Welcome
It all gets in there…
I’ve been a reporter in Rockport, Massachusetts- a peaceful small town on the coast of New England. I had a guy nick my throat with his knife- he decided against killing me- in New York City. And in the middle of the night a couple thugs in eastern Turkey tried to rob me in their cheap hotel- and some Iranian revolutionary students- headed back to Iran to overthrow the Shah- saved me. And I crossed the Sahara in a VW minibus, sleeping on the sand, and watched a camel caravan, traveling by moonlight, ghost past.
My wife, Edie, and I built our own first house ourselves- with much help from friends- all 400 square feet of it. And I walked back to Walnut Street in Peabody, Massachusetts after 29 guys got arrested for gambling after I took pictures of the Greek coffeehouses there. -I figured, well it was either that, or never walk those streets again.
And then there’s the 44 years of an extraordinarily happy marriage. We lived in a 12 x 12 room in a boarding house- sharing a bathroom with eight people we didn’t know- not so great- before we built that house. And during the 15 years we lived very happily in the Midwest, we traveled 100K miles out West, sleeping in the back of our pickup truck- places where it was just us and that vast beautiful dramatic landscape- and that was wonderful.
I was born in a small town in New Hampshire and now, six decades later, Edie and I live on a south facing hillside in another small town, in a small country house heated with a woodstove, and when we discovered Harrisville, New Hampshire- another small town, one small town away- that became Parisville in The Porch of Common Prayer.
And I’m still here, and we’re still here, and I mention all the above because, in writing The Porch of Common Prayer, I wanted in some way to bring as much of the world as I know it, and understanding and empathy for very different kinds of people and lives, into that one book… in the hope that, in some way, from all that good luck and happiness and, I hope, some kind of understanding…
I could share some of it with you.
The Porch of Common Prayer (how it happened)
Something Can Happen…
One day- three summers ago- Edie and I wandered into Harrisville, New Hampshire- the most beautiful and best preserved rural New England mill town- mostly just because we lived nearby, and it was a lovely summer day, so we thought that with any luck we could wander around a bit.
To our surprise, we found a very small general store there, with an even smaller café, and a front porch on this 174 year old building- little changed on the outside. And still plenty old on the inside. So we thought, why not? And poured iced tea for ourselves from the insulated carafe and paid at the front counter- all of this is in almost miniature.
And we noticed that a young woman, unashamed and unstared at- was nursing her baby at one of the tables…
…And then, sitting outside at the little round café table, on little wire round bottomed café chairs- like those you see in pictures of Paris cafés around 1900- we noticed a tall, quite old man, making his slow way with a walking stick, up the road and across the little bridge across the little river that runs through the town, to the general store. He walked slowly, but with great determination, then went into the tiny post office behind the general store, then went into the general store itself, through the back door by the post office, and bought some groceries- and something- maybe it was the newspaper. Sat down at the table, and just stayed there for awhile at that inside table, reading. And then after awhile he got up and left.
And that vision of that tiny baby, and the young mother, and then the old man, all at the general store… And seeing how it didn’t seem to matter whether the customers appeared old or young, rich or poor, all were treated equally. -And with respect, and all given personal attention- no one was just another customer. That somehow was the realization for me of a vision of the whole of life- an ideal of the way people could be with each other- and the ideal- for me anyway- of a human community. That ideal vision come to life for me in that little store.
And sure, I know, we all understand that no people, no town, no community- they’re never perfect. But for me, small towns have always been the kind of community I understand best, and most want to live in, and Harrisville- this town- this Parisville, as I came to think of it- came as close to embodying that ideal as I ever hoped to find.
-So Edie and I sipped, slowly savoring our iced tea- it was very good iced tea, made fresh there- you could taste that- and we watched the condensation trickle from the clear plastic, recyclable glasses- the moisture seeming to emerge from the glasses, like osmosis rather than, as we knew- drawn from the humidity in the air. But it was that feeling of passing from outside to inside- and maybe back again- a feeling of understanding, of a vision- seeing both the ideal community in my imagination and at the same time being in this real and beautiful- it seemed to me- small town community that…
…Although I didn’t know it, became the inspiration for this book about a New England small town that I eventually titled The Porch of Common Prayer. That porch, right there, in that little old New England mill village- that wasn’t cutesy, wasn’t touristy, was just there for the people who lived there, and the occasional people who might wander by and wander in- to see this vision, as I did suddenly- of the whole of life- from the baby breastfeeding to an elderly man, still determined to walk every day to the general store because it was the heart of the community, and he wanted to be part of it.
And so Edie and I were drawn back, day after day, that mid to late summer, to sit at that tiny café table on that little front porch of that small general store. And letting whatever happened happen, I felt suddenly as if we’d become part of the story, passing from the imagined to the real, as that moisture seemed to do with that glass of tea.
And every morning early, around 4 AM, I’d get up and write what happened that day, the afternoon before, and then in the afternoon Edie and I would go over to the little store again. And eventually we began taking walks around the village, before or after the iced tea, and exploring that beautifully preserved and restored mill village, which didn’t try to be anything that it wasn’t and had never been. The dirt alley between the mills was still dirt. No one had put up half whiskey barrels of flowers to make the place look like something it wasn’t.
And the mill buildings, while no longer housing the woolen mills that had made cloth there for 150 years- that machinery was gone. But there was a store devoted to home weavers in one of the oldest mill buildings, and the top floor of the newest (1922) building housed artists’ lofts. And there was a metal fabricating place in the downstairs- so yes, the place had some art- but it hadn’t become artsy. And yes, the place had that amenity- the little store- but the village wasn’t even remotely big enough to handle much tourist traffic- narrow streets and only six parking places in front of the store- and room for no more.
And Edie and I did that- visited to walk around the town, drink iced tea, then the next morning early I’d write what we’d seen or heard or thought or about the people we talked to, and I knew that Edie and I were not only visiting. We were a part of the story- our actual selves, with me as a writer, and Edie a painter, but at the same time I understood that Edie and I were also somehow characters within the story- that it wasn’t journalism, it was something else. So I didn’t ask any of the usual reporter questions. Didn’t try to interview the people who ran the store, or who ran the nonprofit that had preserved the buildings.
I just let whatever happened, happen, without trying to be a reporter. It seemed to me I had to be like that glass of iced tea, and whatever condensed on the side of the glass, those hot and sometimes humid summer days- that was the story- as if the story came from within me, but also actually accumulating on the outside. And then every morning, the next morning, I’d gather the drops, distilled from the air, and put them into some kind of other glass that became my story.
And then, one October evening…
But no, I can’t tell you what happened, because I don’t want to spoil the story for you. But that’s how my book was inspired, how it came into being, how it just somehow condensed out of the air into tangible water, running down the outside of a glass of iced tea, and pooling on that little café table on the general store’s front porch- the porch which became The Porch of Common Prayer.
…So my point- and I have been getting to a point, beyond autobiography, is this… that some kind of epiphany, as James Joyce called it- that moment of revelation or understanding or inspiration when the Muses, or the gods, or your personal god- or who knows- maybe all three- but just wandering around New England, and maybe in the next town over, or maybe in the next state…
…Something, something can happen in your life, that can go beyond the happy, delightful tourism that we all enjoy in New England, with its compactness and density of villages- this is not US 50 in Nevada, where the villages are 50 miles apart- more like five miles, if that… Something, if you’re willing to let it happen… some vision of life beyond the quaint or historical or cozy… that so often characterizes New England villages- they’ve been here a longtime…
…A something else can happen. And if you travel here, with your heart open, and you’re not necessarily longing to be entertained- though that can be pleasant, nor expecting to be treated as an honored guest- though that can also be pleasant…
But if you’re just willing to just be there… these places, that have been here so long, and are part of the country that its founders hoped would become like unto a City of God on a hill- and an inspiration and beacon of light (and self-righteousness!) to decadent Europe….
Well, some part of that idealism, and maybe some of the best part of that idealism yet remains, and you might find it on one of those old church steps- of those so often white painted churches, or…
You could find it on the porch of a small, old but still the heart of its community- little general store.
…As Edie and I did, that summer into autumn in Harrisville, New Hampshire, just over that ridge, just around that bend, just beside that little river, below that little mill pond, with the slaty blue mountains, beyond the cupola of that granite mill, in the distance, defining the horizon.
Peter Tuttle 