New England is old, and that’s one of the things I like about it. As most people learned in school, it was one of the first places in North America to be settled by English-speaking people and they left their marks almost everywhere you look. Many of the houses they built are still standing, sometimes with their descendants still living in them. Even where the houses have disintegrated, cellar holes remain.
There’s nothing I like better than to explore the back roads of New England. I keep DeLorme Atlases of four states on the back seat of my car to guide me if I’m lucky enough to find a few hours and indulge my wanderlust. As family obligations or medical treatment force me to drive to Massachusetts several times a year, I try to work in some side trips whenever possible on the way back. I’ve already taken every possible north to south route where the roads are numbered highways, so now I try to plot back-road detours along each of them. As I investigate those, I find many other intriguing, dead-end side roads too. I intend to examine them all before I die.
Usually, I don’t know how long it’s going to take to explore a road, because I don’t always know where it will lead. Many are not in the DeLorme Atlas. If my wife happens to be with me, that may limit how far down a particular road I can go or how many side roads I can take before she loses patience. If I’m traveling alone, I usually get home late. She doesn’t worry so much anymore because she knows what I’m likely to be doing. and the next time we’re passing through the area I’d been exploring, I can show her some the best out-of-the-way places I’ve found.
English-speaking people have lived in the area for over four hundred years and they’ve altered the landscape. In addition to houses and fields, they built stone walls which remain long after the house has fallen in and rotted away, and the fields have grown up to forest again. While driving along, I look for old gnarled maple trees near the road as signs for where an old farmhouse may have been located. Usually, I find a cellar hole nearby.
The earliest evidence of human habitation in northern New England goes back only about nine thousand years. Those people were probably very different from the Abenaki and other tribes encountered by European colonists. They were likely nomadic hunters of big herd animals like mammoths and mastodons, and it’s quite possible they hunted those animals to extinction. Otherwise, they left very little evidence of their stay here. Only careful archaeological investigation produces whatever artifacts they left and those can only be seen in museums or private collections. The next inhabitants, eastern woodland Indians, didn’t leave much behind either. There are some pictographs on a cliff in Lovell, some petroglyphs on rocks in the Penobscot, and some shell middens on the coast, but not much else. Their descendants still live in New England, but they’re largely assimilated, living pretty much the way I do.
Also interesting is evidence of the prehuman geology all around us. Maine, actually, is one of the most geologically varied places on earth. At Border’s recently, I purchased Roadside Geology of Vermont and New Hampshire and I found Roadside Geology of Maine online. It should be arriving in the mail any day now. I’m already trying my wife’s patience when I pull over to examine road cuts along the highway. Especially interesting are the fresh ones, like those exposed during the recent Maine Turnpike widening.
Many of us around here were forced to learn about geology back in 1988 when the US Department of Energy considered trying to bury high-level nuclear waste in the Sebago Batholith. I never heard of a batholith before that, but I read their literature and found out that a huge mass of granite formed under us millions of years ago when some magma tried to break through the earth’s mantle. It couldn’t quite break out into a volcano and cooled underground instead. The DOE said the batholith, or pluton, extended from Westbrook to Lovell and it was seamless - there were no cracks in it. That was surprising news to the dozens of well drillers who had been boring into it for decades and finding lots of cracks. Otherwise they would not have been able to find any water. Lots of angry New Englanders persuaded the Energy Department to look elsewhere for a nuclear waste dump, but my interest in local geology was reignited.
Ever since, it’s taken me a lot longer to get from place to place in New England, because I have to pull over so much and check out the evidence of history.
Published March, 2004
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Abandoned Neighborhoods in Maine
I’m not sure if we’re following an urge to escape from the modern world, but for a few hours each weekend, my wife and I have been exploring abandoned neighborhoods around our home in Lovell. In the eastern and western corners of town, networks of dirt roads, lined with old stone walls, snake through thick forest. Recently, we started exploring the old Patterson Hill neighborhood in east Lovell.
The older I get, just thinking about how much work went into building these roads makes me long for a nap. Using only hand tools and draft animals, the settlers hacked and smoothed roads that climb steep hillsides, then maintained them through winter frosts, spring floods and mud, and summer thunderstorms. They also cleared forests, built houses and barns, planted and harvested crops, raised animals, raised children, and just plain lived. In the pristine forest settlers first met, the trees towered well over a hundred feet and were often up to six feet around at the trunk. Consider what it took to chop through an oak that massive with an ax! Then, once the trees were down, they still had to be cleared to make way for crops. The huge stumps were often left in place for the first few harvests, leaving them to be dealt with after a house and barn were built. Again using only hand tools and draft animals, the stumps were pulled to the edges of fields to serve as fencing. Some old-timers around town still use the expression “ugly as a stump fence”—once to describe the wife of a former Post Office clerk—which is something less than politically correct in these enlightened times.
Recent theory has it that the stony New England soil was not a problem for that first generation of farmers. The topsoil on the hills, though thin, was still adequate in most places for plowing and planting without hitting underlying rocks. However, because the duff - layers of leaves and pine needles - was plowed under and the topsoil eroded, it could no longer insulate the ground, so frost penetrated deeper, and the glacially-deposited stones in the mineral soil beneath were pushed to the surface. It was the second generation of farmers who had to deal with stones, moving them to the sides of fields to replace the stumps, which by then had largely rotted away.
The emergence of those stones—some of them the size of Volkswagens--may have been what caused the second generation of settlers to abandon the Patterson Hill area. Lovell’s history, “Blueberries and Pusley Weed,” indicates that area families began to move on shortly after the Civil War. In 1858, there was a schoolhouse there with 19 students over behind little Dan Charles Pond. I had driven right past the site of the so-called Dresser School countless times without ever spying a trace of it. Evidently, it was abandoned not too many years after it was established - when area families decided to become pioneers once again, moving to the great American west and starting over.
Such was the pattern in many Maine and New Hampshire towns. The first settlers were given land as payment for their military service in the French and Indian War or, later, in the American Revolution. These veterans and their families carved a farm out of the primeval forest and passed it on to the next generation. The population of rural northern New England continued to grow in this way until peaking in 1861, after which it declined drastically as many families abandoned their farms and moved west. Their houses and barns collapsed, leaving cellar holes and stone walls which were eventually hidden from sight as forests reclaimed the fields.
It appears that at least two generations of forest have grown over the fields and pastures of Patterson Hill since it was abandoned, perhaps even three or four. At the very top of the hill, however, a field has been reclaimed, revealing a breathtaking vista of the New Hampshire mountains to the west, and a well has been drilled. However, there’s no electricity anywhere nearby, since the whole area was already uninhabited long before Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification program in the 1930s. Here and there on Patterson Hill, faded surveying tape is evident, and I noticed a few small campers, but redevelopment does not appear imminent. Patterson Hill seems likely to remain wild for a while longer.
I wrote a column a few weeks ago about the solitary grave of 17-year-old Marion Abbott next to Union Hill Road near the Stow/Lovell line. John Chandler of Lovell told me he knew where the grave was and had heard that Marion was killed by a bull. He knew of nowhere that that information had been written down; it’s just what people always said about how the young woman under that lonely stone marker protected by a little fence had died 144 years ago.
First published May, 2004
The older I get, just thinking about how much work went into building these roads makes me long for a nap. Using only hand tools and draft animals, the settlers hacked and smoothed roads that climb steep hillsides, then maintained them through winter frosts, spring floods and mud, and summer thunderstorms. They also cleared forests, built houses and barns, planted and harvested crops, raised animals, raised children, and just plain lived. In the pristine forest settlers first met, the trees towered well over a hundred feet and were often up to six feet around at the trunk. Consider what it took to chop through an oak that massive with an ax! Then, once the trees were down, they still had to be cleared to make way for crops. The huge stumps were often left in place for the first few harvests, leaving them to be dealt with after a house and barn were built. Again using only hand tools and draft animals, the stumps were pulled to the edges of fields to serve as fencing. Some old-timers around town still use the expression “ugly as a stump fence”—once to describe the wife of a former Post Office clerk—which is something less than politically correct in these enlightened times.
Recent theory has it that the stony New England soil was not a problem for that first generation of farmers. The topsoil on the hills, though thin, was still adequate in most places for plowing and planting without hitting underlying rocks. However, because the duff - layers of leaves and pine needles - was plowed under and the topsoil eroded, it could no longer insulate the ground, so frost penetrated deeper, and the glacially-deposited stones in the mineral soil beneath were pushed to the surface. It was the second generation of farmers who had to deal with stones, moving them to the sides of fields to replace the stumps, which by then had largely rotted away.
The emergence of those stones—some of them the size of Volkswagens--may have been what caused the second generation of settlers to abandon the Patterson Hill area. Lovell’s history, “Blueberries and Pusley Weed,” indicates that area families began to move on shortly after the Civil War. In 1858, there was a schoolhouse there with 19 students over behind little Dan Charles Pond. I had driven right past the site of the so-called Dresser School countless times without ever spying a trace of it. Evidently, it was abandoned not too many years after it was established - when area families decided to become pioneers once again, moving to the great American west and starting over.
Such was the pattern in many Maine and New Hampshire towns. The first settlers were given land as payment for their military service in the French and Indian War or, later, in the American Revolution. These veterans and their families carved a farm out of the primeval forest and passed it on to the next generation. The population of rural northern New England continued to grow in this way until peaking in 1861, after which it declined drastically as many families abandoned their farms and moved west. Their houses and barns collapsed, leaving cellar holes and stone walls which were eventually hidden from sight as forests reclaimed the fields.
It appears that at least two generations of forest have grown over the fields and pastures of Patterson Hill since it was abandoned, perhaps even three or four. At the very top of the hill, however, a field has been reclaimed, revealing a breathtaking vista of the New Hampshire mountains to the west, and a well has been drilled. However, there’s no electricity anywhere nearby, since the whole area was already uninhabited long before Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification program in the 1930s. Here and there on Patterson Hill, faded surveying tape is evident, and I noticed a few small campers, but redevelopment does not appear imminent. Patterson Hill seems likely to remain wild for a while longer.
I wrote a column a few weeks ago about the solitary grave of 17-year-old Marion Abbott next to Union Hill Road near the Stow/Lovell line. John Chandler of Lovell told me he knew where the grave was and had heard that Marion was killed by a bull. He knew of nowhere that that information had been written down; it’s just what people always said about how the young woman under that lonely stone marker protected by a little fence had died 144 years ago.
First published May, 2004
Forgotten Stories in Stone
For over twenty years I’d driven by and never noticed it. Pulling over to study the rocks in an old stone wall, I saw it not ten feet away. A metal fence closely surrounded a single gravestone. The little cemetery was deeply shaded by thick hemlocks on a small knoll that dropped off sharply beside an active little brook. It was the final abode of Marion Abbott - a 17-year-old girl who died in 1860. Alone on the edge of the road - me for the moment; she for eternity - I contemplated Marion and her place. She must have spent time there when she was alive and enjoyed the solitude. The fence suggested that. I wondered if it was her idea - if she’d had time before she died to think about where she wanted to be buried and how her grave would look, or if she passed on too quickly and her family made the decisions.
Was the fence for preserving her privacy in death? Did Marion cherish alone time in her short life? Would she prevent others from sitting next to her grave in her special place? Or was it to stop someone from following her to the great forever?
Looking around, I envisioned the place 150 years ago. The paved road would have been dirt then with the same stone walls on either side, but with sunny, rolling, green pastures behind them instead of dark hemlocks. Did she lie down there alone on the knoll and chew on grass stems, or did she bring a picnic lunch to share with someone else? Did she watch animals graze and drink from the brook now crowded by forest? I climbed over the mossy stone wall and stood on a thick, spongy, hundred-year-old bed of hemlock needles covering the lower part the inscription on the marble headstone. The knees of my pants moistened and the piney smell was strong as I knelt to read the summary of Marion’s life.
MARION
daut of James E & Mary F Abbott
died July 31, 1861 AE 17 yrs 6 mos
Dearest friend, thy pains are ended
Thou hast found a better home
Thy songs are now with angels blended
Where no death nor sorrows come
Climbing back into my truck, I drove off slowly in second gear, thinking about Marion, wondering what she might have looked like, how she dressed. I wasn't in as much of a hurry as I had been. I checked my rearview mirror frequently and pulled over to let others who didn't like my slow pace rush by. I hadn’t gone far when I noticed a big old oak with heavy limbs beside the road - a clue to the location of a cellar hole. Sure enough, on the other side of the road was a line of split granite stones and a break in the wall I could pull my truck into.
Again I was surprised to see a family cemetery dominated by an obelisk in the center and surrounded by stone markers. I walked over and climbed the stone stairs leading up the raised earthen platform that comprised the Smith Cemetery. On the base of the tall monument was the following epitaph:HERBERT
Son of Simon & Mary Ann Smith
Aged 16 YRS 10 M’s
Wounded at Cold Harbor June 3, 1864
Died in Baltimore, Md June 23, 1864
at National Camden Hospital
Why did you go off like that, Herbert? You were too young for battle. Then I remembered that over a hundred thousand boys lied about their age on both sides in the Civil War.
As two crows flew lazily over the surrounding treetops, their caws absorbed by the deep woods, I realized Marion and Herbert very likely knew each other. Did Herbert ever look longingly on the more mature Marion, wishing he were older? He would have been twelve when she died and the war started only two months before. Was his decision to go off and fight before he was old enough influenced by her passing? Had he ever seen her sitting alone by the brook? Did he join her and talk?
Herbert’s grave was the most prominent, but his baby sister, Ella Smith, was born the same year he died. Perhaps he was in camp somewhere in Virginia and read of her birth in a letter from his mother.
The age of trees in and around the Smith cellar hole told me that the Smith family survived in Stow much longer than the Abbott family. Did the Abbotts abandon their farm down the road and join the great migration westward with the dozens of other families from West Lovell and Stow? The woods taking over the Smith farm were less mature than those around Marion’s grave down the street. Herbert’s parents lived on until 1901 and 1903 and were buried next to him. The farm was worked well into the 20th century and the remains of an old automobile were discernible among the encroaching juniper and alders near the barn foundation. His father, Simon, died at 79 on June 26, 1901 - the same time of year Herbert died and the monument marking Herbert's grave was visible from the house. Did painful memories of his soldier son finally get to him? Simon's wife, Mary joined him in the cemetery two years later, also at 79. Three years hence, Ella died an old maid at 42 and is buried nearby. Did she stay and care for her aging parents while Stow’s and Lovell’s eligible men went west? Did anyone live there after Ella? How long before the house and barn fell in and rotted away? I don't know.
The woods and the stones hold many stories. Most, however, are forgotten.
Published April, 2004. Some weeks after it ran in local newpapers, John Chandler of Lovell, who grew up in nearby Chatham, NH told me he knew of Marion Abbott's grave and he'd "heard people say" the teenager died after being gored by a bull.
Old Clothes
“Don’t go outside until you put on your old clothes,” my mother would say to me each day after school. I would take off my school uniform of navy-blue pants, white shirt and blue tie with the letters “SWS” for Saint William’s School arranged diagonally on it, then put on my “old clothes.” New clothes were for school and for church. Old clothes were for playing and there was a special transformation to be felt putting them on. I would cease being a student who had to say, “Yes, sister,” and “No, sister,” and became just a kid who could say or do anything that came to mind. The old clothes fit better because they had worn into my body over time. If I got them dirty, that was okay. If I got a little tear in a shirt or some pants, no one would get excited. They could be easily patched or sewn up.
It’s much the same today. If I get home from school early enough and still have time to do something, I love to get into my old clothes. On weekends and on days off, I don’t have to dress up at all. Except for an awkward period of time as a teenager, fashion hasn’t been important to me. I never cared much what I looked like so long as I was warm and dry, and it’s the same today. Occasionally it has annoyed my wife, since she has to be seen in public with me. She tries sometimes to buy me new clothes hoping I would give up the old, comfortable ones, but that doesn’t work. I don’t want to embarrass her when we go out, so I’ll usually change if she asks me to. I’ve had to learn that the hard way though because, if I wore an old shirt too much or an old pair of boots, she might try to throw them out when I wasn’t looking. More than once I found them in the trash just in time to salvage them. It’s a good thing it’s my job to go to the dump.
Starting out with a young family, I had to do my own mechanical work and the vehicles I drove often needed it. I always had a tool box with me and if I had on teacher clothes or socializing clothes when something broke, it added to the stress when I had to open the hood to pull on some linkage or slide underneath and wire up an exhaust pipe. I had to not only fix whatever it was, but I had to avoid getting grease on my clothes while doing it. I also had projects to work on nearly every day after getting home from my regular job, and it took extra time to change first before going outside and climbing a ladder or working on the woodpile, or whatever else needed doing.
You won’t see them too often around Lovell in the wintertime, but I’ve known some “metrosexual” types. That’s a relatively new word for males who are heterosexual, but like homosexuals, they are inordinately concerned about their appearance. You can spot them once in a while on the weekends or during the summer. They try to blend in, but can be easy to pick out by their haircuts or their new LL Bean outfits. They’re what novelist Robert Parker would call “rural chick.” They’re scarce in Oxford County, Maine but quite numerous in the Portland area or in North Conway.
Here in Oxford County, the native men are mostly what you might call the “hickosexual” type. That’s a brand-new word because I just made it up. They’re difficult to describe exactly, but you know them when you see them. Hickosexuals might pay attention to the appearance of their pickup trucks or their motorcycles or snowmobiles, but not to their clothing or their haircuts. They’re especially solicitous of their tools, their hunting rifles, fishing equipment, bass boats, or their televisions sets, but not their clothing or their personal appearance. In that sense, they’re the antithesis of the metrosexuals who visit the region periodically.
Hickosexuals are interested in how things work. They know how to make things and fix things and they’re seldom very far away from the tools needed to do so. Their clothes - especially the pants - bear evidence of past jobs, like traces of paint or stubborn stains which remain after repeated washings. They’re clean in the mind of the hickosexual, though they may not appear so to an objective observer. If they’ve been washed and they smell clean, they are clean, even if they’re stained. No article of clothing is discarded until it’s badly ripped and the fabric is so thin that repair is not longer possible, and neither the Salvation Army nor the Goodwill will accept it.
Surprisingly, the hickosexual look has become fashionable. Stores patronized by metrosexuals are marketing hickosexual styles like partially worn pants and hats, and lately even pre-stained jeans. They’re new clothes, but they’re made to look like they’re old clothes. They’re carefully designed to make the metrosexual wearer appear as though, like the hickosexual, he doesn’t care about his appearance.
First published January, 2005
It’s much the same today. If I get home from school early enough and still have time to do something, I love to get into my old clothes. On weekends and on days off, I don’t have to dress up at all. Except for an awkward period of time as a teenager, fashion hasn’t been important to me. I never cared much what I looked like so long as I was warm and dry, and it’s the same today. Occasionally it has annoyed my wife, since she has to be seen in public with me. She tries sometimes to buy me new clothes hoping I would give up the old, comfortable ones, but that doesn’t work. I don’t want to embarrass her when we go out, so I’ll usually change if she asks me to. I’ve had to learn that the hard way though because, if I wore an old shirt too much or an old pair of boots, she might try to throw them out when I wasn’t looking. More than once I found them in the trash just in time to salvage them. It’s a good thing it’s my job to go to the dump.
Starting out with a young family, I had to do my own mechanical work and the vehicles I drove often needed it. I always had a tool box with me and if I had on teacher clothes or socializing clothes when something broke, it added to the stress when I had to open the hood to pull on some linkage or slide underneath and wire up an exhaust pipe. I had to not only fix whatever it was, but I had to avoid getting grease on my clothes while doing it. I also had projects to work on nearly every day after getting home from my regular job, and it took extra time to change first before going outside and climbing a ladder or working on the woodpile, or whatever else needed doing.
You won’t see them too often around Lovell in the wintertime, but I’ve known some “metrosexual” types. That’s a relatively new word for males who are heterosexual, but like homosexuals, they are inordinately concerned about their appearance. You can spot them once in a while on the weekends or during the summer. They try to blend in, but can be easy to pick out by their haircuts or their new LL Bean outfits. They’re what novelist Robert Parker would call “rural chick.” They’re scarce in Oxford County, Maine but quite numerous in the Portland area or in North Conway.
Here in Oxford County, the native men are mostly what you might call the “hickosexual” type. That’s a brand-new word because I just made it up. They’re difficult to describe exactly, but you know them when you see them. Hickosexuals might pay attention to the appearance of their pickup trucks or their motorcycles or snowmobiles, but not to their clothing or their haircuts. They’re especially solicitous of their tools, their hunting rifles, fishing equipment, bass boats, or their televisions sets, but not their clothing or their personal appearance. In that sense, they’re the antithesis of the metrosexuals who visit the region periodically.
Hickosexuals are interested in how things work. They know how to make things and fix things and they’re seldom very far away from the tools needed to do so. Their clothes - especially the pants - bear evidence of past jobs, like traces of paint or stubborn stains which remain after repeated washings. They’re clean in the mind of the hickosexual, though they may not appear so to an objective observer. If they’ve been washed and they smell clean, they are clean, even if they’re stained. No article of clothing is discarded until it’s badly ripped and the fabric is so thin that repair is not longer possible, and neither the Salvation Army nor the Goodwill will accept it.
Surprisingly, the hickosexual look has become fashionable. Stores patronized by metrosexuals are marketing hickosexual styles like partially worn pants and hats, and lately even pre-stained jeans. They’re new clothes, but they’re made to look like they’re old clothes. They’re carefully designed to make the metrosexual wearer appear as though, like the hickosexual, he doesn’t care about his appearance.
First published January, 2005
Molly
We found Molly at the pound where she had been abandoned. She was timid and not well-bred. We never found out who her parents were or what breeds any of her other ancestors were either. We could only guess. Even though she had apparently been born under humble circumstances, she had dignity. She was kind. When she looked at you with those soft eyes, you knew she could see right into you and you could keep no secrets from her about what kind of person you really were. Our children took to her right away. She was with us for eighteen years and now she’s gone. All we have left are pictures and ashes. As soon as the snow melts, we’ll bury them in my wife’s flower garden, where she liked to lay in the sun.
Molly’s time overlapped my children’s lives from elementary school to adulthood. She frolicked with them in the yard when they were young children. When they became teenagers, She let their boyfriends and girlfriends pat her as they were introduced. They are grown and gone now, but when they learned Molly was fading, they made a trip back to say good-bye before we had to put her down. As I watched each one lean down and whisper to her, I wondered what they were thinking about. Was it how she never barked when each was sneaking into the house after their curfew? She let us know whenever a stranger came near the house, but even in the dark of night, she always knew when it was family coming home. Was it in the way they walked? Was it their scent? However it was, Molly always knew who belonged there and who didn’t, and she never told any tales. She would take their secrets to the grave.
She’d been deaf for more than two years and there were cataracts on her eyes. Still, she maintained her dignity and she could sense the mood of whoever was present around her, something she had always done. She got along with everybody, but she didn’t force her attentions on people. Whenever I hugged my wife or one of my children, Molly would come over and nuzzle between us. She never approached outsiders, but waited nearby and allowed them to approach her, preferring women to men.
As I younger child, I liked dogs quite well and I had a German Shepherd who was a constant companion until she had to be put down too. After getting a paper route, however, I realized that some could be a real pain in the butt and, though I can’t lean over far enough to see for sure, I think I still have scars to prove it.
I was beginning to lose faith in the species until we found Molly at the pound.
As a puppy, she paper-trained fast and there was never much need to discipline her. She only needed to be told the rules once, it seemed, and she’d remember. She wasn’t the type to perform tricks and she didn’t need to be told what to do. I never said, “Lay down,” or “Sit.” Molly did what she wanted and it always seemed appropriate. She was so good at being a dog that she made me want to be a better human.
For most of her life here on Christian Hill, the neighborhood’s dogs went where they wished and they were well-behaved. They didn’t bark too much or chase cars or get into the trash. They may have fertilized the lawn in spots, but that’s it. The neighbors knew them all by name and where they lived. But they’re all gone now; Molly was the last one.
During her life, Molly was a good example for her human companions. Nobody had to tell her how to be a dog and she didn’t sweat the small stuff, always seeming to understand what was going on around her. She did start to lose it at the end though, but don’t we all? She was incontinent, occasionally. She forgot things, sometimes. She’d go for a stroll and forget how to get back. A couple of times, she wandered down to the Village and appeared lost. Donny Chandler called from his garage and we’d go pick her up. Two other times she didn’t come home and my wife called Harvest Hills to discover that she’d been picked up on the road heading out of town and acting confused. When she made her final trip to the Fryeburg Veterinary Hospital, she seemed to know it. She lay peacefully on her favorite blanket and hardly flinched as the hypodermic needle went into her leg. We weren’t surprised to observe that she died as gracefully as she had lived.
This column was first published in March, 2005
Molly’s time overlapped my children’s lives from elementary school to adulthood. She frolicked with them in the yard when they were young children. When they became teenagers, She let their boyfriends and girlfriends pat her as they were introduced. They are grown and gone now, but when they learned Molly was fading, they made a trip back to say good-bye before we had to put her down. As I watched each one lean down and whisper to her, I wondered what they were thinking about. Was it how she never barked when each was sneaking into the house after their curfew? She let us know whenever a stranger came near the house, but even in the dark of night, she always knew when it was family coming home. Was it in the way they walked? Was it their scent? However it was, Molly always knew who belonged there and who didn’t, and she never told any tales. She would take their secrets to the grave.
She’d been deaf for more than two years and there were cataracts on her eyes. Still, she maintained her dignity and she could sense the mood of whoever was present around her, something she had always done. She got along with everybody, but she didn’t force her attentions on people. Whenever I hugged my wife or one of my children, Molly would come over and nuzzle between us. She never approached outsiders, but waited nearby and allowed them to approach her, preferring women to men.
As I younger child, I liked dogs quite well and I had a German Shepherd who was a constant companion until she had to be put down too. After getting a paper route, however, I realized that some could be a real pain in the butt and, though I can’t lean over far enough to see for sure, I think I still have scars to prove it.
I was beginning to lose faith in the species until we found Molly at the pound.
As a puppy, she paper-trained fast and there was never much need to discipline her. She only needed to be told the rules once, it seemed, and she’d remember. She wasn’t the type to perform tricks and she didn’t need to be told what to do. I never said, “Lay down,” or “Sit.” Molly did what she wanted and it always seemed appropriate. She was so good at being a dog that she made me want to be a better human.
For most of her life here on Christian Hill, the neighborhood’s dogs went where they wished and they were well-behaved. They didn’t bark too much or chase cars or get into the trash. They may have fertilized the lawn in spots, but that’s it. The neighbors knew them all by name and where they lived. But they’re all gone now; Molly was the last one.
During her life, Molly was a good example for her human companions. Nobody had to tell her how to be a dog and she didn’t sweat the small stuff, always seeming to understand what was going on around her. She did start to lose it at the end though, but don’t we all? She was incontinent, occasionally. She forgot things, sometimes. She’d go for a stroll and forget how to get back. A couple of times, she wandered down to the Village and appeared lost. Donny Chandler called from his garage and we’d go pick her up. Two other times she didn’t come home and my wife called Harvest Hills to discover that she’d been picked up on the road heading out of town and acting confused. When she made her final trip to the Fryeburg Veterinary Hospital, she seemed to know it. She lay peacefully on her favorite blanket and hardly flinched as the hypodermic needle went into her leg. We weren’t surprised to observe that she died as gracefully as she had lived.
This column was first published in March, 2005
A Parent? Apparently Not
“I care about the children,” or “I only want what’s best for the children.” It seems that I hear those platitudes most often from people who, by choice, don’t have any children of their own. I also hear it sometimes from others who are parents but have only one child, as if they found out what a huge sacrifice it is to raise one child and they quickly closed the door on the possibility of having any more. There are quite a few such people in education and in other human services fields, more so than in the private sector it seems. I have taken no surveys, nor have I read any; it just seems that way in my experience.
Some childless people really do care about children, but they do it quietly and don’t feel the need to profess it. They simply perform kindnesses in a subdued way without seeking recognition. Others feel the need to trumpet their concern and when they do, it rings hollow somehow.
Often, teachers who have chosen not to become parents are the first to criticize parents whose children are sometimes unruly or challenging in school. They believe firmly that all children would work hard, submit to authority and behave well if only their parents had raised them properly. They cling to this belief even after teaching two or more children from the same family who are quite different from one another - one a model student and the other a certified pain in the butt. Obviously, each had the same parent(s) and presumably were raised about the same way, but they turned out quite differently. Certainly, many unruly students are very likely that way from lack of correction at home, but we humans are complicated organisms and there are many other causes than parenting.
Childless teachers tend to forget what it’s like to be a kid. When capable students slack off, they tend to overlook laziness as a likely cause, thinking that there must be some reason other than sloth for lack of performance. Parents can draw from vast experience in getting children to do chores - experience that childless teachers would obviously be lacking. Parents know that nine out of ten times, indolence and procrastination are the reasons kids don’t do what they’re supposed to, and cracking the whip is the most effective way to motivate them in such circumstances. They tend not to teach that in the education departments of our state colleges and universities where most teachers take the courses they need to become certified, however. Instead, they look for some syndrome or code to account for it, and extra personnel are hired to fix the problem.
Since teachers, social workers, and other human services professionals are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats and support similar policies on issues dear to that party, they tend to be strongly pro-choice. That so many remain childless should, therefore, be no surprise. Radical feminists are heavily represented in those occupations and their rhetoric has proclaimed for decades that the biggest obstacle to leading a fulfilling life as a woman is pregnancy. They tend to consider motherhood in a nuclear family as little better than servitude, so it is ironic whey they’re so often the first to profess how much they care about the kids other people raise.
Their concern is frequently voiced when an expensive program or policy is being proposed in a staff meeting or school board meeting or a budget meeting. Parents must operate within family budgets and they must be ready to say no to something their children want. Parents are also accustomed to going without for the sake of their children. Nearly every day, they have to sacrifice energy, time or money they could have spent indulging themselves to spend it instead on what the children need. Some things, however, just aren’t affordable and parents have to remind themselves and their children that it is possible to go without much and still lead a full and productive life. Parents also know that when kids have to work hard and save up for something they really want, they appreciate it a lot more when they finally get it. When liberals clamor for increased spending money on programs “for the children” however, it’s often other people’s money they want to spend.
Nearly everyone can recall feeling a profound skepticism when told by their parents something like: “Wait until you have children of your own; then you’ll understand,” or “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” or “When you’re a parent, you’ll know why I’m doing this and you’ll feel differently.” Everyone who becomes a parent overcomes that skepticism and learns how true those statements were. Do those who choose not to become parents ever learn this? Apparently not.
This column was first published in May, 2005
Some childless people really do care about children, but they do it quietly and don’t feel the need to profess it. They simply perform kindnesses in a subdued way without seeking recognition. Others feel the need to trumpet their concern and when they do, it rings hollow somehow.
Often, teachers who have chosen not to become parents are the first to criticize parents whose children are sometimes unruly or challenging in school. They believe firmly that all children would work hard, submit to authority and behave well if only their parents had raised them properly. They cling to this belief even after teaching two or more children from the same family who are quite different from one another - one a model student and the other a certified pain in the butt. Obviously, each had the same parent(s) and presumably were raised about the same way, but they turned out quite differently. Certainly, many unruly students are very likely that way from lack of correction at home, but we humans are complicated organisms and there are many other causes than parenting.
Childless teachers tend to forget what it’s like to be a kid. When capable students slack off, they tend to overlook laziness as a likely cause, thinking that there must be some reason other than sloth for lack of performance. Parents can draw from vast experience in getting children to do chores - experience that childless teachers would obviously be lacking. Parents know that nine out of ten times, indolence and procrastination are the reasons kids don’t do what they’re supposed to, and cracking the whip is the most effective way to motivate them in such circumstances. They tend not to teach that in the education departments of our state colleges and universities where most teachers take the courses they need to become certified, however. Instead, they look for some syndrome or code to account for it, and extra personnel are hired to fix the problem.
Since teachers, social workers, and other human services professionals are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats and support similar policies on issues dear to that party, they tend to be strongly pro-choice. That so many remain childless should, therefore, be no surprise. Radical feminists are heavily represented in those occupations and their rhetoric has proclaimed for decades that the biggest obstacle to leading a fulfilling life as a woman is pregnancy. They tend to consider motherhood in a nuclear family as little better than servitude, so it is ironic whey they’re so often the first to profess how much they care about the kids other people raise.
Their concern is frequently voiced when an expensive program or policy is being proposed in a staff meeting or school board meeting or a budget meeting. Parents must operate within family budgets and they must be ready to say no to something their children want. Parents are also accustomed to going without for the sake of their children. Nearly every day, they have to sacrifice energy, time or money they could have spent indulging themselves to spend it instead on what the children need. Some things, however, just aren’t affordable and parents have to remind themselves and their children that it is possible to go without much and still lead a full and productive life. Parents also know that when kids have to work hard and save up for something they really want, they appreciate it a lot more when they finally get it. When liberals clamor for increased spending money on programs “for the children” however, it’s often other people’s money they want to spend.
Nearly everyone can recall feeling a profound skepticism when told by their parents something like: “Wait until you have children of your own; then you’ll understand,” or “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” or “When you’re a parent, you’ll know why I’m doing this and you’ll feel differently.” Everyone who becomes a parent overcomes that skepticism and learns how true those statements were. Do those who choose not to become parents ever learn this? Apparently not.
This column was first published in May, 2005
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
EUnuchs
It’s sad to watch a big person tormented by a small one who knows intuitively the big guy hasn’t the will to defend himself. The little fiend pours on abuse - verbal insults that escalate into humiliating condemnations. Then he’ll throw things at the big weakling who turns away, unable to make eye contact. Then come painful punches and kicks. Onlookers feel his humiliation and plead with him to defend himself, to use his strength to dispatch his tormenter. They want to do it for him but know they cannot. Something vitally important is lacking in his big body - a pride, a belief in himself that would enable him to fight. They know only he can find it - and if he doesn’t, he won’t survive.
That’s how it feels now watching Iran torment Britain. Fifteen British sailors were seized by Iran and they’re forced to make humiliating televised “confessions.” Iran insists that Blair agree his sailors strayed into Iranian waters - even though they didn’t. Blair has asked the UN Security Council for help. That’s how we know he hasn’t got the guts to stand up to the mullahs.
The UN? Is he kidding? He thinks Iran respects the UN? The sailors were captured because they obeyed UN rules of engagement. They couldn’t shoot unless they were shot at. Ask black Christians in Darfur about UN “help.” Ask the Tutsis in Rwanda. This is the UN whose Human Rights Commission last Friday passed a resolution which “expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations.” Nobody should be hanging by the neck waiting for the UN to rescue him.
Blair is articulate. He might work something out if he weren’t dealing with a government of nut jobs who deny the Holocaust, pledge to wipe Israel off the map, and are waiting for the Twelfth Imam to come out of the Iranian well he’s been living in for thirteen hundred years. They believe that if they create chaos here in earth by making nukes and blowing up Israel with them, the imam will come out of the well and establish 1000 years of peace and justice.
I’m not making this up.
Blair thinks he can negotiate with these people? What’s happened to the Prime Minister who fought alongside the United States after September 11th? If he’d just issue an ultimatum like: “Release the hostages in 48 hours or else,” we could help. But no, he’s putting his tail between his legs and whimpering to the UN. Pathetic.
Whatever Britons there are left who haven’t succumbed to the multiculti emasculators of the European Union (EU) are pining now for the days of Margaret Thatcher - the “Iron Lady.” Thatcher would know what to do with Iran’s theocratic dictators. When Argentinean dictators took over the Falkland Islands, she dispatched a naval task force to the area. When no diplomatic progress was made as the fleet was sailing, there was little doubt what it would do upon arrival.
A generation has passed since Thatcher was in office. Today’s Britons are are so enamored with the EU, they’ve become EUnuchs who, like the UN, are worried about offending Radical Islam much less standing up to it.
For example, London's Daily Mirror reported Monday that:
Iran smuggles weapons and terrorists into Iraq to kill British and American soldiers. They’ve set up a proxy army (Hezbollah) to bring down the Lebanese government and attack Israel. Now they’ve kidnapped British sailors and publicly humiliate them every day. The price of oil is going up in anticipation of Britain doing something about it. Iran has threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz (entrance to the Persian Gulf) if it’s attacked and the big western countries are afraid to call its bluff. So, the torment continues. For how long? Don’t hold your breath waiting for a respite.
Americans remember when Iran took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The United States was humiliated for a year and a half while President Carter tried to use his big smile to negotiate with the Iranian theocrats - who only released them on the day his successor, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated. Historians say that was the beginning of our War with Radical Islam.
Something’s lacking in the big western countries like Britain and the United States who represent western civilization itself. Iran and Al Qaeda know it and their torments will only escalate. If we can’t find the will to defend ourselves, if we all become EUnuchs, we won’t survive either.
That’s how it feels now watching Iran torment Britain. Fifteen British sailors were seized by Iran and they’re forced to make humiliating televised “confessions.” Iran insists that Blair agree his sailors strayed into Iranian waters - even though they didn’t. Blair has asked the UN Security Council for help. That’s how we know he hasn’t got the guts to stand up to the mullahs.
The UN? Is he kidding? He thinks Iran respects the UN? The sailors were captured because they obeyed UN rules of engagement. They couldn’t shoot unless they were shot at. Ask black Christians in Darfur about UN “help.” Ask the Tutsis in Rwanda. This is the UN whose Human Rights Commission last Friday passed a resolution which “expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations.” Nobody should be hanging by the neck waiting for the UN to rescue him.
Blair is articulate. He might work something out if he weren’t dealing with a government of nut jobs who deny the Holocaust, pledge to wipe Israel off the map, and are waiting for the Twelfth Imam to come out of the Iranian well he’s been living in for thirteen hundred years. They believe that if they create chaos here in earth by making nukes and blowing up Israel with them, the imam will come out of the well and establish 1000 years of peace and justice.
I’m not making this up.
Blair thinks he can negotiate with these people? What’s happened to the Prime Minister who fought alongside the United States after September 11th? If he’d just issue an ultimatum like: “Release the hostages in 48 hours or else,” we could help. But no, he’s putting his tail between his legs and whimpering to the UN. Pathetic.
Whatever Britons there are left who haven’t succumbed to the multiculti emasculators of the European Union (EU) are pining now for the days of Margaret Thatcher - the “Iron Lady.” Thatcher would know what to do with Iran’s theocratic dictators. When Argentinean dictators took over the Falkland Islands, she dispatched a naval task force to the area. When no diplomatic progress was made as the fleet was sailing, there was little doubt what it would do upon arrival.
A generation has passed since Thatcher was in office. Today’s Britons are are so enamored with the EU, they’ve become EUnuchs who, like the UN, are worried about offending Radical Islam much less standing up to it.
For example, London's Daily Mirror reported Monday that:
Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government-backed study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.
Iran smuggles weapons and terrorists into Iraq to kill British and American soldiers. They’ve set up a proxy army (Hezbollah) to bring down the Lebanese government and attack Israel. Now they’ve kidnapped British sailors and publicly humiliate them every day. The price of oil is going up in anticipation of Britain doing something about it. Iran has threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz (entrance to the Persian Gulf) if it’s attacked and the big western countries are afraid to call its bluff. So, the torment continues. For how long? Don’t hold your breath waiting for a respite.
Americans remember when Iran took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The United States was humiliated for a year and a half while President Carter tried to use his big smile to negotiate with the Iranian theocrats - who only released them on the day his successor, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated. Historians say that was the beginning of our War with Radical Islam.
Something’s lacking in the big western countries like Britain and the United States who represent western civilization itself. Iran and Al Qaeda know it and their torments will only escalate. If we can’t find the will to defend ourselves, if we all become EUnuchs, we won’t survive either.
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