Friday, February 24, 2017

Why I Love New England

Saw an eighty-three year old woman in my office today who came in for her hypothyroidism.





She's feeling fine, goes ballroom dancing three nights a week and bowls two nights a week, and the other two nights are "date nights."
She lives off in the New Hampshire woods at the end of a long driveway which she snow blows with a blower which is not self propelled, so it's something of a work out for her.
She met a man in Florida a year or two ago ,but when he came up to shack up with her in New Hampshire he told her he could not take another New Hampshire winter.
She told him she liked snow and maybe she'd call him when she popped down to Florida in the future. She took out her snow blower, cleared her driveway and called him a taxi.
"The truth is," she told me. "I've had better. Of course, at my age, I can't remember them all, but I know I have."
Our front office lady, Cathy, who checks her out never gets her signed out in under half an hour, because she asks this lady about her latest adventure and there is always an adventure.
"I wish I had her life," Cathy says. "If my husband ever leaves me, I'm going to go live with her."


This morning, a patient cancelled, leaving us with a half hour more or less free, which everyone in the office uses to catch up on paper work (really, now, computer work) and we dispatched Cathy across the street to the Dunkin Donuts in the hospital lobby.
Every place in New England has a Dunkin Donuts. They are in hospital lobbies, office buildings, every town square, along the roads, at the docks. If Dunkin Donuts were discovered to have lead in their water New England would have a nervous breakdown. It's part of the fabric of life.


Of course, even a town the size of Salem, New Hampshire has two specialty coffee shops with exotic blends.



Last night, I got down to the local hardware store after closing hour. It opens at 7:30 AM and closes at 6 PM, and I'm off to work before that and home after. But the light was still on so I tried the door which was still open, and poked my head in. The guy who works there was still there.
"Oh," I said. "I know you're closed, but the door was open."
"I'm here, so I guess we're open. What can I do for you."
I had bought a clock there a week earlier and it stopped working and the battery is new.
"I'm sorry, I lost the receipt."
"I know this clock. We sell it. We back it."
He fiddled with the battery, convinced himself the clock was a dud and went in back and got me a new one.
"Bring it back if it stops," he said.
People here enjoy acts of daily living. They talk politics all day long, but they have lives.  And they don't think of politicians as any different, any smarter, any more or less ethical than the guy who sells used cars.


Every town has some version of a breakfast diner.


Real people live here. 









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