August 28, 1935-Pyle Suggests Cutting Gaudy Coast Off From New England
The Washington Daily News—Wednesday—August 28,—1935
Pyle Suggests Cutting Gaudy Coast Off From New England
Ernie Pyle
CALAIS, Me.—When and if I get to be dictator, I shall have a blacksmith make me a great big knife, and I shall stick it in the ground just east of New York City, and I shall give it a twist about 10 miles up into Connecticut, and then I shall cut off the whole Atlantic coast, from New York to Portland, Me. That would leave New England.
That coast is an abomination and a curse. It is not beautiful, neither is it placid, and there is no enchantment in it. It is one long hideous summer resort for 400 miles, with millions of unhappy-looking people running in and out of hot dog stands in their bathrobes. I say take it away, and give us back New England.
This coast is typified by the Boston Post Road. You can drive 100 miles east of New York on this road, and never reach the country. It is continuously town, or suburb, or eating places, or rows of signs and filling stations, a nightmare of roaring trucks and careening cars. It is an incinerator of burned gasoline fumes. Driving on the Boston Post Road is, I imagine, like driving in the Indianapolis 500-mile race with a hangover. Avoid it.
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But when you get 30 miles inland anywhere from the coast, or when you can pick an authentic old shipping town out from among the summer cabins—then New England is a place of charm.
One thing that gives me a feeling of harmony with New England is that it is so sleepy. All the dashing about is done by the “furriners” who come from New York and elsewhere.
In Connecticut the well-to-do summer people complain because they can’t get the natives to work for them. Why should the natives work for them? If the outsiders don’t like the way the natives act, why don’t they go back to New York where people will dash about for them all day long?
Vermont frightens me. The people who live there like it, and it is beautiful in a colossal sort of way. But in Vermont I can think only of the bitter winters, and the rocky hillsides, and the barrenness, and of people forever being beaten by nature; and of the ominous wind and the hurrying snow clouds on a gray November afternoon, and of Calvin Coolidge, lying up there so alone amid the bleak hills.
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South central New Hampshire is the neatest, and seems the most prosperous, of New England. The frequent farmhouses literally sparkle in the sun. An hour ago they must have finished painting every one of them, a glistening white, and all with bright green shutters. The fences are new, the lawns are mowed, flowers are everywhere, and people look happy.
In New Hampshire you see signs all along advertising “Tonic 5¢,” and after wondering for a long time what it is, you stop and buy some, and it turns out to be Moxie, something like Coca-Cola.
In New Hampshire and Maine the houses and barns and all the tool sheds are built together, all under one roof.
In New Hampshire we drove many miles out of our way to Concord, thinking that was where the Minute Men fired the shot heard round the world, only to find that it was Concord, Mass., where they did it. What a wonderful thing is history. And geography. But Concord, N. H., does print 34 national magazines, so that is something.
In all the old sea towns up the New England coast, there is always a Middle-st. and a Pleasant-st.
I had heard that all New Englanders eat pie for breakfast. Maybe they do, but I didn’t see any.
Also I asked why New Englanders say “down east” when they mean “up north.” They do say it, but the only explanation they can give is that it IS down east. What do you say then?
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And here we are in Calais (pronounced callous), Me., ready to cross the bridge into Canada and more new worlds.
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