Up the Creek

If you live in Gilmanton, you surely know about the Dump Run Gang. You know that this loose ensemble of some 25 musicians — guitarists, saxoph…

If you live in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, you know. You know the exquisite joys of lingering by the water on hot afternoons and the idle pl…

Like a good novel, a small town needs characters. When I was a kid in the 1970s, there was this freelance handyman here in Gilmanton, Razor Br…

Nine years ago, I arrived home one afternoon and took a close look at the picket fence lining my front yard in Gilmanton. Though the fence was…

One morning this spring, I was up early and at my desk, writing, at 5:19 a.m. when a motorcycle came cruising in toward the crossroads here in…

One summer morning in 1977, with my friend Scott, I set up a line of yellow poly cones on Currier Hill Road in Gilmanton, so we could slalom t…

Nigeria is very, very far away from the Lakes Region, and if you ask someone here what they know about that teeming West African nation, they’…

As I write these words, a tick is crawling up my leg. I will kill it, but first I just want to finish this paragraph. And I want, as well, to …

Every town needs a fire department. Passable roads are important, and a post office is a nice thing to have. But I’d argue that there’s one ci…

There are numerous animal disturbances easily tolerated in a New England village. A barking dog? Not a big deal. A black bear lumbering across…

Not long ago, as I was riding my bike uphill on a dirt road here in Gilmanton, a small dog peeled off a lawn and went straight for my ankle, t…

There’s a road between my house and my neighbor Charlie’s. It’s a busy state highway with a double yellow line down the middle and so much tra…

If you’re like me, you’ll be tuning in Sunday night. To the Oscars, I mean. To all those grand red-carpet moments and to the elegant evening g…

There are 38 cemeteries in Gilmanton, and of late I’ve been thinking about what may be the most solitary tomb in all of these graveyards. Civi…

A week after I moved to town in 2015, the Gilmanton Corner Store shut down. A small red building at the intersection of routes 140 and 107, th…

I write this with my hat in my hand — and with ardent hopes I can right an error that marred an earlier piece. Last fall, in writing about lif…

As Tuesday’s primary nears, my mind keeps tumbling back to a photo that captures a crowd gathered outside The Gilmanton Corner Store on April …

After weeks and weeks of nothing but rain and eerily warm temperatures, we finally have snow. The land around is at last frozen and white. All…

If you are reading this, you probably live in a small town in New Hampshire. Maybe it is a big small town like, say, Laconia, which is all fan…