E. B. White wrote an ode to New York City and what made it great. Among the forces he noted was the "newcomers," that steady stream of people who gave the city its vitality, with all their enthusiasm for the place.
The same is likely true of the New Hampshire seacoast. For Mad Dog, who grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, and then spent 8 years after college in New York City, the Seacoast has been a new love affair, and the bloom hasn't worn off after 6 years.
In some ways, Mad Dog has got accustomed to the rhythm of life here and what seemed so charming at first--the fact that most Hampton stores closed down by 3 PM, Saturday and are not open Sundays, hearkened back to the 1950's, when blue laws closed stores on Saturdays and forbade the sale of alcohol on weekends in suburban Washington. Moving to Hampton seemed like walking through a portal in a time warp; Mad Dog was back to a town like the one he had grown up in, frozen in time, 50 years ago. Now, Mad Dog has got used to the laundry closing at 3 PM on Saturday and plans his morning to get things done early Saturday.
It's really just fine, and it makes him feel good to know the shop keepers have Saturday afternoon off to go hike up Mount Major or to go surfing.
Some pleasures remain fresh: Reading the Police Log in the Portsmouth Herald. Some of Mad Dog's favorites: 1. Responded to complaint from woman who said her neighbor called her "obese." 2. Took report from woman who said a young man with "nasty blue eyes" was harassing her while she was cross country skiing. 3. Took report from woman who said a man was following her in a car, while he may have been delivering newspapers.
These reports, Mad Dog has it on good authority, are not fictional. They are simply entered and logged in and the newspaper serves them up dry and without comment.
Of course, Mad Dog would be world's happier if they closeddown the Seabrook nuclear plant. If ever Mad Dog packs up and moves to Maine, it will be because he is seeking a refuge from being at ground zero. When he moved up to Hampton from Washington, D.C., it was surprising the number of his friends, who, bidding him farewell, said, "Well, I don't know about New Hampshire, but at least you won't be living at ground zero any more." And that cheered Mad Dog at some level. But then he discovered his house is about 2 miles, as the crow flies, from the Hampton Falls/Seabrook plant.
When Mad Dog was in middle school, a Congressman parent of one of his classmates gave a talk at a school assembly about the impossibility of hiding from the world and the problems which afflict it. This was 1960, before anyone every heard of "globalization." He told the story of one of his friends who, tired of living at ground zero, moved to Idaho or Montana, one of those Western states with no people. And he built his home and felt, for the first time in years, safe. But then he drove by an isolated area fenced off with barb wire a few miles from his new home, only to discover it was home to a nuclear missile silo. So there he was, back at ground zero.
It made Mad Dog think of that poor man whose farm in Mananas, Virginia became a killing ground at the first battle of the Civil War. So he moved his farm south, to Appomattox, and 5 years later, the war found him there--but of course, that is where the war ended, so he was there at the beginning and the end of the greatest upheaval in American history.
Mad Dog has no ambition to be at the center of American history, at his age. All the movers and shakers he knew in Washington and New York brought to mind Dylan's words:
Princess on the steeple, all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinking they've got it made.
Nope. They didn't.
People here, in New Hampshire may feel constrained some days. May feel the world is out there, throbbing, growing, doing and here we are in small towns, going to jazzercise on Saturday mornings, and dropping our dogs off at the Barking Dog when we go into Boston for the night. But the fact is, we can go into Boston--C&J connects us to Boston and Manchester airport connects us to the world, as does the internet and so now we can live in the boondocks and live our doggy lives and not be isolated.
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