Blue Highways: Melvin Village, New Hampshire

Unfolding the Map

The Blue Highways quote below, about an elderly resident of Melvin Village who helps William Least Heat-Moon see, through her long years of perspective, that change is constant and a recurring, cyclical happening, leads me to reflect on the influence of the elderly residents of my hometown on the fabric of its social structure.  To age gracefully in Melvin Village, pass some of your precious time at the map.

Book Quote

"Marion Horner Robie had not been Melvin Village for all her eighty years; the first seven decades she was just another citizen of fewer than five hundred, although when she ran the post office, grocery and dry goods store, telephone switchboard, and the fire dispatch all at the same time, she was (admittedly) 'the big cheese.'....

"....In broad New England vowels, Mrs Robie said: 'I never planned on becoming the big cheese, you see.  It fell about that way as chance does...'"

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 11

Melvin Village, New Hampshire from Lake Winnipesaukee. Photo at the Melvin Village Soy Candles website. Click on photo to go to host site.

Melvin Village, New Hampshire

When I map a book like On the Road or Blue Highways, both geographically or cognitively, I never quite know where the cognitive topography will take me.  In this post, I am going to a place that surprises me.

It shouldn't be so surprising.  After all, LHM meets a woman who, partly because of her advanced years, has become the self-described "big cheese" of Melvin Village, New Hampshire.  To me, age really defines those who actually are the big cheeses from those are "wannabee" big cheeses or who think they are big cheeses.

With that awkward beginning, I now get to my point.  I grew up in a small town, and there one always can find those people who, because of their age, have reached a lofty status among the rest of the people in the town.  These people are the town elders, whose major accomplishments have been to live and experience and to reach a point where they can pass their experience, history, memories and wisdom to the generations behind them.  Every culture that I can think of puts older people into a class reserved entirely for them.  Somewhat removed but always sought out in case of crisis.  A recent viewing of The Seven Samurai by the great director Akira Kurosawa reminded me of this common instinct in our cultures.  In the movie villagers, tired of repeated attacks by bandits, consult the oldest man in the village to ask him what they should do.  His advice, hire seven samurai to defend the village from the next expected attack, is heeded and with the aid of the samurai, the villagers repel the attackers.

Gertrude White never had to give such advice to my hometown residents, though I had no doubt that she would have if needed.  Actually, I have no doubt that she would have led the defense if the village was attacked.  From the day I first remember her, when I was perhaps three or four, to the day that she died, she always seemed old to me.  She owned a stretch of land along Airport Road, an unknown number (to me) of acres that once served as the town airport for which the street was named.  I think I was only in her house once, however we always had some kind of contact with her.  She ran a horse riding club.  My grandmother, who was a good friend but who I believe also looked up to Mrs. White as a mentor often rode horses with her in the local Paul Bunyan Days parades.  My grandmother was perhaps 10-15 years younger than Mrs. White, but I think their shared history of growing up and living in the area brought them together and, as their ages became greater the difference between them grew less and less.

As the matriarch of the horse club, Mrs. White touched the lives of a lot of young children, mostly girls.  Our summer weekends often revolved around her horse shows, in which manes and tails tore around barrels or ripped around the track at breakneck speed with very fragile little girls clinging to them.  But I remember that Mrs. White was also heavily involved in town business and affairs, and can think of a couple of times when I heard of residents of my parents generation approaching her for advice or to learn some history about how the town handled certain situations in the past.  As she got older, her mystique, augmented by her large house, seemed to grow.  When she died, somewhere approaching 100 years old, it was like the passing of an era that we could never get back.

My grandmother, Mary Cox, was very similar.  She was something of what I considered the last of the pioneers of Northern California.  She grew up in the woods where her father and grandfather ran a small lumber mill.  She married a fisherman who turned lumberman in the depression, and then reverted back to fisherman.  She raised four children (one of which was my mother) in logging camps in the woods during the heart of the Great Depression.  After her husband died of cancer when she was in her fifties, she used it as an opportunity to get the education she always wanted but never had, and got her nursing degree.  She worked until she was into her seventies and forced into retirement because of a back and knee injury sustained while trying to hold up an unsteady and heavy patient.

My grandmother was the focal point of our family.  Our lives, especially as she got older, revolved around her.  My sisters and cousins spent afternoons after school and entire summer days over at her house riding her horses.  Family members went to her for advice, and often received blunt words from a woman who had seen almost everything in her life and knew that the solution to life's problems began with the person who was having them.  Sometimes family members, as she got older, tried to keep news from her of certain family members' bad behavior, or problems that arose within the family.  It didn't matter - she always seemed to know anyhow.  I often went to talk to her to hear first-person accounts stories of growing up and living in places and times that otherwise I would only be able to read about.  My grandmother was also, for a time, the only one of our family that had traveled to Europe, and her accounts of visiting her relatives in Austria fascinated me and fueled my own desire to travel to other places.

When my grandmother died in her mid-nineties in 2001, her passing was like the breaking of the cement that held disparate elements of the extended family together.  Her children, my mom and her remaining siblings, still come together for the holidays but the spark that fed them, my grandmother, is missed.

If you view a small town as an extended family, the influence, wisdom, history and common-sense that our elders provide is incalcuable.  It is no accident that it seems that in smaller locales that elders are held in the most esteem, and valued more.  In large cities, it is easy enough to become lost in the teeming masses, and I think that older people are often forgotten in those places where the business of life often takes precedence over the relations and the connections that we need.  Our policies, which make it harder for our older members of society to live and get by, also do not help.

I have learned, however, that there is no substitute for an older, wiser presence in our lives.  We may not agree with everything our elders say and they can be as wrong as anyone else.  I would argue that isn't the point.  When they speak with us, we are almost compelled to listen, and it is in our listening that we give ourselves the space to come to our own wisdom and solutions.  I wish I could thank my grandmother for those times that she made me stop, think, and take stock, whether or not her views were useful to me or not.  Just her presence was sometimes enough.

Musical Interlude

The Who's My Generation was originally about the younger generation telling the older generation where it could go and what it could do to itself.  It's pretty amazing that this group of older people, The Zimmers, have turned that song on its head.  Now they're doing the singing, and telling the rest of us where to go.  Good for them!

I also had to include Neil Young's Old Man, that melancholy air that shows that young people and old people often have the same needs.

If you want to know more about Melvin Village

Sorry, there's not too much on Melvin Village.

Wikipedia: Melvin Village

Next up:  Hunter's Maple Farm, New Hampshire

Blue Highways: Somewhere on the North Side of Oneida Lake, New York

Unfolding the Map

As we continue through New York, we happen with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) upon Oneida Lake, the largest freshwater lake entirely within the state.  This post is about framing, or specifically how a lake helps visually frame vistas.  But it is also about something more.  Books like Blue Highways frame an author's perspective and thoughts, and now I'm using these posts to frame my experience of Blue Highways and other books for you.  Hopefully, you can use my posts to frame your own thoughts and create frames of perspective for others.  To frame Oneida Lake geographically, please see the map.

Book Quote

"The shingled cafe, Ben and Bernies, afforded a broad view of Lake Oneida....

"The Oneida shoreline was warm - too warm - for May, although maples by the highway had opened to a cooling shade.  The perpetual spring I'd been following around the country was about done.  On a map, Lake Oneida looks like a sperm whale, and my course that morning was down the spine, from the flukes to the snout.  All along the shore, old houses, big houses, were losing to the North climate, and for miles it was a place of sag and dilapidation."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 6

Sunset over Oneida Lake, New York. Notice how water, land, sky and sun work together so well in this picture. Photo by The Brit_2 and hosted at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host site.

Somewhere on the North Side of Oneida Lake

I've always heard that when one takes a picture, framing the shot is the most important thing one can do to make sure that the picture is a good one.  I've also watched videographers, and have seen television shows about how certain movies are made, and once again how shots are framed are very important.

What is framing?  In photographic terms, framing focuses the viewer's attention on an object in the photo or in the scene, and in many cases can add a sense of depth to an image.  So, why am I starting out a post centered on Oneida Lake with the concept of framing?  I think I first became aware of this component of visual arts through my interaction with lakes.

I grew up next to the Pacific Ocean.  When one looks west from my hometown, the ocean spreads flat as far as the eye can see.  On some days, the view is to the horizon and on other days, if it is foggy, the eye cannot see as far.  When looking out over the ocean, one seeks some kind of frame of reference, such as a boat or other object.  I often found my eyes seeking the coastline, especially north where Cape Mendocino juts out into the ocean many miles distant, and I often found that a pleasing sight as it gave me a sense of distance and depth that I lacked looking straight west.

I probably had my first experience with a lake when I was too young to remember.  My family used to make yearly winter trips from our home on the ocean to Lake Tahoe.  They started this before I was born, and for some reason these trips ended when I was about four years old.  I do not remember much about my couple of trips to Lake Tahoe at the time other than some disjointed images of the car ride and being in snow (which I hated at the time because I didn't like the cold).

The first time I remember seeing a lake and really appreciating it was when I was in junior high school.  I was probably in 8th grade.  I had a friend named Mike, and he lived with his mother.  His father lived in Clearlake, California and Mike asked me if I would like to go with him to see his dad for the weekend.  His dad was a pilot, and flew over to Little River Airport to pick us up.  It was my first airplane ride, and as we followed Highway 20, which I knew well, I saw the limits of my world laid out for me.  I noted the turn from Highway 20 onto U.S. 101 and followed its line down toward Ukiah - the route I knew so well from frequent trips to the orthodontist and the ophthalmologist.

Just beyond a low hill from U.S. 101, where I wouldn't have seen it from the road, lay a small lake.  I asked about it, and learned it was Lake Mendocino, a large reservoir on the east fork of the Russian River.  We were following Highway 20 again after it split off from 101 - a continuance that I wasn't aware of.  There were a series of little lakes that followed along the road.  I was told those were the Blue Lakes, and told some thought they were bottomless.  Then, a much, much larger lake, Clear Lake, came into view.  As we banked over and began our approach into Clearlake's airport, I was amazed by its size.

Since then, I have seen a number of lakes, some much bigger than Clear Lake, and have realized that everything is perspective.  And to be fair to myself, Clear Lake is the biggest body of fresh water entirely in California.  But at that time I never realized that there could be a volume of water, outside the ocean, that could be so big.

The time we spent on and around Clear Lake was fun.  Mike's dad owned a motel with a pier into the lake and we spent time fishing, and he took us out in his boat and I learned to water ski for the first time.  But what made the lake so fascinating was the view.  Mount Konocti, a volcano, rises on the south shore of Clear Lake, and small hills ring it.  The depression in which the lake lies and the flat blue water of the lake itself creates a natural frame.  I think that my unconscious view was drawn to this frame of water, earth and sky and I would spend a lot of time looking toward the lake for that reason.

I've seen this effect at other lakes as well, including in New York where LHM travels first past the Finger Lakes and then past Oneida Lake.  On a visit to a friend's parents' house at Geneva, New York, I was aware of a similar effect as I looked south down the long lake.  Hills and sky frame the lake, and if an object such as a sailboat were on the lake in the distance, the combination of elements framed the boat beautifully.

I can imagine LHM coming upon Oneida Lake for the first time.  The water appears, and the frame spreads as more water fills the field of vision and the shores spread out to the right and left.  Depending on the time day, the sun might add to the effect.  At dawn, as the sun rises, a trail of light might direct one's gaze toward where the sun is coming up if one is standing at the western end of the lake.  One might see the same effect in the evening at the eastern end of the lake.  The lake is long enough that one might not be able to see completely across its length, which in itself creates a frame for the eye.  At the same time, standing on the north shore, the length of the south shore (if it can be seen - I don't really know) would draw the eye toward natural frames that the brain would recognize, giving depth and distance a meaning.  I'm speculating, because I have never been to Oneida Lake, but that's the point of a book - to put these images in my mind that tap into my own experience.

I've always been one to really observe and see the art and beauty in the world around me.  Some of my most memorable scenes, ones that are indelibly etched into my experience, are the vistas surrounding lakes, and I believe it is because of that natural framing that occurs that my unconscious, developing mind recognized and appreciated long before my conscious mind understood why.

Musical Interlude

The lyric "In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky and they stand there" came into my mind as I was writing this post.  To me, it almost perfectly encapsulates the effect a lake can have on one's vision.  The lyric is from the song Roundabout by Yes.  The rest of the lyrics can be seen if you go to the YouTube site for the video.

If you want to know more about Oneida Lake

New York Department of Environmental Conservation: Oneida Lake
Oneida Lake
Oneida Lake, New York
Wikipedia: Oneida Lake

Next up:  Somewhere on the Erie Canal