Sometimes I get feeling down in August. Maybe it’s the weather or the fact that summer is winding down, but I am not my usual upbeat self at this time of year. On the chance that my readers are having similar feelings, I decided it might be the perfect time to share a true story that just might cheer us up.
It all began in the town of Peterborough a few years ago when my friend Jacquie got worrying about her father. Not that he was ill, but he was getting up there in age, and she thought the time had come to see whether he would agree to leave his longtime home in New Jersey to be nearer to her.
Mr. Edwards thought about it for a while. After all, he had done well on his own down there, but since he was then in his mid 90s he knew the time was coming when he could use a bit of help, so after an amazingly short bit of convincing he agreed to the move.
Delighted at the news, it didn’t take Jacquie long to find a perfect place for him in her town. The apartment was not far from the Main Street and was all on one floor so he would have no stairs to contend with. His new abode also happened to be situated between a church and a funeral home. The humor in this didn’t escape Mr. E. He said that at least he would have a short commute when he passed away!
Fitting in with his new surroundings took a surprisingly short time for him. He was a serious card player and in no time he found himself linked up with like-minded folks in the area. Another bonus was that because of their close proximity, he and his daughter could catch up on their long-neglected cribbage games.
After he’d been in his new digs for a while, Jacquie mentioned that his birthday was coming up soon. Since it was to be his first New Hampshire birthday, we wanted to do something special for him, but what?
Then it came to me. One night I happened to hear one of New Hampshire’s foremost storytellers tell about his own father’s birthdays and how excited he was as each one came due. He could barely wait for the next one to come around.
The reason? It seems that two young ladies in his town had come up with a novel way had to wish this elder gent a happy birthday. On his special day they went to his home, rang the bell, and when he came to the door they flashed him. Yes, they swooped open their jackets and there these ladies were naked from waistline to neckline. It was over in a flash but long enough for the birthday gent to get pretty excited and to have a good laugh. They continued to take him this birthday gift year after year.
“That’s it!” I exclaimed to my friend Jacquie. ” I am going to flash your father on his birthday!”
She looked at me as if I had lost my mind. She probably figured it would be quite a stretch for me, a local columnist, poet and former minister’s wife, to do such a thing. Besides, I was getting pretty long in the tooth, and my body was way past its “sell-by” date, but I was up to the challenge.
It became a joke between us, and we even told her father about it. We all laughed at the absurdity of the whole thing.
On the night of his birthday, I took myself over to his house, rang the bell, he opened the door, and well, I flashed him! Right there in our town, between the church and the funeral home, I opened my coat and flashed him! He laughed and laughed, and for good reason. When the time came for me to expose some of my epidermis, there was not an inch of bare flesh to be seen. I had taped a sheet of 8 ½ x 11 computer paper onto my torso which read HAPPY BIRTHDAY and that was it.
But that was not the end of the story. A few days after the event I received a note from the birthday boy himself and the message was short and sweet. It read: “Next time, use a tiny Post-it note!”
I love our New Hampshire towns. We never know what will happen when newcomers move in, but if they turn out to be as good-natured as Mr. E., we’ll consider ourselves very lucky indeed.
Joann Duncanson, a former Peterborough resident now living in Greenland, is the author of “Who Gets the Yellow Bananas?”, co-author of “Breakfast in the Bathtub” and author of her latest book, “Eight Crayons – Poems and Stories by an Almost Sane Woman.” She can be reached at ourbooks@worldpath.net.