Unexpected Encounters | Inside Yankee
Whenever I take to the road, the stories I tell when I return are always about what I stumbled upon when I wasn’t following a plan but just casting about to see what might be waiting for me if I looked around. The turnoffs leading to country lanes, for instance, that might bring me to […]
Whenever I take to the road, the stories I tell when I return are always about what I stumbled upon when I wasn’t following a plan but just casting about to see what might be waiting for me if I looked around. The turnoffs leading to country lanes, for instance, that might bring me to someone’s art studio or woodworking shop standing nearly out of sight, so when I step inside it feels as if I have discovered a secret known only to locals. There are few more satisfying pleasures of leaving home than that. This is what readers tell me: They look to Yankee to guide them to the tucked-away places where their own adventures can take shape. This issue’s stories do just that.
Rowan Jacobsen’s “On the Rise” began when he took a bite of fresh bread made by a small Vermont bakery using wheat grown right down the road, and he realized it might be the most satisfying, most wholesome he’d ever tasted in his career as a food writer. Yankee’s food editor, Amy Traverso, found two women“Poorhouse Pies,” who sell home-baked pies in one of the most “look what I discovered” places imaginable: a pie shed on the lawn of their farmhouse in a New England village. And for our travel feature, frequent contributor Bill Scheller sought out not the familiar, high-traffic leaf-viewing spots but instead the towns where you’ll find plenty of room at the inn, at the dining table, and on the hillsides in this season of beguiling foliage colors (“Hidden Gold”).
“The Making of The Vietnam War” had its start when I was dining at the Restaurant at Burdick’s in Walpole, New Hampshire, and happened to glance at a poster on the wall for an upcoming movie by the town’s most famous resident, Ken Burns; the premiere was still more than a year away, and I had not known about it. And “The House at Allen Cove” happened just two weeks before this issue went to press. I was traveling in Maine, and someone I was chatting with said, “Did you know E.B. White’s former house might be for sale?” A tour of the property ensued—and in my four decades doing stories here, I can’t recall a more time-stopping moment than entering White’s studio and seeing what he saw when he wrote some of the most elegant prose of our time.
There is yet another journey of unexpected discoveries that awaits you, dear reader, in Yankee’s digital issues. The mere tap of a finger on your mouse or keyboard will bring you to many additional stories and columns, including Julia Shipley’s “The Farmer’s Life,” which also appears in this issue as “Something Borrowed, Something Blue”. The pages may be electronic, but the heart and soul is all New England. All Yankee. So take the turn off the main road, and go see what you’ll find at newengland.com/yankee-digital.
Mel Allen editor@yankeemagazine.com
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
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