https://www.omekaclassic4.nhlibraries.org/files/original/a17953dcbc85028b94a90a61488d0ada.pdf 43d943a007de8c02422188d53de4b54c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The New Hampshire Troubadour Subject The topic of the resource Troubadour Description An account of the resource The New Hampshire Troubadour was a publication of the State of New Hampshire's State Planning and Development Commission in Concord, NH from 1931-1950s. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The State of New Hampshire Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The State of New Hampshire Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930s-1950s Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource NHSL Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource State of New Hampshire Troubadour PDF files of the Troubadour OCR OCR of the Troubadour The New Hampshire Troubadour COMES TO YOU EVERY MONTH SINGING THE PRAISES OF NEW
HAMPSHIRE, A STATE WHOSE BEAUTY AND OPPORTUNITIES
SHOULD TEMPT YOU TO COME AND SHARE THOSE GOOD THINGS
THAT MAKE LIFE HERE SO DELIGHTFUL. IT IS SENT TO YOU BY
THE STATE PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION AT
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE. FIFTY CENTS A YEAR One morning soon he will look out. To see that ice has left his lake
And let spring in beyond a doubt. The shining world will all but break
The patient strings that bind his heart; For here the ancient miracle
Renews the secret of its art, To make life brave and beautiful. The mayflowers will peek through like stars
Beneath the elemental brown, And cows will wait at pasture bars
For milking when the sun goes down. Then he may live his dreams again
In furrows opened by the plow, To learn that spring is made for men, And heaven is not distant now. ANDREW M. HEATH, Editor VOLUME XVI March, 7947 NUMBER 12 ANNOUNCEMENT l,j juju n he man Yew Hampshire Troubadour — Courtesy, Boston Post 3WINSTON POTK The Presidential Hnihuav (V. S. 2) at Jefferson THE HIDDEN TRAIL With eyes closed I see the hidden trail, for memory retains a
picture of snow under trees in late winter days. This is the scene: A shack in a sugar orchard surrounded by tapped trees with
wooden buckets hooked under dripping spiles. Constantly sap is
slowly dropping, filling the clean, yellow pails with water-colored
fluid. Threading between the trees, treading on deep snow with
snowshoes, I gather overflowing containers and fetch them to
huge kettles, used to “boil down” the sap. Under the kettles or inside the shack in rusty, warped stove, are
brisk fires; from burning birch wood odors of smoke fill the air
with pungent fragrance, — not unlike the taste of spice and tang 4 The March PUTof hot gingerbread, covered
with homemade, sweet butter;
or the acid sting of hard cider
after father had plunged a red-
hot poker into the cracked,
brown pitcher filled from a
barrel, downstairs, in the cold
cellar. Wind is sparring with brown
oak leaves. They are scolding
with husky voices, telling the
boisterous boaster to sweep the
carpet covering forest’s floor,
and to seek clouds burdened
with spring- time moisture; twist
them together, wring out show-
ers to wash away all ice and snow, and feed pregnant soil, vibrant
with life, waiting to give birth to buds, all seeds and roots of ver-
dant, sleeping children conceived by nature. Perhaps that is the
reason clinging oak leaves remain on guard all winter: merely to
guide vagrant winds and send them about their business. Returning to the sap-house for warmth of fire and steaming
kettle, 1 try, very gingerly, to taste the bubbling syrup. It is too hot!
My tongue is burned. The first maple sugar hardens when a tin
cupful is poured on the snow outside. There is no sweeter candy
than frosty maple cooled in the forest on crystalline snow. Later, at home, we decide there is no better nectar than maple
syrup, generously spread over hot, brown flapjacks. To fully enjoy
these, breakfast must be served in the kitchen near the hot, wood-
burning range; the table must be covered with a checkered red
cloth with white fringe. Over the faint odor of wood-fire and
slightly scorched cakes an aroma of sizzling bacon and freshly
brewed coffee greets a hungry boy. Xew Hampshire Troubadour 5Is this the hidden trail? It stretches back over the years away
from war and shackled hopes, fettered ambitions, back to the days
of wishful thinking. Then faith lighted the pathway yet to be blazed
along the trail. One cannot go over the years again except in mem-
ory following lights of faith that still remain undimmed. I decide
the trail is not hidden at all. VACATION THE YEAR-ROUND I am not a native of the State, and my work has been in New
Hampshire for over fifteen years, so I can have neither the joy of
returning to her as my boyhood home, nor the out-of-stater's
anticipation of the coming summer. In spite of that, I won’t be cheated out of the greater joy and
anticipation which belongs only to us who live here all the time. I’ve been in love with the State since I went to Phillips Exeter
in 1919. And now in these later veal's, having married a Concord
girl, Eleanor, daughter of the late Dr. Charles Duncan, Secretary
of the State Board of Health, and having lived in turn in Salem,
Franccstown, West Lebanon, Hollis, and now Auburn, I find my
love for New Hmapshire continues to grow. Other writers to The Troubadour may sing their praises of
olden times or summer days or winter holidays; let me sing of New
Hampshire the whole year through. I was not always thus. Not that I didn't love the State, but I
took her for granted, as we arc so wont to do. Then one summer
day, being impressed by the number of cars from other states, it
suddenly dawned on me, “Why, here these folks arc spending hun- 6 The March 1947dreds of dollars to drive over these roads and see this scenery and
I'm being paid to live here!" From then on 1 had a new pair of eves
and a heart which beat with greater and continuing appreciation. I’ve found this. There’s a clump of birches I have to pass two
or three times a week. They’re the same, but different, as you
know, each time; and they’re mine the year round with continual
joy and anticipation. Some vacationer spends, say, a hundred dol-
lars to go by them and love them. There’s two or three hundred
dollars a week I’m paid beyond my regular salary. Then there’s a fine lane down back of our house. It leads
through a lovely wooded spot, with a small brook, pines and all
that, and more wildflowers in the summer than I can find names for.
A walk down that lane full of joy and anticipation is mine any-
time I want it. How many hundreds of dollars do I gather in
twelve months there? Again, I have to drive quite
a bit. Each time I start out I say
to myself, “If you were on vaca-
tion you’d pay for this like the
others do — all right, you’re on
vacation!” So I don’t know how-
many vacations a year I have,
from five minutes to several
hours long. I don’t have to wait for snow
or summer, or fishing or hunt-
ing. New Hampshire is mine for
the whole year round of one
grand vacation as I work. 1
have twelve months of joy and
anticipation, for, because of my
love for New Hampshire, I live
here now. Ktmtlnl/ih -intrlnmi vallry from Hantlolf>h
Mountain WINblON poie A ew Hampshire I roubadourPROGRESSING BACKWARD Ltf la if dn S. jf^earson Standisu Corners is itself again. The natives are satisfied; the new
folks who live here like it, and the summer folks are happy. The whole upsetting episode was due to Obadiah Phren’s good-
heartedness. His wife, Patience, was heard to remark that Obadiah
may have a good heart, but it wouldn't have done any harm to ask
before he went ahead. It was a year ago that Obadiah suddenly decided he wanted to
modernize. When we heard the first faint rumors, we simply paid
no attention. “Phren’s General Store” was the mecca of the coun-
tryside. It was one of those traditional institutions that simply
goes on and on. Obadiah’s father had run it for sixty years; Oba-
diah himself had had it for forty. Now he was going modern!
Streamlining! It was difficult to think of the Corners without the General
Store. Here was New England storekeeping at its best. One side
of the big room held groceries; the other side was the dry goods
area. On a huge counter down the middle were heaped clothes and
shoes. There were glass cases with toilet goods, candies, and small
tools. Spread helter-skelter everywhere were cardboard advertising
signs left by traveling salesmen. Near the rear of the store was
a huge, round, wood-burning stove. From early fall until late
spring it never went out. Around it were two or three broken chairs
and several kegs and lx>xes. This was headquarters for the town, the
forum where local, state, national, and international issues were
really settled. In the back room were grain, kerosene, harnesses,
molasses, and farming tools. Obadiah held the agency for a dozen
and one things. You could get a mowing machine, oil burner,
sewing machine, or set of furniture through him. 8 The March 1947MOODY STL'DIO General store at West Spring field He has never revealed when the thought of change entered his
consciousness. All the town knows is that one day, without warn-
ing, a group of city men descended on the store. In a twinkling, the
wide front porch disappeared. In a couple of days there was a
brand new front, all shining and aggressive in bright colors. Two
big plate glass affairs took the place of the dusty, cobwebby, many-
paned windows. Obadiah was vastly pleased. He had done something for the
community! Inside, the shelves were rebuilt; the middle counter
was eliminated. Modernistic showcases came into being. The old
stove went, and Obadiah sold himself an oil burner. “Phrcn’s
General Store” was catching up to the twentieth century. He
chuckled mysteriously as folks asked, “What next?” One couldn’t
help smile, he was so obviously having the time of his life! Before the modernization was completed, one began to hear the
first rumblings, like distant thunder on a sultry August afternoon. New Hampshire Troubadour 9If one lived in the country, why couldn't he trade at a country
store? \Vc didn't want the chromium-plated, blatant-colored,
streamlined effect in the store where we spent our money! To add
the final straw, several smart-looking signs went up. “Cash only.” Now all of us paid our bills. If folks didn’t Obadiah soon weeded
them out. His genial friendliness didn’t mean he was an easy mark.
But most of us liked to pay once a month. Through it all, Obadiah beamed and smiled. He apparently felt
that he was doing us all a great service — giving us an up-to-
the-minute atmosphere in which to do our shopping. No one knows for sure just when we began to doubt the ways of
progress. Standish Corners is not a bustling, hustling, streamlined
community. We take things “in our stride,” but moderately.
Hurry for hurry’s sake doesn't go with country living. Perhaps
there was a subtle, mysterious atmosphere of disapproval in the
community. The free-for-all discussions were no more. A radiator
doesn’t do the things to a man that a friendly stove does. “Phren’s
General Store” was gone. The Peterborough Town Library, established in IH33% the first free public library in
America supported by public taxation 10 The March 1947Obadiah was and is a stubborn man! He doesn’t give in easily.
Through the spring and summer, his chin kept the angle that we all
know well. It was the angle that won the bandstand, the Recrea-
tion Hall for the young folks, and the uniforms for the baseball
team. It was because of these things that the town remained loyal.
But the new folks and the summer folks put on a good deal of pres-
sure. The second change was effected as suddenly as the first, except
that Obadiah called in Seth Warner, the local carpenter, and his
crew. Before our eyes signs of modern merchandizing disappeared.
All was as before, except the new heating system stayed. But
the wood stove came back! Obadiah hasn’t said much. Once in a while he rubs his chin and
smiles quietly. He is a Shakespearean scholar and likes to change
quotations a bit. Anent another subject he murmured the other
evening, “O that a man might know the end of a day’s business
ere it comes.” SHEEP ON OUR FARM L ft.Andrews, Our farm in Sanbornton is like a good many other summer farms
in central New Hampshire — a few acres of fields, a woodlot, a fine
garden and a blueberry patch. We’re inclined to brag a bit because
it's home and many hours of toil have gone into its rejuvenation.
It is true we see the Belknaps as others are not favored, and when
the first forethoughts of winter send cool nights in August we look
out across Lake Winnisquam over a billowy sea of fog that keeps
our friends along the lakeshore wondering about the weather for a
few early hours in the morning. New Hampshire Troubadour 11Mother ami lamb on a Chichester farm When my folks acquired the place more than fifteen years ago
it had weathered a hundred and a quarter years of storms and
peaceful change. Time was, a century ago, when Sanbornton was
a mid-state metropolis and across what is now our front lawn ran
the range road straight as an arrow for miles. Now much of it is
dense forest, but a part, kept open by a neighbor's cattle and cord
wood hauling, guides us to our blueberry patch up on the hillside.
Along the old road are the cellar holes of homes of yesteryears —
generations who bent the rocky granite hills into submission for
a time then, when the cities and the level prairies called their sons,
relinquished their precarious grasp and the woods have crept back.
Yet they live and they will for a long time to come in the solid
field-stone walls and crumbling foundations overgrown with
raspberry bushes, and maybe a lilac or an old rose lingering on, 12 The March 1947and certainly some apples gone wild through the woods and in
overgrown pastures. just as a love of the rural life and the old ways of the past have
gradually seeped into me after twenty years of following New
Hampshire trails I have hoped these last few years that my own
small sons would come to really feel the spirit that lingers on here
in the hills. Our winter home in St. Louis eliminates the possibility
of week-end visits, but they look forward to the summer vacation. For years Dad has let native friends use our eight or ten acres
of hayfield for mowing, for oats, or potatoes. It kept the land
“gainfully employed” but never created much enthusiasm on the
part of the family. But by last spring our next door neighbor, a
Sanborntonian of old and enduring stock, had increased his flock
of sheep to the expansion point and bargained for use of the field
as a pasture. Dad is a great vegetable gardener; there are few old
timers in town that could better the long succession of delectables
that load down the table but we know now, perhaps somewhat
belatedly, that animals make a farm, and last summer the third
generation of us fed yellow transparents to the sheep on their regu-
lar traverse past the back door. Sheep, like ourselves, my older son
found, have their likes and dislikes. Some disdained these summer
delicacies from the start, others munched a bit half-heartedly and
trotted off with a baa . . . that conveyed little gratitude, but a few
were regular customers and obviously mourned the fall of the lone
tree’s last apple in late August. A century ago our sheep in New Hampshire meant clothing for
the immediate family that winter, and stories are told of busy and
efficient housewives who could shear, clean, spin, and weave, then
tailor a pair of trousers within two days time when occasion called.
Well — we have a spinning wheel on the farm too but we do not
especially hope for that particular occasion. Although the sheep
are not our own we feel that they are part of the farm and last sum-
mer it was more alive than it had been for many years. . Yew Hampshire Troubarlour 13Front Cover: Sugar house and
gathering sap in a New Hampshire
maple orchard at Randolph. Color
photo by Winston Pote. Back Cover: Skier at Jackson.
Photo by Harold Orne. Frontispiece: Ice breaking up
on the Contoocook River. Photo by
Eric Sanford. Correction: The January front
cover showed Mt. Adams from the
Glen. The photograph of Governor
I )alc and his family, which appeared
in the January Troubadour, was
taken by A. Thornton Gray. Pauline Soroka Chadwell’s poem,
Winter Garden, which appeared on
the back cover of the February
Troubadour, appeared originally in
The Flower Grower. Ralph Page, of Nelson, popular
singing square dance caller who
put dancers at the New Hampshire
Folk Festival through their paces
last June, recently sang his w'ay
through six sides of square dance
recordings, including one recording
appropriately titled “ Monadnock
Muddle.” It was recently announced that
the Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion at the University of New
Hampshire, under the leadership
of Dr. A. F. Yeager, is developing
new varieties of fruits and vege-
tables suited to our climate, in-
cluding apples, strawberries, rasp-
berries, blackberries, peaches, blue-
berries, hazelnuts, hickory nuts,
butternuts, lima beans, tomatoes,
squash, watermelons, cantaloupes,
shell beans, and pop corn. The Rhododendron Reservation
and Cottage in Fitzwilliam, a 300-
acre tract including 16 acres of
rhododendron plants, was offered
to the state by the Appalachian
Mountain Club last December, and
accepted by the Governor anti
Council. This unusual growth of
rhododendron plants, the largest
known natural tract in this latitude,
should be especially interesting to
New Hampshire people as the
beautiful flowering shrub is rare
elsewhere in the state. Rhododen-
dron Cottage, a farmhouse said to
be over 200 years old, was given
modern facilities by the Appalach-
ian Mountain Club without losing
its original charm and character.
The property is stituated two and
one-half miles from Fitzwilliam on 14 The March 1947Rhododendron Cottage, l ilzu illiiirn the old Richmond Road. The State
Forestry and Recreation Com-
mission plans to continue the per-
petuation of the area and the
cottage for the use of the public The first “ PBX,” or private
branch exchange in history, tele-
phone engineers say, was installed
at Concord, New Hampshire. Young Charles F. West, teleg-
rapher and chief dispatcher for a
little railroad, went from Concord
to Boston in 1879 to explain his
idea to the engineer of the year-old
telephone company. “If,” he said in substance, “I
could connect my office telephone
whenever I wished directly with
the offices of the yard master, the
master mechanic, and a few others,
it would be a great convenience
and time-saver. Here’s my rough
idea of how it can be done. What
do you think? New Hampshire Troubadour The engineer designed a “gadget”
to carry out West’s suggestion, and
some weeks later it was installed in
West’s office at Concord, mounted
on a sewing machine table. A recent issue of Collier's con-
tained this item about Claremont,
New Hampshire: The Chamber of
Commerce returned traffic fines
paid by three dozen motorists, as a
good-will gesture. NEW HAMPSHIRE
BOOKS AND AUTHORS A chapter on the stone ruins at
Salem of a village believed to have
been built more than 1,000 years
ago appears in New England's Buried
Treasure by Clay Perry, recently
published by Stephen Dave Press,
New York. The Concord Monitor reports
that Nearby, the latest book written
by Elisabeth Yates McGrcal of
Peterborough, has been selected
by the People’s Book Club as one
of its choices, and an additional
100,000 copies have been ordered
from the publisher. A new book of poems by Marion
Francis Brown of Center Harbor
has been published under the title
High Flung Banner. 15 RUMFORD PRESS CONCORD. N N.SKI SONG I '/ TIERE on the hill we pause for flight
11 Over a trackless sea of white, A silver sea of moonlit snow
Now with a slow, soft swish we go! With stars overhead and stars below
Where snowy diamond crystals glow. The song of our skis is the song of wings, A soft, swift skimming of white gull’s wings. Space and time are left behind
Where city lights gleam and pathways bind.
Here we are to fly through the snow
Over the hills as the white hares go. White spray splashes our faces with light
As on we skim through the limitless night;
Over the hills and over the snow, Sweet is the song of our skis below. From The Christian Science Monitor Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 4677Troubadour194703 Title A name given to the resource The New Hampshire Troubadour March 1947 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource New Hampshire State Planning and Development Commission Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1947-03 Description An account of the resource The New Hampshrie Troubadour was a monthly publication of the New Hampshire State Planning and Development Commission. The magazine was printed between 1931 and 1951. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 16-page booklet Language A language of the resource eng Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant New Hampshire Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. New Hampshire State Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource No Copyright - United States Subject The topic of the resource sugaring, general stores, Type The nature or genre of the resource Text general stores sugaring