our property backs onto the elementary school, so I don’t use power tools out there until 2:30. I spent the morning raking the area clear of the last of the loose (and the not-so-loose) duff, roots, and vines, and dealing, awkwardly but adequately, with the large rotting logs I’ve been averting my eyes from. Late in the afternoon I spent an hour or so ruining an already dull chain by cutting stumps level with the ground.
The big news, though, is that I think I’ve finally pinned down a decent used chipper. If all goes well tomorrow, I’ll start chewing up all this detritus, minus those rotted logs (way too big) and the obvious firewood. It will be good to have this part of the mess cleaned up. I think I’ll just admire it for a few days before moving on to the north side.
I went out for a tentative shuffle this morning, my first in weeks. Extra very especially short and slow, but highly satisfactory. The offending body part has made its point (“don’t push it, Buster”) and returned to normal. So now it will be a gradual build-up back to the minimum level that seems to yield a noticeable fitness benefit. Which is good, because I’m tired of being Mr. Fatty.
Brits give their weight in stones, an arcane measure that I’ve never internalized, and that always sends me away to multiply something by 14. (Let’s see, if I do 12 times and then 2 times, is that the same as...?) I use the much more sensible shot units.
In the U.S., a girls’ high-school shot weighs eight pounds. The boys toss one that weighs 12. In college and beyond, the men’s shot is 16 pounds. My body weight recently has been a men’s shot heavier that the highest weight at which I usually begin to feel relatively fit. This means, in my mind, that I’ve been carrying around, just behind my belly button, a large, heavy, spherical object that, if I dropped it from that height, would break bones in my foot. This is a gross enough thought to get me to work shrinking that hunk of iron to high-school size, boys; high school size, girls; and eventually to accept the level of slightly chubby and lumbering fitness that seems to be the best I can do these days. (Otherwise I’d have to admit there are actually two Olympian shots in there, a horror I can’t quite bring myself to contemplate.)
The late, great Parry O’Brien puts the shot to its proper purpose.
H had to work from 7 AM to 10 PM Saturday, and A was off for much of the day with two bruisers and a truck, moving boxes and furniture to the new house, so we were stuck with sweet B. As you can see, it was a terrible bummer!
There’s another NH baby-weekend coming soon, then a flurry of walks in the Whites in late September (with Paul) and early October (H gets a week off—we’re looking for B-friendly hikes).
No work on the back-back yesterday, but we’d bought some lovely Greenings last weekend, so I baked an apple pie in the afternoon. My mother, grandmother, and aunts all made great pie, as did my mother-in-law. They are now all sadly late, asPrecious Ramotswe would say. Did I ever go to the trouble of learning their little tricks? No. Now I fumble and bumble, following a variety of recipes and advice, resulting in one or another version of mediocrity. This one was a little dry, and the crust (the hard part) was more crispy than melt-in-your-mouth.
Of course, I eat the result regardless. I love pie. Apple is the standard, but it’s impossible to beat a (rare, oh, so rare) great peach pie. Except perhaps with a great rhubarb pie (with none of those damn strawberries to spoil it). Apple, though, is the iconic pie, especially in New England, as in this old wheeze:
To a foreigner a Yankee is an American. To an American a Yankee is a Northerner. To a Northerner a Yankee is a New Englander. To a New Englander a Yankee is a Vermonter. To a Vermonter a Yankee is a person who eats apple pie for breakfast.
And sometimes you hear this capper:
To a Vermonter who eats apple pie for breakfast, a Yankee is someone who eats it with a knife.
Of course, all true Yankees eat their apple pie with cheese...a chunk of good Vermont cheddar, naturally. And that’s a combo I’d take even over port and Stilton, any day.
