Different Place But The Same People

The plane’s wheels touched down. It was chilly in Portland, Maine. Three plus hours on a less than spacious Delta Connection cramped muscles. The short hike to the car rental area was welcomed. Within a few minutes we drove away from the airport, delighted to discover the highway onto which we’d turned was the avenue to our destination.



We were not in Georgia anymore. This road was rough. Wear and tear from dozens of feet of snow each year combined with applications of salt and scrapings by snow removal equipment contributed to a new meaning of “washboard road.”



Mountains rose on both sides of our journey. Snow patches streaked their sides and topped their peaks. We were in a quiet place that in places seemed a step back in time. The inhabitants we learned quickly are wedded to a practice foreign to those who dwell where we do. When the speed limit sign read thirty miles-per-hour they drove thirty. When those signs read forty that’s the speed they assumed. No one seemed to be possessed of a need to get there first.



We settled into our mountain village lodgings. Nestled in evergreens off the road it was spacious and warm with a fire burning. Looking up through the trees the slopes that a few weeks before had hosted hundreds of skiers looked lonely. We settled in ready to begin our explorations the next morning.

Bright, bright daylight burst through the window. We awoke to the discovery daylight arrives at five in the morning in New England. Our start was early. Our idea of vacation is to stay away from places tourists visit. We take the back roads, those byways marked by numbers in squares and circles on the maps. We saw New Hampshire sights most tourists have missed since the roads were paved.



Hunger set in late in the afternoon. A challenge of back roads wandering is the lack of adequate restaurants. Where do you eat when you’re not sure where you are? We saved on that first day by the sign in front of a church that was built in the late 1700s. It read: “Chicken Pot Pie Supper, All-You-Can-Eat $7.00” We parked the car in the lot behind the church.



“Come on in this way,” said the lady at the outside door of the church’s kitchen. Several women were there piling the pot pie on plates. We were motioned to the dining area where three rows of tables were arranged across the room. We sat down. Those sitting to the sides and across from us continued talking. We waited. One of the women from the kitchen placed steaming plates of pot pie in front of us with the whispered word, “Enjoy.”

The table contained bowls of beans and cold slaw. We were to help ourselves. People across the table continued to talk – to each other. “Excuse me,” I said, “would you pass the slaw?” She did and then turned back to her conversation companion without a word to me.



I turned to Lynn. I whispered. “We’re going to stay here until someone speaks to us.”

We did. And finally they did speak. The lady across from me discovered we graduated from the same university. We were no longer strangers. And over homemade desert we shared our stories. But it took a while to get to that place.



From Georgia to Maine we just have problems welcoming the stranger to our table or pew.



Credits: Mount Washing photo from Clip Art Dot Com; Supper graphic from Church Art Pro

Comments

[DannyG]

I've always thought that, having grown up in northren New England (the west coast of New Hampshire...right on the Conneticut river), a lot of my reserved nature comes from there. In a town where anybody whose family wasn't there before the civil war is considered a newcomer, it could be hard to make friends.nbsp; I do find that people in the South tend to be more open, or at least more openly curious (Nosy?).nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;