A review of the last 40 years of the Gazette reveals that while there’s never a scarcity of controversial topics or opinions, we’re woefully lacking in laughs. So much so that when someone attempts to write something humorous, some people take the material seriously, becoming at times quite perturbed. Despite disclaimers, we anticipate phone calls questioning a few items in this very issue. The void isn’t our fault. Quite the contrary. The jovial folks on the editorial board not only welcome humor – we relish it. Thus, in an effort to encourage our town’s comedians, this month we salute the brave few who have bared their humbler moments and risked the ire of misinterpretation with the hope of helping us to lighten up a little.
Ed Adelman was the first serial, if you will, humorist. From 1992 to 1994 he penned a column called “Nobody Asked Me But…”, explaining his impetus from the first – “One thing I’m usually pretty good at is laughing at myself.” Turns out “others are good at it, too.” He opined on common place things, such as suspenders – “Why shouldn’t your shoulders help out your waist and legs by holding up your pants? Isn’t that what being a body is all about?”, and posed common questions, like – “Why was this house built without closets?” Many of his columns were seasonal. He praised a particularly tough winter for keeping the tall tales “secured for future generations”, as in “boy did we have winter when I was a kid,” yet he kept a “personal misery index” to record the number of times, for example, he “questioned why are we here when we know about places like Florida, Arizona and California?” One of his favorite holidays was Groundhog Day. “Regardless of what we get someone will complain,” he wrote. “In February, however, you’ll take your complaint to the groundhog department. Tell it to the chief over there, the one with the big buck teeth.” In the summer he wrote of camping, “when we forego the everyday challenges and purposely make things a little tougher for ourselves. Kind of like going through your day with your shoelaces tied together,” and developed a top 20 list of activities he didn’t accomplish, among them: learning to play the piano, getting a goat, and insulating the crawl space, explaining, with the assessment: “Whew, what an exhausting summer I almost had!”
Angela Fichter is our most recent serial humorist. Her articles on gardening include “Flower Police” in which she refused to “divulge my secrets for getting the greatest amount of flower loot other than to say it helps to act like a detective and get to know the parking areas and the rules of the plant sale and how strictly they are enforced”, and “Plant Abuse”, of which she accused deer and gypsy moths when she isn’t looking, and when she is, as in during a garden tour, her cat, who “goes up to a plant near me and flings her entire body…onto the flower.” Though Angela has opined on the town dump, particularly the men who “watch the dumping of each other’s trash and snatch and take home something they ‘might need’ someday. In other words, they trade trash”, many of her articles involve faraway places that lack the comforts of home. The “Intrepid Traveler” has taken us to Ireland where she was afraid to dial 911 when lost because she “didn’t know what would happen,” having “seen police on various Dublin street corners with machine guns.” In Paris, she described ascending a steep staircase which resembled a fire escape with no rails and no risers to shower on slippery floor tiles with “nothing to hang onto.” Her recommendations for a trip to China: “expect living accommodations to come in one size, tiny.” And who could forget her account of failing to catch the “red eye” when she slept through the announcement of her departing flight? We’ll never quite erase the image of her running on the tarmac flagging the taxiing plane with the gatekeeper chasing her.
Gordon Hansen also wrote of his trips around the country and abroad. Like when he was in Mexico and realized that the tremors he was experiencing were not the cause of Montezuma’s Revenge and thought – “Oh thank God, I’m not sick – it’s an earthquake!” Gordon shared some of the signs he observed on his travels: “GAS STATION: SELF-SERVICE — NO EXTRA CHARGE”; and the unfortunate — EAT HERE AND GET GAS. There was the butcher shop that advertised WE HAVE BRAINS ONLY ON THURSDAY, and the furniture store that announced – 40 YEAR WITHOUT A SALE, which probably explains the GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign shortly afterwards. He also recalled advertisements for GENUINE PLASTIC and REAL PLASTIC SNOW.
Janet Robertson’s “Journal” chronicling their family’s trip around the world relayed many humorous stories. Of navigating locks in Wales and the destruction of their boat, so unusual an occurrence for the Welsh that the word “sank” had to be spelled to be believed. Of Taiwan where they lost their son “in the wilds of who knows where” when they arrived, and departed in a typhoon. Of a Korean restaurant which served 18 courses; and those of us who knew Mr. Robertson could hear him proclaim, “My God it was interesting!”
Tom Gaines penned several political editorials, injecting a little levity at times, like in “Power and the Justice of the Peace”. Elected to the position in the same cycle as the President, he compared the two offices, correcting common misconceptions. “While the president is saddled with annoying checks and balances”, the Justice of the Peace “has practically unlimited power,” he wrote, and since they set their own fees, he “hired an ad agency to work out specials, premiums, two-for-ones, and so on”. Refuting that their duties are easy, he pointed out “the responsibilities in fact are so great Hampton has nine Justices of the Peace”, as opposed to only one president.
Animals have provided plenty of material for our humorists. Virginia Welch’s contributions to EarthCare included “Mousecapades”, the “cautionary tale of discovering MICE! wintering in birdhouses, and the never-to-be-forgotten experience when one bails out and heads for cover in the long, dark tunnel of your pants leg.” And the tale of the wounded goose the Welches nurtured until he “left with the call of migrating geese”, but only as far as downtown Danbury where a reporter, a photographer, and a group of people gathered as they cornered, pinned, caged him, and “drove off leaving people wondering what they had seen.” There was Vandal, the appropriately named German Shepherd, the “Great Dane who rode upright in the car like a chauffeured dowager” and the part-time dog, “a confirmed runaway”, who cost so much to reclaim “from the dog catcher, she could have stayed at a good motel.”
Cindy’s Bezanson’s chickens frequently amuse us. There’s Brownie, whose mothering instinct caused her to “sit on sticks, rocks, straw, a blade of grass.” And Jack, who disproved the adage that a rooster crows at daybreak: “Our boy crows in the morning. He crows at lunchtime, dinner time and just before bed. He crows at two in the morning. He sings to the mail truck, the lawn mower, and answers our neighbor’s donkeys when he hears them call out ‘heehaw’.” Her affection for chickens is infectious, and probably is the reason a co-worker who would proudly announce after the slaughter of his own, “Chicken burritos tonight…Chicken Cordon Blue on Saturday!” decided “that the ladies would now permanently reside in the newly remodeled coop instead of in the freezer. And that the ladies were going to be named.”
During Random Recollections, we heard stories from different generations. Peggy Fox recalled the time she and her friend Lucille were “selling stamps for crippled children” and an encounter with Mr. Putnam using his door-less outhouse caused them to announce to the next customer, “We’re selling cramps for stippled children.” Morris Burr recalled the time a group of couples, including the minister and his wife, went to dinner at a place that turned out to be a strip club. He remembered the sermon the next morning, too. Allan Freeman recalled the end of his career at the Post Office when he mistook Charlie Fox’s directive “take this trash” with the wrong pile and set the mail on fire. Jo Freeman remembered that while waiting for their desserts to bake at 4-H class, the boys smoked cigarettes in back of Our Lady of Lourdes and ate raw onions to disguise their breath. Both Allan and Jo remember their “experiences” with the nudist colony, where Jo was the designated “look out” for Neal Moon and Jeff Osborne who knew where there was a knot hole in the fence, and Allan recalled sneaking up in Bob Miller’s Plymouth coup which backed into a stonewall when the proprietor “opened the door and let the dogs out”.
Last, but certainly not least, our Auntie Mac, who monthly answers queries as to living at large, and in Hampton in particular. This month she advises us on acceptable behavior at the library, other months elucidating other town institutions. Advocating for participation at Town meetings, she noted the ordinance “mandating attendance at all public events involving a book, a speech, or a bowl of spaghetti” and promised, “in terms of intrigue, dialogue, plot twists and theatrics…Hampton’s Annual Town Meeting is not to be missed!” She encouraged participation in the Memorial Day Parade where she comes “dressed in diaphanous lavender chiffon performing a Dance to Spring right behind the Monster Truck contingent” and clarified transfer station etiquette, explaining that the town dump “knows all and sees all, and it is there that our best – and our worst – selves are placed on display for all the world to see. Candidacies are made there. Rumors begin there. It is the font of all town knowledge.” She has offered advice on dealing with neighborhood noise, parties, nude sun bathing, garden gnomes, and barnyard odor, while she herself remains “absolutely baffled…to hear people who have moved ‘to the country’ complain that there is just too much actual country near them, and wonder what they can do to shut it out, or better yet, to whom they can issue cease and desist orders.”
It’s been an arduous journey, reviewing 40 years of coverage of the things that are important to us, and we close with humor, in the hopes that those who laugh last, laugh longest.