When I was growing up on the Chute Road in Windham, we would wait each morning for one of the local “characters” to go by. Walking, I mean. In those days, more than 60 years ago, many people walked.

This man, and some of the old-timers will remember him, was a tall, stout guy with a beard and always had an ax over his shoulder, sort of like some men used to carry guns. He always wore a hat, the kind with ear-flaps, bib overalls and a long-sleeved shirt. This guy was on his way to cut wood, for I was told by my mother he had a wood lot somewhere beyond us. I don’t know how he hauled the wood home, or if he even really was cutting wood. Us kids were terrified of him. He didn’t stop to chat with anyone who happened to be out in the yard and the ax over the shoulder, discouraged us from even saying hello. He was a character, for sure. And of course, he was just a quiet, harmless man.

My mother could remember a lot of characters from her younger days in the same neighborhood. She was born and grew up on the Webb Road, not far from the Chute Road. We children used to pester her to tell us what it was like “in the olden days,” and she always obliged us. The stories were wonderful and of course, had a factual base. In the days of her youth, in the mid 1920s, it was common for families to visit their neighbors on a regular basis. She told of going with her mother and grandmother to visit the two Cram sisters who lived on the Chute Road. These two “maiden ladies,” or spinsters, lived together sharing a house, but didn’t speak to each other. What happened to cause this schism, my mother never discovered, but she said visiting them was kind of odd. They didn’t talk to each other, but each would talk with the visitors. They even kept separate teakettles on the old wood stove and had “their own” dishes.

Sometimes their visit was really a trip with a purpose. Down on the Land of Nod Road, an old man and his wife lived in a very old place. They must have been the herbalists of the neighborhood, because among other things they brewed up down there, was skunk oil, which according to my mother, the old people liked to use as a liniment for aching muscles. So, off they’d go, my mother, her mother and the grandmother, in the wagon and team of horses, down to this place where they either bought or traded for the precious oil. My mother, who was about 8 or 9 years old then, loved to go because this old couple had a wind-up record player and were partial to John Phillips Souza marches. Mom said you could hear them as you approached the house. One day she said the woman was sitting on the stone wall, eating raspberries out of a Mason jar and alternating with biting off a hunk of bologna from one of those rolls. My mother didn’t care to ask about this odd way of eating, because good manners forbade asking about the ways of adults.

Why don’t we have any interesting people like that to visit nowadays?

History repeats itself. When I was 8 or 9 years old, my mother and my siblings and I would walk from our house over to visit my aunt on the Highland Cliff Road. Along the way, we’d be anticipating every landmark and house. First we’d go by the gravel pit on the Hemon Cobb Road. We imagined it was haunted or someone would come zooming out of it. Next, we’d see John Irish’s cows out in the pasture and fret if there was a bull in there which might attack us. We’d wave hello to the Verrills, sitting out in front of their house. Then we’d come to the dreaded Newfoundland dogs – many of them – which ran across Mrs. Pendexter’s yard. They were harmless, friendly, but we always thought they looked like bears. After that ordeal, it was an uneventful walk of a couple of miles. We’d spend the afternoon with our cousins and whatever neighborhood kids we gathered along the way, playing King of the Mountain on the huge ledges behind the Chase Cemetery, or picking elderberries to throw at something (or someone).

A neighborhood walk today would not be the same. No one sits outside much; if you wave to someone, they might call the authorities. Today, dogs all must be leashed; there are very few cows or bulls in roadside pastures and I don’t think I could climb up the ledges behind the cemetery anymore.

Once in a while, I do see a person I’d term a “character,” but even that has become politically incorrect. Memories are a good thing.

See you next week.