All this talk of stolen vacations, and all I had to do was wait another week. Well, maybe not for a vacation, per se, but certainly a change of scenery. My mother called to let me know that my grandfather was entering hospice care, and before I knew it, I was on a plane back East.
For the first time in my life, it felt like going away rather than going home, but my roots are here nonetheless. This is Exeter, New Hampshire, formerly my grandparents’ place of residence and, for most of her life, anyway, Mum’s hometown.
Exeter, founded in 1638 (ye olde now-defunct colonial movie theatre founded a little later, har har), is a place where change comes so gradually that much of its past—and the memory of my childhood—is still intact. It’s a classic, the quintessential New England town. So much of what I identify with New England is either here or nearby, and between visits with Bampa, I soaked up all my Yankee favorites.
The mills. Remnants of the Industrial Revolution are all over New England, and still alive in one form or another—my parents even live in one.
The churches. From simple Quaker meetinghouses to grand dames like the Exeter “Congo Church,” one can observe an entire colonial history just by exploring a handful of churches.
The houses. I picked up my fascination with residential architecture from Mum, and she and I have a tradition of taking house-viewing jaunts along the coast. My favorites are the colonials:
McIntire Garrison House, built either in 1645 or 1707, depending on whom you ask
Postmedieval Englishes,
Well, Jefferd’s Tavern, on the right, is almost a saltbox…
Saltboxes,
Original or “true” Capes don’t have dormers upstairs
classic Cape Cods,
Emerson-Wilcox House, built 1745, York, ME
Georgians,
and Federals/Adams.
Tuttle’s Red Barn, founded 1632, the oldest American family farm still in operation
The farms. Nothing says New England to me like the barns dotting the countryside—
especially the steepled ones. They’re everywhere, but I’ve never seen two barn cupolas that are exactly alike.
The landscape. I love the pockets of meadows and marshes that pop up suddenly between the trees,
momentary visions right out of Anne of Green Gables,
and that line the winding country roads, casting a dappled green glow onto every surface.
The stone walls. Criss-crossing the woods and fields like seams, the walls are some of the oldest remnants of Colonial culture—demarcating property boundaries and connecting living New England with its past. And every time I go back, New Hampshire’s own Robert Frost recites in my head:
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
