A Christmas Song Can't Be Wrong, Can It?

There is a side to New Hampshire that really is like what you see in the popular Yankee magazine or Yankee Candle and all that very romanticized, sentimental New England stuff. Christmas is a HUGE deal up here in New Hampshire, and New Hampshirites take their Christmas decorating very seriously. (Check out this video from the local news that made big headlines when someone swiped an inflatable Santa from a New Hampshirite's front lawn.) Imagine my surprise then, given all this, when my wife decides to roast some chestnuts and our neighbors looked at us like we offered them some nummy squirrel brains. Now, as a wee lad, my father used to get me a small white paper cup of roasted chestnuts from corner street vendors in the main town for our region of New York state, and I know years later you could still buy the same on the streets of New York City itself, although admittedly, there the chestnuts tended to have a carbon monoxide flavor, courtesy of the buses and yellow cabs. I mean, come on people, even Wayne Newton sang about roasted chestnuts by the fireside! Chestnut trees are native to New Hampshire, although a blight many years ago put a big dent in their numbers. A few weeks ago while in Portsmouth on the ocean, we watched a couple collecting their own scallops and shucking them by the dock; what's so strange about picking up chestnuts and roasting them? You'd think a tradition-crazed state like NH would be all over the roasted chestnuts thing, but no, I'm afraid roasted chestnuts in New Hampshire have been surpassed as a Christmas tradition by the likes of marshmellow peeps. In a futile attempt to restart a good old tradition, I offer this page for a recipe. Enjoy.

New Hampshire = Not Summer

We really do have summer in NH. Sometimes. Well, for about 3 months each year. But in those three months it can get downright hot here, and with the nearby ocean you also get hyper-humid air, which mixes nicely with the often 90 degrees + temps to cook us like lobstahs. This is why getting a spot on the Hampton beaches during those months is as iffy as cell phone coverage in NH. This year June was extremely rainy and New Hampshirites went around complaining they had fungus growing in their armpits, but then came July and the killer heat. The fungus went away, but so did about two-thirds of our bodies' water mass. A surprisingly large proportion of New Hampshirites still have an English ancestry, so what you got here in July and August was a bunch of embarrassingly pasty-white, sweaty and dehydrated -- and irate -- Yankees.

But alas, those days are behind us and we can go back to our tweads and wool sweaters. We have entered that season in New Hampshire known as "non-summer". There are two other seasons, spring and autumn, but those both last about twenty minutes each. Sometime after August, you'll just hear a popping noise outside and if you're quick enough to run to a nearby window, you'll see the trees have all changed colors and dropped their leaves in one dramatic gesture. It's very pretty, but you have to be quick. Once the leaves have hit the ground, the scenery changes from stunning reds, oranges and yellows to a sort of brown-gray hybrid. That's the official color of non-summer, a dull non-ending streak of of brown-gray that uniformly wraps the landscape with the exception of the many evergreen trees, but even they try their best to blend into the scenery, at least as we get closer to Christmas.

Anyway, we have entered that part of the year -- lasting some eight months, give or take -- called non-summer here in New Hampshire but non-summer has a surprise it likes to spring on you. (No pun intended there.) Non-summer is allowed, just about any time it wants, from its inception in September until May, to suddenly and inexplicably dump lots of white stuff on us. That's right, non-summer is snow season, and it is going to make that point again this week -- just before Halloween -- when even here in southern NH, we're expecting 2-4 inches. This time non-summer has been nice enough to give us a little heads up (via the local news, WMUR), which provokes a mad rush to get porch plants and garden hoses indoors, but there have been a few times when we were caught off guard, with unpleasant consequences. That mad scramble is upon us now, so if you'll excuse me, I have to go find the car window scrapers in the basement.

Spring in New Hampshire

It is early May and I can finally say with certainty that the snow is gone. We did have a snowstorm in later April that dumped several inches of the white stuff on us, but it didn't stick around long. Now, flowers are blooming, the trees are green, the Merrimack River is bulging with melted snow and spring showers, the Forsythia bushes are screaming bright yellow, and I've been squawked at by the blue jays who have moved back into our yard. I know parts of the country to the west have gotten more than their fair share of rain recently, but our rainy days have been interpolated by enough dry, sunny days over the past few weeks that even our bedrock-ridden granite surface ground has been able to soak it all up. There was some flooding up in the northern-most counties where snow was still a couple feet deep in the mountains but for the most part, this New Hampshire spring has been decidedly pleasant. In fact, for the first time since I've moved here, I've repeatedly seen a rainbow out my home office window. Not a bad start to the year, and we're looking forward to our first warm-weather outing to the coast. Portsmouth, here we come!

New Hampshirites in Tights!

There is a comedic scene in Mel Brooks' 1993 film Robin Hood, Men in Tights in which local villagers joining Robin Hood's Merry Men are forced to line up cafeteria-style to receive their official Merry men uniforms which include, among other articles, large green plastic eggs containing green tights. They hen cut to a scene of the Merry Men emerging from their changing rooms in their new green tights and doing a song-and-dance number about manly-men in tights. Very funny stuff, typical Mel Brooks.

Well, imagine my surprise recently when I found myself purchasing panty hose. Now, these weren't for my wife and I haven't taken up any strange habits that might provoke a divorce. Believe it or not, they were kind of hard to find. My neighbors had all also decided they needed them. The local news even suggested them, not in their fashion segments -- which is good because I am NOT shaving my legs -- but in the weather.

The problem was an odd combination of unusually large amounts of snow, coupled with alternating periods of warming and (re-)freezing during which ice dams formed on roofs, causing water leaks inside New Hampshire homes in February as the warmth of houses melted these ice dams which forced their way beneath tiles. Suddenly everybody in New Hampshire (present company included) had to own a roof rake -- yeah, I'd never heard of one either -- to rake off the bottom 2 feet of snow or so to allow proper ice melting. The local news also suggested taking magnesium chloride -- which is a slightly more environmentally-friendly form of rock salt -- and stuff it into panty hose, tying them tights off sausage-style. We then were told to lob these things on our roofs, aiming particularly for high ice-build up areas like corners and crevasses. Did it work? I don't know for sure, but all my neighbors did it (as well as I), and he ice dams seemed to have melted. and when a few used panty hose fell off the roof, I told me wife she can use them, to further their environmental friendliness by recycling. She, however, was not impressed by my green suggestion.

Cold

Every winter, you just know it's coming. Yes, it's winter and this is New Hampshire, so you know it's cold, and for the most part that's OK. Keeps the snakes and the bugs small. But in mid- or later January, you just know it's coming and there's no way to really prepare for it: it's that mid-winter arctic blast that shows up and hangs around for a week or two before going away, leaving us with the more normal winter temps of mid-20s or 30s, with the odd 15 degrees at night here and there. I really wasn't ready for it this year, so when it finally came, it really snuck up on me. (Is 'snuck' really a word? Am I supposed to say 'sneaked'?) Anyway, sure enough, earlier this week the temperature dove down to the minus degrees. Let me tell you about the joys of starting a car and scraping it at 5.30 in the morning -- in the dark -- when the temperature is -22 degrees Fahrenheit. For our Canadian readers, you'll be interested to know that 0 degrees Fahrenheit is -18 degrees Celsius, and that both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales actually converge at -30 degrees. To illustrate what that temperature is like, a fellow New Hampshirite sent this video into the local news of this person tossing a cup of boiled water into the frigid air so that you can watch it freeze literally as it hangs in the air, before it hits the ground.

Now, this isn't North Dakota or Siberia where they'd snear at a mere -22 degrees Fahrenheit, but still -- it's best to sip one's hot cocoa inside. Seriously, don't lick any metal poles until at least next week.

New Hampshire Comfort Food

One of the advantages of being cooped up in your home for months on end in the winter is that you start getting a little creative with your cooking. New Hampshire Yankees have centuries' worth of winter inspiration for a lot of great comfort food recipes. Now, with our modern comforts and technologies we're not so cooped up anymore but this has only provoked competition as some Yankees have emerged from their winter cocoons early to discover their neighbors have also been fiddling in the kitchen. Some of the cleverer among them have organized formal competitions. Just such wise souls exist at the New Hampshire Dairy Farmers Association, who organized a macaroni & cheese bake-off today in the state's capital, Concord. Mac & cheese is, I think, the ultimate comfort food and the prospect of going from booth to booth in the ballroom of a Holiday Inn, spoon in hand, and sampling dozens of different macaroni & cheese recipes is very close to my idea of heaven. I wasn't alone; long lines snaked around the hotel lobby. There were traditional takes and more adventurous recipes (e.g., with apples, or Caribbean spices, maple syrup, potatoes, different cheeses, etc.) All in all it was a fun event and three winners will be announced, based on both a panel of professional judges and popular votes.

Living with Nor'easters

This is not South Carolina. You might be momentarily fooled in the summertime if you visit the Hampton beaches chock full of tanned, scantily-clad young folks, on a blazing hot summer day with the temperatures hovering around 100 degrees and the humidity at 80%+, but I'm here to tell you, this is not South Carolina. Now, there are those who prefer South Carolina and there are those who prefer New Hampshire; I've made my choice clear enough by voting with my feet. For one thing, though I live in a swamp -- We'll explore 'Swamp Yankees' later -- the bugs here are pretty small, and any encounters in the garden with local snakes does not have the potential to end with a fatality. ("Man mauled to death in garden by 8 inch garter snake!") Up here the quaintly-named palmetto bug is more bluntly called a cockroach.

Another indication that you are not in South Carolina around here is those very cyclical winter storms known as Nor'easters, massive swirling storms that park off the coast and, sucking up moisture from the ocean, dump it as snow in the form of furious blizzards that can rage for days. Unfortunately, like everywhere else in the country, the local news (which is not local in ownership) has slid into increasing fits of sensationalism so that every snow storm is the storm of the century, the weather forecasts are preceded with dramatic graphics implying certain imminent doom, and the meteorologists speak like they were delivering the declaration of war against Japan in 1941. Nor'easters have been a regular feature of New Hampshire life since long before there was a New Hampshire, however, and folks take them in stride. I remember one news broadcast which featured a very excited reporter standing on a street corner during a snow storm, his arms flailing as he described scenes of utter chaos caused by the storm -- all the while, in the background behind him locals calmly passed by and went about their business. The moral of this story is that if you live in South Carolina, you're probably used to your 3 inch-long palmetto bugs and maybe even give them names, and you are careful to wear snake guards when walking in tall grass or in the woods. Well, in New Hampshire, you learn to take the fire-and-brimstone weatherman with a grain of salt, and be sure to be stocked up on plenty of beer and bread for the storm.

That Round Thing on Your Dashboard with the Needle and Numbers

Yesterday, on Route 93, which for southern New Hampshire -- indeed, most of New Hampshire -- is the main north-south artery, disaster struck in the form of a 40+ car pile-up, creating a traffic jam that stretched for miles in both directions. Now, this hardly compares to the 9-day traffic jam recently reported near Beijing, but when you're late for work or conversely, are after a long day at the office and just want to get home, it's annoying enough. Luckily, nobody was killed and nobody was seriously injured. The byline to this story read, "Bad Weather Caused Major Crash, Police Say."

There were some cultural assumptions built into that statement. New England drivers -- Massachusetts moreso than most, though this trait is apparent throughout the region -- seem to believe that cars are only capable of going either 5mph or 75mph; nothing in between. It just wouldn't have occurred to the drivers yesterday morning on Route 93, who were driving in a long-predicted snow storm (which had actually turned out milder than forecasted), to slow down in white-out conditions. Now, accidents can happen anywhere and they can catch any of us unawares, but did 40(+) separate accidents happen yesterday on Route 93? Of course not; you had drivers who just wanted to get home who chucked caution to the wind and went the speed they'd normally drive in the summer on icy roads in near-blizzard conditions, and were shocked -- Shocked, I tell you! -- to find themselves in an accident. While 40 is a bit unusual, multi-car accidents are surprisingly common in New England, and I am not alone in attributing it to the local mentality that physics (or laws) be damned, people have a right to drive 75 mph regardless of road conditions.

Pots and Kettles, etc.

New Hampshire's economy in the southeastern part of the state is pretty diverse and more or less like just about anywhere else in the country: lots of small- to medium-sized businesses, more service-oriented from financial services to other typical suburban service businesses, and with a good dose of tourism-related businesses like rustic B&Bs or the ski lodges. However, this fairly modern American macramé of economic components does not extend very well to the western and even less so to the northern parts of the state. These latter parts of New Hampshire are often able to capture some of those tourist $$$s through the fall leaf and ski seasons, but tourists are notoriously seasonal (whereas hunger and mortgage payments are not). Particularly for the northern part of the state -- which is easily the most scenic part -- towns tend to be very heavily dependent on a single large (or medium-sized) employer. It is all too common these days to read the news that some paper mill is closing in the north, with devastating results to that town's economy as most locals work at the closing plant.

This phenomenon of the economically-lagging western and northern parts of the state -- as opposed to the southeastern part which is effectively becoming a suburb of Boston and as such increasingly integrating into the Boston-area economy -- has given rise to a strange New Hampshire prejudice: "millrats". I heard this expression a few times before finally asking just what a "millrat" is. Here goes:

In the days before steam and later, oil, propelled our machines, the first major energy source of the industrial revolution was water. With its mountains and subsequent mountain streams, New Hampshire was just made for water power, and the first settlers here immediately set up mills with water wheels next to streams all over the place to do everything from grind grains to cut lumber. Great stuff. Indeed, some of these mills are still standing (some are even still working!) and serve as tourist attractions. However, for all the scenery and quaintness, the reality is that most of these preserved mills are in the lesser developed western and northern parts of the state. As strange as this is going to sound, calling someone a millrat is the southeastern New Hampshire equivalent of calling them a hick from a one-horse town. Some even take this moniker seriously, looking upon "millrats" the same one someone from Manhattan might look at someone from West Virginia. This is pretty funny if you consider that among the top ten largest cities in New Hampshire, the lower end of that list barely break the 20,000 population mark....