Where there are trees, there are fires. Alot of controlled fires in the pine forests of NH. Most of which were smokeouts safely wrapped behind the sternum and tangential to the sacs at the ends of networks that make up the lungs. Alot of lungs in a state of recycle from a quarter century of casual freerolling tobacco pinners, ritual made mornings to calm the whole organism mental and physical, for each and every slightly unpredictable afternoon of attention and presence toward the community here understood as having slid off benchmarks long since established and become landmarks. Like pine become oak. Hardened to dead solid. Respected like a wall. Not respected so much as a known entity and spoken of as such. Like
goddamn it! I accidentally ran the snowplow dead set into the old Oak tree lee side of Smith's rock! Everyone would know what ya meant when you said such. Locally.
The young families of the lakes region NH who sourced locally, were typically well-educated (though often self-educated), working class in nature (with varying degrees of industriousness), lightly scarred by nuclear family proclivities toward violence and insensitivity....misogyny and sexualizing the burden of most women, but taken on and often handled the best a girl can handle trauma. The children were always loved except when they were not. But usually somebody could love each and every child, if that child was not in some isolative place. Men and sons and brothers were still likely in the taking up of arms of diverse typology (anything according to what one could reasonably within the law beg steal borrow or finance out for themselves) when any issue become too emotional or overwhelming to be handled well (settled). Often a family affair of long running depth could end up getting beat back down to size. Most did not prefer this way, however it ran in the blood of many. And so was manifest. Often against the wishes of atleast one pacifist in any family system tied into the
Ten (what i call the greater systemics).
Meaning the community and the families that made up the community, was represented by the Ten. Ten being that simple way of moving a decimal point to quickly comprehend larger mathematics by scale. Taught commonly in schools in twenty-first century USA. So plumbers, truckers, traffickers of goods, fences, barbacks, yoga studio owners, microbrew entrepreuners, corner store clerks, cashiers, DIY loan lenders, DIY in home thievery, used car saleswomen, children as young as probably three years old, or as old as forty-five just learning the rudimentary trick. Just push and pull that little black type point in and out the fold, depending on how you are working or manipulatin' numbers, or gettin' manipulated at any given juncture... The lesson of the Ten was a lesson worth learning to most in this socio-economic strata of the country, and worth a few precious moments of what's left of anyones attention span, one would think.
And most everyone did. Except some weren't done being ignorant. Some were overly attached to their Ritalin and or their ADHD or ADD diagnoses. Which was also fine. A choice. And some chose to judge them, but mostly did not. For Ritalin was a widespread panacea to disobedient and otherwise non -compliant kids of the eighties. Some weren't done conning. The others weren't done being conned.
The transactional nature of all human affairs inevitably led to the two aforementioned encampments becoming more or less prominent. Could be as simple as changing bills with a stranger. Here's a twenty for your two tens. A crisp twenty for two old hamiltons. You gotta feel good about that. Hamilton wasn't much to write home about. Certainly no Franklin! No Lincoln. No Clinton. No Roosevelt. In fact, he might just barely resemble a Romney on a cloudy humid poor excuse for a summer afternoon in Wolfeboro, NH. Romney with an inedible scaleback sunfish on his hook flopping to be released. Romney with a post elect scowl possibly, and straps from the lawn furniture on the dock, imprinted on his back from the weight of him. After an unbearably cold dawn swim. With a bodyguard trying his hardest to just fade into the shadow of a fiberglass laminated bow of an antique wooden campaign cruiser at the bottom of a pencilled in expense account list, waterlogged at the base of the inboard cover, in that uncomfortable place where one would hope to be able to fittingly sum it all up: where the rubber meets the road! But the road is a lake and not a road, and so casts off the baseboards like driftwood-- but not like driftwood because its not. Maybe a liberal feeling in the atmosphere. Or just a reflection of a mormon element introduced into a state less familiar to mormonism, thus marginalizing the scene. Yes it can get complicated if you stray far from the Ten.
So here you have you with your crisp bill, the
Dub, the double dime, the twenty. You who may not be done getting conned, and may or may not know it. Or may be an innocent victim. Or an innocent so-called victim who chooses not to be a victim because money is in this case not an object or at least not renting any extra time or leasing any space in your head.
So a real unaffected wise man or woman, according at least to one opinion (if maybe your own, still viable, still counts, like following your own page or blog, for instance). Not perhaps worthy of a half minute of choice words around anybody's dinner table or business meeting. But still extant in the moment. Man and bill. Bill and man. Putting aside all accessories however vital, from cigar cutters to vistaprint business cards to lobster bib tucked away in a tourist destination mariner's rescue kit of some disgusting sort, conceived of and put together by a few frozen asses around a carved out fish hole in the New Hampshire deepfreeze winter, probably a couple twelve-packs into a Meister-Brau and waiting too long for the bass to bite, and not much longer than it takes to jot down somewhere the rudimentary idea to help carve holes into the tourists fannypacks the following summer, as locals are obliged and certainly licensed to do...
Short of theft and long on cute lake crap out of towners hauled home for some goddamn reason no one up there would ever care to know. Nor dare to report. God forbid any such nonsense be found on their person. A great bellyaching hurt would be put upon them, this was certain. For which they would offer thanks. To keep them tried and local true. A kinda purification ritual, no doubt....
Coming back to the twenty dollar bill, the exchange, the con and the conned, and the rest. So crisp it seems counterfeit somehow, the twenty. Like an overstarched shirt collar. Or many, for that matter. Or nothing but starch, hold the collar, light on the shirt. Its own inertia could not be expressed like that, if the one describing the scene actually expected to be a credible witness... unless they were absentee from the class. Or masterful at masking and misrepresentation, which in itself sounds suspicious if not malicious. So?
So here in NH, a great land and loved!! We will have the freedom. The choice to stop and stop at once, no lollygagging about in this soup of crap words (not if you hope to have any kind of decency or respect in this land, okay). Seriously. Wake up. Wake the fuck up. Pretenders stop pretending. Locals suffer and love and work. Work and suffer and love. Tourists tour. Politicians pull up camp for a while. Locals tend to their homes need tending. And charge a prized inflated rate, for sure. And spend the extra on fudge at the fudge shop. And earmuffs and gloves and salt for the winter. Yes. This is how it is done. And no one comes in and does it any different, at least not without any success in effecting change. Not over the long haul. Well...that kind of thing would certainly be rare and not well remembered, by most. Possibly lost in the pines, held out on the mournful chord of any loon any august late night, or june. Possibly held tight and together in the rational of the Ten, or anysomesuchconcept that approaches what the writer efforted to convey, with all the best of intentions. With love for the NH people and land and lakes and all. amen.
