Enter content here
Enter content here
Enter content here
May 22, 2002
It was, finally, a spring day here. But, it being the North Country, that meant temps were somewhere in the 70s ... and snow frosted the higher peaks of the Presidential Range.
Now, this may not be big news anywhere else, but since the beginning of the month, we have contended with dreary days, rain, gray days, freezing rain, dreary, gray, cold days and snow. It is a strange feeling to look out at a snow dusted lawn and think that as soon as it melts, it would be wise to get out and mow it.
It was foolhardy, probably, to think on the first nice, warm day a couple of weeks ago I could safely put away sweaters and fleece. But I did. Packed `em up right tight. All except for the odd turtleneck and long sleeve shirt that was in the hamper. And thats all I`ve been wearing for the past two weeks. There just comes a moment in the spring when enough wool and fleece is absolutely enough.
Neighbor Aaron got the John Deere running last week and after about four days of steady rain, I finally got to use it during a two minute break in the clouds. I believe that shortly after that, it began to snow. There were even a couple of nights when the DOT sent plows up to treat Kinsman Notch.
Even while there is still snow at a couple of thousand feet, the other routines of spring are shaking out. Just about every time I take a trip up North, a moose is hanging out at the side of the road. Twice this week, I`ve seen a bear frolicking on the slopes of Cannon. Leaves and lilacs are budding ... the universe is unfolding, as it always does.
Good weather is predicted for this holiday weekend and we expect lots of visitors to return here to the mountains. If you`re headed this way, it will be about 40 degrees warmer than last week. Bring a sweater, though. Once that sun goes behind the mountains, it becomes frosty fast.
Do travel safe this weekend. Find a parade and wave a flag and pause in thankfulness for those who made it possible to enjoy a free and beautiful country.
April 30, 2001
What is that saying? Oh yes ... `If winter comes, can spring be far behind?`
Winter has been clinging to the mountains and valleys here. We had a lovely respite ... for about 2 minutes ... two weeks ago, but cold, snow and an endless dreariness moved back in, much to our disappointment. But when you live here long enough, you just know that spring does not come and stay in the middle of April.
Tomorrow is May 1, but today seems like a day straight out of March. Early March. Still, there are signs of better days. The bears at Clark`s Trading Post are awake and frolicked in the snow last week. It`s green grass that collects big fat snowflakes. Bobbi Donahue`s toenails are bright pink.
For the past couple of weeks, it`s been school vacation, so we have had many visitors coming through town. They have gone now and won`t be back until summer. This is perhaps the best time of the year in North Woodstock. We see old friends and have time to chat in the post office. Restaurants, loath to close completely for Mud Season, offer irresistible deals to bring the locals in for dinner.
Few are the times locals will come to a complete stop at intersections - there is simply little enough traffic. U-turns on Main Street are a breeze. Not that I, of course, would make a U-turn on Main Street. Not me.
These days are good for being lazy a time or two more, before summer gets underway. Spring cleaning beckons, as our homes are begging for fresh spring air and to be divested of shoes that endlessly track in mud. It`s time to return snow shovels to the shed and get the porch dusted for languid evenings, watching the sunset over the mountains and fireflies come out at dusk.
We can expect a few more days of this dreariness and then, without warning or transition, spring will come to stay.
Hurry!!
April 16, 2002
Spring rode a hard rain into North Woodstock Saturday night, drilling the most stubborn patches of snow into the ground, already too wet to absorb it all. It drummed heavily on our rooftops and we fell asleep to its rhythm, thoughts of summer storms on our minds.
But in the early hours of Sunday, the amber lights of DOT trucks revolved through the night. Lost River Road, the one that leads through Kinsman Notch, washed out. Further north, the Connecticut, the Ammonoosuc and the Androscoggin Rivers washed over their banks, flooding miles of low-lying farmland and scores of basements.
``Two or three brooks came up fast and sent a lot of water over the road,`` said Reg Howe, a DOT supervisor. ``It plugged up the basins and ate away under the road. We`re going to fix this so it won`t happen again.``
It has been dreary here for two weeks. By the time we put our skis away for the season, we were more than ready for spring, but the snow seemed to linger and the weather was not conducive to quick melting.
And then came today. The mercury rose to near 80. The air was clear and the brooks and streams nearby rushed with ferocity. The lawn is already green in spots, although one tiny patch of snow refused to melt.
It was one of those glad days. People rolled up their sleeves and went to work on the debris from winter, or tied on some walking shoes. The mountains were clear, their colors changing with the position of the sun.
So spring has arrived and we welcome it. Two weeks ago, we were skiing down snow covered slopes and wondering when this day, this glorious day, would ever come.
Being that its Mud Season, we have much fewer visitors now in town. Like bears coming out of hibernation, we are seeing friends we missed on cold snowy nights. We are tucking away the fleece and turtlenecks. Long days and summer sunshine stretch before us.
I suppose it would be naive of me to think that in the middle of April we are on the springtime track. It seems to me that I should know better. That I should know the fickleness of these mountains and know this:
It will snow one more time.
I will bet on it. Place your wagers.
April 3, 2002
We must ``spring forward`` this weekend, so don`t forget to put your clocks ahead one hour when you go to bed on Saturday night.
We continue to wait for the snow to melt here in North Woodstock. Mud Season is not the finest hour in this part of New Hampshire, but we ... pardon the pun ... muddle through.
So while we wait for that to happen, let`s take a ride up the road and through the Notch to Franconia, one of several towns in the North Country that has a public clock. In this little town, you can thank Don Eastman for keeping time.
He`s done it for years and early Sunday, he`ll check with the US Naval Observatory`s atomic clock for the precise time this morning, then head down to the old Dow Academy and set the appropriate hour and minute.
Across the North Country, others will do the same thing. David Emerson tends the clock at the Conway Public Library. Palmer Lewis, Colebrook`s timekeeper for 30 years, will take care of the clock at the Monadnock Congregational Church and Jim McIntosh with push the hands ahead on the clock at the Methodist Church.
It`s a labor of love of tradition that keeps these clocks wound weekly and in good working order. Back in the days before wrist watches and alarm clocks, McIntosh said, tower clocks were a ``poor man`s pocketwatch,`` the only way to tell time in a community.
``In Franconia, the clock was for the school and a community clock,`` he said. ``In Lisbon, the clock was related to the railroad and the need to know the time in order to meet trains.``
In the North Country, public clocks were ordered from two manufacturers. The ones in Franconia, Gorham, Lisbon and Sugar Hill came from the E. Howard Company in Boston. The Conway and Colebrook clocks were produced by the George M. Stevens Company.
The mechanics, though, are about the same. Weights for the clock and bell are the energy that drives the clock`s mechanism by releasing the escape wheel, which have a series of jagged teeth. The escapement rocks back and forth, moving the pendulum, which then produces the `tick-tock.` The length of the pendulum determines how closely time is kept. These clocks were built to run for about a week before needing to be wound again.
It is up to the timekeeper to wind the cables that work the clocks and the bells - in some cases, that can take over 200 revolutions, which, some of them laugh, gives them great upper body strength.
Each clock has its own ideosynchracies. Lewis can count on the hands of time being frozen a time or two each winter. Eastman knows that hot humid weather is going to swell the minute hand on the south facing dial, causing it to stick on one of the numerals.
The clocks, the bells and their towers are full of stories. Franconia`s clock is the second in its history, as the first schoolhouse burned at the turn of the last century. One of the only items rescued from the that fire was pendulum of the clock, which is in use today.
In 1903, the Dow Academy opened and would educate children until 1960, when it was closed. The building was vacant for some years before Franconia College took it over and the clock keeping duties were haphazard. The college closed down in the 1970s and little went on at the academy, until it found new life as condominiums in the early 1980s.
About that time, Dwight Taylor stepped in to take care of the clock, cleaning it up, winding it and making a whole lot of repairs. At some point, vandals stole the hands from the southeast dial. Selectman offered a $50 reward for their return, Eastman said, but they were never found.
Mark Champagne, then a senior at the Profile Regional School, crafted hands and with little ceremony, the clock got back to the business of keeping time.
High above the clock workings, a huge bell dominates the belfry, which tolls the hour, night and day, and has, with the exception of a couple of years when a resident of the condo complained about the noise. That person moved away and the bell resumed its job.
The Dow Academy is privately owned now, but the clock belongs to the town, which pays for the electricity and light bulbs that illuminate the four faces. The bell is deeded to the children of Franconia, per the request of Henry W. Noyes, who gave it as a gift in 1903.
``With the bell, it synchronized the town,`` Eastman said. ``When people heard the bell, they knew what time it was.``
The bell above the clock in Colebrook hasn`t chimed in about a dozen years, after guests at a nearby motel, not in town long enough to get used to the bong, complained. But, Lewis said, he`s awaiting word from the selectmen these days as to whether he can put the bell back into operation.
To toll or not to toll the bell is a touchy question.
``It didn`t chime in Conway for about 20 years, because it drove the neighbors crazy,`` Emerson said. ``At one point, the (library) custodian was climbing up twice a day to turn the bell off and on, but he finally gave up doing that.``
Then a Weare man, Phil D`Avanza, stepped in with a ``brilliant mechanism`` that allows the bell to ring only between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Installation was not without its moments. Emerson said soon after, for some reason, the tolling times were switched and the bell began ringing, without stopping, at 8 p.m. one day.
``Fully wound, the bell will strike 1,000 times,`` he said.
It was well on its way to striking its way through the night, since the police couldn`t find anyone who knew what to do about it. Enter Amy Gardner and her son, who climbed into the belfry and ended the din.
Emerson was moved enough by the story that he penned a poem in tribute to Gardner`s heroic efforts about the time ``Amy stilled the bell that night.``
Most bells are large and plain. Franconia`s was cast noting its dedication to children.
In Conway, the bell was cast a century ago with this quote:
"Like a sentinel, all day and night, I note time's steady, silent flight. And through those newborn hours its well, With those who are faithful, like the bell."
Public clocks have been a part of their communities for more than a century in some places, and slightly less in others.
At the 1874 town meeting in Colebrook, according to Lewis, a man named H.S. Eustis said he would pay back the $1 tax levied on the clock and bell to anyone who found they did not benefit from it.
``He never had to pay anyone,`` Lewis said.
Clocks and their towers are a part of the landscape and not given much thought, unless they`re not running.
``You feel better about a town when the clock is right,`` McIntosh said. ``If you go somewhere and the time isn`t right, you get the feeling that something might not be quite right in the town.``
Time had stopped in Lisbon for about 10 years before McIntosh, with the help of Eastman, decided in late 1999 to see about getting it running again. A close inspection of the machinery showed it in good working order, once hundreds of pound of bat guano was removed.
``We got it fixed in time for the millenium,`` he said. ``Tom Andross and Bob Meserve were there at midnight to witness it and we tolled the bell at midnight. The clock is running - an entire generation had become accustomed to it not running.``
The bell, he noted, was not reconnected.
So captivated by tower clocks, McIntosh has begun an inventory of tower clocks in the North Country, which he details at his website, www.magnetic-north.com.
With some care, these clocks will keeping ticking for many years to come, McIntosh said.
``What is so amazing is that these machines were built to run in all kinds of temperatures,`` he said. ``They were built to run continually for more than 100 years and in many cases they have, without stopping.``
