Interlude

A sojourner finds treasure in the storied gin joints and churches of Rome

Note: Dan Szczesny is an award-winning New Hampshire journalist, author, and speaker. His latest work, The White Mountain, along with all other things Dan can be found at his website here. For the entire month of November, Dan published daily “live essays,” such as this one, on his Facebook feed. We are grateful for his permission to reprint some of these essays here at Monadnock Underground over the next few weeks. You can find the original post, from November 26, here. — CJD

I’m on stage in five minutes.

A solid one hundred members of the Rome NY Wednesday Morning Club have packed into the concert hall of the Rome Historical Society and are buzzing like bees awaiting pollen. There’s a display of my books up front. And out on the sidewalk, right in front of the doors to this old, beautiful building, members have reserved for me a parking spot by taping a sign to a traffic cone. Fancy!

At any rate, I was pleased to be asked to come speak in the city where the first large scale cheese factory had been built.

I generally don’t get too nervous about presenting — especially about Mount Washington. But just as I’m getting ready to go on, the society’s IT guy whispers in my ear: “Not to put any pressure on you, but Amelia Earhart spoke to this group!”

Ouch! Wish he would have saved that tid-bit until after the talk. Way back in 1890, a young woman and mother named Helen Clark Bedell was looking for ways to educate herself and brought together about 40 women from the greater Rome area to form the Wednesday Morning Club. These post-Victorian society clubs were becoming popular around this time — New Hampshire has one — and Helen and her members literally wrote the lofty goal of “intellectual improvement” into the group’s constitution.

The work load was heavy, and included four Shakespeare plays a year, reading and discussion of Ibsen and Shaw, history lessons on Greece, Rome and South America and learning about social issues like child labor, evolution and astronomy.

Beside Earhart, I was going to be walking in the footsteps of Robert Frost, Margaret Bourke-White, Carl Sandburg and Alex Haley who was born in Rome. I wonder if Frost had a traffic cone?

Despite the pedigree, the group was informal, kind and attentive, many taking notes with follow up questions later. I often forget that when I leave New England to talk about Mount Washington, the questions tend to be more general and usually about the extreme weather. People outside the area tend to be amazed that humans can actually live up there and that some of us actually like it!

After, several members took me to Coalyard Charlies, one of those family owned gin joints common in central New York jammed uncomfortably inside an old two-story home. I grew up in places like this, where beer signs blink and fried haddock sandwiches — which I greedily ate — are mid-week specials.

And as lovely as the event itself went, sitting along a long table surrounded by women club members, each of them telling me the story of their family or of their own outdoors pursuits, it’s easier to understand why a group like this has lasted for 130 years. Before we parted ways, the members of a century old club took selfies.

Three hours later, just up the road in Lowell, in a tiny Methodist Church hall where a couple dozen artists and musicians had gathered to celebrate faith and food, I once again found myself surrounded culturally by the sort of community that I grew up in. A place where a framed, embroidered rug of the last supper hung above the kitchen area and where the goulash came out in a slow cooker emblazoned with images of NASCAR’s Dale Jarrett on the pot.

I set up my books on a table next to other regional authors atop picnic table clothes with pictures of candy corn or pumpkins. This is a church of enormous heart — where the preacher Frederick and his generous wife, Anne-Louise, have become friends and invite me to stop in whenever I’m passing through; a place now that’s become a second family, a church that seeks faith, yes, but also thrills in the pursuit of creativity and encourages me to tell stories of far-away places and cultures.

“Love is the only thing that matters,” Fred tells me at one point. “How we get there or where from isn’t as important.”

And on this evening, that process to get there is with music and words. Artists take to the stage, casually, like being in front of the fire at an old home. One tells stories of the old country; one sings songs of living and family. There is a banjo and guitar. One player named Norm, with a voice fit for Nashville, sings “You Are My Sunshine” and I feel homesick and wish my daughter was here to listen and sing with me.

When I take the stage, I read from these essays that you’ve been reading this month — I talk about my own path, reflect on my family as muse and the wonder of being in a place like this at all. How rare to come together like this, not in stadiums, but in museums and churches; where attendees become friends and ask questions like “How is your life?” and “What are your goals?”

During one of my readings, I see Fred scribbling down his sermon for next Sunday. I’m told he’s written 11,100 of them in his preaching lifetime.

After the lunch meat sandwiches, after the cider and the cheese, and after all the musicians converge on the stage for a round of gospel songs, we all mull about a bit, meeting with each other and trying to stall for time and not let the show end.

A shy man walks up to me with a request — one that in all my career as a writer I had never received. He tells me his sister is going through a hard time, there was recently a fire and she’s trying to put her life together. He tells me she lives in Arizona and that she’d like the essay I wrote about finding joy and awe in everyday living.

“That story on your daughter driving around Wal-Mart, my sister would like that I think, maybe make her feel better,” he says. “If I called her, would you read that to her over the phone?”

I don’t even have to think about it. “Of course!”

It’s unusual for both of us at first, I think. I put the phone on speaker so a small group that has gathered around can hear. I read the essay, straight through, one hand holding the phone, the other holding the typed story, standing in a church hall in the middle of nowhere. At the end, the woman says, “That was nice, thank you.”

I give the man the story so he can mail it to his sister if she likes. He hugs me. How curious this all can be.

Finally, as I’m leaving, some of the attendees pack me up some cookies and other treats. And Anne-Louise hands me a winter hat, hand knitted for Uma. On the top of the hat, instead of a fuzz ball, is a little chubby Santa.

“Next time,” she says, “you bring your whole family.”

It is easy to forget that there are places like this in the world; and those places are rarely where you’d think. But the words need to be written, and the stories continue to be told. There are stages in every hall and basement. Find one. Listen. Pay witness. Tell your story.