Dateline July 18, 2019, Into New Hampshire
Another RV adventure. Our generator had refused to start the night we spent in Hershey, so the next morning we tracked down a Roadtrek dealer south of Allentown and simply drove in, hoping for mercy. Service was open but backed up, and they suggested we get underneath ourselves and check the breaker and pull the fuse. Both were fine. I will say there were nearly some fine photographs of Janice under the vehicle, but she put her foot down. We could start the generator from below; it was the remote that had quit. A generator outfit in New Hampshire told us to come by once we left the Cape, and when we did they found the trouble in about a minute: the remote simply was not plugged in, and from underneath the plug is a devil to find. It had not been serviced in seven years anyway, so they pulled it to set everything right. Charlton Heston is said to have talked himself out of a boat with the line that a boat is a hole in the water you pour money into. An RV, we have decided, is just a boat on wheels.
Derry, with Connie and Lee. Lee was home when we pulled in; Janice's sister Connie is still a working girl, at least a while longer. We had not been there long before we found Lee's internet creeping along like the old dial-up days, and for the younger crowd, that meant a telephone line plugged into the computer, a modem squealing away, and a long wait for anything at all. We called the provider, ran a hundred tests, and in the end they sent a real live person the next day, who put in a new modem, ran a fresh line from the pole, and had him humming along at better than a hundred megabits. He sorted out Lee's email into the bargain, so Janice got her annual turn as family tech support.
Connie and Janice fell to remembering the time, back in 1986, that Janice bought a Malcolm Konner Commemorative Corvette and got to bring a guest along to collect it at the plant.
Those special-edition Corvettes were built to honor Malcolm Konner, who ran a Chevrolet dealership in Paramus, New Jersey, and Konner's people flew the whole lot of buyers down in an old DC-3, loud as anything, and set it down on a dirt strip near the plant. The next day they toured the line, drove Corvettes around the test track, and were handed the keys to their brand-new cars; all fifty of them drove home to Paramus together, and a town or two along the way even put on a parade. Connie still has the jacket and the blanket they were given.
We spent a couple of days mostly resting, and Connie and Janice made their lists of what to bring up to cook at the Lake Sunapee house that Janice's brother Brian had rented. Friday morning we set out for the Sunapee region.
The Sunapee mill, and Jeff Trow. We drove up the back way, and our first stop was the Sunapee town hall, to ask about the cemetery where Janice's parents are buried, for Janice and her brothers and sisters and their spouses have all decided their ashes will rest there too. The woman at the hall sent us to find Jeff Trow, and told us to drive down to the mill in town, W.W. Trow and Son, where Jeff usually is, and where he keeps the cemetery maps. We found him in his office, and he showed us right where Janice's folks lie, in the Eastman Cemetery. His own father had the job before him, and Jeff now looks after all six of Sunapee's cemeteries. The mill once cut logs and made all manner of wood products; these days it dries some timber but mostly mills wood flooring from lumber folks bring in. Jeff was a character, eighth-generation Sunapee, and he walked us through how it is done: a box of ashes, the proper particulars, and a hundred dollars mailed to him at the mill, and a place is made near her parents' graves. We could have listened to his stories all afternoon.
Newport and Northstar. We had meant to spend the night at the Newport Golf Club, a Harvest Host nearby, only to roll in and find the course had gone into receivership, with new management that had never heard of Harvest Hosts. Janice had spoken earlier with the Northstar Campground just outside Newport, so we dropped by to ask. No reservations on a Friday night, but all you can do is ask, and they gave us one of the prettiest sites we have had anywhere in our travels, thirty dollars, cash or check. We paid with one of our freshly printed Flagler Beach Trust checks, just joking.
We backed in on the edge of a wide stream running over a little dam, fixed a drink, set out the chairs, and soaked up the quiet of the place. We got to talking with the couple next to us, as we always seem to, New Hampshire folks who said this was their favorite campground in the state; they book site forty-four months ahead for its patch of grass along the water. If we are ever back, we will ask for it.
The Country Club of New Hampshire. We were down to play the Country Club of New Hampshire on Sunday with Janice's brothers Steve and Brian, and it was another course we had arranged to write about. First thing Saturday morning we drove over to see if we might sneak in an early round, introduced ourselves to the general manager and head pro, Dereck Lytle, who had our note of introduction in hand and said the timing was perfect. He had sixty players going off starting at a quarter past seven, and slipped us out ahead of them.
It is a must-play if ever you are in New Hampshire. It was named the number-two classic course on Golfweek's 2018 list of public courses, and Golf Digest has twice put it among its top seventy-five, and it earns every bit of that. The Mountain course winds beautifully through the foothills of Mount Kearsarge in Sutton, and we thought the par threes, taken together, among the finest we have played, every one of them testing and fair. The rest held to the same standard, and it made for a glorious morning. Afterward we stopped in the grill, where John had the best pastrami Reuben he has had in years and Janice an excellent BLT, and we sat over some good craft beer and watched the British Open on the television. A perfect morning, and only the start of the day, for the whole family was gathering at Lake Sunapee that afternoon.
