the sea-a gray plane, cold and bleak. I drove and drove, thinking that any moment now I would encounter the fabled Maine of lobster pots and surf-battered shores and lonely lighthouses standing on rocks of granite, but the towns I passed through were just messy and drear, and the countryside was wooded and unmemorable. Once, outside Falmouth, the road ran for a mile or so along a silvery bay with a long, low bridge leading over it to a landscape of snug farms nestled in a fold of hills, and I got briefly excited. But it was a false alarm and the landscape quickly grew dull again. The rest of the time the real Maine eluded me. It was always just over there, like the amusement parks my dad used to miss.
At Wiscasset, a third of the way up the coast to New Brunswick, I lost heart altogether. Wiscasset bills itself on the signboard at the edge of town as the prettiest village in Maine, which doesn't say a whole lot for the rest of the state. I don't mean to suggest that Wiscaset was awful, because it wasn't.
It had a steep main street lined with craft shops and other yuppie emporia sloping down to a placid inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. Two old wooden ships sat rotting on the bank. It was OK. It just wasn't worth driving four hours to get there.
Abruptly I decided to abandon Route 1 and plunge northward, into the dense pine forests of central Maine, heading in an irregular line for the White Mountains, on a road that went up and down, up and down, like a rucked carpet. After a few miles I began to sense a change of atmosphere. The clouds were low and shapeless, the daylight meager. Winter clearly was closing in. I was only seventy miles of so from Canada and it was evident that winters here were long and severe. It was written in the crumbling roads and in the huge stacks of firewood that stood outside each lonely cabin. Many chimneys were already sprouting wintry wisps of smoke. It was barely October, but already the land had the cold and lifeless feel of winter. It was the kind of atmosphere that makes you want to turn up your collar and head for home.
Just beyond Gilead I passed into New Hampshire and the landscape became more interesting. The White Mountains rose up before me, big and round, the color of wood ash. Presumably they take their name from the birch trees that cover them. I drove on an empty highway through a forest of trembling leaves. The skies were still flat and low, the weather cold, but at least I was out of the monotony of the Maine woods. The road rose and fell and swept along the edge of a boulder-strewn creek. The scenery was infinitely better-but still there was no color, none of the brilliant golds and reds of autumn that I had been led to expect. Everything from the ground to the sky was a dull, cadaverous gray.
I drove past Mount Washington, the highest peak in the northeastern United States (6,288 feet, for those of you who are keeping notes). But its real claim to fame is as the windiest place in America.
It's something to do with ... well, with the way the wind blows, of course. Anyway, the highest wind speed ever recorded anywhere on earth was logged on the top of Mount Washington in April 1934
when a gust of-pencils ready?-231 miles an hour whistled through. That must have been an experience and a half for the meteorologists who worked up there. Can you imagine trying to describe a wind like that to somebody? ,,Well, it was, you know, real ... windy. I mean, really windy. Do you know what I'm saying?' It must be very frustrating to have a truly unique experience.
Just beyond it, I came to Bretton Woods, which I had always pictured as a quaint little town. But in fact there was no town at all, just a hotel and a ski lift. The hotel was huge and looked like a medieval fortress, but with a bright red roof. It looked like a cross between Monte Cassino and a Pizza Hut. It was here in 1944 that economists and politicians from twenty-eight nations got together and agreed to set up the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It certainly looked a nice place to make economic history. As John Maynard Keynes remarked at the time in a letter to his brother, Milton, 'It has been a most satisfactory week. The negotiations have been cordial, the food here is superb and the waiters are ever so pretty.'
I stopped for the night at Littleton, which, as the name suggests, is a little town near the Vermont border. I pulled into the Littleton Motel on the main street. On the office door was a sign that said,
'If you want ice of advice, come before 6:30. I'm taking the wife to dinner. ('And about time too!'-wife).' Inside was an old guy on crutches who told me I was very lucky because he had just one room left. It would be forty-two dollars plus tax. When he saw me start to froth and back off, he hastily added, 'It's a real nice room. Got a brand- new TV. Nice carpets. Beautiful little shower.
We've got the cleanest rooms in town. We're famous for that.' He swept an arm over a selection of testimonials from satisfied customers which he displayed under glass on the countertop. 'Our room must have been the cleanest room in town!'A.K., Aardvark Falls, Ky. 'Boy, was our room ever clean! And such nice carpets!'-Mr. and Mrs. J.F., Spotweld, Ohio. That soft of thing.
Somehow I doubted the veracity of these claims, but I was too weary to return to the road, so with a sigh I said all fight and signed in. I took my key and a bucket of ice (at forty-two dollars plus tax I intended to have everything that was going) and went with them to my room. And by golly, it was the cleanest room in town. The TV was brand-new and the carpet was plush. The bed was comfortable and the shower really was a beauty. I felt instantly ashamed of myself and retracted all my bad thoughts about the proprietor. ('I was a pompous little shit to have doubted you.'-Mr. B.B., Des Moines.)
I ate fourteen ice cubes and watched the early evening news. This was followed by an old episode of
'Gilligan's Island,' which the TV station had thoughtfully put on as an inducement to its non-brain-damaged viewers to get up immediately and go do something more useful. This I did. I went out and had a look around the town. The reason I had chosen to stop for the night at Littleton was that an American Heritage book I had with me referred to it as picturesque. In point of fact, if Littleton was characterized by anything it was a singular lack of picturesqueness. The town consisted principally of one long street of mostly undistinguished buildings, with a supermarket parking lot in the middle and the shell of a disused gas station a couple of doors away. This, I think we can agree, does not constitute picturesqueness. Happily, the town had other virtues. For one thing, it was the friendliest little place I had ever seen. I went into the Topic of the Town restaurant. The other customers smiled at me, the lady at the cash register showed me where to put my jacket, and the waitress, a plump and dimpled little lady, couldn't do enough for me. It was as if they had all been given some kind of marvelous tranquilizer.
The waitress brought me a menu and I made the mistake of saying thank you. 'You're welcome,'
she said. Once you start this there's no stopping. She came and wiped the table with a damp cloth.
'Thank you,' I said. 'You're welcome,' she said. She brought me some cutlery wrapped in a paper napkin. I hesitated, but I couldn't stop myself. 'Thank you,' I said. 'You're welcome,' she said.
Then came a place mat with 'Topic of the Town' written on it, and then a glass of water, and then a clean ashtray, and then a little basket of saltine crackers wrapped in cellophane, and at each we had our polite exchange. I ordered the fried chicken special. As I waited I became uncomfortably aware that the people at the next table were watching me and smiling at me in a deranged fashion. The waitress was watching me too, from a position by the kitchen doorway. It was all rather unnerving.
Every few moments she would come over and top up my iced water and tell me that my food would only be a
