The Beauty of New England Covered Bridges

I grew up in Berlin, NH and one of the things I enjoyed most growing up in northern NH was driving over the Jackson, NH bridge “countless times”!!!!! I really loved seeing it lit up at night. That is one of the very first things I did with my husband when I met him and he loved it, too! We also drove one of our cars to the top of Mt. Washington, which he also enjoyed immensely. I have also visited Stark, NH many times, believe it or not!!!!! (and enjoyed driving through that bridge). My father owned a furniture store in Berlin and he had a delivery in Stark, NH, possibly his only delivery there! The lady he delivered 4 very modest (my father sold durable, reasonably priced furniture, so he wouldn’t have any of it returned to him!) kitchen tables with 4 chairs each (16 seats total) was a lovely lady named Taz, who was Korean and was a Korean War Bride, had 2 children with “this lovely gentleman”, a boy and a girl, I knew her son growing up and spent a lot of time with him skiing at Wildcat Mountain, left her alone with 2 children “in the middle of nowhere” (Stark, NH, which was named for a Revolutionary War General whose last name was Stark and I have a picture, I believe the girl is 3 in the picture of a little girl named Laura Stark (she must be his relative, I found it in an antiques shop in VT), who was abandoned by her husband (ex-Army)…I recently discovered as a UNH alumnus her son Mike Eastman, who wrote a letter to the Editor, and my husband made the same military comment verbally Mike made, ended up Career Army!) . She named her small restaurant Yokohama. There were 6 furniture stores in my city, one of which was Eastman’s (a lot of those stores also sold appliances, including my father) who had frequent deliveries in the Stark area. She couldn’t afford a baby sitter, so she brought her 2 young children to work with her. Charlie Eastman ate his lunch there when he had deliveries near there and fell in love with Taz and married her and adopted her 2 children. My father had a lot of civic activities, so my mother took a local (in our neighborhood) friend with us (my sister and me) to eat countless times in Stark, which was really fun. She always knew what to make for my fussy-eater sister!!!!!!! I ate and loved everything she ever made for us!!!!!!!! My mother had chicken (very fancy capons) for Sunday dinner at noon every Sunday and Sunday night was “her night off from cooking”. Charlie moved the restaurant to Gorham, NH, and it is still in business, run by her family! We ate there a lot on Saturday nights, after my father closed his store at 5:00pm she wasn’t busy, so we had leisurely dinners until she got busy (always on Saturday nights!!!!!), during which she always gave us “something free”. She also stopped cooking to talk to us for up to 5 minutes every time we ate there! Boy did Charlie “know how to make alcoholic beverages”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yummy and very potent!!!!!!!!! Several of those were also free!!!!!! Sundays we had take out from there frequently. She always gave us something free with the take out orders, also!!!!!!! My father liked rice crackers…boy did she give Dad plenty of those free!!!!!!! She gave most customers a small plastic container of them with their alcoholic beverages. I love driving all over New England and I am going to make a point of visiting most if not all of these gorgeous covered bridges!!!!!!