There are corners of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine
which seem impossibly far from the more well-known big cities. We
could drive through New England many times, always on different roads,
turning a corner to find an unexpected treat. These pockets of small
towns tucked into forested valleys don't seem to have changed much
in at least half a century. While the tourists in the chain hotels
read USA TODAY or surf the high-speed internet, the locals read their
weekly local newspapers and sit on their front porches, watching the
traffic and playing with their children. In the local diners men
Outdoor wood furnace
talk in loud voices about hunting. Our housekeeper's father once
tended 2,000 maple trees, and her mother still fills the freezer
full of snow at the beginning of each winter, so that the family
will have maple syrup on snow as often as they want.
Unlike the flatter states in the midwest, the roads here in New England have been adapted to the geography, with sudden hills and dips and corners and twists. After a few miles of empty forest come a few dairy farms, then a one-street town and it's back to forest again.
90% of the maple syrup is shipped out of Canada, but the
Pep-O-Mint Statue, Gouverneur, NY
northerners are still proud of theirs -- it's a cash crop, after
all. There's plenty of firewood beside every country home, and
we're seeing a lot of outdoor wood furnaces for sale.
In Gouverneur, New York we spotted a giant steel statue of a
War Memorial, Gouverneur, NY
roll of Pep-O-Mint Life Savers. The local Rotary Club had the
statue erected, because the creator of Life Savers lived in
Gouverneur for a while. But the statue is not as beautiful as
the nearby war memorial.
Another unexpected discovery was the boyhood home of Almanzo
Wilder, who grew up on a small tidy farm east of Canton, New
Almanzo Wilder Homestead
York, and later married Laura Ingalls. Almanzo's story is told
in her book Farmer Boy, just as she told her own childhood
memories in the Little House books. Today this farm is part
of the flourishing Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead industry.
Almanzo's home has been restored and a museum (and large parking
lot, with space for tour buses) added.
At breakfast at Anthony's Diner in St. Johnsbury, we enjoyed a
quartet of large pony-tailed ageing hippies one-upping each other
Almanzo Wilder Farm
with tales of the biggest marijuana crops they knew. Vermont
maintains a tight connection with the sixties -- organic
vegetables in the local market, earnest environmental
entreaties, elderly bicyclists, and posters on many store
windows advertising the next blue-grass band concert and lecture.
St. Johnsbury, Vermont, is just down the road from Lyndonville,
home to Carmen's Ice Cream, sold primarily at the Freight House
restaurant and ice cream stand. There's a porch across the front
of the building where the ice cream-ordering queue forms. We had
Carmen's Ice Cream
enough time to read the local specials -- Bear Creek Caramel
(caramel base, caramel-filled chocolate cups 7 caramel swirl);
Boston Creme pie; Fenway Fudge; Cashew Turtle; Chocolate Lover's
Chocolate; Dinosaur Crunch; Lighthouse coffee; Maine Black Bear
(vanilla with raspberry swirl and chocolate raspberry mini-melts);
Moose tracks -- a classic (Vanilla with chocolate fudge swirl and
mini peanut butter cups); Maine Deer Sign ( coffee ice cream,
chocolate fudge swirl and toffee candy) and Mud Pie. By the time
we had narrowed our choices and ordered, the line was off the
porch, across the parking lot and down the sidewalk.