Yankee classic from December 1995 If the tawdry, materialistic displays that too often mark a modern Christmas make you feel like the Grinch, then travel with me to Thompson, Connecticut. It is an evening in early December, and the Old Town Hall, at the northwestern edge of the five-acre Thompson Hill Common, is ready for […]
yankee
Magazine
Rangeley, ME: An Angel in Rangeley
Yankee classic from December 1993 It’s a long road to Rangeley. Route 4 twists through miles of thickly forested land, rising and falling as it heads north from Augusta, and on winter nights snowbanks narrow the road, shining white in the headlights, tunneling through the darkness. Surrounded by the mountains and lakes of western Maine, […]
In 1962 Waine Morse decided to build a make-believe store beside his vegetable garden in Greenfield, MA, to house his burgeoning collection of Americana. He couldn’t stop. Excerpt from “’The Man Who Build a Town in His Backyard,” Yankee Magazine, December 1989. It didn’t start out to be like this, a whole village, a toy […]
Magazine
Write It and They Will Come
The July/August issue of Yankee features one of the most complex stories we have done during my nearly 30 years here at Yankee. We titled it “25 People You Must See This Summer.” We put this together many months ago when the editors got together repeatedly to toss out the names of New Englanders we […]
Magazine
Still No Answer
From Yankee Magazine March 1974 Although, officially, flying saucers do not exist, unofficially, it is a different story: flying saucers have been “landing” here, there, and just about everywhere. Experienced pilots claim that their planes have been chased by interplanetary flying machines. And responsible citizens continue to insist that they saw something unearthly in the […]
From Yankee Magazine April 1982 It was twilight, still and overcast, in Starks, Maine, on November 28, 1981, two days after Thanksgiving. Elsewhere in New England, store merchants were enjoying one of the year’s busiest shopping days. But you wouldn’t have known that in Starks. The town, with a population of 440, is strung along […]
From Yankee Magazine January 1978 Like the Old Harbor town itself, some of us in Marblehead, Massachusetts, have for twenty-eight years had a grisly horror on our hands. Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend in 1950, as a savage nor’easter battered the Massachusetts coast, spinster Beryl Atherton was strangled to death in her own kitchen, her […]
“How do I break into Yankee?” I hear that question over and over from hopeful writers. Through the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of freelancers at writers’ conferences, as well as on the phone and through letters and e-mails. The earnestness and hope in that question are not to be taken lightly. The desire to […]
Magazine
Portsmouth, RI: The Tin Can Man
Yankee classic from January/February 2001 In a small, white house on a side street off a side street in the seaside town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, there lives a village so lightweight a child could pick it up and carry it away, but strong enough to lift the weight of the world off the shoulders […]
Connecticut
Wethersfield, CT, and Onions
Yankee classic from August 1993 Plan a weekend visit to Wethersfield today. In those days, you could smell Wethersfield before you could see it. Outsiders dubbed the Connecticut village “Oniontown,” with a crosshatch of affection and derision, for this was home of the world-famous Wethersfield red onion, and its pungent scent stung the air. Wethersfield […]
Racking up the miles and the calories is part and parcel of this job, and I confess: I love it. Not all weeks are like this, but this was mine. Monday: Tremont 647 chef Andy Husbands celebrated a recent trip to the New Orleans Jazz Festival by cooking up a multicourse “Big Easy” dinner, which […]
Magazine
The Dear Old Computer
Yesterday my computer crashed. I hate that sentence and all the possibilities that it implies. I was sending photographs on e-mail to a magazine I occasionally work for and, whether it was this actual act or just coincidence makes no matter, the fact is that the computer threw up a dark screen and refused to […]