Republican Party Reptile(60)

A story about the planning board in Jaffrey read, in part, “The planners did not decide on the subdivision last week. By the time the public hearings were over ... it was after 11:00 P.M. The planners did not think they should be making decisions when they were tired.” It’s hard to imagine Congress being that downright. I’d like to see a story in the New York Times saying, “Congressmen did not decide on the defense budget last night. The members of Congress did not think they should be making decisions when they were half-witted, corrupt, and drunk.” But the most telling item I’ve found in my local papers read simply, “Money was found on Middle Hancock Road on Sunday, June 5.” Eleven words which paint a picture of almost baffling decency.

Things like that will make you want to get to know your neighbors. Believe me, they’ll already know you. New Englanders are not nosy. They pride themselves on respecting the privacy of others. All the same, they manage to know everything about you, and sometimes they’ll let it slip. You’ll be on the phone, making a long-distance call. “Operator,” you’ll say, “I’m having trouble getting through to my mother in Florida.”

The operator will say, “You really ought to call her more often, and you haven’t written her a real letter since Christmas.”

Or you’ll be shopping in a local store and the salesclerk, a total stranger to you, will say, “But that’s not the kind of undershirt you usually wear.”

The first of these neighbors you should get to know is the plumber. Marry him if you can. In some rural places the most prominent citizen is the doctor or the reverend at the church; not so in New England. It’s the plumber, and for good reason. When your water pipes freeze and burst at 3:00 A.M., try calling an M.D. or a priest.

It will be easier to get to know the plumber, and everyone else, if you understand local values. One local value is early rising. Don’t let on that you sleep until 10:00. It’s considered hilarious. Personally, I sleep in my clothes with a coffee mug beside my bed. That way, when someone rings the doorbell at 5:00 A.M. to see if I’d like help stacking cordwood, I can run downstairs with cup in hand and pretend to have been awake for hours. Getting up early means going to bed early, and it worries people if you don’t. When I first moved to Jaffrey, I was having a 1:00 A.M. nightcap when I heard a knock on the door. It was a concerned-looking native in a bathrobe. “We saw your lights on,” he said. “Is anything wrong?”

The two most important New England values, however, are honesty and thrift. Honesty you’ve already seen exampled in Middle Hancock Road where someone found money and did what only a born and bred small-town Yankee would do and called the newspapers. This honesty is a great thing but dangerously habit-forming. On visits to New York I have found myself telling people, “Just charge me what you think is fair.” And there is no polite way to express what people in New York think is fair.

More important even than honesty is thrift, not to say outright tight-fistedness. Money in the city is like money in Weimar Germany. You go to the Citibank cash machine, get a wheelbarrowful of the stuff, and shovel it out whenever you’re told. Then you cross your fingers and hope to die before the Visa Card people process your change of address. But Yankees are serious about spending money. And they give advice at length on the subject.

“Drive over to Portland, Maine,” they’ll say, “and you can get two cents off paper towels.” Or “There’s a special on five-gallon cans of margarine at the A&P. Limit, six to a customer.” And they’re especially forthcoming with advice about what you should have paid for your house. “You know that place sold for eight thousand in 1976.”

Besides changes in values, country life means changes in all your activities. Many city pursuits are inappropriate to the new venue. If you go jogging in Jaffrey, people will stop and offer you a ride. And having dinner at 9:00 is considered as bizarre as sunbathing on a roof. Do not, however, adopt local customs wholesale.

Fishing, for example, turns out to be less serene than it looks on calendars. It is a sport invented by insects and you are the bait.

Hunting is as uncomfortable and much more hazardous. Deer hunting, particularly, attracts Visigothic types from places like Worcester, Massachusetts. I spend all of deer-hunting season indoors trying not to do anything deerlike.

Gardening is better. Everyone in New England will be eager to give you advice about a flower garden—too eager, in fact. By the time I’d spent a month listening to gardening advice, I was so confused the only thing I could remember was that you shouldn’t plant bulbs upside down. This is nonsense, and I have a septic tank full of daffodil blooms to prove it.