Two hundred steps, give or take. That’s the distance from Schoodacs Coffee House to the seasonal Velvet Moose Ice Cream Shoppe on East Main Street in Warner. You can walk it in a couple of minutes if the clock demands it, and then cross the street toward the New Hampshire Telephone Museum for the return trip. Another couple hundred paces for an adult of average height and you’re at the door of The Local, the popular eatery across Main from the equally popular cafe where you started.
The arbitrary loop doesn’t take more than five minutes, all told. But do it right and it takes much longer. Sometimes a lifetime.
It’s just after noon on a quiet weekday in early April, clear and dry. The sun is out and boasting of its warmth, but it can’t back it up. A weather app says 37 degrees. There’s no warning about the wind, which feels more like an assault than a gust.
A farmer’s porch lines the storefront of 25 East Main, which is next to the old fire station and home to the Velvet Moose, Dillons Woodworks and Country Cobwebs gift shop. The journalist walks up the stairs and peers in the window of Dillons. It’s full of beautiful pieces but empty of people, so he rounds the corner to Country Cobwebs.
Audrey Martel is the only soul inside. She smiles from behind the counter and says “Hello.” She says nothing more for now. No sales pitch, no small talk. Just “hello” and the kind of smile you can feel even after you’ve turned away. A good journalist with a plan would introduce himself right off the bat, but this one just returns the greeting and starts looking around at candles, preserves and discounted Christmas items before arriving at a couple of rows of Lone Star barbecue sauce from Tilton. Audrey says the sauce is really popular and that they can hardly keep it in stock. She said she prefers the chipotle because it’s spicy, and that’s good enough to send one more jar flying out of the store in a brown paper bag.
With the ice broken, the awkward guy with a notebook explains that he is not just preparing for grilling season but working on a column, which in truth is little more than a hazy concept. He wants to write about places without having any real reason to do so. No festival, no foliage, no visiting politicians, no “news hook,” as the editors say. Just a place and its people.
If Audrey thinks the idea, the pitch and the guy are odd, she doesn’t show it. She just smiles – although it may be that she never stopped smiling to begin with – and shares a little bit about herself (she worked for the state for more than three decades), Country Cobwebs (a business card lists her as an assistant but she calls it “playing store”) and East Main Street.
“What do people say about the town when they come in here?” the journalist asks.
There is hardly a pause before she answers. “They say it’s just like Mayberry.”
The comparison to Andy Griffith’s fictional North Carolina town is on the verge of cliche for quaint little hamlets in New England and elsewhere. When the tourists are out of earshot, the locals will often give you the straight dope. So the journalist asks, “And what do you think?”
Again, hardly a pause. “It’s just like Mayberry.”
At some point during the conversation, the Dillon in Dillons Woodworks arrives next door. Audrey is happy to handle the introduction, and does so quickly before returning to her post.
If you ever find yourself in a professional rut and dreaming of the day when you can finally start doing the work you’re passionate about, you may want to stop by Mike Dillon’s shop. The cedar and maple planks he sells are impressive, and so are the finer woodworking pieces on the shelves and tables, but his story might be the most interesting thing on display. He’s a young man with a young family, and up until late last month he was an IT guy who worked with wood in his spare time. But when you love the smell of sawdust as much as Mike does, you can stare at a computer screen only so long before something gives way inside of you.
And so he quit the IT game. Not recklessly, but methodically. Using every spare minute, and with immense bliss, he built up the side business until it was strong enough to flip his occupational script. He is now a woodworker first and an IT guy only when he chooses.
If you catch him at the shop, he’ll tell you about how it all happened. There will be wisdom in the telling, and bits of tragedy, and by the end you’ll realize that just by standing there you’re playing a minor role in a story that is simultaneously a happy ending and happy beginning. When it’s time to leave, you might walk out still wondering why so many people spend a lifetime doing work that brings them no joy. Mike has a family and bills to pay, and he knows very well what economic hardship feels like. But there he is, in his little shop on East Main Street, living his life like it’s the only one he gets.
Back outside, dry leaves are wind-whipped up, down and across the street, free and furious. Diners enter and exit their beloved Foot Hills, and the journalist makes a mental note to take the family there soon. A Saturday or Sunday perhaps, when the Warner Public Market is also open. On this April afternoon, the question asked of the questioner more than any other is, “Have you been to the Public Market yet?” He hasn’t. He will.
For every boulevard of broken dreams, there must be a place like East Main, where better days aren’t so much ahead as present.
That’s the vibe you get from Cindy Snay, anyway. She wanted to run her own pharmacy and Warner needed one, and nearly a decade ago the two found each other. Business is good, steady. Cindy lives in New London but loves it here, and her interaction with a regular customer hints at why.
Their conversation is light and familiar, punctuated by mutual kindness and interest in the other’s shared good news. The journalist is waiting, and happily so, in the front of the store while casually looking at a rack of funky socks and not-so-casually eavesdropping. It seems that royalty could have been waiting, too, and Cindy still wouldn’t have broken away from her customer prematurely.
It can be difficult to give someone your full attention for as long as the moment requires, but she makes it look easy.
When her conversation with the journalist resumes, Cindy mentions there’s a new tenant moving into the building – a naturopathic doctor. Out on the sidewalk again, he spots her. Amanda Hegnauer is on one end of a wooden table and her dad is on the other as they try to maneuver it up the stairs and over the threshold of 11 East Main. The doctor’s mom is on hand, too, and will be for the foreseeable future. She works for Amanda, left her job to do so, and by all accounts the arrangement is a good one.
Mom, dad and daughter talk with the journalist briefly, but they have work to do. A photo request is made of the group, but the parents demur. They would rather step aside and watch Amanda take her place, alone and smiling, beneath the sign reading “Hegnauer Holistic Health.”
More than an hour has gone by, and the street hasn’t been crossed. It’s time. But first, coffee.
Llama Mayo is behind the counter, where she always seems to be. The barista recognizes the journalist as the bleary-eyed guy who started stopping by regularly a few weeks ago for dark roast. She hands him a cup and he fills it before heading across the street to The Local, where Krystin Watts is wiping down the bar.
He holds up the cup to ask if it’s okay, and she smiles and nods: “We let Schoodacs in here.” It’s an odd hour now, so the place is nearly empty. It won’t stay that way, especially as the weekend draws closer. The madness begins Thursday with trivia night, and then rolls through the weekend. But madness isn’t really the right word. Day or night, it’s a family-friendly place, Krystin says. This is Mayberry, after all.
Krystin grew up here, has watched it change and stay the same. She lives in Manchester now but would like to buy a house. Not just anywhere, but in Warner. Home.
If East Main has an anchor, it’s just a few doors down from The Local. MainStreet BookEnds is Katharine Nevins’s place and has been since 1998. The journalist and the bookseller talk for a little while, about their kids, the challenges for bookstores and newspapers, and why she has a cast on her arm. She says business is good and the town is even better. Outside, there’s a sign hanging on her 1795 farmhouse that reads, “Something Wonderful is Happening in Warner.”
Before he leaves, the journalist asks if there’s a philosophy section. Katharine leads the way, and after a couple of minutes he settles on The Holy Man by Susan Trott. It’s a short book, a collection of vignettes really, about the search for and discovery of happiness.
Of course he found it here, on East Main Street.