The headlights cut through the dark of night as I drove through the November night. The culmination of all my efforts for the last quarter century was supported by who sat next to me, what was in my heart, and what was in my thoughts. To the west, the bridge. When I was just 11, I crossed the previous old iron bridge that stood here, for the first time. It was built in 1910.
Back in the 70s, it was nothing to cross bridges that were this old. That was just the way things were. Ten years later, I drove across that bridge the day before it was closed forever. The day before, on April 5th, 1987, the Schoharie Creek Bridge on the New York State Thruway (I-90) over the Schoharie Creek near Fort Hunter and the Mohawk River in New York State collapsed due to bridge scour at the foundations after a record rainfall. The collapse killed ten people.
We were enduring record rainfall at that time. My job at the time was pouring concrete for Bob Eilers in Newington Connecticut. That day, April 6th, he foolishly poured walls in hard rain and things got dangerous. I got mad and left. I kept driving until I got to that Connecticut River crossing that connects Westminister Vermont and Walpole New Hampshire. I did not know it at the time, but I was standing on the threshold of one of the major pivotal moments of my life. You can be sure I was thinking about the Schoharie Creek Bridge as I crossed the old 77-year-old narrow iron girder structure with the Connecticut angrily thrashing a couple of feet under this old girl. I stopped on the west side, then gear jammed the three on the tree shifter on my 72 Dodge pickup. Adrenaline pumping. Hey, if a whole interstate bridge can fall, anything is possible!
Where was I going? It was a progression really. I was going to my family's camp in East Alstead New Hampshire. My cousins Dave and Janet, my second set of parents really, had built this cabin, with some guest appearances by others, including my father, who currently in 1987 had been living in Port Aransas Texas for the last 7 years. I had nothing with me today. I went to work this morning, threw a tantrum, and drove all the way up here. This was what you can do when gas is 86 cents a gallon. The bottom fell out on oil prices the year before, and you could literally roll pennies and fill a gas tank.
When I got up to the cabin, it was still lightly raining. I always loved coming here. This was my place. I was so drawn to it. It was like there was a source of energy under the soil that pulled me like Superman to the fortress, well, except no superpowers, red boots, capes, tights, or flying. A great deal of my life would be launched from here. When I was 11 years old, coming up here was the most incredible thing that could have ever happened to me. Back in 1977, my absolute obsession with this place could later be a foreshadowing of the incredible change and milestones, good and disastrous that would culminate in the years and decades to come, all happening on this very mountain.
I loved this place back in the 70s, having first gone up there in the summer of 77 with Dave, my Father, and my cousin Steve. There were only 2 walls up at the time and no floor. Steve and I took the scraps and built a small cabin fort in the front yard for something to do that weekend. The following fall, I went up again with Dave and Steve. It was going well until one of the beagles did not come back Saturday night. Overnight, it rained very hard, I recall Dave getting up many times thinking that maybe she was outside the door, ready to come in.
Morning came and the rain did not ease up at all. Dave suited up in raingear and left with a rifle in case he found her injured and needed to ease her suffering. During that time, Steve and I sharpened sticks. Being alone, the first thing that came to mind in our young brains was that we might need to defend against unwanted visitors. We felt it was our responsibility to craft weapons. Hours passed during Dave's soaking-wet hike over the mountain.
I will always remember what happened next because it was a glimpse into what it was really like to be an adult with kids who have no clue. Dave returned, soaked to the bone and unsuccessful in finding Daisy. We quickly learned that the logical and most helpful thing we could have done here was to start packing, brush our teeth, and clean up the cabin. There was so much to do. Dave always took a load of wood back home with him and that had to be loaded. I recall that the bumper of the truck got caught on a stump and got pulled out straight. The memory of Dave swinging that sledgehammer to right the bumper and cursing will forever be there. I would live this moment myself many times in the future, even with this same truck that later became my truck in the late 1980s.
I am happy to report that on Monday, a person on the mountain called Dave's home number to let him and Janet know that their Daisy was safe with them. They went up the next day and retrieved her. After that Sunday morning, I tried a little harder to ask myself, what can I do to help the adult who is trying to carry this load right now.
Because I brought nothing with me that day in 1987, no food, no bedding, nothing, I lit a fire and lingered for about an hour, then I drove back to Connecticut. One Saturday night that passed winter two friends and I were having a couple of beers at a bar in Southington. It was lightly raining. We got bored, so at some point, one of us suggested a road trip to New Hampshire. We switched to coffee and by the time we got just north of Springfield Massachusetts, it began to snow very heavily. Eventually, we could only move at about 30 miles an hour, so it took the better part of the rest of the night to get up there. There was a dim daylight in the heavy snow by the time we got to Cobb Hill Road. I had snow tires on the back of my 2 two-wheel-drive truck and a full bed of planks from my concrete jobs that kept the old girl moving even in weather like this.
I would think of this trip as stupid kid stuff. I was 21. We buried the truck in a snow bank on the side of the steep dirt road and hiked in the last mile as the road going out to the cabin was not maintained and sat under 3 feet of packed snow all winter long. We got inside, lit a fire, and sat there warming up, but this time too, no food or provisions. We looked at each other and decided to go back home. The one very memorable thing about this strange trip other than the long drive in the snowstorm overnight was the truck was stuck good when we got back. It was stuck in a bank on the left and facing up a steep hill. We turned the steering wheel all the way to the right, and the three of us got by the left fender and kept pushing the truck sideways. When the steering wheel moved, we would crank it to the right again, and we did this over and over until the truck was facing downhill. We hopped in and just drove out and back to Connecticut.
It seemed like in 1987, not a 14-day span went by without me driving up to the cabin. Sometimes with my friend Scott, sometimes with my then-girlfriend Stephanie. Sometimes we would drive up there and find Scott and his wife up there. I never understood the pull this place had on me, but it kept pulling me.
In the summer of 1987, I was working for Clock Company, a heat treatment plant in Manchester Connecticut. I had talked my way into a job operating their most elite vacuum furnaces. I always thought I would be marrying Stephanie, perhaps mostly because she just always talked about what the wedding was going to be like. Then without warning, she ended it because she "needed some time."
Suddenly, my tether broke. I had been living in a campground in my 1976 Chevy Van that had carried me up from Texas the previous autumn. I was running around like a madman, always running towards Stephanie on my opposite 3rd shift schedule. I was always late, always disappointing her or her family, always having to be somewhere. Suddenly, I had time and space.
Clock Company was owned by the same company that owned Mal Tool Aircraft in North Charlestown New Hampshire. We were having our annual company picnic weekend there. I decided to go since I had nothing better to do. The cabin was only 2 towns away.
I never got up to North Charlestown that weekend, but there was an awakening. I arrived at the cabin Saturday afternoon with a cooler of food, a 12-pack, and a notebook. I sat at the table after dinner Saturday night listening to Solid Gold Saturday Night on a station out of Rutland. Old songs from the two decades passed unheard for many years. I wrote. That was something I had not done in a long time. As I sat there I came to the conclusion that I was done with Stephanie. I did not want to live in Connecticut. I never intended to stay there when I left Texas, I was supposed to be moving to Maine. But here, tonight, a new seed was planted. Why not New Hampshire? Other than my job, which was a really good one, I was no longer attached to Connecticut. I left the cabin Sunday afternoon feeling like a new person. For the first time since leaving South Texas, there was some direction in my life.
The next time I went up, everything changed. My impulsiveness led to a complete shift in life. I was suddenly married and had a family. That land in East Alstead also meant a lot to them. Just like the months before, we frequently visited the cabin in any season. I was young, wreckless, tireless, and indestructible. Road trips were made on a whim all of the time.
The following summer, everything around me collapsed as far as a place to live and work. I took my stepdaughter Amy to Florida to spend the summer with her father and when I came back was told that I did not have a job anymore. I could have just found something else since there were jobs everywhere, but the toxic people who lived all around us in the campground were making even living there unpleasant. I decided that there was no better time than now to start over in New Hampshire since I had to start all over again in Connecticut anyway. The fact was, Connecticut for me was repulsive. It had completely changed from what it was when I was a kid and enough was enough.
The summer of 1988 was hot, so living in a one-room hunting cabin without electricity or running water was interesting. I don't think I will ever know how we ate or put gas in the truck. The gas gauge on the old truck had not worked in years. It was better this way. Don't ask, don't tell got us by. Putting a couple of dollars in change for gas at a time seemed to carry us back and forth between Connecticut and New Hampshire over the long hot summer and yet, I will never know how.
We left Connecticut in June with only $50 and a tank of gas, and by the 2nd week of August, I had a 2nd shift job in Claremont, New Hampshire for $5.50 per hour, an apartment on the 2nd floor of Spring St in Claremont for $115.00 a week. That wonderful place in East Alstead and my family who owned it had really helped us start life in New Hampshire. Things did get pretty dark at times, but they really started looking up.
Over the next few years, this spot on that mountain continued to be a foundational part of our lives. We were now only 40 minutes away and still enjoyed going there. Now it was also a way for us to visit with our cousins Dave and Janet when they came up.
During the mid-nineties, I continued to go there but my second wife never had the desire to go. For that reason I would go up on my own, or with friends, or my brother Bobby when I brought him up to NH. As the years went by, the freshness of this beautiful place changed. I know that it was always really a reflection of the miles that I had put on. For me, it was always beautiful.
In the late 90s, I was so busy in my life that I did not have time to visit, and a great deal of time passed. Dave had a serious incident happen in his life and I always felt that maybe he and Janet just might be holding onto it not only for them but maybe also for me. Maybe that was just in my head. I wanted to make sure they put their needs ahead of mine and told them that they should do whatever they wanted to do with the land. I can still hear Janet's voice on that call, during which she told me she would let Dave know how I felt.
The irony was that in the year 2002, they did sell the land in East Alstead that we enjoyed for 25 years. 2002 marked a year that I most likely would have used more than ever before in my life for the next 20-plus years at least. I did not know that at the time. When I think about it, I do wish I had made an offer to them the year before. I was in the position to do so at the time and it would have allowed me to let Dave and Janet continue to enjoy it just as they had for over 2 decades. I imagine we would have built a little camp somewhere else on those 50 acres so that they could use their cabin whenever they wished. Hindsight is 20/20 and is just the way that things are.
What I find so fascinating is the sprout of a seedling in 1977. A Friday afternoon Dave and my Dad picked me up from where I lived in Torrington Connecticut and brought my cousin Steve and me up to that land in East Alstead. It seems like a stand-alone, unconnected event on a summer weekend almost 50 years ago now. However, because of that one weekend, so many people were born and would never have existed without that trip. Wars could not have been fought, and marriages, rescues, and inspirations would never have happened. Amy and Jesse's children, nor their children would ever exist, neither would Liam and Noah. Those are only the direct effects.
I always talk about how many entire courses in my life hung on the thread of one single second in time, in which I could have gone one way or the other with the way I chose being so unlikely. But this journey to NH as an 11-year-old kid was the very DNA of many of those threads that built entire lives and in turn, touched thousands of lives. Even I have a hard time comprehending the far-reaching implications of this.
There is something else though. I am sad sometimes when I think about that land in East Alstead. It was so important to the wild ride that my life has been and so many changes within it. Like a fuel section of a Saturn 5 rocket, nothing could have happened the way it did without it, but later it feels discarded, and fallen to earth as refuse. I know this is not the case. There are memories in the hearts of Amy and Jesse, my stepchildren in those days who if not for what I did then, would never have these memories. That is something to be so thankful for. I would not trade it for anything.
As I sit here, I think about the influence that place in East Alstead had on me. I started playing my life out as if I had never visited there that day in 1977. I realized as I tried to project how the course would have been different, I could write an entire series of novels about that course. That is the refuse, isn't it? That is the path not taken which makes it worth nothing. There are many people alive who will never know that their entire existence and family hang on that one day. I lived every moment of where that path took me, and I still cannot believe it.
