UPCOMING EVENTS

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Trusting Souls on Gravel Roads in the Granite State

I traveled to New Hampshire this weekend for a wedding. The nuptials were great, I had a fantastic time, and I was really happy I could be there for it. So since I can't make jokes about joyous occasions, let me make unfair generalizations about a state based on 72 hours spent in one tiny part of it.

If you've never been to New Hampshire, it's a lot like the Catskills, if the Catskills had more lakes and more danger. The state's motto should really be "Live Free and Die," since it seems dedicated to both outcomes.

As soon as you cross the border from Massachusetts, you are greeted with signs for NH LIQUOR STORE NEXT EXIT, where you can buy extremely cheap booze and lotto tickets in abundance. Even when driving on local roads, it's impossible to miss these stores (which are state run, by the way) because of street signs that point you in their direction. The kind of signs that normally direct you to a historical monument are used to tell you the best place to buy alcohol while driving.

In most states, highways are sponsored by car dealerships and benevolent organizations. In New Hampshire, they're sponsored by fireworks stores. If these signs are to be believed, at least 35% of the local economy is pyrotechnically based.

There are also no helmet laws, so you see tons of hog riders letting their greasy hair flow wildly in the breeze. There are actually signs outside bars and restaurants that say WELCOME BIKERS. In the rest of the nation, the only places that welcome bikers are meth labs.  

We spent our first night at a restaurant in Sandwich, which is where friends of mine grew up. It's an almost impossibly quaint town nestled between Lake Squam and the White Mountains. Driving into the town, we passed by a police car that had pulled someone over. The driver's side door of the squad car read, in an imposing, law-enforcement-type font, SANDWICH POLICE. I thought this was hysterical, and it led to several minutes of me yelling things like "Sir, put down the Reuben. PUT DOWN THE REUBEN!"

When I say we went to a restaurant, I should really say "the restaurant." This place was not only the sole restaurant in town, but it also appeared to be the only commercial establishment on the town's main drag, unless you count the post office. It's the local watering hole, and has clearly been there for several hundred years, if its sturdy wooden beams and decorative moose heads (made from real moose) were any indication.

How quaint is the town? It features in the opening credits to Newhart. At least that's what I was told by a fellow patron. He offered up this bit of trivia unsolicited. In fact, I wasn't even talking to him, and I wasn't even talking about Bob Newhart. Somehow, the name "Tom Poston" came up for reasons that completely escape me now.

Unnecessary Parental Sidenote: When I was a kid, my father claimed to know Tom Poston (best known as the Newhart handyman) and lunch with him every now and then. He even went so far as to refer to him as "my friend" whenever he'd see him on TV. It was the kind of unverifiable thing my father said a lot, so I tend to disbelieve it. On the other hand, there is no appreciable gain in pretending to know Tom Poston.

Regardless of context, our neighbor used the mention of Poston's name as an opportunity to lay a hand on my shoulder and drop some science on me. According to him, the scene was actually shot as second unit footage for On Golden Pond, never used, and recycled for the Newhart title sequence.

I nodded my head and commented on how interesting that was, trying very, very hard not to be a snotty, aloof New Yorker. There are no friendly trivia buffs in the City; if a stranger talks to you, it's either because he wants money or has to tell you about the imminent arrival of Jesus and his magic spaceship.

You'd think that if a restaurant is the only game in town, it would have little motivation to try hard. But Sandwich's Only Restaurant clearly eschewed the "take it or leave it" approach, as the food was very good. I had a cheeseburger with grilled Portobello mushrooms that's one of the better burgers I've had in a while. I was pleasantly surprised, because 75% of the time I order something with Portobello in it, I wind up with a slime-covered microwaved hockey puck.

The restaurant also had some interesting local beers on tap, which were sampled plentifully. The Wife didn't care for a blueberry wheat offering, saying it tasted like a pancake with hops, but I admire their ambition nonetheless.

This being a small town, an enormous amount of our fellow patrons knew the bride and her family. Much like Newhart Man, they interjected unsolicited well wishes on the couple's behalf. Even our server inquired about the groom-to-be, since he'd never met him. "He's kind of a dick," I said, "she could do so much better." Our server nodded nervously, unaware that I was kidding until I told him I was. He let out a relieved laugh.

Several times during the meal/drinking, friends said they were going to The Creamery for ice cream. By the time we were ready to leave, it was after 11 pm, so I figured The Creamery was surely closed by this point. Not so, I was told, it was open 24/7. You mean, they have people dispensing ice cream around the clock? No, there are no people involved at this creamery at this hour. Or any hour, as I would soon find out.

I followed a friend's minivan up the side of a mountain. No, seriously. In distance, the trip from the restaurant to The Creamery couldn't have been more than 2 or 3 miles. But in pitch blackness, with no street lights, up the side of a mountain, on dirt roads--did I mention these were unpaved roads?--it felt much, much longer than that. I had no idea where I was going, so I had to rely on the minivan in front of me to light the way. And the longer it took, the more I thought I was on a slow, bumpy ride to my doom.

Once we actually arrived at The Creamery, I still wasn't sure I'd make it home alive. The Creamery is really nothing more than a small wooden shed on the side of a very rocky unpaved road. It has one large window and a rickety screen door. When you're at The Creamery and the clock is approaching midnight, the only light around for miles comes from the soft fluorescent purr of the ice cream cooler inside, which gives the shed an almost unearthly glow. You expect to go inside and find not delicious ice cream, but little oval-headed aliens mutilating cattle.

Above the cooler is a chalkboard with the prices for the various ice cream sizes--pint, quart, etc. The Creamery trusts that you will leave the appropriate funds in a mail slot nearby. Should you lack exact change, there is an old aluminum milking bucket filled with quarters, dimes, and nickels. It doesn't just operate this way late at night, but around the clock. And The Creamery mustn't get ripped off too badly, as it's been in business for 12 years according to their web site.

One of the walls has a map of the US, marked with little red dots showing the origins of all its visitors. It also has a guest book, which I signed YOUR CREAMERY IS DELICIOUS AND TERRIFYING.

We bought our ice cream and stood outside the shack. With no light to compete with it, the night sky glittered with stars. And as I stood there, staring at the stars and eating something called Squam Sundae, I felt so strangely happy. It was a rare kind of happy, the kind of happy where you consciously think, "Hey! I'm happy!" It's the kind of happiness you experience when you come across something that has absolutely no right to exist.

I don't believe in fate. I don't think things happen because there is some Great Hand directing it all. That's a scary notion to some folks, but to me it makes the great things in this world that much more amazing because they don't need to happen.

There's something beautiful about a little shack on the side of a mountain that sells ice cream completely on the honor system, 24 hours a day. And the fact that I got to enjoy that ice cream because I have two friends, both great people in their own right, who met, fell in love, formed one of the most honestly blissful couples I've ever known, and got married in a town called Sandwich.

I mean, I can still barely believe there's a town called Sandwich. Everything else on top of that blows my mind.

Posted 08.13.07 09:03pm * Permalink

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