Notes from New England
About five years ago, my daughter asked if we could change up Thanksgiving. She wanted to swap the traditional turkey and extended family foray for something less familiar. So we committed to spending all future Thanksgivings in a new city, just our immediate family.
We started with New Orleans. Ate at Willie Mae's Scotch House. Chased the Second Line. Hung out with swamp folk who technically spoke English but never said a single syllable I could decipher. And we learned a lot about Voodoo and Nicolas Cage. Greatest trip ever.
The year after Nola, we did Nashville. Ate hot chicken and moon pies. Heard live music in one bar, left the bar, walked ten feet, heard live music at that bar—rinsed and repeated many times over. Did the Johnny Cash Museum. Did the National Museum of African American Music. Saw Steve Earle and Gary Mule Deer at the Grand Ole Opry. Stayed at the Gaylord Opryland while a Fundamentalist convention was going down—repression and floor-length denim dresses go together like scotch and soda. Greatest trip ever.
After Nashville, we did New York City. Rode in the greatest cab ever. Clocked twenty-five thousand steps in the park. Sat next to Weird Al on the subway. Followed my daughter around the McKittrick Hotel. Ate Chinese. Ate hot dogs. Ate pizza. Ate burgers. Ate bagels. Smelled hundreds of things we’d never smelled before. Heard dozens of languages we’d never heard before. Greatest trip ever.
This year we did a handful of cities on a New England road trip. These are the highlights:
Wandered The Freedom Trail. Watched a tour guide wearing a waistcoat, a wig, ruffles, and stockings hold court for a bunch of tourists: “Pray, let your eyes follow yonder cobblestoned street to the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin, right betwixt the T.J. Maxx and the Shake Shack.”
Nothing is sacred, not even the C Note. Did a duck boat tour. It would have been forgettable except that a women’s natural bodybuilding team was on the tour with us. The guide made the mortal error of inviting tourists to drive the duck in the Charles River. We spent the next hour watching female bodybuilders with one hand on the wheel while the other flexed all-natural biceps for their Instagram stories.
Had dinner at Faccia a Faccia. Ate the Heirloom Chicories. Pretty sure the chef harvested the persimmons in that salad from the Garden of Eden.
Paid respects to The Harvard Lampoon.
Stayed at the Hawthorne in Salem. Dared its ghost to haunt us. No dice. Begged and prayed to be haunted. Nothing. Summoned it via a Ouija board in a nearby gift shop. Nada. Some ghosts are prima donnas like that.
Appreciated Salem’s transparency. The city’s like, “Yeah, we killed witches here. Big mistake.” Didn’t so much appreciate their exploitation. Every twenty feet, the city’s like, “Wanna buy some sage? Wanna buy a witch’s hat? Wanna buy some cat-themed tarot cards?”
Tourist traps. Ate at Ledger. When our server said, “And for you, sir?” I said, “Surprise me.” My wife hates it when I do this, but I love the adventure. Though I was deflated when the server said, “I’m bringing you the chicken.” Sounded boring, but then I got the chicken, and this is where the real black magic is happening in Salem. Don’t know what the chef did to the chicken, but it was the kind of dish that rewires your DNA. By comparison, every other chicken dish has done a disservice to poultry cuisine. I’m fairly certain the head chef of Ledger sold his soul to the devil for this chicken recipe.
Drove up to Portland, Maine. Saw a bunch of lighthouses. They’re even more charming than you think they are. Ate lobster rolls. Ate chowder. The server pronounced it lobstuh and chowduh.
Got disoriented on a cobblestone street in Portland. A guy stopped and asked if we needed help. Odd, I thought. I put my hands in my pockets, checked for my phone and my wallet, and then I prepared to defend my family with violence. Turns out people in Portland are just pathologically nice. I said as much to a waiter. He corrected me. “We’re not nice, we’re kind,” he said. I asked him to explain the difference. He said, “During winter storms, we let homeless people stay in our houses. Because we’re kind. We resent those same people. Because we’re not nice.”
Drove through New Hampshire on our way to Vermont. The entire state is a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.
Stayed in Woodstock, Vermont. The entire town is a Thomas Kinkade painting come to life.
Walked downtown. Covered bridges. A general store. A courthouse. Townspeople who all seem to know each other. I imagined that murders in Woodstock, Vermont were investigated and solved by the public librarian, a folksy gal who can turn a phrase, spikes her coffee with bourbon, and has instincts as sharp as the knitting needles that are always within arm’s reach.
The Woodstock Inn serves coffee and cookies every day at 4pm, just outside a gift shop that sells maple syrup by the buttload. My son and I got in line behind a half a dozen women with differing hues of purplish-gray hair. The cookies are limited supply, first come, first served. Each of these women got a napkin, unfolded it, and loaded it with as many cookies as the napkin would hold. We counted nine cookies snatched by one of these women alone. The chocolate chips went fast. My son was ready to hip check these broads and eat the cookies right in their faces. I talked him off the cliff. But that didn’t make the oatmeal raisins taste any better.
The women of the Woodstock Inn when cookies are served. Woke up Thanksgiving morning to a snow storm. Four inches had fallen. Another seven or eight in the forecast. We’re Californians. Snow ain’t our thing. We had a couple hundred miles to drive from Vermont to Providence, and these are fairly accurate representations of the conversations we overheard at breakfast:
“It’s pretty bad out there.”
“Haven’t seen it snow like this in 50 years.”
“I got four-wheel drive, snow tires, and I’ve summited Everest, but drive in this weather? Not me.”
“I heard a family from California is driving to Providence. Thousand bucks says nobody ever hears from them again.”
Our drive out of Woodstock.
White-knuckled it to Providence, three hours in blizzard-blind conditions. Drafted behind snow plows most of the way there. Felt pretty manly.
Walked the Providence river. Saw Brown. Saw RISD. Saw Wicked. The boy and I left the girls to see the Basketball Hall of Fame. I wear a size 12 shoe. With my shoes on, I couldn’t fill Shaquille O’Neal’s shoes. If I were a pedicurist and he walked into my shop, I’d retire.
Drove back to Boston to catch our flight home. Delayed so we spent the day bowling candlepin in South Boston, the same alley that hosted Anthony Bourdain and the wrap party for Good Will Hunting.
Greatest trip ever.
Heads-up! My dark crime comedy novella Dig is available for free on the Kindle store this week (starting Monday).
One body. Two brothers. A whole lotta gravedigging.
Most people need all ten fingers to play the piano. So when up-and-coming bluesman Griff Wiggins freakishly loses two of his fingers, it doesn’t take much effort for his two-bit older brother Ollie to talk him into a career change.
The career? Robbing the local kingpin.
But when the robbery goes sideways, they find themselves digging a shallow grave in a mountain pass. The dead body wasn’t part of the plan, but if they can just dig the grave and lay the body to rest, they’ll be on their way with the score of a lifetime. Seems easy enough, right?
Wrong. There’s Ollie’s girlfriend who’s playing her own angle. There’s car trouble. There’s a one-legged associate who can’t stop bringing up quasi-philosophical quandaries. But most importantly, there’s a river of bad blood flowing through a lifetime of broken brotherhood.
And Griff and Ollie will have to bury the hatchet if they hope to bury the body.
Oh my! Your Maine memories had me howling. In 1999 I took my then-68 year old mom and 66 year old auntie to Maine to “see the cousins”. My mom had seen them in 1981 to take them little jars of Mt. St. Helens ash. Her sister had not seen them since the late 1940s.
Their mother was born in Falmouth and summered in Bah Hahbuh. We visited Paris, South Paris, Norway and stayed in a family log cabin on Lake Penneseewassee. We had lobster rolls at McDonalds!
Saw lots of graves of relatives, some in the back yard of one of the cousins who was living in the farmhouse that had been in the family over 200 years. It was the best family roadtrip ever.
Best trip ever-- is also hilarious. '“We’re not nice, we’re kind,” he said. I asked him to explain the difference. He said, “During winter storms, we let homeless people stay in our houses. Because we’re kind. We resent those same people. Because we’re not nice.”' Haha!
We raised our kids in Boston. I miss the people and the accents. We'll be moving back to be near our adult kids who are forever linked there. (Probably NH since Boston is horribly pricey now.) New England-- Best place to live ever.