Things That Go Bump in the Night in NH, Part III

Actually, it was midday, and a nice one, too, this afternoon in fact. The sun was high, the leaves are just past peak in color, and the temperature was cool enough to require a thin sweater but warm enough that you felt comfortable outside all day long. We had been in errand mode this morning, running all over the place, and we were almost on the last leg of our journey when we decided to try to find the local "sugar shack", the common New Hampshire term for maple syrup maker/vendor. We usually buy ours from a guy whose place is along my route home from work, but we'd heard of a place very close to home, and wanted to try it. We knew it was somewhere close by as we wandered down a typical New Hampshire slim, twisting and turning rural road, and after a few around-the-bends we finally came upon a sign announcing the place. The sign was fairly new and in good condition, and seemed professional -- in other words, wasn't written with a heavy black marker on cardboard.

So we pulled in next to a large, late-19th century New Hampshire farmhouse with the barn attached out back, and the dilapidated sugar shack on the other side of the driveway. There was no obvious entrance, however. My wife went up to one of 3 doors facing us on the side of the house, one of which had an old sign asking delivery people to use the other door -- though there were 2 other doors. She knocked, with no response. She then tried the door that had the sign on it, again with no response. We both sauntered down the driveway a bit towards the barn and the sugar shack, and while we saw maple syrup products in the window, the shack was empty of people and the floor was strewn with chopped wood and mechanical equipment parts. I looked into the barn from the open door closest to the house but saw no one, only stacks of hay -- which brought back lots of memories from my youth, when I used to work as a farmhand -- but I could also see there were no animals, though the hay was fresh. I wandered towards the other open barn door and saw that this part of the barn was completely strewn with electrical tools and mechanical parts. I cracked a joke to my wife about how they needed some space management skills and began to turn my attention back towards the sugar shack when I heard a male voice fairly close by, just a word or two which I didn't catch but which told me someone was nearby. I looked in the barn again and couldn't find anyone, and looked around out back but again, no one.

Puzzled, we both walked up towards the house again and we both took a door and knocked, but to no avail. However, as we each both stood in front of a door, we both heard a door open wide, with a very typical sound of a noisy weather-exposed hinge. We both looked at one another because to each of us, it sounded as if the other had opened their door. Neither of us had. We looked around again -- maybe the wind had blown one of the barn doors? -- but they were on sliders and seemingly hadn't moved. I walked around to the front of the house to read the sign again to see if it mentioned any instructions I had missed earlier like "Knock hard" or "Ring the bell on the barn", or something along those lines, but it just plain announced the sugar shack, with the business name. It was a well-made sign and seemed in good condition.

At this point I thought out loud that maybe they'd just taken off to grab some lunch, but my wife interrupted me to say that she wanted to go. This was kind of unusual; my wife is not the "touchy-feely" type who indulges in fantasy. She told me as we were driving away that she had the distinct impression that we were being watched, and she had a mounting sense of alarm, a feeling that someone didn't want us there. I admitted, strangely enough, that I also felt we were being watched, but to me it felt more like whoever it was feared us, and I chalked it up to maybe a child or elderly person being home, someone who doesn't deal with the business and was afraid to deal with strangers.

So there you have it. Might be nothing but a pile of circumstances and coincidences.

The Sticky Stuff

It's only early September but soon New Hampshire will be overrun by tourists gawking at the changing tree leaves while dodging Canadian goose poop on the grass in our state parks. An important part of this yearly ritual is the hunt for 'authentic' maple syrup, and the thousands of by-products made from maple syrup, like maple sugar candy, maple sugar mustard (really! not kidding!), maple sugar butter, maple sugar party favors, and etc. Now, the truth is that maple syrup is commonly harvested and made in just about all the states of the Northeastern U.S. (including New Jersey) and Canada, but it's strongly associated with New England, particularly northern New England (New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine), so to visit New Hampshire and leave without a maple sugar candy-shaped moose would be like going to Miami and not buying a toy stuffed dolphin. In fact, New Hampshirites are very proud of all their home-made foods and crafts, as we'll be exploring more later. Indeed, I have filled out some of my Christmas gifts to friends and family outside New Hampshire with locally-made crafts and items like maple syrup products. I was once busted at an airport, in fact, for trying to bring a quart of New Hampshire maple syrup to some relatives I was visiting back when the strict rules about bringing liquids on planes were still in force. Apparently the terrorists have found a way to hijack a plane with maple syrup, and so I posed a threat to my fellow passengers.

These maple syrup associations take their craft very seriously, though, having official grades judged by color and other attributes, and no serious maple syrup producer would ever consider not belonging to the official state association. The video above was made by one of my favorite producers, Ben's Sugar Shack along Route 101 in southern New Hampshire. As one maple syrup producer explained to me, real maple syrup is made up of only about 16% sugar, while the artificial stuff you buy in super markets can often be 80-90% sugar, via corn syrup. Yikes. So even if your friends call you a snob for insisting on the real stuff, do yourself (and your kids) a favor and go out of your way for authentic maple syrup. By the way, did I mention we make that stuff here in New Hampshire.....?

When Not to Visit New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a beautiful state and one well worth your time as a tourist, but we must confess that there is, every few years, an infestation which makes this otherwise exceedingly tourist-friendly land a dangerous place for man and beast. We've tried everything, from pesticides to special hunting seasons, but these ornery critters just seem to breed like bunnies and have an immune system that would impress a cockroach. Our every attempt to eliminate them has come to naught, and every leap year they swarm over the scenic New Hampshire countryside like locusts. For some reason, probably owing to its severely picturesque nature, they are particularly attracted to the main east-west artery in southern New Hampshire, Route 101, which goes from Route 1 on the coast to the southern Vermont border. Route 101 is lined with postcard-perfect town after town, each one filled with friendly, folksy everyman "Joe and Jane Sixpack" New Hampshirites, genuine hard-working Yankees, each one a gullible victim-in-waiting for these predatory vermin. It's a sad spectacle to have to watch, with the victims shown months later on the local news reliving their ordeal very much like Midwesterners describing on their local news stations what the tornado sounded like. These beasts seem to show up in 4-year cycles, although some of their lower-level cousins -- the bottom-feeders -- function in 2-year cycles.

I feel like I'm letting some deep, dark secrets out of the family closet, but it's best you knew: New Hampshire is attacked and overrun every four years or so by...politicians. One day, you're just walking down the street, maybe contemplating some shopping, and the next thing you know you're confronted by a baby-kissing, hand-shaking, absurd promise-making politician, desperate to slobber over your baby and grip your hand in their clammy, germ-infested paws for a photo op before shoving you out of the way to make room for their next victim. Worse, maybe you've got steak on the mind and so you round the corner towards the local butcher shop or market, only to be confronted by several big guys in black suits wearing dark sunglasses with wires sprouting from their ears blocking your way, informing you, American citizen, that your market is now off limits as a politician has his/her picture taken inside with real, hard-working Yankees and a lobster. (This is New England, after all. All photo ops must include either a lobster, maple syrup or a moose, preferably with all the local Yankees wearing Irish wool sweaters and knit fishing caps.) These insidious creatures snarl traffic everywhere they go ("security concerns"), and set up cruel ambushes in local diners for innocent but gullible Yankees. Some of the more ruthless of these buggers like to play with their prey, feigning sympathy in front of cameras for common people's problems and then promising to solve them all in far-off Washington. Like I said, it's a sad thing to watch later after the elections when their victims describe on local news stations in disbelief how they were blind-sided by the outlandish promises.

Crafty New Hampshirites have found something of a solution for this problem, though. It's not pretty and it's only temporary, but hey, it works, at least for the short-term. They fib back to these flag-waving, speech-spouting locusts, promising them that we'll vote for them, at which point they pack up and swarm off to Iowa. Like I said, it may not be the most ethical thing to do, but you can't argue with success. We're really sorry, Iowa, but it was either you or us, so... And anyway, as we understand, you folks do the same thing to South Carolina. Passing the buck is the American way.