Home, Sweet Home
By Dan Mackie
We open the paper every Saturday morning to see how rich we are.
There they are, page after page of homes for sale, lined up like cars on a car lot, average homes going for mansion prices. We have watched prices balloon month by month; we shook our heads because we couldn’t quite take it in.
Is our $40,000 house really worth five times that much, and more, after two decades? Our modest bungalow needed work when we bought it, and needs care still. We’ve lived here so long that some of the needs-work projects need work again. Paint peels, shingles crack, things fall apart.
If they needed more than a nail or duct tape, most repairs were beyond me. I put on my denial cap (It’s just a small hole in the roof, honey), but my wife resides more in the real world. “We better call someone,’’ she’d say. “I’ll get around to it,’’ I’d answer. “Here’s the phone number,’’ she’d say. “Do you want to call, or should I?”
We did make some improvements. We added a bedroom, a bath and family room, and nicks and dents from robust family living with children. We planted a maple tree, Japanese tree lilacs, a lovely Katsura that a gang of volunteers helped me plant. Some bushes thrived, others died. This year a Lebanon Library book, Bungalow Colors, sent us back to our bungalow roots for the trim; before suburbia turned everything white and off-white, bungalows were pretty snazzy in an earth-tone sort of way. Some were almost a little bawdy.
All that said, the Mackie compound remains modest, a workingperson’s home in a workingperson’s neighborhood. Trust-funders are rare in this section of West Lebanon. When we climb the ladder, it’s to fix something on the roof.
We bought the house from Dorothea Downing, “Mrs. Downing” to us, a retired schoolteacher who moved into senior housing. “You got a good deal,’’ she said later, and I suppose we did, although prices seemed high at the time. We bought our first (pre-Upper Valley) house for $21,000, and traded up to $33,000.
“Prices are crazy,’’ we declared several times through the years, repeatedly predicted a decline, and were proved wrong. When houses went for $100,000, $150,000 was just around the corner. Sometimes Massachusetts money pushed things to a new level: People who moved here from hot markets thought our prices were low, even charming. We grew nervous as first-time homebuyers got squeezed out; how would the next generation get into the market? How could our own kids buy a home? Still prices shot up like a run-away auction. “Do I have $200,000? $250,000? $300,000”? It went higher and higher … then silence.
Last year it seemed like nobody was bidding. The buyers were gone, like dodo birds. Had they been stolen away by Arizona Realtors, or Florida land speculators?
And was I still rich? The city assessor said so. But at night after we turned the lights out I thought I could hear the faint hissing of air leaking from the real estate bubble. Or was that one of the radiators?
I don’t know that my house has ever been a gold mine. Mortgage interest eats the profits like squirrels at the bird feeders. City taxes take a slice, and contractors and repairmen have had their share. We installed one furnace, then another. Replacement windows. Rugs. Flooring. More rugs. More flooring.
I never really minded the capital drain. It’s my house, not my wallet. The room with the dented wall is my son’s old bedroom where his friend heaved a big painted rock during some flareup. You’d see a flaw; I see a story. I waited a long time to repaint the door in my daughter’s old room. She and her friends wrote about boys they liked in an elaborate code. It always made me smile.
We live in an old-fashioned neighborhood of small lots and sidewalks. Some people and families trade houses like cars, but many have stayed. We’ve seen children grow up and move away, and bring grandchildren back for visits. If we aren’t all friends, we at least wish each other well, and if there is nothing more that we can do for each other we smile and wave. When people need to go, people will feed their cats. We regret the loss of good neighbors, those who’ve moved, and those who’ve died.
Mrs. Downing showed me where she buried a beloved little dog, Cinders, in the backyard. I buried my own dog nearby. No one else would care about such a trifle, but she did, and I do.
To be perfectly honest, this wasn’t my dream home. My dream was a country hillside, with a pretty view and not many neighbors. My wife, thinking of our small children, feared isolation. She was right. Here, our kids had friends nearby, and yards to play in: every day was a play date. They could walk to a school playground, or the small local woods at Smith Field. Because all of us parents looked after them, no one had to watch over them like bodyguards. Their old-fashioned childhood was passing away even as they lived it, and minivans and anxiety were taking over the culture. Our neighborhood always felt safe. It was safe, as safe as life ever is.
Week after week, year after year, we looked in the paper and thought about cashing in, getting a bigger, better place. Was it laziness, or history, holding me back? Or clutter in the basement growing exponentially like zucchini?
In recent months, home prices have dropped a little in my neighborhood and the buyers are back, as welcomed by some as the monarch butterflies. We remain bystanders in this commerce. We continue to plant perennials. We buy new cans of paint.
Our house has made us both poorer and richer, and most days we are satisfied with the balance sheet. On Saturday mornings I look at the real estate ads in the paper; I dream a little, and I turn the page.

Same Old, Same Old
By Dan Mackie
Some people seek thrills in their diet. My inclination is to go for the sure thing, the tried and true, the frank and the bean.
I try to eat a varied diet because my arteries demand it. But when it’s time to make a little something for myself, I use Thoreau’s “Simplify, Simplify” cookbook. Like many men, I prepare only a few basic meals. And like some men, I would not mind eating them from here to eternity.
Food commentary and writing are dominated by restless people for whom every meal is an adventure, sometimes involving risk taking — Icarus flying too close to the broiler, so to speak.
Not I. I have my go-to foods, the ones I could eat daily. You might have your own (and you can put this column down and get a favorite before we proceed). Here’s a short list:
Cheerios, with raisins. I like the cheery little Os and have since childhood. I forgo the half-sack of sugar I once poured on them, but my posse of raisins gets the day off to a tolerable, if not happy, start.
Oatmeal with fruit, fresh or canned (light syrup poured out), or raisins. In winter, the power of plainspoken oatmeal fortifies me; I like to think it steamrolls evil cholesterol.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Give me all-natural peanut butter, simple jam or jelly, and I am never bereft. It’s a meal. It’s a snack. It’s a lifestyle. I like my PB&J with milk, sometimes chocolate milk. Yes, I know that sounds juvenile, but I have foresworn a lot of serious vices; allow me one. Natural peanut butter feels oily as an eel when you bring it home from the store, but if you stir it and store it in the fridge, it firms up with true peanut resolve. As for bread, I go through moods. Sometimes I dutifully eat whole grains. I migrate to Italian and sourdough, best fresh from the bakery, but I also like Shaw’s Country White because it toasts nicely. As bread goes, so goes the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
For a snack, I crave chocolate. I often choose the dark chocolate because it is allegedly healthy in small doses, but when there’s no nutritionist in the room what I really want is a humble Hershey’s Kiss or two, or three. There, I’ve said it.
Pasta. I could cook spaghetti or any of its cousins very nearly seven days a week. Sometimes I add hamburger. Sometimes I add broccoli. Sometimes I add both. I treat myself to an expensive sauce that’s relatively low in salt and tastes good, too.
Ice cream. I have cut way, way back on this, but I was a one-man scoop shop in my heyday. In the blast furnace of summer, I like sherbet. Occasionally I want to mainline a super premium from Ben and Jerry’s. But if I had to settle on just one, it would be Fudge Tracks from Edy’s. (Gifford’s makes a nice Moose Tracks, too.) I have never seen much point in vanilla unless it sits meditatively on a pillow of hot apple pie.
If you want to witness the seductive nature of ice cream, watch shoppers stalking the frozen food case, dreamily trying to choose a flavor as if in search of true love.
Potatoes. There is nothing thrilling about a potato, but it is a food that won’t let you down. It isn’t pouty or difficult, or thin-skinned. I like mine baked, mashed or messed around with. Potato salad is a cool pal in summer. In winter, my spouse makes a potato/egg casserole, Northern soul food, that simply makes me a better person.
Hamburg. The lowbrow hamburger is a no-fuss treat, although I know I can’t eat it daily without my system going postal. (I can store fat with the best of them.) Once or twice a week is more like it. I have replaced much of my hamburger consumption with veggieburgers. They do the job, but they are veggieboring.
Apples and bananas. Banana season has been elongated to the entire year. Thanks a bunch for that. Apple season is extended nearly likewise, although a stored McIntosh in midyear can have droopy, depressing innards. That’s when evergreen Granny Smith comes to the rescue.
Vegetables. Give me corn, broccoli and sometimes, peas. A medley a day.
I have come to accept this about myself: My heart’s desire is to cook and dine in the Comfortable Rut Restaurant. At home, I have my diner-quality coffee mug, and a small spoon (I detest large ones — I don’t know why). Plastic bowls and plates are banned (ice cream doesn’t melt correctly on petrochemicals). I require a sharp table knife; most butter knives seem dull and stupid. The plate can vary, but I take my milk straight, in real glass.
Don’t misunderstand, I enjoy the occasional exotic voyage. I have nibbled on Sushi, although when I first saw it I thought it was a fancy cut of bait. I like Korean, Mexican, Thai, Italian, and the All-American Blue Plate Special.
But I want to speak for diners who don’t mind repetition, not because they lack imagination or are shackled by routine, but because they are satisfied. And isn’t satisfaction the point?
So, when I cook I go strictly for the old standards. It’s not just comfort food that I crave, it’s comfortable food.
Years ago I used to smirk at a college professor who pulled the same lunch Monday, Wednesday and Friday from a paper bag (crumpled and recycled) before a noon class. He was a magician with no surprises: presto, another plain sandwich and an apple. “My Spartan lunch,’’ he’d often say, and smile.
Now I understand what he was getting at. In a world of choices, confusion and complication, he had found his story, and he was sticking to it.
Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com. His Web site is www.danmackie.blogspot.com.

Donald Rumsfeld, R.I.P.

First Kevin Federline. Now Donald Rumsfeld. The post-election carnage continues. We may have had our differences, but I respected Rummy’s ability to command while looking just like Mr. Wilson on the old Dennis the Menace TV show. Come to think of it, he kind of spoke to the press as if each was just a cowlicked, mischievous Dennis. That was kind of cool. "Now Dennis, I told you not to go poking around my Iraq policies, look what you've gone and done ...."

Adios, Kevin Federline

Like most Americans, I’ll be watching the pundits for the next few days to make sense of the historic shift in the nation’s balance of power. Conservatives, liberals, committed centrists — all will weigh in on the dramatic events of Tuesday, Nov. 7. Red states and blue states alike must come to grips with a changed America. I refer, of course, to the announcement that incumbent Kevin Federline has been ousted from his marriage with Britney Spears. What message is Our Britney sending to America? How should we respond? Do we all share some measure of blame for the global pressure on celebrity supermarriages? Are any of us all that innocent? As for me, I lament that I never got to really know Kevin Federline. Godspeed, Kevin, whoever you are.

Blush, Blush, Sweet Comedy

By Dan Mackie
I am a person who can string together a funny thought or two, or so people tell me, but I would rather go over Niagara Falls in a barrel of alligators (or congressmen) than attempt what Cindy Pierce is doing.
Comedy. On stage. Frank talk about anatomy — and sex. I’d blush so hard I’d outdo Rudolph. My jackhammer stammering would loosen my fillings. I grew up in a religious tradition that promoted the Joy of Guilt, and after maladjusting this long I’m not likely to change.
But Pierce, a soccer mom and Etna innkeeper by day (and night), says standing on stage
isn’t daunting. “If you can tell a story to 10 people, you can tell a story to a thousand,’’ she insists.
Last year, Pierce’s one-woman act, “Finding the Doorbell,’’ filled the Lebanon Opera House as she made her local stage debut in a big way. She returns next month for two shows, Nov. 4 and 16, the second a benefit for the Hanover Nursery School, as she continues her longshot quest at showbiz.
She’s “cleaned up” her act, she says. That doesn’t mean she’s eliminated references (and I might blush as I type this), to sex and body parts. She’s been working with a New York director to tighten her material, sharpen her delivery.
If less is more, she likely will still have a lot. Pierce has the energy of an aerobics instructor. In an interview, a table and chair seem to confine her. She crackles and pops with energy and her fingers snap. She speaks with such vigor she provides her own comic drum roll.
The director told her all her bopping around on stage could tire the audience, so she she’s working to rein it in, to make every movement work to enhance the stories. “Now it flows better,’’ she says. “I’m less exhausting to watch.’’
Her act is more comedic storytelling than stand-up comedy. “I can’t retain a joke; I can’t deliver a joke,’’ she says. Pierce, who says she has never been afflicted by inhibition, shares stories about herself and her not-so-private parts. It’s all about sex, and personal plumbing, about discoveries and delayed revelations. Pierce was a tomboy, a girl jock who got into the womanhood thing later than most. She hung out a lot with men in high school and college (future sitcom star Mike O’Malley was a pal at UNH), and she learned to see their point of view. Unlike some women comics, Pierce does no male bashing.
She talks about sex with a frankness that makes people laugh, and feel relieved. “I get e-mail from people thanking me for helping them, for helping their marriage,’’ she said.
How’s that?
In her act she tells women that men aren’t mind readers, that women should tell them what they like and want. If that sounds like Communication 101, consider that while Paris Hilton rules the airwaves, Queen Victoria still presides over many a bedroom. Pierce says her mission is to promote communication and bring some levity to the process. “Part of the goal is to prevent sexless marriages after babies,’’ she says. “I encourage women to be kinder to their bodies, to live in their bodies, and not be so self-conscious … Their husbands are not that critical.’’
Pierce has come to this point from an unlikely start. A couple of years ago, she was at a reunion of women skiers who were sharing personal stories. Her tales unleashed an avalanche of laughter, and the women said she ought to work up a professional act. She tried it out in front of smaller audiences, then larger ones. The Lebanon show was something of a triumph, but Pierce has had her ups and downs. Comedy club appearances in Boston and New York have gone well — she won a prize one night — and less well. After following raunchy stand-up comics, going on stage with her routine which depends more on a we’re-all-in-this-together vibe, Pierce didn’t always connect.
But when audiences “get it,’’ in her words, it works. She has spoken to medical students at Dartmouth and Harvard and college audiences elsewhere; both present promising niches for future tours. Pierce and a friend have started work on a book that would be based somewhat on her act — and New England Cable News has shot a documentary about her life as mom, innkeeper and performer.
Like many a would-be artist, it’s not her craft that she has to force herself to work at. “It’s the promotion that’s really intense. That’s about three hours a day, heavy-duty, relentless,’’ she says. “Promoting yourself is the most painful part of the process.’’
Pierce, 41, has a somewhat harried, unconventional life even without the stage work. She and her husband have three children, ages 4, 6 and 8, and run Pierce’s Inn in Etna, where she grew up. She says she was only middle-of-the-pack funny in her family of seven kids — she learned a lot from their funny stories — and that living in an inn provided plenty of opportunity to observe the best and worst of human behavior.
These days, temporary setbacks don’t faze her, she says, because it’s all a learning process. And when something funny happens, it’s all material. “I don’t have a second to be embarrassed,’’ says Pierce.
There’s no stage fright in her, either. Under the spotlight she finds that time goes by quickly, and feels that the audience is just a cozy gathering — “I feel like some of my friends have invited a lot of their friends. It’s so word-of-mouth.’’
Pierce says she isn’t in a hurry to get to the big time. “I feel that this has unfolded at just the right pace,’’ she says. “I’m resilient.’’
One thing she won’t do is spice up the act with narratives that are better than real life. “All my stories are true,’’ says Pierce. “I want to stick to the truth.’’ And, of course, she’s not afraid to take a risk.
For that, we who are about to blush, salute her.

Happily Ever After

By Dan Mackie
There isn’t much that beats a beach day in the fall. Recently we headed to the Maine coast for a couple of days to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. Yes, I know, I expect the Guinness Book of World Records to be in touch.
Our longevity seems natural: each brings something to our “coupleness,’’ or is it “coupletude.” My wife is overall a better person than I am. I am taller and can reach things on the top shelf. And there you have it: wedded bliss.
We found ourselves driving to Maine thinking of 1976, and not the big Bicentennial, which pretty much robbed our chance of being the headline event of the season. She was a happy bride, and I was an awkward groom (any time I am the life of the party you have a pretty sad party — although I’ve gotten better in three decades). We set off in ’76 for life, liberty and the pursuit of children, not entirely comprehending that the latter would make life immeasurably richer, but that liberty was out the window for a couple of decades at the least.
We probably should have done something bigger for The Big 30 — climb Kilimanjaro or hitch a ride to the Space Station, but Maine was the best we could manage. I have nothing against Maine, although its cold ocean water seems unearthly; my wife has a sentimental attachment to the York-Wells-Ogunquit tourist triangle because she was a chambermaid at the Sleepytown Motel one summer when she was a teenager. She and her best friend walked to doughnut shops and arcades and pizza shops and to meet boys, after slaving all day in a typical high workload/low pay summer arrangement. These days they bring in seasonal foreigners because Americans are either too lazy or they’ve wised up.
We did a quick summary on the way over. Satisfied? Check. Still happy? Check. Would do it all again? Better go with yes, or as Ricky Ricardo used to say to Lucy, “there’s gonna be some ’splainin’ to do.’’ But could we have taken a different path? Could I have married a rich supermodel? Could she have married into the Monaco royal family? Not likely, come to think of it. I would have liked to have been a professional ballplayer, too, and I could have been, except for the hitting and throwing and running and fielding and stuff — there is no pro league for “nice try’’ level athletes. When you make a nice try at marriage it often works, however. Effort counts in relationships.
And no matter what, we’ll always have Maine.
We yacked all the way over; I never fell asleep once, which was good since I was driving. Before you knew it, we were near the coast and seeing signs for lobsters, lobster bibs, lobster T-shirts, lobster pots, lobster stew and lobster psychics. (I made that last one up, although there is a psychic or two on Route 1, as you’d expect.)
Though it was mid-October, the weather had only turned brisk, not punitive. The sun came out to say Happy Anniversary, and seagulls danced in the air like bluebirds of happiness. Also, some other people on the beach were throwing them chips. They’d been married for several years and had a couple of kids. He seemed taken aback when we said we were celebrating our 30th; he contemplated that as he would a stint at Folsom Prison. “Goes by just like that,’’ I said, which was something I didn’t believe when people said it to me three decades ago. And now I know it’s true.
We walked on the Marginal Way in Ogunquit, a beautiful coastal walk that goes from Ogunquit Beach to Perkins Cove, gift shops stuck like barnacles onto a little fishing cove. People stop and stare at the ocean and sit on craggy rocks, which to some people speak of the power and beauty of nature, but to most of us speak of those old Chevy “Like a rock’’ commercials. Some took out their cell phone cameras to take disappointing pictures of the mighty Atlantic. One or two made a call. When you contemplate the ocean and cliffs and deep blue sky, I don’t think you should talk to anyone but your Higher Power, and I am not referring to Verizon.
We had lunch at the Maine Diner, fabulously busy and still serving up real diner food even though it could just rip off all the tourists. I was proud of their integrity, and the cole slaw.
I felt so cheery that I even walked into the shops, where Dede was scouting for birthday presents for our daughter. I’d brought a camera along so I could take my own disappointing photos of the rocks, ocean and boats, although I do better than the cell phone folks. The camera also encourages me to look intensely for interesting light, colors and shapes, and for clearance sale signs. I can outwait the trinket sellers — I only get really interested when it’s 75 percent off or they’re “closing forever.’’
Fall at the beach is prime time for me. I am not a person who does well in the summer heat and sun; centuries of Irish rain produced a race of people like me who turn red and peel, then red and peel, over and over, where others turn into bronze gods and goddesses. I enter the warm months pale and leave them the same way. But I appreciate the fall sun, which leaves my skin alone, especially on a day when shadows remain cool and only the direct light warms the skin. You feel how fleeting perfection is in a way that you can’t in July, so you face the sun and smell the light, drink the rays, take it inside where you store it like a pilot flame until spring.
After you are married 30 years you know that happiness — alone or together — is a little like the fall sun: you seize the minutes, you embrace the hours. You remember the perfect days, and as well as you can you forgive all the rest.
Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.