September 30, 2024

Very little has changed in Manchester in years. Elm Street, the main business route through New Hampshire’s largest town, offers the same eccentric mix of shops and eating places. At noon on Thursday the sidewalks were nearly deserted, drenched by the sweeping rains, the leading edge of Hurricane Helene.

Even in September this is a winter town. Fifty years ago brown smog rose over the old mills along the fast-moving Merrimack River, when coal and oil were the primary heating fuels. Eventually the smog lifted, leaving the snowbanks gray, as they lasted through April. The snow sweeps in through winter, but the place doesn’t shut down. New Hampshire people, like cold-weather people elsewhere, pile on the layers, get coffee, and go to work and school.

We escaped South Carolina before Helene’s rain and winds lashed the Southeast. The “abbatial blessing” ceremony at St. Anselm Abbey, the initial reason we came, was sweet and unique. Thirty Benedictine monks processed into the grand Abbey Church. My college classmate Mark, the outgoing Abbot, handed over his staff to Isaac, who now takes over the spiritual leadership of the monastery.

 Later that day our daughter Marie called to report that a neighbor’s huge tree had crashed in our backyard, crumpling about fifty feet of fence. She sent a video that showed the newly painted pickets and spars in splinters. Power is still out around the Upstate. Western North Carolinians are worse off.

A thousand miles north the sun shone on the brilliant New England foliage. We pushed on to Errol in the far-north corner of the state for our three days of R&R. The idea was a taste of quiet in remoteness. We left Manchester early, getting ahead of the leaf-peepers. We paused in Concord to get the flavor of the state capital.

I walked the gold-domed State House grounds, taking in history. A bronze Daniel Webster scowls next to the building. Nearby is the poignant eight-foot-high statue of Christa McAuliffe, the brave New Hampshire elementary school teacher who died in the January 1986 Challenger explosion. Her pedestal bears the humble words, “I touch the future, I teach.”

Interstate 93 winds into the White Mountains, the trees and peaks glowing with color. Just past Franconia we tacked northeast on U.S. 3. Hikers’ vehicles lined the shoulder near the trails. Trump signs showed up, so did Harris-Walz banners. We turned into Berlin (BUR-lin, not Ber-LIN), astride the now fast-moving, now-tranquil Androscoggin River. The city altered the pronunciation during World War I to avoid association with the German capital.

The town is classic old New England milltown, the cramped brick rowhouses, the soaring steeples, the dregs of the old paper mills. Industry failed here and moved on. A state jail and federal prison landed in the town.

Eventually we turned on U.S. 16, still following the Androscoggin. We pulled over in Milan to walk through a flea market, more market than customers, but a chance to stare out at the multi-color horizon. The highway continues past spacious ranches and colonials alternating with downscale shacks and mobile homes. As we neared Errol civilization seemed to fade into the forest.

Errol is a sort of rugged island on N.H. 20, a secondary state road. The rental, across from Akers Pond, didn’t match the mental image we had of the place. This was Great North Woods New Hampshire, but Akers Pond Road, from what we saw, looked like a backwoods trail in coal-country Kentucky. Three guys in cowboy hats leaned on their Ramchargers and F-150s parked next to our place.

We asked a young girl about a grocery store and restaurant. She looked back blankly and asked a guy standing nearby with a fishing rod. “Stay on the main road to Colebrook, about 20 minutes,” he said.

The 200 or so Errol citizens really do drive 15 miles to Colebrook to find groceries. Which is what we did. We raced along the near-deserted road, through Dixville Notch, famous as the place where the first votes in presidential elections are reported. In 2020 Joe Biden took the hamlet’s five votes. Where the voters live we couldn’t tell.

In Colebrook we found the Wilderness Restaurant on Main Street. It was a late lunch, a couple of other tables were still occupied by local oldsters. We chatted with the young woman who brought the menus, trying not to sound like foreigners. She gave directions to the IGA. We asked where we really were. “We’re 15 minutes from Canada, only five from Vermont. I live in Canaan, in Vermont. I go over to Canada all the time,” she said.

The IGA occupied space next to a Chevy dealership. We picked up some stuff and headed back to the rental.

The leaves are at their peak of loveliness, the lakes mirrorlike and tranquil, the mountains rugged and forbidding. The Colebrook-Errol route alternates paved and unpaved stretches, passing through a couple of state parks. A few visitors’ cars parked here and there.

Back in Errol, we continued past the Catholic mission church to what looked like the main intersection. A Stop ‘N Go market stood on one corner, a general store across the street. We pulled into a parking lot along the Androscoggin. Suddenly I noticed a raft full of helmeted folks waving paddles as they flew over the rapids and disappeared. This is a pretty spot, we thought. Remote. Isolated. But pretty.

Back at the rental the cowboys with their pickups were gone. Not a soul walked the street. We unpacked and explored the place. A little worn on the outside, but otherwise okay. We sat on the deck and, as the sun set, looked out at the pond.   

September 23, 2024

Famoda Farm is off the beaten track, even for this area, which is saying something. But a scenic country drive for some might be a dreary, monotonous trek through the middle of nowhere for others.

The farm is a 300-acre homestead owned by the Brown family. William and Minnie Brown bought the land in 1945. “Famoda” comes from the first two letters of father, mother, and daughters. We read that over the years the Brown daughters, Shirley, Doris, and Heather took pride in every blue ribbon they won. At one point Shirley was the Shorthorn Princess, and Doris was named American Angus Queen.

Last week we saw the Famoda booth at the Greenville farmer’s market and stopped to hear the pitch. The friendly young woman stood in front of a display of the farm’s products, but didn’t try to sell. Instead she handed us a brochure. “Come out and see us, we’re in Taylors,” she said with a smile.

A few days later we drove up to Taylors. The farm is out in the sticks, about a 25-mile hike that seemed much farther. It was dreary and drizzling, but we found the place.  The road wound past large lots and wide pastures where cattle grazed. We passed a sign, “Entering Tigerville,” then found the farm a mile farther along.

We drove up the gravel driveway and looked around. We saw no one else and stepped into the “Farm to Table” shop. The place offered grass-fed beef and pork, non-pasturized milk and yogurt, local honey, jams, preserves. The inventory would appeal to the clientele of some hip urban health-food bistro. But this was down-home Upstate South Carolina. We browsed, the only customers, and bought a few things.

The lady at the register was happy to chat. She urged us to walk the property and see the animals penned in a nearby barn, the events venue, the ice-cream shop. “There’s a wonderful meat ‘n three just a couple of miles from here,” she offered.

Having lived in the South for a long time, I know a meat ‘n three is country for a local place where you tuck into your fried steak, fried chicken, or fried fish and a couple or three sides. “You mean the Hungry Drover?” I asked. “That’s it,” she said, smiling. “My daughter took me a while back, she said have the fried flounder, so I did. It was delicious.”

I wandered over to the barn. A half-dozen straw-lined pens were home to a couple of well-fed pigs, a dozen goats, some cows and donkeys. The pigs and goats pushed their faces through the slats and stared at me and whined, as if asking me to let them out.

A fence crossed a wide pasture where cattle grazed. Another barn stood a couple of hundred yards off, framed against the North Carolina Blue Ridge. The hazy rounded peaks extend northeast toward Asheville and northwest toward the far end of the state where the tall mountains rise, eventually becoming the Great Smokies.

It’s pretty country, an alluring quality of Upstate. But then, this is South Carolina. Slaves worked this land 160 years ago. Reconstruction brought years of racial violence and Jim Crow.

That was about it. We headed for the Hungry Drover, which I know is popular, the parking lot is always full. I had stopped there once and picked up a sandwich. It was lunchtime, we got lucky and found a spot. The name taps into the local cattle-raising business, which is all over that part of the county.

We’ve been to Hungry Drover-type places a hundred times. The tables are fitted with black-and white crisscross tablecovers. The patrons enjoy the meat ‘n three menu: chicken fried steak with sausage gravy; grilled smoked sausage and onions, peppers, and potatoes; a pulled pork plate; hamburger steak, onions, and gravy. You could also have tomato pie and bacon tomato pie. Then too, the fried flounder.

We went off-menu and got sandwiches. The place was packed but strangely quiet, serene, even. No large-screen TV hung on the wall broadcasting ESPN or Fox. Patrons, young and old, chatted. The crowd was a mix, women in jeans, guys wearing ballcaps and workshirts, white-haired seniors. A few folks in button-down shirts and dresses stood out. This is farm country, but the suburbs are encroaching, bringing subdivisions and mini-mansions.

Years ago we would visit the Cowan Café in Sandy’s hometown in Franklin County, Tennessee. It was the Hungry Drover of that time and place, the meat ‘n three, the good coffee, the good company, the sense that the world might be complicated somewhere else, but here and now things were okay. You had the same mix of farmers, truckers, and folks from up the street.

Her parents moved away from Cowan, we stopped going. The Cowan Café closed, now it’s a Mexican takeout. But the same kind of place springs up elsewhere, in the next town, in any town. Back east and up north, I think of Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, diners are everywhere, everyone goes, you hear Spanish, Italian, Arabic. The menus offer everything, steak, pasta, pizza—and your basic meat ‘n three. It’s the Hungry Drover in another place.

I wondered about the politics of the place. South Carolina is hard-core red Republican, one of the seven Congressional districts is Democratic. Yet six weeks before the election, Trump signs are scarce. In 2016 I drove across Pennsylvania, every barn advertised for Trump. Same in 2020 in backstate Virginia. Months ago he put on a rally in nearby Pickens. But since then, quiet.

Maybe the folks at Hungry Drover, and the crowd is probably similar every day, are thinking about other things. The bass tournament at Lake Hartwell is always big, now we’re in football season, high school games are a big deal, so is Clemson. The state economy is booming. Yankees are crowding in, buying big homes in new subdivisions.

It’s still quiet out in Taylors and Tigerville, the roads are near-empty, the cattle are grazing. The Brown family is still selling their grass-fed beef and pesticide-free eggs. Visitors like us drift in, look at the animals, stop at the ice cream shop. Then, if they’re up for a square meal, they may head for the Hungry Drover. Meat ‘n three sounds good.

September 16, 2024

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 I planned to be at the Pentagon for an afternoon meeting. About 9:30 that morning I was in Woodbridge, about 25 miles south of Washington, D.C. I was working at home then, and stopped at the Post Office. A news bulletin reported a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers.

At 7:59 American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston bound for Los Angeles. About 15 minutes later five hijackers attacked and killed one passenger and overpowered and possibly killed the pilot and first officer. At 8:24 Boston air traffic control picked up a transmission from the plane’s intercom: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay.”

At 8:46 the plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower. United Airlines Flight 175, also from Boston en route to Los Angeles, struck the South Tower at 9:03. At 9:37 American Fight 77, which took off from Washington, hit the Pentagon. United Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:02.

When I got home from the Post Office Sandy, our kids, and a niece had called, trying to find me before I left for the Pentagon. I turned on the TV and watched 9/11 coverage for three days.

On September 14th, President George Bush visited Ground Zero. He placed his arm around the shoulder of firefighter Bob Beckwith. He said, “I want you all to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here.

“This nation stands with the good people of New York City, and New Jersey and Connecticut, as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. I can hear you, the people of the world hear you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

Later that week the Pentagon reopened. I walked through the Navy wing. The smell of burned sheetrock and masonry was overwhelming. The damaged south side was sealed off by plastic sheeting. Heavily armed security officers patrolled the grounds.

A week after the attack I took the train to New York to visit a friend who then worked on Wall Street. Thirty miles from the city we could see through the train window a thin column of dark smoke curling skyward from the World Trade Center site and spreading across the horizon.

The New York City subway remained closed south of 25th Street or thereabouts, so I had to walk the rest of the way. It had rained the night of 9/11. The pulverized masonry of the towers turned to paste and coated the walls and windows of nearby buildings. From a couple of blocks away I could see the twisted structure of one of the towers protruding from the vast piles of rubble. Hundreds of workers in hardhats still searched for victims and remains. 

On my walk back to Penn Station I passed St. Vincent’s Hospital. The hospital had been used as a triage center for Trade Center casualties. The walls were covered with photos of missing persons. Crowds stared at the photos. I heard crying.

The 2,990 victims include approximately 2,600 at the Twin Towers, 125 at the Pentagon, and 265 on the four hijacked flights. The total includes 343 firefighters and 71 New York police officers. Thousands more were injured in New York. The total doesn’t include the 19 hijackers.

Last weekend in Greenville, S,C., at the city’s annual 9/11 commemoration, roughly 1,000 area firefighters and civilians walked six laps of the field-deck aisles of the city’s Fluor Field, the equivalent of the Twin Towers 110 stories.

I carried the card of Capt. Thomas C. Moody of Engine Company 310, Maspeth, Queens, who died in the North Tower. Eighteen others in his unit also died.

Moody, an 18-year veteran firefighter, lived in Stony Brook on Long Island. He was 45 years old, married to Maureen Moody, the couple had four children. His father, Charles, brothers Frank and Michael, and an uncle, William, all were New York City firefighters.

Moody earned a chemical engineering degree from the State University of New York and was a certified engineer in New York. He taught fire science and conducted training in handling hazardous materials at a local college. He responded to the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Since 2002 hundreds of others have walked in memory of Capt. Moody and his 342 comrades at 9/11 commemorations nationwide. Many have posted messages on the “Legacy” website.

On my visit to New York I stood for a few moments and watched the dust still rising from Ground Zero. Almost no one understood then that thousands of recovery workers and others at the site would develop cancer and other respiratory diseases.

In 2018 the World Trade Center Health Program at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital estimated that of the 10,000 first responders and others at Ground Zero who developed cancer attributed to 9/11, 2,000 had died. By 2022 some 250 New York City police officers and 300 firefighters had died of 9/11-related health conditions.

Some years ago, on our way home to Virginia from Pittsburgh, we detoured off the Turnpike to visit the Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville, Penn. The site was not yet completed, but 40 marble plaques, one for each victim, had been erected. The Flight 93 passengers are believed to have fought back and forced the hijackers to divert from their course to Washington and fly the aircraft into the ground.

The Greenville stadium walk, like dozens nationwide, has been held for years. At the start each participant rang a firehouse bell, which chimed solemnly across the ballpark. Each person carried or wore a card bearing the name of a firefighter lost that day.

By the third loop it was hot. A firefighter in full gear and, like many others carrying an oxygen tank, collapsed on the stairs. Medical personnel hurried to support her. The line held up as she recovered. Then we moved on along the course.

As we all know, the world changed that day and in following years. Capt. Moody’s children, young kids when he died, are now in their twenties. They and all of us are witnesses to change, and to remembrance. We will be back for this observance next year, and in years to come.  

September 9, 2024

We stopped at our daughter Marie’s office at the Neighborhood Cancer Connection.  I picked up a book in the NCC library. Another scolding “eat this, don’t eat that” tome, I guessed. But I took it home.

Two weeks later I browsed through it. The authors, nutritionists Maureen Keane and Daniella Chace wrote that “most of the protein in your diet should come from plant sources.” Plant sources. We had been through all that.

Ten or twelve years ago I read elite trail runner Scott Jurek’s memoir, Eat and Run. He tells his story of growing up on a Midwestern farm diet heavy on beef, pork, chicken. He moved to Seattle and, after sampling the vegetarian and vegan culture, got the no-meat religion.

Jurek went vegan and kept winning races, including the country’s premier ultra race, the Western States 100-miler seven times (1999-2005). In 2015 he set a new record (later broken) for running the entire 2,198-mile length of the Appalachian Trail in 46 days and about eight hours.

I caught the vegan bug, but didn’t win any races. To get protein I ate soy—soybeans, tofu, seitan, tempeh, along with edamame, black beans, then almonds, peanuts, walnuts, cashews. We ate spinach, asparagus, lettuce, arugula, kale, cauliflower, avocadoes, brown rice. I learned to eat Brussels sprouts. We spend hours planning meals to avoid meat and sauces and gravies flavored with meat.

I kept running trail events. Sandy would prepare Jurek’s vegan Minnesota Winter Chili for the post-race meals. The runners called her the “Chili Lady.” It stuck for years.

Yet I felt hungry most of the time.  

In 2018, the year of sickness, while driving across Texas, I noticed my face in the rear-view mirror. I looked like a prune, shriveled and lined. This is not working, I thought. I shifted from strict vegan to a vegetarian diet and ate eggs and drank milk. Finally I ate some chicken and said goodbye to the vegan and vegetarian life.

Inevitably, you learn about diet. The body requires 22 amino acids, substances that perform critical body functions. Your system can produce 12 of the 22. Animal protein provides all 10 of the others, although we can get them by eating a mix of non-meat protein-rich foods like nuts, beans, and soy. Non-meat protein sources don’t contain saturated fat, which can clog arteries and lead to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems. You seldom see an overweight vegetarian.

By going back to meat I gained some weight. Getting sick taught new lessons about food. Cancer cells replicate faster than most healthy cells. So cancer patients find themselves racing with their disease to get nourishment, as it consumes their bodies’ protein. The malnourished, underweight look means cancer is winning.

I ate to stay ahead. A friend made me rich chicken soup, I sometimes ate three bowls for breakfast. I ate lasagna, burgers, chicken, beef stew, and other heavy foods. The vegan/vegetarian fling was ancient history.    

Keane, incredibly, went through cancer therapy but didn’t have cancer. Ater a miscarriage, her tests were interpreted wrongly to show cancer. She endured three rounds of chemotherapy followed by surgery. Years later she required intravenous drug therapy to keep her pulmonary arteries functioning.

She writes that over sixteen months of treatment no doctor, nurse, or other health-care worker mentioned nutrition. But then, Keane’s and Chace’s book, What to Eat if You Have Cancer, isn’t really about cancer. They write for anyone.

The chemo class I attended, required at the practice that treated me, issued a book of recipes by an oncologist and a nutritionist. I thumbed through it, then set it aside. It landed in a closet. Keane and Chace, in their book, back me up: “nutrition therapy alone will not cure cancer.”

They make the point that “in the unlikely event that you are dependent on a single food source for survival, it would have to be a ‘complete’ protein source,” that is, meat. That isn’t going to happen. Infants and young children need complete protein, for example, ovalbumin found in eggs, or casein, the protein in milk. But the rest of us don’t.

Keane and Chase argue once again that the mature human body can get most of its protein from plants. The next-best source should be fatty fish, like salmon, anchovies, and fresh (not canned) skipjack tuna. After that, grass-fed beef and other grass-fed meats.

“Animal protein comes packaged with lots of fat, few vitamins and minerals, and no fiber, whereas plant protein is accompanied by lots of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. … animal fat is a major source of arachidonic acid—a fatty acid that promotes inflammation.”

Keane and Chace wrote a graduate-school-level textbook. The chemistry gets densely technical. Arachidonic acid—what’s that? Keep reading: when consumed out of balance with omega-3 fatty acids, it interferes with the body’s natural defenses against disease.

We may have heard about omega-3, a good thing, omega-6, less good. But omega-6, we learn, contains gamma linoleic acid (GLA)—the good omega-6 fatty acid needed for cellular health. Sunflower, safflower, corn, and soybean oil are sources of omega-6, which the body converts to GLA.    

I didn’t read through to the end, which is a series of complicated meal plans for different levels of calorie consumption. But we thought we should make some changes. We visited the organic grocery store. Their eggs were $9.00 for a dozen, which seemed high. We still had a box of the mass-market eggs at home.

We hit the local farmer’s market and walked past the stacks of bright-red tomatoes, corn, okra, onions, green beans, asparagus, squash, zucchini. We inspected the greens, collard, lettuce, kale—all the glowing bounty of the land. Memories rushed back. I bought some garbanzo beans at $2.25 for a pound. They’re supposed to be good for you.