Bill Bryson

by The Continent

  Today Route i is still there, but you would need weeks to drive its entire length. Now it is just a local road, an endless city street, an epic stretch of shopping malls.

  I had hoped that here in rural New England it would retain something of its former charm, but it seemed not to. I drove through a chill morning drizzle and wondered if ever I would find the real New England. At Portsmouth, an instantly forgettable little town, I crossed over into Maine on an iron bridge over the gray Piscataqua River. Seen through the rhythmic swish of windshield wipers, Maine too looked ominously unpromising, a further sprawl of shopping centers and muddy new housing developments.

  Beyond Kennebunkport the suburbs at last gave way to forest. Here and there massive brown boulders emerged eerily from the earth, like subterranean creatures coming up for air, and occasionally I caught glimpses of the sea-a gray plane, cold and bleak. I drove and drove, thinking that any moment now I would encounter the fabled Maine of lobster pots and surf-battered shores and lonely lighthouses standing on rocks of granite, but the towns I passed through were just messy and drear, and the countryside was wooded and unmemorable. Once, outside Falmouth, the road ran for a mile or so along a silvery bay with a long, low bridge leading over it to a landscape of snug farms nestled in a fold of hills, and I got briefly excited. But it was a false alarm and the landscape quickly grew dull again. The rest of the time the real Maine eluded me. It was always just over there, like the amusement parks my dad used to miss.

  At Wiscasset, a third of the way up the coast to New Brunswick, I lost heart altogether. Wiscasset bills itself on the signboard at the edge of town as the prettiest village in Maine, which doesn't say a whole lot for the rest of the state. I don't mean to suggest that Wiscaset was awful, because it wasn't.

  It had a steep main street lined with craft shops and other yuppie emporia sloping down to a placid inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. Two old wooden ships sat rotting on the bank. It was OK. It just wasn't worth driving four hours to get there.

  Abruptly I decided to abandon Route 1 and plunge northward, into the dense pine forests of central Maine, heading in an irregular line for the White Mountains, on a road that went up and down, up and down, like a rucked carpet. After a few miles I began to sense a change of atmosphere. The clouds were low and shapeless, the daylight meager. Winter clearly was closing in. I was only seventy miles of so from Canada and it was evident that winters here were long and severe. It was written in the crumbling roads and in the huge stacks of firewood that stood outside each lonely cabin. Many chimneys were already sprouting wintry wisps of smoke. It was barely October, but already the land had the cold and lifeless feel of winter. It was the kind of atmosphere that makes you want to turn up your collar and head for home.

  Just beyond Gilead I passed into New Hampshire and the landscape became more interesting. The White Mountains rose up before me, big and round, the color of wood ash. Presumably they take their name from the birch trees that cover them. I drove on an empty highway through a forest of trembling leaves. The skies were still flat and low, the weather cold, but at least I was out of the monotony of the Maine woods. The road rose and fell and swept along the edge of a boulder-strewn creek. The scenery was infinitely better-but still there was no color, none of the brilliant golds and reds of autumn that I had been led to expect. Everything from the ground to the sky was a dull, cadaverous gray.

  I drove past Mount Washington, the highest peak in the northeastern United States (6,288 feet, for those of you who are keeping notes). But its real claim to fame is as the windiest place in America.

  It's something to do with ... well, with the way the wind blows, of course. Anyway, the highest wind speed ever recorded anywhere on earth was logged on the top of Mount Washington in April 1934

  when a gust of-pencils ready?-231 miles an hour whistled through. That must have been an experience and a half for the meteorologists who worked up there. Can you imagine trying to describe a wind like that to somebody? ,,Well, it was, you know, real ... windy. I mean, really windy. Do you know what I'm saying?" It must be very frustrating to have a truly unique experience.

  Just beyond it, I came to Bretton Woods, which I had always pictured as a quaint little town. But in fact there was no town at all, just a hotel and a ski lift. The hotel was huge and looked like a medieval fortress, but with a bright red roof. It looked like a cross between Monte Cassino and a Pizza Hut. It was here in 1944 that economists and politicians from twenty-eight nations got together and agreed to set up the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It certainly looked a nice place to make economic history. As John Maynard Keynes remarked at the time in a letter to his brother, Milton, "It has been a most satisfactory week. The negotiations have been cordial, the food here is superb and the waiters are ever so pretty."

  I stopped for the night at Littleton, which, as the name suggests, is a little town near the Vermont border. I pulled into the Littleton Motel on the main street. On the office door was a sign that said,

  "If you want ice of advice, come before 6:30. I'm taking the wife to dinner. ('And about time too!'-wife)." Inside was an old guy on crutches who told me I was very lucky because he had just one room left. It would be forty-two dollars plus tax. When he saw me start to froth and back off, he hastily added, "It's a real nice room. Got a brand-new TV. Nice carpets. Beautiful little shower.

  We've got the cleanest rooms in town. We're famous for that." He swept an arm over a selection of testimonials from satisfied customers which he displayed under glass on the countertop. "Our room must have been the cleanest room in town!"A.K., Aardvark Falls, Ky. "Boy, was our room ever clean! And such nice carpets!"-Mr. and Mrs. J.F., Spotweld, Ohio. That soft of thing.

  Somehow I doubted the veracity of these claims, but I was too weary to return to the road, so with a sigh I said all fight and signed in. I took my key and a bucket of ice (at forty-two dollars plus tax I intended to have everything that was going) and went with them to my room. And by golly, it was the cleanest room in town. The TV was brand-new and the carpet was plush. The bed was comfortable and the shower really was a beauty. I felt instantly ashamed of myself and retracted all my bad thoughts about the proprietor. ("I was a pompous little shit to have doubted you."-Mr. B.B., Des Moines.)

  I ate fourteen ice cubes and watched the early evening news. This was followed by an old episode of

  "Gilligan's Island," which the TV station had thoughtfully put on as an inducement to its non-brain-damaged viewers to get up immediately and go do something more useful. This I did. I went out and had a look around the town. The reason I had chosen to stop for the night at Littleton was that an American Heritage book I had with me referred to it as picturesque. In point of fact, if Littleton was characterized by anything it was a singular lack of picturesqueness. The town consisted principally of one long street of mostly undistinguished buildings, with a supermarket parking lot in the middle and the shell of a disused gas station a couple of doors away. This, I think we can agree, does not constitute picturesqueness. Happily, the town had other virtues. For one thing, it was the friendliest little place I had ever seen. I went into the Topic of the Town restaurant. The other customers smiled at me, the lady at the cash register showed me where to put my jacket, and the waitress, a plump and dimpled little lady, couldn't do enough for me. It was as if they had all been given some kind of marvelous tranquilizer.

  The waitress brought me a menu and I made the mistake of saying thank you. "You're welcome,"

  she said. Once you start this there's no stopping. She came and wiped the table with a damp cloth.

  "Thank you," I said. "You're welcome," she said. She brought me some cutlery wrapped in a paper napkin. I hesitated, but I couldn't stop myself. "Thank you," I said. "You're welcome," she said.

  Then came a place mat with "Topic of the Town" written on it, and then a glass of water, and then a clean ashtray, and then a little basket of saltine crackers wrapped in cellophane, and at each we had our polite exchange.
I ordered the fried chicken special. As I waited I became uncomfortably aware that the people at the next table were watching me and smiling at me in a deranged fashion. The waitress was watching me too, from a position by the kitchen doorway. It was all rather unnerving.

  Every few moments she would come over and top up my iced water and tell me that my food would only be a minute.

  "Thank you," I'd say.

  "You're welcome," she'd say.

  Eventually the waitress came out of the kitchen with a tray the size of a tabletop and started setting down plates of food in front of me-soup, salad, a platter of chicken, a basket of steaming rolls. It all looked delicious. Suddenly I realized that I was starving.

  "Can I get you anything else?" she said.

  "No, this is just fine, thank you," I answered, knife and fork plugged in my fists, ready to lunge at the food.

  "Would you like some ketchup?" "No thank you."

  "Would you like a little more dressing for your salad?" "No thank you."

  "Have you got enough gravy?"

  There was enough gravy to drown a horse. "Yes, plenty of gravy, thank you."

  "How about a cup of coffee?" "Really, I'm fine."

  "You sure there's nothing I can do for you?"

  "Well, you might just piss off and let me eat my dinner," I wanted to say, but I didn't, of course. I just smiled sweetly and said no thank you and after a while she withdrew. But she stood with a pitcher of iced water and watched me closely the whole meal. Every time I took a sip of water, she would come forward and top up my glass. Once when I reached for the pepper, she misread my intentions and started forward with the water pitcher, but then had to retreat. After that, whenever my hands left the cutlery for any reason, I would semi-mime an explanation to her of what I was about to do-"I'm just going to butter my roll now"-so that she wouldn't rush over to give me more water. And all the while the people at the next table watched me eat and smiled encouragingly. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

  When at last I finished the waitress came over and offered me dessert. "How about a piece of pie?

  We've got blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, boysenberry, huckleberry, whortleberry, cherry berry, hairy berry, chuckberry and berry-berry."

  "Gosh, no thanks, I'm too full," I said placing my hands on my stomach. I looked as if I had stuffed a pillow under my shirt.

  "Well, how about some ice cream? We've got chocolate chip, chocolate fudge, chocolate ripple, chocolate-vanilla fudge, chocolate nut fudge, chocolate marshmallow swirl, chocolate mint with fudge chips, and fudge nut with or without chocolate chips."

  "Have you got just plain chocolate?"

  "No, I'm afraid there's not much call for that." "I don't think I'll have anything then."

  "Well, how about a piece of cake? We've got-" "Really, no thank you."

  "A cup of coffee?" "No thank you." "You sure now?" "Yes, thank you."

  "Well, I'll just get you a little more water then," and she was off for the water jug before I could get her to give me my bill. The people at the next table watched this with interest and smiled a smile that said, "We are completely off our heads. How are you?"

  Afterwards, I had a walk around the town-that is to say, I walked up one side of the street and down the other. For the size of the place it was a nice town. It had two bookstores, a picture gallery, a gift shop, a movie house. People on the sidewalk smiled at me as I passed. This was beginning to worry me. Nobody, even in America, is that friendly. What did they want from me? Up at the far end of the street there was a BP service station, the first one I had seen in America. Feeling vaguely homesick for Blighty, I walked up to have a look at it and was disappointed to see that there wasn't anything particularly British about it. The guy behind the counter wasn't even wearing a turban.

  When he saw me looking in the window he smiled at me with that same strange, unsettling smile.

  Suddenly I realized what it was-it was the look of someone from outer space, that odd, curiously malevolent B-movie smile of a race of interplanetary creatures who have taken over a small town in the middle of nowhere as their first step towards becoming ... Earth Masters. I know this sounds improbable, but crazier things have happened-look who was in the White House, for Christ's sake.

  As I strolled back to the motel, I gave everyone I passed that same eerie smile, thinking I ought to keep on their good side, just in case. "And you never know," I remarked to myself in a low voice, "if they do take over the planet, there might be some openings for a guy of your talents."

  In the morning I arose very early to a day that promised splendor. I peered out of my motel window.

  A pink dawn was spilled across the sky. I dressed quickly and hit the road before Littleton had even begun to stir. A few miles out of town I crossed the state line. Vermont presented an altogether greener, tidier prospect than New Hampshire. The hills were fat and soft, like a sleeping animal.

  The scattered farms looked more prosperous and the meadows climbed high up the rolling hillsides, giving the valleys an alpine air. The sun was soon high and warm. On a ridge overlooking an expanse of hazy foothills, I passed a sign that said PEACHAM, SETTLED 1776 and beyond that stood a village. I parked beside a red general store and got out to have a look around. There was no one about. Presumably the people of Littleton had come in the night and taken them off to the planet Zog.

  I walked past the Peacham Inn-white clapboard, green shutters, no sign of life-and wandered up a hill, past a white Congregational church and pleasant, dozing houses. At the crest of the hill stood a broad green, with an obelisk and flagpole, and beside it an old cemetery. A zephyr wind teased the flag. Down the hill, across a broad valley, a series of pale green and brown hills rolled away to the horizon, like the swells of a sea. Below me the church bell tolled the hour, but otherwise there was not a sound. This was as perfect a spot as I had ever seen. I had a look at the obelisk.

  COMMEMORATING PEACHAM SOLDIERS 1569, it said, and had names carved in it, good New England names like Elijah W. Sargent, Lowell Sterns, Horace Rowe. There were forty-five names in all, too many surely for a mere hamlet in the hills. But then the cemetery beside green also looked far too large for the size of town. It covered the hillside and the grandeur of many of the monuments suggested that this had once been a place of wealth.

  I went through the gate and had a look around. My eye was caught by one particularly handsome stone, an octagonal marble column surmounted by a granite sphere. The column logged the copious deaths of Hurds and their near relatives from Capt. Nathan Hurd in 1818 to Frances H. Bement in 1889. A small panel on the back said:

  Nathan H. died July 24 1852 AE. 4 Y'S 1 M'O.

  Joshua F. died July 31 1852 AE. 1 YR 11 M'S.

  Children of J. & C. Pitkin.

  What could it have been, I wondered, that carried off these two little brothers just a week apart? A fever? It seemed unlikely in July. An accident in which one died and the other lingered? Two unrelated events? I pictured the parents crouched at Joshua F.'s bedside, watching his life ebb, praying to God not to take him as well, and having their hopes crushed. Isn't life shitty? Everywhere I looked there was disappointment and heartbreak re corded in the stones: JOSEPH, SON OF

  EPHRAIM AND SARAH CARTER, DIED MARCH 18 1846, AGED 18 YRS, ALMA FOSTER, DAUT. OF ZADOCK AND HANNAH RICHARDSON, D. MAY 22, 1847, AE. 17 yrs. So many were so young. I became infected with an inexpressible melancholy as I wandered alone among these hundreds of stilled souls, the emptied lives, the row upon row of ended dreams. Such a sad place! I stood there in the mild October sunshine, feeling so sorry for all these luckless people and their lost lives, reflecting bleakly on mortality and on my own dear, cherished family so far away in England, and I thought, "Well, fuck this," and walked back down the hill to the car.

  I drove west across Vermont, into the Green Mountains. The mountains were dark and round and the valleys looked rich. Here the light seemed softer, sleepier, more autumnal. There was color everywhere-trees the color
of mustard and rust, meadows of gold and green, colossal white barns, blue lakes. Here and there along the highways roadside produce stands brimmed with pumpkins and squash and other autumn fruits. It was like a day trip to heaven. I wandered around on back roads.

  There was a surprising lot of small houses, some little better than shacks. I supposed there couldn't be much work in a place like Vermont. The state has hardly any towns or industry. The biggest city, Burlington, has a population of just 37,000. Outside Groton I stopped at a roadside cafe for coffee and listened along with the other three customers to a fat young woman with a pair of illkempt children moaning in a loud voice about her financial problems to the woman behind the counter. "I still only get four dollars an hour," she was saying. "Harvey, he's been at Fibberts for three years and he's only just got his first raise. You know what he gets now? Four dollars and sixty-five cents an hour. Isn't that pathetic? I told him, I said, 'Harvey, they're just walkin all over you.' But he won't do nothin' about it." She broke off here to rearrange the features on one of her children's faces with the back of her hand. "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO INNARUP ME WHEN

  I'M TALKING?" she inquired rhetorically of the little fellow, and then in a calmer voice turned back to the cafe lady and launched into a candid list of Harvey's other shortcomings, which were manifold.

  Only the day before in Maine I had seen a sign in a McDonald's offering a starting wage of five dollars an hour. Harvey must have been immensely moronic and unskilled-doubtless both not to be able to keep pace with a sixteen-year-old burger jockey at McDonald's. Poor guy! And on top of that here he was married to a woman who was slovenly and indiscreet, and had a butt like a barn door. I hoped old Harvey had sense enough to appreciate all the incredible natural beauty with which God had blessed his native state because it didn't sound as if He had blessed Harvey very much. Even his kids were ugly as sin. I was half tempted to give one of them a clout myself as I went out the door.