I am not a sociologist — or ologist of any kind — but I may be on to something.
Lately I’ve been wondering where all the local characters have gone.
As a flatlander who sputtered his way here in 1982 in a green Volkswagen Beetle that was no match for New Hampshire winters, I can’t say definitively. But this longtime visitor thinks we’ve been blending into something just a little bit duller. We more closely resemble “everyone else,” for better and possibly worse.
Not you, of course. You are reading this on pulp paper instead of watching Netflix or scrolling on your phone. If you are over 65 and reading this on a smartphone, much respect to your reading glasses.
Put on your flannel shirt, sip some apple cider and think this over with me.
I don’t hear many, or possibly any, authentic Vermont accents anymore, or the flinty New Hampshire equivalent. I don’t even hear commercials with fake Vermont accents. This — ayup — was a staple in the 1980s.
The region had town clerks with names like Clyde Jenne (Hartland) and Howard Zea (Plainfield, 58 years in office!). Longevity was still a thing. Hartford Town Manager Ralph Lehman (in office a mere 35 years) would leave his desk to fix roofs or potholes. That hands-on era is long over, and administrators come and go with the seasons.
Fred Tuttle, the retired dairy farmer who ran for U.S Senate, won the Republican primary and then endorsed his Democratic opponent, was the embodiment of quirky Vermont. I guess Sen. Bernie Sanders is, too, or at least his mittens.
We don’t seem to have unofficial mayors anymore. They were big personalities who lived in a village forever and knew everyone. They held no elective office because they did not need one.
And where are the Wendells, the Emmits, the Iras? Is there an Asa in the house?
What of nicknames? Peanie Goodwin was a major local developer. Now we have anonymous LLCs. Local coaches had names like Stretch, as in Stretch Gillam, who coached basketball in Hartford and elsewhere for over 50 years.
What about Buzz, Scooter, Butch? They are aging out, and you mostly see them in obits.
I once interviewed an old couple living on a back road in Chelsea who wondered why the hippies came and went and were sore at Franklin Roosevelt as if he’d just left office. They were living in 1950s Vermont and saw no reason to leave it. I was delighted with them.
It’s not just people that have changed. The media was more local. Now it is generic. WTSL-AM in Lebanon did real news coverage, competing for scoops with the Valley News. WNHV-AM was homey. Dartmouth’s student-run stations were wild and woolly.
Alas, both AM stations are gone. I listen to some FM channels, but mostly for sports talk, in small doses before my knucklehead alarm goes off, and VPR Classical, because it does not add to the national stress test that is the politics of today.
Radio made minor celebrities out of business people like car and truck dealer Charlie Kelton, who had his own show in the morning, and Larry Carr, whose zippy ads for his used car lot made him a name you knew even if you didn’t know him.
Channel 31 was an itty-bitty TV station, but it was ours, and you could watch it for free with an antenna. Any kid growing up in Lebanon had a chance to be on it, as it covered news both great (rare) and small (mostly). Our son was caught on film in a Halloween parade at school. Big doings!
It’s no secret that newspapers are leaner as they face a digital tsunami. Sooner or later my 800-word column will seem too long, lack kitten photos, need more clicks. I am not clickbait. I know that about myself.
Delocalization has happened to businesses and institutions. Dartmouth Health, as useful as it is, is a monolith, almost too big for the Upper Valley. Dartmouth College doesn’t answer to us, and who knows who owns our many chain stores.
So what’s the deal? Too much time online? Too much coming and going? People want to go viral, but don’t know who lives next door. Incomes are up, but most people want a new job.
The mills were on their last legs when I arrived, but I’m glad I saw H.W. Carter & Sons in its final days in Lebanon, churning out clothes for working people.
I think it may have been somebody there or at Colodny’s Surprise Department Store, which was closing in White River Junction, who summed it up. As I recall it, someone said to me, “Progress goes on, don’t it?”
Ayup is what I say to that.
The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.
