I am writing this on a January morning that feels as if spring has leaped into our midst while we were sleeping. I know many of us no doubt feel a twinge of guilt when we step outside without a jacket, look at blue skies, know that days like this in January may portend deep […]
New. A New Year. A New Yankee. What is not new is that Yankee‘s readers care. Big time. For the past few days my phone here has been ringing off the hook with loyal, faithful, readers, many of whom feel their longtime friend, Yankee Magazine, has gone away. At the moment, I am not their […]
It’s not possible to freeze old people in the beginning of winter, store them outside, almost naked, and then thaw them out in time to help with the spring planting. Is it? Well, in 1939, a Dr. Temple S. Fay of Philadelphia, who had done some experiments freezing human organs, gave a talk in Providence, […]
We know you turn to Yankee recipes to get a taste of New England. We also know that there are a few of our recipes you couldn’t do without. We’ve compiled these reader favorites — from our mouthwatering Indian pot roast to our deliciously classic apple pie — here. Enjoy!
Even before Yankee‘s new January/February issue arrived in subscribers’ homes, the letters and e-mails started coming: “Why are you changing my Yankee?” These messages, surprisingly, give me much hope for our future, because Yankee readers care passionately about the unique little magazine they’ve always looked upon as a friend. And we never want our friends […]
In this column last February, I recalled my old friend and barber, Bill Austin, telling me a joke I might use in a forthcoming speech I was to make at the local Women’s Club and assuring me that, no, I needn’t worry. It was clean. In fact, he said, it was so clean “you could […]
Yankee Classic from November 1983 Read about a 2008 visit to Plimoth Plantation. The little village hugged the cleared hillside under the crude wooden fortress and the one heavy artillery piece that faced seaward across the salt marshes. The defensive position told the visitor that this was wartime. The lone street was a long, unpaved […]
To those of us who were around during World War II, and even as late as the 1970s, the name Kilroy is as familiar as MacArthur, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. During those years, the words “Kilroy Was Here” were penciled on rest room walls, carved on picnic tables, painted on bridges — you name it. […]
OF ALL THE theories as to the origin of the word Yankee, the one that makes the most sense to me is the so-called Dutch theory. It says that the early English settlers in Connecticut sold cheese to the early Dutch settlers in New York. So the New Yorkers began referring to the English as […]
THE WEEKEND BEFORE Memorial Day is when a lot of wonderful commercial enterprises along the Maine coast open up for the summer tourist season. Bertha Nunan’s Lobster Hut, in the tiny fishing village of Cape Porpoise (just up from Kennebunkport), is a case in point. Multiple generations of Nunans have been hauling lobster traps off […]
1. Were “spring dance floors” built to spring? 2. Where, exactly, does “down east” begin? 3. Why were bridges covered? WELL, LET’S BEGIN with the term “down east.” We all know it’s a nautical way of referring to sailing with the wind or down wind when traveling northeast off the Maine coast. Where down east […]
NEW ENGLANDERS WERE always so stuffy about love, sex, and romance, how come it was commonly approved practice for young couples to go to bed together before they were married? And also, more surprisingly, to get married in the nude? Both are true. Young New England unmarried boys and girls would indeed go to bed […]
