Center Harbor Memories

By Thomas Durant Visser

Sometimes our richest memories spring from places we knew when we were young.

Located on a gentle bluff overlooking the northwestern bay of Lake Winnipesaukee and surrounded by foothills of the White Mountains, Center Harbor village gained distinction as a fashionable summer resort in central New Hampshire.

Of such places memories are often indelibly shaped by first impressions. Even small details of experiences that unfold at initial arrivals may establish a framework for subsequent experiences and realizations.

So it was in 1833, when Nathan Hale (1785-1863), the editor and publisher of the Boston Daily Advertiser, first arrived in what was then called Senter Harbor by stagecoach, travelling along a round-about route from Meredith to descend down the steep hill into Center Harbor village. This is how he described his memorable arrival experience:

On the 25th we left Meredith, after visiting the very thriving manufacturing establishments of a Mr. A. . .

The road thence to the Lake, about thirteen miles, is extremely hilly. The variety of scenery, hill, water, mountain, and valley so completely engaged my attention, that I was not aware of any danger, till our horses made a sudden halt at the foot of a precipice. We were immediately congratulated by some countrymen, on our escape from such imminent danger. Our driver to oblige a friend, had attached two horses to his team of four, and in descending the last long and steep hill, lost all power for checking or directing their course.

So rapid was their flight, a man driving a light wagon over a short bridge, seeing our carriage descending, stood motionless with affright, and we passed him with the rapidity of lightning, within an inch or two, of his wheels, while our wheels left their traces just within range of the verge of the plan of the bridge. . .

The great Lake at length came in view; and descending the southern hill, we entered the village of Senter Harbour, situate on a cove at the extremity of the Lake.

The stage stopped at the tavern; a house not very inviting either by its exterior, or its community. We were enjoined to put up at Senter's hotel; and when we inquired for the place were very reluctantly told, that, Senter's house was on the other quarter.

To another quarter we went, and soon found a new and well appointed house. The landlord ushered us into a very commodious apartment, and learning we intended to sojourning with him a few days, directed a servant to give us the choice of any bed rooms that were unoccupied. [1]

Boasting several grand seasonal hotels during the mid-1800s, the two most prominent were the Senter House that stood facing the lake near where the current town office building is located and the Moulton House that was just north of the Square on the west side of Plymouth Street.

One 1850s periodical touted Center Harbor as follows:

Quiet and romantic. With pure and invigorating air, it is a delightful place for the invalid, who would find it an asylum adapted to his wants. At the Centre Harbor, the traveller will find all the elegance, style, variety, and luxury, of a first class hotel. Sail-boats, row-boats, fishing-tackle, horses, carriages, &c. are ready for any who call for them; and two fairy steamboats visit the place every day in the season of travelling. [2]

Indeed Center Harbor became widely known as one of New England's most desirable summer destinations, attracting many famous people. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) recorded his first impressions of Center Harbor when arriving by horse with his friend on July 4, 1858:

Camped within a mile south of Senter Harbor, in a birch wood on the right, near the lake. Heard in the night a loon, screech-owl, and cuckoo; and our horse, tied to a slender birch close by, restlessly pawing the ground all night, and whinnying to us whenever we showed ourselves, asking for something more than meal to fill its belly with.

July 5, 1858. Go on through Senter Harbor, and ascend Red Hill in Moultonboro. Dr. Jackson says it is so called from the Uva ursi on it turning red in the fall. On the top we boil a dipper of tea for our dinner, spend some hours, having carried up water for the last half mile. Enjoyed the famous view of Winnepisoegee and its islands south-easterly, and Squam Lake on the west, but I was as much attracted at this hour by the wild mountain view on the northward. Chocorua and Sandwich Mountains a dozen miles off seemed a boundary of cultivation on that side, as indeed they are. They are, as it were, the impassable southern barrier of the mountain region, themselves lofty and bare, and filling the whole northerly horizon, with the broad valley of Sandwich between you and them. [3]

The poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), who was a frequent summer guest in Center Harbor, published a poem in 1861 titled, "A Legend of the Lake," that began:

Should you go to Centre Harbor,
As haply you sometime may,
Sailing up the Winnipesaukee
From the hills of Alton Bay,

Into the heart of the highlands,
Into the north wind free,
Through the rising and vanishing islands,
Over the mountain sea,

To the little hamlet,
Lying white in its mountain fold,
Asleep by the lake, and dreaming
A dream that is never told. . .[4]

By the mid-1800s, Lake Winnipesaukee's summer tourist trade boomed as the railroads and steamboats provided much easier access for visitors from Boston and beyond. A popular route was to take the train from Boston to the Weirs or Alton Bay, and then to travel to Center Harbor by such lake steamers as The Lady of the Lake, launched in 1849, or on the grand Mt. Washington, launched in 1872.

Stereograph photos from the mid-1800s and postcards from the early 1900s celebrated the beauty of Center Harbor while bolstering its image as a popular retreat to restore one's health and sense of well-being. Short comments inscribed on such postcards can be especially enlightening. On a card showing the Center Harbor shore mailed to Massachusetts in 1907, the sender noted: "am feeling much better."

After the Senter House burned in 1887, it was immediately replaced by another majestic hotel sited on the south side of Main Street designed by architect, Frederick Stickney. Renamed the Colonial Hotel, it had 91 rooms, modern plumbing, steam heat and broad verandas that offered sweeping vistas of the lake and mountains.

But as had so many other large wooden resort hotels of the era, this grand local landmark also was destroyed by fire in June 1919, leaving an unfortunate gap in the village's streetscape, as well as in its identity and memory landscape. Despite this tragic and painful loss, the Colonial Hotel was rarely mentioned thereafter. Center Harbor village continued to serve as a desirable, but not especially exclusive summer destination, catering mainly to families from the Boston area.

There were some very wealthy summer residents, like Ernest B. Dane, the famous banker from Brookline, Massachusetts who owned a sprawling estate extending to the lakeshore west of the village. But Center Harbor also had long been popular with those from the Boston area seeking modest hotel, guest house or cottage accommodations in the summer. Many seasonal guests returned year after years and informal social networks developed.

Groups of regular Center Harbor summer residents even established off-season social clubs in the Boston area, including one primarily comprised of families that attended the Catholic Church located at the corner of Bean Road and Kelsea Avenue.

Access to Center Harbor by automobile travel became increasingly popular during the twentieth century as the quality of the roads was gradually improved with macadam and asphalt paving.

Advertisements for summer vacation establishments in the Center Harbor area of New Hampshire long dominated the travel sections in Boston newspapers and other periodicals.

Indeed, the Lake Winnipesaukee and White Mountain regions of New Hampshire seemed to inspire an almost mystical reverence by many in the Boston area who longed to escape from the entanglements and expectations of urban society. So it was with my Bostonian family. My parents honeymooned in New Hampshire in 1948, but within two years my father had lost his mother and my mother had lost her father. Yet through these sad events, they shared a dream of leaving Beacon Hill to raise a family near the lakes and mountains in the North.

This opportunity came in 1955 when my father, William Visser left his position in corporate advertising. And with my mother, June, and my year-old younger brother, Charles, we moved to a sprawling old yellow house with a beautiful view on Parade Road in Meredith, New Hampshire. This large homestead with a guest house, carriage barn, and shop belonged to my grandmother, Naomi and her new husband, C. Elmer Smith of Boston, who both moved there as well. Uncle Smitty had a wholesale business of fine gifts and imported leather goods with retail gift shop clients scattered across New England and upstate New York. The plan was that my father would join the business to help boost sales.

Unfortunately, the New Hampshire dream soon soured as it became clear that their "Parade Shop" antique and gift venture would not be sustainable in New Hampshire. By necessity, much was then sold off at auction, including many family heirlooms.

But rather than returning to Massachusetts with the in-laws, my father soon found a sales position with the WLNH radio station in Laconia, and he and my mother rented a small house near Center Harbor.

Tempered now by over a half-century, these are some of my childhood Center Harbor memories illustrated with family photographs, clippings and postcards in my collection.

I still remember how my first impression of arriving in Center Harbor was shaped by a memory of a section of the old road approaching from Meredith being especially rough and bumpy. That foggy recollection lingered through my childhood. But by the time we moved to Center Harbor during the very snowy winter of 1956-57, a new wide-shouldered highway stretch of Route 25 ran from the Meredith line through the magnificent pine forest of Dane's Woods to Longwood Farm. On a new alignment between Center Harbor village and Lake Winnipesaukee, it continued east by-passing the old shore road towards the southern end of Lake Kanasatka in Moultonboro.

It was about a mile east of Center Harbor village near the far end of the by-passed section of the old shore road that my parents rented a white cape. Although still unfinished upstairs, the new house was well-suited for our young family. My father set up his artist studio in the small rough-floored room intended to be a second bathroom upstairs. Soon, his retired widowed father moved in, too. Gramp had the first floor bedroom for several years. My brother and I loved having him with us! He smoked a pipe with fragrant Granger tobacco and ate in the traditional European way with the knife in his right hand and the fork in the left. I also remember some of the Dutch words that he taught me then.

Even though the Lake Shore Drive house was actually located over the town line in Moultonboro (as it was then "modernly" spelled without its formal original "ugh" ending), both our mail and telephone addresses were listed as Center Harbor, and it was to this village that we identified most closely. To there we walked or drove for shopping, swimming, church and entertainment.

Having arrived as beleaguered winter strangers, the spring of 1957 unfolded for our family with a never-ending sequence of pleasant discoveries. It was somewhat like awakening from a nightmarish snarl of chaotic uncertainties to find oneself in a magical place of beauty and wonderfully friendly people! Perhaps I felt as though we were in the "Land of Oz" or in Wonderland, as our bedtime readings from the classic books about the Wizard and Alice's adventures often glided us to sleep nestled in our bunk-beds on Lake Shore Drive.

Indeed, I was at that age when kids have an insatiable thirst to learn. I recall standing in the kitchen asking for the meaning and spelling of the word "Asia." There was also a serious lecture in the dining room when we learned of a word that should never be used to describe other people.

We soon discovered that the community hub of Center Harbor village was then up at the Square, located at the intersection of Main Street and Plymouth Street (Route 25B). Here in 1907, the Kona Fountain had been installed in the center of the three intersecting streets. Also called the Dumaresque Fountain after its donor, it was made with a beautiful round granite horse-watering trough surmounted by a bronze naked Indian boy holding a flapping goose that shot a stream of water high into the air.

Surrounding this magical space clockwise from the west were the Nichols Library, Nichols Variety Store, the Coe Mansion and E. M. Heath's store. On the north side of the Square, Nichols Variety Store housed the United States Post Office in its east wing until around 1959. There, as elsewhere in Center Harbor, a way of life from earlier decades seemed to linger with a certain grace. With her grey hair tied in a tight Victorian bun and standing tall in her laced, black high-heeled shoes and black-seamed stockings, the recently widowed Mrs. Minnie Nichols sternly reigned over her high-ceilinged store from behind its long marble soda fountain counter with brisk efficiency, while her short, white-haired assistant, Miss Gilpatric would be sure to share a few pleasantries with a sweet smile and a twinkle in her eyes.

It was here at Nichols Store that we felt special enjoying an ice cream soda presented with a cherry in a fancy glass. Here we also picked up the Boston Herald (for Dad) and the New York Times (for Mom) before Sunday services at the nearby Center Harbor Congregational Church. Although gasoline could be purchased from the red-and-white pumps by the front curb, rarely would such customers be seen.

RCA Victor radio tubes in all sizes and shapes were displayed in long racks in the back room at Nichols Store. As home radios were then still tube sets, including my grandfather's big Hallicrafter shortwave radio on which we listened to Radio Nederland from Hilversum, Holland, I recall regular excursions with Gramp for replacement radio tubes. On one slow morning drive to Nichols Store, he even showed me how to steer the wheel of his 1948 Ford convertible down Lake Shore Drive.

North of Nichols Store on Plymouth Street stood the flat-roofed, four-story Garnet Inn. This white clapboarded hotel was connected to the earlier gable-roofed section of the inn by a long wooden veranda that would be lined with wooden rocking chairs. During the late 1950s, the Garnet Inn served as a summer home for many musicians with the New Hampshire Music Festival. In the 1960s it became a dormitory for Belknap College, a short-lived school said to be popular with some avoiding the Vietnam War draft. Sadly, both sections of the Garnet Inn were demolished in the 1990s, leaving another discomforting gap in the streetscape and memory landscape of Center Harbor village.

Across from the Kona Fountain on the south side of the Square, E. M. Heath's store ("Dealer in Most Everything") had groceries shelved in open aisles with squeaky oiled wooden floors sprinkled with sawdust. Everett Heath did his own butchering in the small room behind the meat counter wearing a white shirt and dark tie, a long white apron and thick black leather gauntlets on his arms. To the rear and side of the main grocery aisles were rooms stocked with hardware, Benjamin Moore paints, Lee dungarees and plaid flannel work shirts. I still remember the smiling faces of Nancy Kelley and the other wonderful people working at Heath's who then seemed like part of our extended family.

Freeman Brooks (better known as "Brooksie") ran a small barber shop upstairs above Heath's store during the summer months. Perhaps best known for his style and his humor, Brooksie would finish off our "whiffles" by flipping up our hair in front with his comb and running a stick of wax across the tines to hold it in place.

West of E. M. Heath's store was a sloping hayfield on what had been the site of the Colonial Hotel. Opposite this on the north side of the old main street that led to Meredith and Garnet Hill Road was a broad level space between the Nichols Library and the Center Harbor Congregational Church. This sandy area extending in front of the white wooden firehouse of the Center Harbor Fire Department served as a gathering area for many public events, including the cuing up of participants in the annual Memorial Day and Fourth-of-July parades. On July 4, 1957, I was photographed there by a newspaper reporter while being given a scooter ride by Jack Dennis who had dressed up as an "Old Farmer" for the annual town parade. What a thrill! And what a welcome to Center Harbor!

On the west side of this space by the old firehouse stood a long white wooden livery stable that had served the original Senter House, and between that and the Congregational Church was the old Center Harbor bandstand. Shaded by tall American elm trees, this eight-sided white wooden bandstand had a performance floor that was raised about four feet above the ground to provide a space for storing the musicians' folding wooden chairs beneath. This waterproof deck with a flight of stairs on the east side was surrounded by an open railing with tall posts at the eight corners fitted with bare light bulbs that illuminated the musicians' music.

During July and August, the Center Harbor Band offered free outdoor evening concerts here every other week. On alternate weeks, the concerts were performed on the lawn in front of the library in Moultonboro village. Both towns allocated tax revenues to pay a small amount to support the band and the musicians signed a sheet at each concert to receive small payments.

Founded in 1878, the Center Harbor Band had its own one-room "concert hall" hidden in the woods off Plymouth Street behind the Center Harbor Grange Hall. Here in this derelict building amidst a jumble of nineteenth-century dark navy woolen band uniforms, moth-eaten hats, banners, tattered sheet music, rickety wooden chairs, a cast iron potbelly woodstove and a big bass drum, the town band held its annual one-evening rehearsal before the start of the summer concert season.

Center Harbor Band stalwarts were conductor, Charlie Bickford, who led with a battered baton, and Mr. Almon Bushnell on the alto horn, an octogenarian who taught music lessons and recruited many into the band. These included my brother, Charles, who played the trombone, and me on an ancient silver-plated E-flat tuba. Perhaps in anticipation of the band's needs, Mr. Bushnell had taught me how to play a tuba while I was in the sixth grade. After I had learned to sight-read the bass-clef music and to finger the instrument's valves correctly, Mr. Bushnell made arrangements with the heirs of a deceased long-time Center Harbor Band member, Ralph Dodge, to sell me his old tuba. These two women, known to us as the "Dodge sisters," were regularly among the first arrivals at the summer band concerts; and from their smiles and little waves, I knew it gave them great comfort to hear Ralph's tuba being played again. But there was apparently something quirky about the pitch of the old silver-plated tuba, so soon after I started high school, I was encouraged to switch to a large "double B-flat" fiberglass sousaphone.

Leading the brass section of the Center Harbor Band by carrying tunes for all to hear was the lead trumpeter we called Clyde. A kind and careful man, Clyde never spoke above a whisper. Another devoted band member was saxophone player Mossy Smith, who would drape his smoldering half-chewed cigars over the edge of his tattered instrument case while he played some wheezy notes as the pungent smoke helped repel the mosquitoes. Before each concert was over, someone in the brass section would be sure to crack a joke aimed to get Mossy to break into his odd, braying laugh. This would prompt a broad chorus of giggles, snickers and laughs in response, which in turn would get Mossy and everyone else to laugh even harder!

The Center Harbor Band's repertoire consisted mainly of marches by John Philip Sousa and E. E. Bagley, interspersed with turn-of-the-century overtures and twenties hits, plus a few popular Broadway show tunes. Favorites were the Washington Post march, Corinthian Overture, Tiger Rag, Moon River and Everything's Coming Up Roses. The audience, who mostly sat in the comfort of their automobiles to avoid the bugs, applauded by tooting their car horns after each number.

An especially memorable event was the 1966 Fourth-of-July celebration, which coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Center Harbor Fire Department. This provided a fitting opportunity for the town's fire trucks to be joined in a grand parade with a fleet of vintage and contemporary fire trucks from surrounding communities. The celebrations were topped off with an afternoon concert by the Center Harbor Band, performing on the old bandstand between the fire station and the Congregational Church.

The Center Harbor Congregational Church stood beyond the small field west of the bandstand. Its white clapboarded walls and steeple marked a symbolic edge to the village. As a child, my memories of the church were most strongly imprinted with the characters of three people: Gertrude Martin, the ebullient organist whose musical flair brought a theatrical dimension to Sunday services; Reverend Wesley Burwell, the affable, but at times forgetful minister who seemed to rely on Gertrude Martin's prompts; and Mrs. Keith Matheson, whose strong contralto voice led the choir and congregation in fellowship song. But we also knew that Mrs. Matheson, who as the friendly head teller at the Meredith Village Savings Bank, maintained a watchful eye on our savings. She later became a friend of my mother when they worked together as insurance underwriters at the Clyde B. Foss Agency in Moultonboro.

After a few years of regular Sunday school attendance in the basement of the church, a Holy Bible with Helps was presented to me in front of the entire congregation in June 1960 by Eugene L. Manville, the superintendent of the Center Harbor Congregational Church School. My last time there was over two decades ago when we sang, "Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave" at my father's funeral surrounded by the comfort of many long-time family friends from Center Harbor and beyond.

But my closest "hands-on" experience with the Center Harbor Congregational Church came in 1982 after a heavy winter snow deformed its roof structure, causing the east eaves soffit to pull away from the top of the east wall leaving a gap of several inches. The upstairs sanctuary of the 1837 Greek Revival style church has a wide ceiling span, thus there were serious concerns that if the roof trusses failed, all might collapse. And so with a crew of timber-framing carpenters from Sandwich, I was hired to assist in repairing the church. After removing the shingles and roofing boards along the east eaves, it was discovered that several of the 12-by-12 inch rafters had slipped out several inches because pegs had never been inserted into the holes at the mortise joints at the ends of the cross ties! After several hours of jacking up the ridge and using "come-along" winches to pull the rafters back, we were able to install new oak pegs in the empty holes in the mortise-and-tenon joints. Soon the roof boards and shingles were replaced leaving little evidence of the repair work.

But haunted by the mystery of the very curious omission of those rafter framing pegs, some historical research revealed that during the construction of the church there had been a major dispute. By one account, the principal benefactor, Mr. Coe, a stanch abolitionist and leading local 19th-century figure whose mansion stands just east of the Square, had threatened to replace the work crew unless the consumption of rum was curtailed on the job. This brought about a work stoppage. But when a new crew arrived, a settlement was reached and construction continued. I have long wondered whether this all happened when the church roof was being framed!

West of the Congregational Church was Dyer's Twin Gates Manor nursing home and their "Dybros House of Jewelry" shop in the attached carriage barn. There was something magical about stepping inside Dybros gift shop!

I remember as a child being curious about the history of the beautiful old cut granite stone wall that curved beneath the elms along the south side of Main Street. What an grand entrance to Center Harbor village! It was a delight to later discover that photographs of this from over a century ago had been saved by the U.S. Library of Congress. Beyond, the street climbed west up Garnet Hill passing the homes of the Burwell and Geddes families that we knew from Sunday school.

But more often we took the fork that curved back to Route 25 which headed west towards Meredith, passing the fancy Victorian homes before coming the Longwood Dairy Bar. Having lunch there, it was always a fun treat to sit on the spinning stools at the dairy bar, especially when Dick and "Jerry" Tower swiftly prepared our meals there in the early 1960s. Later the Towers converted their old barn on the Lee Road in Moultonboro into the popular Woodshed Restaurant.

But no visit to the Longwood Dairy Bar would be complete without glimpsing into the huge gambrel-roofed barn next door or watching the herd of cows that grazed in the pasture down by the lake that provided our fresh whole milk from Clark's Dairy.

East of Center Harbor village's main intersection at the Square, a narrow street ran south down the hill beside E. M. Heath's store, crossing Route 25 near the Ulm family's Center Harbor Sport Shop, then passing by a cluster of summer cottages and a bathhouse to the Center Harbor town beach and docks at the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. The long white public bathhouse had an open shallow porch in front of a row of about a half dozen changing rooms with green, ill-fitting doors. Inside, these dark dingy rooms had smelly wooden floors and tongue-and-groove board partitions decorated with rude carvings, words and initials. We were frequently warned to not step on the dirty floors with our bare feet. The end rooms of the bathhouse had one-holed privies and a storage space.

From what was then a narrow town beach next to the bathhouse (a fence excluded the public from venturing to the neighboring brick boathouse), one could swim out to a wooden raft supported by steel barrels. A few large rocks in deep water provided convenient waist-level perches. It was here that we learned to swim at an early age through a program run by the local Red Cross, practicing the dog-paddle, side-stroke, crawl, Australian crawl (my favorite), breast-stroke, two types of back-strokes and treading water in a range of weather conditions. Accompanied by my mother and brother, we walked the mile from our home on Lake Shore Drive to the Center Harbor beach several times a week for these summer swimming lessons. Often we went barefoot, pulling along our matching red Radio Flyer wagons filled with beach towels, swimming suits and lunches, and by the end of the summer, the soles of our feet were as tough as leather!

One very hot afternoon, Randy and Jimmy Huston's cheerful mother gave us all a ride to the Center Harbor beach in her 1937 Plymouth four-door sedan. We loved her big green car with its separate headlights that looked like strange melon eyes and its hump-backed trunk. When we parked at the beach, we placed our crayons on the shelf behind the rear seat. But on our return from swimming, we were dismayed to find that all the crayons had melted into the "mole fur" upholstery making a colorful sticky soup of wax that became a permanent feature of the car's decor.

In front, south of the Center Harbor beach, a few small wooden piers provided berths for local and visiting boats. At the left was an open wooden pavilion with benches. Here, passengers and onlookers could sit in the shade while waiting for the arrival of the 205-foot M.V. Mount Washington that docked at the main long wooden pier daily at 9:45 AM and 2:45 PM through the summer months.

With a long blast from its loud horn, The Mount would enter Center Harbor Bay through the distant narrows by Mile Island. Within minutes the large white ship would approach the dock. Slowed by a mighty surge of its reversed propellers, deckhands tossed monkey-fisted heaving lines ashore and the ship's starboard gunwale would screech against the wooden pilings as heavy manila ropes were wrestled in place onto the huge docking cleats. Meanwhile, teenagers dove for coins tossed into the water by passengers from decks high above. If successful, the divers would surface, yell, and wave their catches before slipping the silver treasures inside their cheeks which soon bulged like squirrels, a practice that our parents sternly warned us never to do.

After disgorging each crowd of summer people, a sharp toot of The Mount's horn would announce its departure. The gangplank would be heaved back onto the splintery dock with a slap, and with a rush of swirling water, the ship would swing its stern out and to the left, pause a moment, and then surge ahead to resume its seventy-two-mile excursion around Lake Winnipesaukee.

Center Harbor was the off-season berth of The Mount, along with the smaller mail boat Sophie C, and later the Doris E excursion boat. Each spring after the ice melted, The Mount was pulled from the water for painting the hull and other maintenance on a large steel cradle behind the ship company's long wooden maintenance shed near Don Carr's house. From his oil-stained grey shirt and pants, it was easy to remember that Don Carr served as the chief engineer on The Mount.

Although the 1954 widening of Route 25 from the Meridith line to Lake Kanasatka relieved congestion at the Square, as this highway served as a main automobile and truck route connecting the Boston area with New Hampshire's White Mountains, it created a tricky a six-way intersection east of the village at the Center Harbor–Moultonboro town line.

Here, Route 25 was met by Main Street that connected to the village square and by Bean Road that came down from Center Sandwich. Nestled in the shade beneath tall elm trees at the northeast corner of Bean Road and Route 25 was Winn's Lodge, a summer guest house.

Several large white wooden houses lined the north side of Main Street. I recall when I was quite young walking up the concrete sidewalk by one these big houses on a hot summer morning and hearing the loud voice of Tommy Hughes' mother calling to him out from an upstairs window.

But there was little activity then at the elegant Coe Mansion that was capped with a cute belvedere. Set next to Nichols Store behind its fancy white wooden fence, the mansion's elegant gardens gradually became overgrown. One day my mother had a call from a local women's club, inviting her to a gathering at the Coe Mansion to retrieve some perennial plants before it was transferred to Belknap College. She returned with some magnificent pink peonies that flourished with huge June blossoms for many years. The legacy of these transplanted memories continues with one of the peony off-springs still growing in my Vermont garden!

Along the stretch of Bean Road from the corner of Route 25 north to Kelsea Avenue and the Catholic Church, the center line had the odd distinction of marking not just the town boundary between Center Harbor and Moultonboro, but also of being the line between Belknap County and Carroll County. During the busy summer months this seemed to matter little, but when the school year started, this road divided the village socially. School children living west of Bean Road could walk to the Center Harbor school, but those of us to the east were bussed five miles to the Moultonboro Central School in Moultonboro village. As a result, we established fewer friendships with those we knew from summers in Center Harbor, and instead relied more on social visits with our Moultonboro schoolmates that were typically arranged by our parents and were made by car.

Opposite Bean Road on the south side of the six-way intersection stood the large two-story gable-front building with apartments upstairs that was converted to house the Center Harbor Post Office around 1959. Along its west side, a small dirt lane led down to some boathouses on the lake by Don Carr's house and from there, a narrow path wound around by The Mount's cradle to the beach. We often followed this route as it was a convenient shortcut that avoided the need to hike along busy Route 25, but we also learned to watch out for big, black water-snakes along the grassy path!

At the southeast corner of the intersection of Route 25, the old "Shore Road," re-named Lake Shore Drive (and later known just by its initials in the Belknap College years), branched off just over the town line in Moultonboro. East of the post office was Fred Robbin's store, a dimly lit, low-slung roadside emporium where most bought fishing licenses and bait or beer and cigarettes. It was in front of Robbin's Store that while parked in the family car I overheard my father tell an acquaintance that Gramp had suffered a "shock" the night before and had been taken by ambulance to the hospital. I recall then wondering why my father had called it a shock? Was he using a euphemism for stroke, a word perhaps too painful to utter on that cold winter morning?

Although we rarely shopped at Robbin's Store in the summer, on hot afternoons after swimming we would often stop next door at Felix's Market for a frozen Popsicle, a Fudgie or a "chocolate-covered" ice cream on a stick. This small modern convenience store later became Anderson's Bakery.

As with many other towns in the Lakes Region and the White Mountains, the start of the summer season brought to Center Harbor a swift and dramatic transformation from a quiet place where most people knew each other into a bustling tourist destination with throngs of fun-seeking summer people interspersed by an endless passing flow of nameless strangers.

The sharp contrast between the anonymous transient traffic speeding along Route 25 with its hot wide asphalt shoulders and the peaceful pedestrian community that stretched along the old stagecoach route that had been by-passed in the early 1950s was most obvious when one would walk east along the concrete sidewalk that ran about a quarter of a mile on the south side of Lake Shore Drive. Between this narrow shady street and the Big Lake were large and small summer cottages with porches. Some were grouped and painted in matching color schemes. Those that were operated as tourist cabins and guest houses had painted signs in front. During July and August, boards proclaiming "No Vacancy" would dangle beneath almost every one of those signs.

Several summer cottages were owned by extended families. Everyone knew the Rooney clan with their bright blue eyes, freckles and big smiles. Few in the village missed the story about the time that Mr. Rooney, a retired school teacher, took an unexpected dip in the lake while attempting to step aboard a rowboat at the town docks. He took it all in great humor and loved to tell everyone what had happened.

Kathy Lambert and her mother lived just beyond the Rooney place. Mrs. Lambert had a flock of hens and sold eggs to neighbors.

But some summer people preferred seclusion, like the Chiarello family whose long black Cadillacs with New York plates would quietly disappear behind the tall white picket fence and dense privet hedge that screened their beautiful private lake-front compound. I recall catching occasional glimpses of a boy about my age there when we passed by on our morning walks to the beach. Although we were never introduced as kids, it came as a wonderful surprise when he contacted me several years ago after having read an earlier version of this piece and shared more fascinating stories about his Center Harbor memories! What a treat it was to connect after all these years!

A few buildings stood on the north side of Lake Shore Drive away from the lake. The first big old house belonged to the Staples family. Judy Staples, who was then probably in her teens, was one of our favorite babysitters when our parents went out for evening events. She had a wonderful way of reading us stories that made these evenings quite special.

Standing opposite what would become the famous White Diamond Inn, Moulton's Garage with its large hinged garage doors on the left and an office on the right looked as though it had once been a livery stable. The Moulton family lived upstairs in this weathered two-story wooden building. Their son, Calvin, who was a few years older than me impressed us on the basketball court at the Moultonboro grade school. Surrounded by an overgrown lawn, a vacant gable-roofed house painted white with a large porch stood just east of Moulton's Garage.

About halfway along Lake Shore Drive between the village and our house was Caggiano's Oak Corner House, a summer inn with cottages on the lake. Here, a narrow dirt road led to more lake-front cottages on First Neck. One large white summer house on First Neck was surrounded by a wrap-around porch and a few small cottages. For several years in the 1960s, our family moored our 1930s Winabout sailboat there. The high point of one hot summer afternoon was the sound of a steam whistle marking the passage of the Anna E. George, an old white and red-trimmed wooden steamboat towing a skiff full of wood to fuel its long trip back to its home berth at Lee's Mills at the northern tip of Moultonboro Bay.

Mrs. Edwards and her young adult son, Jan, lived across from the Oak Corner House. Jan had two beagles that he used for rabbit hunting and a delightful HO-scale model railroad. After acquiring some spare vintage HO supplies from Jan, my father soon built for us the "Kanasatka Logging Railroad" at HO-scale. It was great indoor winter fun to work on landscaping the terrain carved from Homosote layers and to watch the miniature engines haul their loads around the winding loops of electrified track!

Just beyond the Oak Corner House, Lake Shore Drive became a shady narrow dirt road that passed by Chet and Addie Wilder's white house. Gruff-voiced Chet was one of Moultonboro's three policemen, along with Harold Tilton, husband of our 5th grade schoolteacher Irma Tilton, and Harry Perkins, husband of our 2nd grade teacher Clara Perkins. Addie was influential in local politics.

Next door to the Wilders' was the Blackey place, a large white house with a grand, curving two-story staircase inside. And shaded under elms on the north side of the street was a dark-shingled bungalow that belonged to "Doc" Mallard. He served as the town road agent for the west side of Moultonboro and was proprietor of Doc's Restaurant located at Green's Corner several miles east on Route 25 where we sometimes dined on holidays.

Beyond "Doc" Mallard's on the north side of Lake Shore Drive was an abandoned gable-fronted house that we assumed must be haunted. A red barn stood opposite. The old house had partially collapsed, and concerned that the barn would fall next, I borrowed my father's camera to record the view shown here. Behind this old barn, an over-grown field stretched down to an inlet of Lake Winnipesaukee that we called Blackey's Cove. East of the red barn stood a well-kept, but usually vacant yellow summer house with "Posted: No Trespassing" signs prominently displayed on the front porch.

Farther along on the south side of Lake Shore Drive were two trim white capes owned by retired couples. Nestled low beneath tall pines, the first belonged to General and Helen Sturtevant Matthews, our landlords, and the second to Leon and Virginia Sturtevant. Mrs. Matthews was a local historian who wrote a book about the history of Moultonboro. As our neighbors, the Sturtevants occasionally invited us in for visits with treats of cookies and to hear beautiful music "broadcast from the summit of Mt. Washington" playing on Leon's new FM radio. They also had a cozy cottage beneath pine trees on the lake cove that was accessed by a narrow dirt road west of their house.

Between the Sturtevant's place and our house was a scraggy boulder-strewn field overgrown with fragrant sweet-fern, spiny hawthorn shrubs and small pitchy white pines. It was here that we learned to ski and to snowshoe. Yet it was also from this field that we anxiously watched Sputnik pass swiftly through the night sky far aloft. With tense adult whispers about the Soviets and civil defense exercises in grade school, there seemed to be an unspoken assumption then that nuclear war would soon destroy all that we knew.

Except for the Sunday newspapers and morning radio broadcasts of the Carl DeSuze Show on WBZ Boston, the outside world seemed far away, but this changed when our first black & white Philco television set arrived. I remember the first time we saw the President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, on television. At first we only could watch channel 8, the ABC affiliate broadcasting from Mount Washington, but with the installation of a large antenna, we also could get snowy, but watchable signals from channels 4 and 5 in Boston and channel 9 in Manchester. A few years later we were awoken one morning by my mother who told us the new president was not going to be the Mr. Nixon that most in town were supporting, but instead it would be another very good man.

A frequent yard guest (and occasional pest) was an enthusiastic, long-haired, long-tongued neighborhood mutt we called "Fluffy," who may have belonged to the Youngs who lived across the road.

Soon we had a puppy of our own that we named "Jip" after the dog in one of first sentences I learned in my first grade reader, "See Jip run." But within a year or so, Jip had grown into a gangly foxhound with a sprightly independence that was his undoing the day he ran off and was hit by a car down on Route 25. Next came "Skip," a well-behaved beagle that we loved deeply.

But the true master of our household was Alfie, whose unwavering affection and sharp claws garnered our utmost respect for which we granted him W. O. C. status as our "Wise Old Cat."

Alfie was indeed quite old, and after he died instantly after jumping down onto the kitchen floor one evening, we soon sought a replacement. After hearing that the Hambrooks in East Sandwich had a new litter, we went to their place on Vittum Hill Road to retrieve a kitten. It turned out that they were a litter of barn cats, and after some chasing around under their barn, we finally caught a black and white male, that we first named "Walt." But we soon discovered that Walt had a very different character than Alfie. Walt was short-tempered, and if not swinging with his claws, he would be sure to bite at the slightest provocation. Thus we learned to respect Walt's wishes and to generally let him be. Perhaps due to his jumpy nature, his name later morphed to "Cricket," but his attitude never changed.

Our family life in this home on Lake Shore Drive had a regular cadence of predictability and variety. As we were on an eight-party line, the black rotary-dial telephone on the living room table rang throughout the day. We learned to listen carefully for our own two-long ring.

My mother served as the Moultonboro correspondent for the Meredith News, taking care to avoid including any news from Center Harbor that might be reported by W. Irving Brown, the official Center Harbor correspondent! Each week after gathering the news tidbits by phone, she typed out her stories with carbon paper between the two sheets, smoothly snapping with all fingers on the keys of the large black Underwood typewriter that had belonged to her late father, an Army colonel and business consultant of whom little was spoken except for casual references to his government work in Africa and his chronic health problems from being gassed in France during the First World War.

For my brother and me, our closest same-aged playmates were Randy and Jimmy Huston, who lived on Route 25 east of Green's Corner between the Williams place and Stewart and Peg Lamprey's home where my friend George lived with his older sister and grandmother, Mrs. Watson. Randy and Jimmy's father, Bob was an expert mason and an avid photographer, and their mother, Evelyn had a wonderful enthusiastic spirit wrapped in a warm Georgia accent. Visits to the Hustons were fun, especially when playing in the basement of their modern house with their big S-gauge Lionel train set or twirling the huge old grindstone to sharpen some metal.

In addition to sharing summer swims at the Center Harbor beach, we also enjoyed winter sports with Randy and Jimmy and George and other kids from Moultonboro, Sandwich, Center Harbor and Meredith by learning to ski at an early age at the Red Hill Outing Club located on Sheridan Road near Moultonboro Falls. Through mastering the challenges of skiing at Red Hill under the instruction of the ski school run by Olympians Penny Pitou and Egon Zimmerman, many of us later became varsity skiers helping to lead our high school ski team to state championships.

Weekends also provided opportunities for other adventures. In the midst of the winter, this would include meandering out on the ice at the Center Harbor town dock. But we would be carefully not to get to close to the Mount as a ring of open water would usually surround the hull that was securely tied to the wharf.

Another favorite family destination was the nearby town of Sandwich. Whether climbing Mount Israel from Mead Base or exploring Bennett Street and Whiteface Intervale, there seemed to be a deep understanding that something was quite special and almost mystical about Sandwich. Indeed my feeling about the place was indelibly shaped by a first impression. Normally our routine travels to the north only went as far as the town dump on Route 109 a few miles north of Moultonboro Village. But one Saturday morning we all loaded into Uncle John's big Plymouth station wagon for an expedition to Sandwich. I recall riding up Route 109, passing the dump, and winding down through Dead Man's Curve. The road then changed from tar to dirt, and as we started up the gradual ascent up toward Sandwich Lower Corner, a big black bear suddenly darted out from the right and casually walked across the way! Another time my father returned from fly-fishing with a fantastic story about a twilight encounter with a moose by the Whiteface River.

An oft-told story was about when Jip stole the butter. It was on a very hot summer evening that we ventured up to Beede Falls off the Sandwich Notch Road for a picnic. Although my brother and I were tempted to go for a quick swim, Mother forbade it, citing concerns that we might catch polio from the Bearcamp River water. So we waded instead, even venturing beneath the cascade that flowed of the huge granite ledge. But just as the food preparations began, our sprightly foxhound Jip, grabbed the only stick of butter and high-tailed it away into the woods, leaving dinner plans upended!

And so it seemed that Sandwich came to be regarded as a special place and such stories became family lore. This feeling was a quality understood, but not openly discussed, except for occasional references to it being "God's Country" by our Uncle John. And so we made short pilgrimages there in all seasons, often memorialized with photographs and art, such as a large watercolor of Whiteface Intervale in autumn splendor painted by my father in the late 1950s.

As we were on the main Star Route between Center Harbor and Moultonboro, our mail on Lake Shore Drive was delivered by Gene Manville (the Sunday school superintendent) twice daily. Reggie, the milkman from Clark's Dairy in Center Harbor, came twice weekly. If we were not to be at home on a delivery day, my mother would just leave a note and Reggie would come into the kitchen through the back porch door to leave the appropriate number of cream-topped glass quart milk bottles in the refrigerator. It was Reggie's brother, "Ot" Stokes from Sandwich, who drove the old school bus owned by Frank McIntire, the Moultonboro town meeting moderator who lived on Bean Road.

Other vendors included Walter Nave, a lumberjack-farmer we called "Eggie," whose face was marked by a diagonal scar from a chainsaw accident, as well as the occasional bread man, fish man, and various other traveling salespeople offering brushes, encyclopedias and frozen foods. Once after making a big show of how powerful was his machine, a vacuum cleaner salesman admonished my mother to "always clean the edges first and then the rest will be easy!" But we kept using the silvery gray 1948 Lewyt canister vacuum cleaner weekly around the house for another decade or so until it became our shop vac for boat repair projects.

Mother had a black Singer sewing machine that she used for making many of her clothes, as well as sport-shirts for the rest of us, but "no pants" we were told, except for patches and adjusting cuffs. My brother and I learned at a very young age that her sewing machine was not a toy as one of us had our finger pierced with the needle! Mom had a large collection of Butterick patterns that followed the fashion trends of the 1950s and '60s. It seemed she always had at least one sewing project underway. But her main hobby was making rugs, especially braided rugs, which ranged in size from small scatter rugs to a huge oval for the dining room that took at least a year to complete. She made the rugs from strips of heavy woolen fabrics procured from various remnant shops in the region. Her favorite shop was in downtown Laconia just over the bridge on Union Avenue where she regularly searched through the large tables covered with bolts of leftover odds and ends while chatting with the friendly staff. Another small remnant shop was tucked into the back of one of the old factory buildings off Mill Street. To get there, I recall that we had to climb some stairs and take a covered bridge over an alley.

On most Saturday mornings our whole family went to downtown Laconia in our Ford station wagon, which my father parked in the alley behind his WLNH office that was located on the second floor of the Masonic Temple building between the Tavern and the Colonial Theater on Main Street.

Downtown Laconia was always busy and fun! We seemed to know almost all the shop keepers, having been introduced regularly to them by my father, who was by then the WLNH sales manager.

After helping our mother with some grocery shopping at the old A&P supermarket on Pleasant Street, our weekly downtown Laconia routine included chatting with Mrs. Roberts at the Modern Appliance Store, getting some fresh jelly donuts at Laflamme's Bakery, saying "Hi!" to "Hy" Greenlaw at Greenlaw's Music Store, trying on some shoes at Melnick's, wandering through the grand old O'Shea's Department Store with its amazing pneumatic piping system that would deliver payments up to the cashier on the balcony with a swoosh, poking through the jumble of sporting goods with gravel-voiced Moe Levine and his helpful wife Beulah at Kelly's Army-Navy Store, and surveying the toy departments in Woolworth's and J J Newberry's. Then we would return to the radio station.

The wait for my father to finish work on Saturdays always seemed to pass quickly as we were regularly entertained by various radio news announcers, disc jockeys and local celebrities. Some of the more memorable of these WLNH personalities were Esther Peters and T.J. Martin. The host of the popular "Around Town" talk show, Esther Peters seemed to know everything about everybody. We especially enjoyed chatting with Esther, whose unforgettable dusky voice and wonderfully warm and engaging character we greatly respected. T.J. Martin was a charismatic disk jockey with a big toothy smile. His antics provided a regular flow of evening kitchen gossip.

We also would be greeted by Dad's boss, Arthur "Roxy" Rothafel, as well as by program manager and sportscaster, Jim Westhall, who with his wife Vera and her mother, managed a beautiful lakefront guest house and cottages called the "Whispering Pines" on Paugus Bay.

Occasionally we would even be invited into the soundproof WLNH studio and control room. Red lights in the hallways would glow whenever a broadcast announcer, such as the youthful Neal Seavey, went live on the air facing the huge console of dials, switches and turntables. We often sat around a table in the adjoining studio that offered a direct view over the console through a large plate-glass window.

We would also be fascinated by the noisy Teletype machine in a small closet across the hall from the WLNH newsroom that would continuously type out the latest UPI news in all caps on a long roll of yellowish paper. If it were a news bulletin, bells would ring and someone would run to rip the story from the Teletype and then rush it to the announcer.

But Saturdays were also wash days with loads of laundry hauled in large wicker baskets to the laundromat by the Laconia liquor store. After returning home to Center Harbor, our house was then often filled with delightful matinée radio broadcasts from the New York Metropolitan Opera. As my mother sang along while finishing the weekly ironing in the kitchen, I secretly absorbed the magic of Verdi and Puccini while sequestered in a dark cranny behind our infrequently used, tall-legged wringer washing machine.

Radio was a big part of our life then. My mother's sister, our Aunty Robin, who was known for her acting in Boston theaters and in summer stock at St. Michael's Playhouse in Winooski, Vermont had a morning children's radio show on WHDH in Boston in the 1950s. It was a thrill when she once invited me to join her in the radio studio for a holiday broadcast! Indeed most Thanksgivings and Christmases were celebrated with our aunts and uncles and grandparents in Hingham and Cohasset, Massachusetts. The drive from Center Harbor to the South Shore would seem like an expedition before the interstate highways were built. Depending which routes were taken, memorable landmarks along the way included the Lee traffic circle, the Mystic River Bridge, the wholesale market by Faneuil Hall, Wollaston Beach and the Quincy shipyard. We also sometimes went to Boston on weekends, staying at the Statler Hilton Hotel with shopping at Filenes and Jordan Marsh, lunching at the Union Oyster House and dining at the Athens Olympia restaurant, which as the family favorite was usually just called "The Greeks," and where the manager would greet us like old friends.

From my first day of school in 1957 thorough the next four years living on Lake Shore Drive, I remember enjoying the school bus rides to Moultonboro Central School. There was always some action on that "Center Harbor side" school bus driven by "Ot" Stokes, including a fight or two between some eighth graders! I remember how Jon Molberg would often have saved me a seat when it stopped in front of our house. The Molberg family were among the first to board from their old farm on the back side of Red Hill where they raised sled dogs and where we picked apples a few times. One morning Jon showed me a bottle of soda they had made at home, but when he offered a sip and opened the cap, the bus hit a bump and we were sprayed with a sticky sweet splash!

Located on Route 25 just west of Moultonboro village, Moultonboro Central School was an impressive modern brick building that had opened in the early 1950s with four classrooms and a large assembly hall that doubled as a basketball court, as well as a place for town meetings and other community events. But with twenty kids, our Baby Boom class was the largest ever to enroll, and soon there was talk of the need to add more classrooms for the eight grades. Thus within several years, two more large classrooms, a smaller classroom and offices were added on the east end. A large stage and changing rooms and showers below were constructed on the west end of the Moultonboro Central School. Lunches were served in the basement cafeteria. Although we usually brought our lunch from home packed in a metal lunch box, sometimes we had a hot lunch prepared by the school cook, Leila Gillooly, who also ran the Hi There Cafe in Moultonboro village. The special dessert treat for those who asked was a greasy slice of brown wheat bread fried in leftover fat. Other school cooks were Martha Oliver and Hazel Straw. Next to the kitchen, the school janitor, Roy Foss, had his store room. Roy was a kind older man who could be counted on to calmly sit and listen to whatever problems any of us had to share.

After an enjoyable first grade with the supportive Fannie Whitehouse, the tone of patient instruction changed sharply in 1958 in the second grade with Clara Perkins in charge. Order and discipline were mandated from the start! Punishments were swift with even the slightest infractions enforced with a snap from her long wooden ruler. One enthusiastic classmate who kept talking after Mrs. Perkins issued the "BE STILL!" command was even dragged into the hallway and bound to a wooden sidearm desk with a thick gauze gag across his mouth for all to see at the next recess break! Indeed we soon found that the most challenging criteria on the quarterly report cards was the "listens and follows instructions" grade. But the year passed quickly, and for the third and fourth grades, Mrs. Dorothy Kaffel seemed to have a knack for bringing out the best in everyone!

By 1959, a range of improvements had been made to our rented house on Lake Shore Drive, including hanging shutters by the front windows. But the most obvious landscaping change came with the installation of an antique split-rail fence to separate the front yard from the street. The fence came from Hingham, Massachusetts where my father's brother, our Uncle John, salvaged it from the overgrown, brier-infested woodlot that he and my father co-owned off Jones Street. Made from cedar, the twisty rails and posts with holes were well-weathered and covered with lichen and moss. These had been transported to New Hampshire in several loads in Uncle John's and Aunt Ginny's big Plymouth station wagon. After the fence was installed, morning glories were planted by each post, which twined about with beautiful blue late season flowers.

Across the street from our house, a short road headed up the hill. This had been a section of the old Glidden Road that led to the west shore of Lake Kanasatka, but with the construction of the Route 25 highway stretch bypassing Lake Shore Drive, the old road segment terminated at Mr. and Mrs. Hap Bergren's place at the summit with a sharp cliff of blasted ledge beyond. One afternoon after hearing an enormous boom, we ran up this hill to see that a car had crashed into the cliff. As smoke arose and sirens approached, we were hastily taken home. No one would discuss what had happened.

It was down the Bergren's hill that I learned to ride a bike. As a surprise birthday gift, I was presented with a big red bicycle. Although it was used and its provenance was not mentioned, I loved this grand old bike! My father had been working on it in secret for weeks in the basement and the new red paint was still fresh. It had fat balloon tires on 26-inch rims, a big seat and a wide handlebars, unlike anything that my other friends rode. I felt like a cowboy riding a big western steer! And it could go anywhere. As a one-speed, hills were crested by standing and pumping on the pedals. Stops could be quick, even with a squeal, by back-pedaling with its New Departure coaster brake.

But back to the hill! Having never ridden a bike, I was given lessons on that first morning. We started with my father holding the saddle and instructing me how to turn the front wheel to maintain balance. After a few trials and short glides, it seemed that I had learned the task. So I was instructed to take the bike up the hill towards the Bergren's to get a good head start. Assured that Lake Shore Drive was clear, off I went with everyone watching from the front lawn. Unfortunately, I had not yet mastered how to turn, so despite lots of yells, I smashed head-on into the split-rail fence, breaking both rails and landing in a heap on the lawn. All was taken in good humor; I was uninjured; and the fence was soon mended.

Fortunately, our place on Lake Shore Drive was an easy stop for those traveling to Center Harbor for groceries and other needs, so we often hosted guests. The family rule was that we could invite others to visit us, but it was inappropriate for us to invite ourselves to visit someone else. I recall explaining this politely to our visiting Aunt Ginny one weekend when she asked if we children might like to go somewhere to play with some friends. She took my response in good humor and we soon had a party!

But our family parties on Lake Shore Drive were quite unlike a late summer weekend gathering we attended at Grace Metalious' home in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. The author of the scandalous best-selling novel, Peyton Place, Grace was by then a nationally-known celebrity as movie versions of Peyton Place and the Return To Peyton Place sequel had been released. Usually my brother and I would have quiet evenings with a babysitter when our parents went out to such events, but this time our whole family was invited.

I remember arriving at Grace's long house with its deep front lawn set well back from a rural road in Gilmanton. There was a driveway and a wooded hill rising steeply on the right. What may have been a birthday party for Grace had apparently been arranged by her partner, T.J. Martin, the WLNH radio station disk-jockey. T.J. sported trendy clothes and shiny dark hair. He was very friendly and greeted my brother and me by name.

Grace's party was held on the rear patio of her L-shaped house. We were soon introduced to Grace as she sat smoking and drinking at a large table covered with food, beverages and gifts. She was instantly recognizable with her dark hair and full figure dressed in a very casual outfit. Grace was quite cordial chatting with us and introducing us to her kids between puffs and refilling her glass from the large bottles of liquor and soft drinks on the table.

But after a few minutes, a dark handgun suddenly appeared, and T.J. and two or three other laughing men started firing bullets at trees on the side hill as an informal game of target practice. After a few gunshots, Grace screamed at T.J. to stop shooting as their large dog was running loose in the woods, which he did.

My brother and I were rushed into Grace's house, but then looking out from the front door, we could see other guests arriving. Cars had parked along the road in front of the house and one pulled onto the lawn. As soon as it stopped, a loud-mouthed WLNH salesman, possibly Arthur Clark, yelled out, "Hey, Grace, look what we have for you!" With a quick turn, he pulled a large white duck from the car. He held it up high over his head as it flapped its broad wings into the setting sun.

Along with Grace's children, my brother and I were soon invited by a young woman to play with the big white duck, which had been brought inside to swim in the bathtub of the green-tiled bathroom in the bedroom ell of the house. All went well with the duck in the bathtub at first, but soon we all noticed that it was leaving lots of brown poop in the water, so we were taken out of the bathroom.

By now it was getting dark, so my mother came to help bundle my brother and me into the big bed in Grace's large master bedroom in the front corner of the house. The bedroom had heavy curtains and soft wall-to-wall carpeting. We soon fell asleep and I faintly remember later being led to our station wagon for the long drive back home to Center Harbor.

A small brook running into Blackey's Cove from Lake Kanasatka passed through the woods behind our house on Lake Shore Drive. Although no paths led directly to the brook, my brother and I used a towering white birch tree with a smooth white trunk that looked like an ocean liner's funnel as our landmark to guide us through the dense forest beyond an old sandpit and overgrown fields. A faint path did run along the edge of the brook, which at times was littered with smelly carcasses of speared sucker fish.

It has just come as a wonderful surprise to learn about those smelly fish through correspondence with Jad Dennis, whose father was Jack Dennis, the "Old Farmer" who welcomed me to Center Harbor with the afore mentioned scooter ride in 1957. According Jad, as teenagers then, he and his friend Irad Young, who lived across the street from us on Lake Shore Drive, speared those sucker fish! And he often dove for change at the pier when the Mount docked! Jad also owned a beautiful old gaff-rigged catboat that I remember seeing as a kid near the boathouse by Don Carr's place. Wow! What a delight to connect after all these years!

The brook behind our house flowed beneath Route 25 just beyond the east end of Lake Shore Drive after spilling over a dam on Lake Kanasatka near the Old Red Mill House. Although this small lake was just a short walk from our house, the public access area by Route 25 was not pleasant. The constant noise of high-speed highway traffic and the rough gravel terrain that looked like a left-over construction site attracted few but dedicated anglers who took their boats out to fish far from shore. And since the small sunfish that lurked in the shallows were not considered edible, there was little interest in fishing there with worms for bait. The bottom was also quite mucky, so we never thought of going there to swim, especially after Dad had the unfortunate experience of stepping on a dead horn-pout that seriously infected his foot! Nevertheless, the Lake Kanasatka boat landing did serve as a curious place to search for tossed returnable soda bottles and to play with rusty tin cans and mud.

We did, however, moor our first sailboat, an old thirteen-foot wooden Old Town White Cap lapstrake sloop with cotton sails, in the cove of Lake Kanasatka next to the Old Red Mill House. It was on a Saturday afternoon late in the winter of 1959 that my father acquired it from a used boat and outdoor equipment dealer in Melvin Village. We traveled to the storage barn in the dealer's light brownish Willys Jeep Wagon. As my father and the man from Melvin Village poked at the boat that was stored amidst many other craft on the second floor of what looked like an old poultry barn, there was an enormous roar and a big crash. My brother and I ran to look out the window on the sunny side and saw that a huge pile of snow had slid off the barn roof, landing square atop the Jeep! We all rushed outside to discover that the snow had seriously dented in Jeep's roof, so the man crawled inside, laid on his back on the rear seat, and with his feet, he pushed up to pop the roof back in shape! When all the excitement calmed down, my father told him that they had a deal.

But after the old sailboat was delivered to our driveway on Lake Shore Drive, it became more clear how poor was its condition, and so its restoration became a major family project. New canvas was needed for the deck, which my mother helped procure.

To get the special white oak needed for the replacement ribs, arrangements were made with the local lumberman, Chester Davis to have him saw some for us at his sawmill. This was located on Route 25 east of Green's Corner where Red Hill Road branched north before heading west by the house of my schoolmate, Randy Davis towards Red Hill and the east shore of Lake Kanasatka. It was great fun watching the logs getting run through the huge spinning saw blade and my retired grandfather enjoyed chatting with old Chet!

For other supplies we went to Prescott's lumberyard off South Main Street in Meredith village. The first stop was always at the front office in an old house by the original location of Meredith train station next to the Boston & Maine railroad tracks. After waiting in turn at the office counter, my father or grandfather would tell the clerk exactly what was needed, and a list was written up. Then we would be instructed to go out back to the big rusty "Tin Shed" in the middle of the sprawling lumberyard where another employee would guide us to the stack or bin or barrel of the materials being sought. For boards or planks, each piece would be examined closely in the low light, looking for knots, twists, checks, cracks, bugs, rot and the direction of the grain. This usually required some sorting through the stacks as the top pieces were usually the worst. But the yard attendants were patient and good-humored, so after some small talk and banter, the stuff would be loaded into the station wagon, sometimes with a small red cloth flag attached to the end of any extra-long overhanging pieces, and we would return to the front office to settle the bill, where there would be more chat and a few laughs and maybe a cup of coffee before saying good bye.

My grandfather taught my brother and me how to hold the various wood-working tools needed for the project. My favorite tool was the spokeshave that when properly sharpened and held could smooth the wood with long curly shavings. He also taught us that when a tool no longer cut well, it meant it was time to take a break to sharpen it with a file or oilstone. He even showed us how to file the teeth on handsaws and to set them to the proper angles using a special hand-tool and vice.

One of the most complicated tasks on the boat repair project was adding new white oak ribs, as many of the originals where broken. These new white oak ribs had to be steamed to make them flexible enough to be inserted and bent to follow the curve inside the hull. This steaming was done in our driveway using a custom-made metal tube heated by a small campfire. To help with that weekend project, Uncle John and Aunt Ginny drove up from Massachusetts.

By mid-summer, the restored sailboat, named Dutch Treat in honor of Gramp's homeland, was ready to be launched. We had no boat trailer, so our two red wagons were rigged to carry the sailboat down to the lake. We soon learned to sail on the Dutch Treat along with a full vocabulary of proper nautical terms and protocols. "Ready-about," Dad or whoever was at the helm would call out, and we all would dutifully all scramble in response. As a small center-board boat with a round bottomed hull, constant attention and quick maneuvers were needed to avoid capsizing in heavy winds. This involved carefully handling of the tiller, trimming the cotton sails with the sheets and "hiking" by leaning out over the windward gunwale.

Everyone in the family loved to sail, including our beagle, Skip who preferred to stand on the bow like a grand clipper ship figurehead with his long ears flapping as he faced the breeze. But one morning the wind was especially brisk, so Skip was left at home. Just after we had set sail and were headed out of the cove, we looked back to see Skip racing across the highway and leaping into the water. So as he dog-paddled briskly towards us, my father swung the boat around, and we pulled Skip on board. Of course, we were all then treated to a big shower as Skip shook himself dry!

On the first (and last) time that Dad took Uncle Smitty out for a sail on the Dutch Treat on Lake Kanasatka, they nearly got blown aground by a stiff northwesterly down by the Ames' summer camps. According to Dad's story, the only way to avoid hitting the rocks was by a tricky jibe that nearly sank the boat! Uncle Smitty got apparently soaked and was not amused. It was never known whether he could swim, but Smitty was always very well dressed--"snazzy," as he would say--and was rarely seen without a tweed sport-jacket and bow tie--and certainly never in a swimming suit or shorts!

Mother loved to swim, however. One spring her task was to dive deep down to the bottom of the cold lake to snap the sailboat's heavy mooring line to a hook on the huge concrete mooring pad nestled in the mud. She smoothly accomplished this task on her first dive!

After the launch of the Dutch Treat, Mr. Kent, a quiet retired gentleman who rented rooms in the west wing of the Old Red Mill House, kept a watchful eye on our moored sailboat and on the small wooden rowboat that we kept tied up on the shore. We, in turn, often visited with Mr. Kent to help brighten his last days. Shortly before his death, Mr. Kent gave our family his most prized possession, an antique mahogany credenza that may have belonged to his mother. Although its Italianate style contrasted with the modern and colonial furnishings in our house, the credenza's drawer soon became a catch-all for various small souvenirs, foreign coins, playing cards, cribbage board and some teeth missed by the Tooth Fairy, which are all still nestled in the old credenza now in my living room.

Our closest neighbor on Lake Shore Drive, Mr. Roy White was a robust octogenarian with bright white hair and bright red suspenders. He kept busy working in his large vegetable garden or in his workshop or repairing his house with its black trim and white asbestos siding (that he assured us would never burn). He taught us about the dangers of working with powered table-saws by showing us his several missing fingers. Mr. White also owned two houses on Kelsea Avenue in Center Harbor village with matching white asbestos siding and black trim. His live-in summer housekeeper, Mrs. Canfield, sometimes invited my brother and me into their dark kitchen on hot afternoons for a glass of ice-water that she poured from a large jar kept in the refrigerator. In the fall Mr. White would close up his house and would navigate his long white Dodge sedan with tall tailfins to his winter home in Sarasota, Florida.

Next to Mr. White lived the Browns at the east end of Lake Shore Drive. Phyllis Brown and her mother were charming, but firmly commanding ladies of dignified tastes, while jovial husband, Bob, sometimes seemed happiest when he could sit undisturbed with a cool Schlitz. A large white sign with black letters reading simply, "Guests" hung in their front lawn. The centerpiece of their summer guest house was a long, partially-enclosed, east-facing screened porch with thickly-cushioned wicker chaise lounges, as well as chairs and tables set up for playing the popular card game, canasta. This porch overlooked a picturesque view of Lake Kanasatka and Red Hill.

This same view, engraved by W. H. Bartlett, had been published in American Scenery, one of the most popular American travel books of the mid-nineteenth century. That engraving, shown here, was captioned "Sawmill at Center Harbor, Lake Winnepeseogee."

According to Center Harbor Historical Society records, W. H. Bartlett visited Center Harbor and climbed Red Hill in August 1836. The following is an inscription he left in the Senter House guest book:

After visiting the scenery on the continent of Europe & that of Mount Lebanon Greece - I find the scene from Red Mountain one of extraordinary magnificence - In one respect Lake Winipisiogee surpasses those of Europe in the number & picturesque variety of its islands - It is a scene too which will be continually increasing in beauty as towns - villages - churches and it may be safely prophecied - villas & country residences adorn the vallies & islands which are peculiarly adapted for improvement by art. [5]

Moultonboro Memories

As the innocent contentment of childhood inevitably melts through the reality of adolescent awakenings, such changes commenced in my tenth year. We were told that 1961 would be a special year, as even when inverted, the numbers would read the same, and so it was.

Our fifth-grade teacher was Irma Tilton, whose reputation for tough discipline rivaled Mrs. Perkins'. Their husbands were both Moultonboro policemen, but there was more. Mrs. Tilton's pleasant daughter, Bonnie, was in our class. So was my good friend, Gary Mitchell, who lived next door to the Tiltons on Sheridan Road. We had heard of the neighborly tensions between their families. And no one messed with Gary. With two feisty older brothers, he had learned how to look out for himself at an early age!

Play visits at the Mitchells inevitably were memorable. Once one of the older Mitchell boys asked me to help start their old farm truck by holding my finger on a bare spark plug wire as he turned over the engine... Zap! And they all laughed! Another time they told me to drop a match into a rusty old fuel tank in their junk pile. Little did I know they had poured in some gasoline... Kaboom! And they all laughed! Lessons learned!

And thus school days at Moultonboro Central were rarely boring with one crisis or another blamed on "you boys" amidst a turbulent sea of gossip, name-calling, insults and bullying. The anxieties of the Cold War and America's social crisis of civil rights and desegregation also played in the background of patriotic exercises.

But the innocent contentment of childhood perceptions of place also soon melted as we learned more about the town of Moultonboro. There had been an ambiguity of place identity on Lake Shore Drive. While our home there was legally in the town of Moultonboro in Carroll County, nearly everything associated with our sense of community flowed from Center Harbor and Belknap County, including the postal address, telephone exchange and the range of social and work connections discussed above. Historically and through our family roots, culture there seemed to radiate north from Boston.

But geographically, Moultonboro is divided by Red Hill, as can be seen in this turn-of-the century birds-eye map of Lake Winnipesaukee. And as we were to soon learn, a cultural separation also divided the town between the west side and the east side.

We moved from Lake Shore Drive in winter of 1962 when my parents purchased a rundown circa 1912 farmstead on the east side of town on the Lee Road about three-quarters of a mile southeast of Moultonboro village.

This marvelous place enveloped us through my teenage years with ongoing renovation projects, a huge barn, large garden and twenty acres of land with direct access to what was considered the best trout stream in town, Halfway Brook.

The most delightful space in the house was its southeast facing screened porch. It offered a memorable view that extended across the rough dooryard in front of the barn and over the Lower Pasture down to the bridge over Halfway Brook. The focal point of the picturesque view was a huge American elm with a broad canopy that shaded the dirt road near the brook. With morning sun for breakfast and afternoon shade for lunch and supper, we lived on this porch from spring to fall. It was here that we entertained guests around the old white-legged round oak table passed along from Gram and Smitty. On hot summer nights my brother and I slept on cots with the covers pulled up over our heads to keep off the mosquitoes that inevitably found ways inside the porch. The laundry was dried on clotheslines strung overhead. We even watched television on the porch. But no longer could we get a signal from Boston. Instead it was east to Portland, Maine that we had to point the antenna.

The long driveway that curved up the grade in front of the house terminated in a huge dooryard that was so muddy in the spring that the milkman would back his truck right up to the side porch door. Soon, my father had a shallow terrace of large cement slabs and lawn installed between the porch and a sharply edged dooryard. It was my job to do the weekly lawn mowing, raking and driveway edging. Rarely did it take less than four hours to complete the Saturday afternoon task. But it sure looked nice!

After replacing the roofing, some of which looked like fifty-year-old wooden shingles, the first major renovation project on the Moultonboro house was the bathroom. Although the original unheated two-holer was still intact in the woodshed off the kitchen, we were instructed not to use it, "unless we absolutely had to!" Inside, the pale green privy was spooky, like stepping into the past, with an old bucket of dried corncobs and a tattered Sears catalogue still there amidst spiderwebs and odd junk.

Although a bathroom with running water had been added, it was in poor condition. Roof leaks had stained its ceiling and rotted away the outside wall. The old claw-foot cast iron tub had no shower. So in the summer of 1963, our family weekend projects involved moving the bathroom door to enter off the dining room, tearing out the rotten back wall, replacing the plumbing fixtures and installing new cabinets, flooring, and plastic tile around the new shower. But with just a shallow well located on the bank by the Lower Pasture, summer showers were rationed to once a week, and laundry was washed at a laundromat and brought home to dry.

A new central heating system was soon installed to replace the smelly kerosene space heater in the dining room. Vern Drown of Melvin Village did the heating installation with skill and humor. Red Porter did much of the plumbing. Two years later came the kitchen renovations. After removing the kerosene kitchen range, cast iron sink and old fridge, the floor had to be leveled with long wedges. Then new cabinets and appliances were installed. The final home renovation project was to convert the dirt-floored woodshed into a family room with a nice picture window.

But life on the east side of Moultonboro had a noticeably different tone than it had on the Center Harbor side of town. We learned this immediately when we shifted to the east side school bus driven by Ernestine Richardson. "Turn around or I'll wring your neck!" she would bark if we tried to chat with anyone behind us. No one was allowed to sit in the rear seats, because anyone there would be a "troublemaker," we were told. Yet despite her strict tone, we did respect Ernestine's discipline and efficiency. Her bus was always on time and the rides were mostly forgettable. But I do recall the deep emotion in her voice on that dismal Friday afternoon ride home when she told us news of the assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

As we got to know the residents, Moultonboro started to feel more connected. Indeed it seemed that nearly everyone was related to someone else on that side of town. Ernestine's husband, Horace Richardson, was a farmer and the east side town road agent. He had a wonderfully warm character and spoke with a touch of humor in the rich Carroll County twang that we loved. Horace and Ernestine's son, Vern Richardson ran the tidy Mobil gas station in the village with efficiency and respect. We trusted Vern for our car repairs and 6-month inspections. He once told me that when an engine has the right combination of gas, air and spark, it has to start! And Horace Richardson's elderly aunt, Ethel Smith, was the town clerk. To her we would go to pay the local taxes, including the annual four-dollar fee for the town to "break the dooryard" after every snowstorm. Ethel had an apartment on the side of Horace and Ernestine's big old farmhouse on Route 109 overlooking Halfway Brook.

A huge field and pasture once ran south along Halfway Brook all the way from Route 109 to where we lived on the Lee Road. By the 1960s only scattered clearings in the pines hinted of these former fields along the brook. Recently I acquired a postcard showing the view of Halfway Brook looking south from the Richardson place. It was a delight to see that this card has a message written in 1916 to Miss Virginia Ladd of Meredith (the daughter of the founder of the Meredith Village Savings Bank, Seneca Ladd, a distant cousin on my mother's side). The note on the back of the postcard says, "This view is just below our house, our water supply is taken from the brook." The card was sent by Susie Smith, who was was Ethel Smith's older sister. Their sister, Eurie Smith married Harry Richardson, who was Horace Richardson's father.

The hayfield behind our house was kept mowed through an arrangement with Ted and Cora Whitehouse Roth next door. After Horace Richardson (shown here) would cut and bail the hay late in June, Ted Roth and his sons, Chuck and David, would haul the hay into the hayloft in our barn where they could get it as needed to feed their cattle through the winter. The charge was fifty cents a bale.

Across the dirt road by our house, the sprawling Homestead Farm apple orchard that Peter Larson sold to John Ives provided us with our first opportunities for youth employment, paying fifteen cents a bushel for picked apples and ten cents a bushel for drops that were pressed there into cider. The old cider press had actually long been housed in a shed addition behind our barn when it was owned by Bert Whitehouse. This left a gaping hole in the shed floor and a huge pile of composting apple pressings out back that supported a dense thicket of blackberry bushes.

But we found that Moultonboro village had a somewhat more anonymous character with all the highway traffic schussing through. Aside from occasionally biking to the Old Country Store for some penny-candy or to the old Ellen's Store for an ice cream cone scooped unceremoniously from the freezer by the old Coca-Cola cooler, we usually drove there instead. Walking along the narrow dirt shoulders, especially on Route 25 by Joe's (or Bud's) Pond and by the old Country Fare Inn just seemed too risky. Sure, we enjoyed the huge Moultonboro Bicentennial hoopla in 1963 with the big parade through the village.

Our parent's closest friends in Moultonboro included Isabelle Behr, a retired university dean who served as the school librarian and lived on the "Dump Road" by Edgar Brown's, and "Doc" and Helvi Ratsep, who lived with their daughters, Ingrid and Linda, next to Vern's Garage in the village. We often visited the Ratseps on Saturday evenings. As they had recently immigrated from Estonia, their home had a crisp European feel that seemed quite special. The high point of most of those evenings was when the doctor and my father would share their favorite recent photographs in a slide show.

We also loved to chat with Adele Taylor, the jovial librarian at the Moultonboro Library on most Saturday afternoons, and with Jessie Thompson when picking up the mail at the tiny U. S. Post Office attached to the Old Corner Store. We made wonderful friends in school, in our Boy Scout Troop 142, skiing at Red Hill, and working at Ledgewood Farm on Route 171.

But local politics came to a head in 1963 when a special vote would be held to determine whether the town of Moultonboro would become part of the Governor Wentworth Regional School District based in Wolfeboro where the new Kingswood Regional High School was planned to be built. My father served as the chairperson of the Moultonboro School Board and strongly supported enabling us Moultonboro kids to attend the Interlakes High School in nearby Meredith instead of being bussed over an hour away to Wolfeboro, a place on the far side of the Big Lake that we scarcely knew!

Through all the town meetings and hearings, we soon learned how the nuances of Robert's Rules of Order could be deftly played to political advantage. A divisive tension gripped the town as everyone identified with one or the other side. Ultimately at a special town meeting, Moultonboro voted by a narrow margin to join the Governor Wentworth Regional School District in order to send junior and senior high school students to the proposed high school in Wolfeboro. My father was not re-elected to the school board. Through all this we maintained cautious respect, but by then the polarization had cast subtle resentments that lingered well through my awkward high school years at Kingswood. Even at occasional Methodist Church services in Moultonboro village, the mood seemed somewhat stiff as it felt like we were being watched by some "from the other side."

So even after the move to the east side of Moultonboro, it was still to Center Harbor that our family closely identified. We continued to shop at Heath's new supermarket, to play in the Center Harbor Band, to go to the Center Harbor church, and to sail our boats in Center Harbor Bay--even frostbiting there a few times in winter!

We also restored two more vintage wooden sailboats in the barn. The favorite was our 1930s Winabout lapstrake daysailor--a predecessor of the Town Class--built at Pert Lowell's Boat Shop in Amesbury, Massachusetts. After several summers of work replacing rotten wood and refinishing the hull, we launched the Tenacity at the Center Harbor boat ramp and moored it on First Neck. As teenagers, Charles and I were even trusted with taking the sailboat out by ourselves. We had some wonderful adventures in Center Harbor Bay and out by Becky's Garden, including making an emergency landing on the lee side of a wooded island in a gale one afternoon!

In my late teen years, I took a summer job serving as a deckhand on the MV Mount Washington and took special joy in throwing the monkey-fisted heaving line to enable the Mount to dock twice a day at the wharf in Center Harbor.

NOTES

[1] Nathan Hale, Notes made during an excursion to the highlands of New Hampshire and Lake Winnipiseogee by a Gentleman of Boston (Andover: Flagg, Gould & Newman, 1833), 29-31.

[2] John Hayward, New England Gazetteer (Boston, Otis Clapp, 1857), 109-110.

[3] Henry David Thoreau, Summer: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1884), 284-286.

[4] John Greenleaf Whittier, Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, December 1861, 679.

[5] Frank E. Greene, "The Cook Family of Red Hill," Moultonborough, New Hampshire, ms., 1987, accessed at moultonboroughlibrary.org.

 

Center Harbor, New Hampshire, 1957

Center Harbor, New Hampshire, 1987

Center Harbor, New Hampshire, 2002


Winnipesaukee quadrangle map, USGS, 1909


View of Center Harbor in Bartlett's American Scenery, 1838


Senter House, Center Harbor village, circa 1860s


Moulton House, Center Harbor village, circa 1870s


Colonial Hotel, circa 1900. Photo: U.S. Library of Congress


Colonial Hotel, Center Harbor, circa 1900
Photo: U.S. Library of Congress


"Am feeling much better," postcard postmarked 1907


Center Harbor village, postcard, circa 1900


Center Harbor, circa 1910, postcard


Mt. Washington, drawn by William Visser


Garnet Inn, postcard postmarked 1911


Garnet Inn, circa 1940s, postcard


Nichols Variety Store and the Square, circa 1930


Parade Road, Meredith, NH, 1955


With Uncle Smitty at the Parade Shop, Meredith, 1955


Naomi Smith and June Visser in Meredith, NH, 1955


Arriving in Center Harbor, 1956


Nichols Variety Store and Kona Fountain, 1957


Scooter ride with "Old Farmer" Jack Dennis, 1957


WLNH radio van cues before the parade, July 4, 1960


Boy Scout Troop 142 at the Center Harbor
Memorial Day parade, 1964


Marching to the beat of the Center Harbor Band, 1964


Center Harbor Memorial Day parade, 1964


Center Harbor Memorial Day parade, 1964


With the silver tuba, 1965


Charlie Bickford, conductor, Center Harbor Band, 1966


Almon Bushnell, alto horn, Center Harbor Band, 1966


Brass section, Center Harbor Band, 1966


Mossy Smith, saxophone, Center Harbor Band, 1966


Playing in the Center Harbor Band, July 4th, 1966


Center Harbor Fire Department, July 4, 1966


Center Harbor Congregational Church with visiting
fire trucks waiting for the parade, July 4, 1966


Center Harbor Fourth-of-July parade, 1966


Center Harbor Congregational Church, 1983


Entering Center Harbor looking east along Main Street / Meredith Road, circa 1900, Library of Congress


On the raft at Center Harbor beach, 1961


Morning approach to Center Harbor with Capt. Brian Avery
on the bridge of the M.V. Mount Washington, postcard


The Mount
at the Center Harbor wharf, postcard


Center Harbor docks, 1961


Center Harbor docks, 1961


Motor Vessel Mount Washington


M.V. Mount Washington, after the season


M.V. Mount Washington, circa December 1966


Coe Mansion, postcard


Bean Road and Main Street, looking west, 1987


Robbins Store and post office, circa 1960 postcard


Anna E. George at Lee's Mills


Kanasatka Logging RR locomotive


"Doc" Mallard and Bill Visser discussing local politics


Red barn on Lake Shore Drive


Our home on Lake Shore Drive, 1957


With Fluffy, 1957


With Jip and the Ford Ranchwagon, 1958


With W. O. C. Alfie in the kitchen, March 1959


With Walt, a. k. a. "Cricket," September 1959


Winter sports with Randy & Jimmy


Red Hill Outing Club ski slope hut


Red Hill Outing Club float at Sandwich Fair Parade, 1960


The Mount in ice, 1961


Wentworth Hill, Sandwich, 1959


Approaching Whiteface, 1959


At Whiteface Intervale, 1959


Whiteface Intervale, watercolor on board by W W Visser


Beede Falls, Sandwich Notch


Main Street downtown Laconia, postcard


William Visser betwixt Laconia businessmen
John O'Shea and Peter Karagianis at WLNH


T.J. Martin at WLNH


Moultonboro Central School, Grade 2, 1958
Front row: Bonnie Tilton, Thomas Visser, Ellen Person, Cynthia Wakefield, Barbara Monteith, Arthur Abbott, Francine Hoyt, Colleen Wakefield, Marlene Porter, Eric Richardson, William Ames, George Lamprey
Second row: Richard Jacques, Randy Davis, Howard McCormick, Jerry Bickford, Gary Mitchell, Robert Lincoln, Richard Shute, Randall Huston, Davis Ames, Wayne Dale
Teacher: Mrs. Clara Perkins


Our home with fence on Lake Shore Drive, 1959


Party time on Lake Shore Drive, 1959


Old Red Mill House, Lake Kanasatka, 1959


Lake Kanasatka boat landing, 1959


Steaming sailboat ribs, Gramp with spokeshave, 1959


Uncle John inserts ribs, 1959


New canvas deck to be fit and painted, 1959


Dutch Treat launch, 1959

Mr. Kent, 1959
Mr. Kent, 1959

Christmas card, 1959
Christmas card by W W Visser, 1959


Roy White's house, December 30, 1956


Lake Shore Drive, 1960


East end of Lake Shore Drive,
view towards Red Hill and Lake Kanasatka, 2002


"Sawmill at Center Harbor, Lake Winnepeseogee."

Engraving by W. H. Bartlett in American Scenery, 1840


This 1909 Bird's Eye Map of Lake Winnipesaukee shows how the mountainous mass of Red Hill separates Center Harbor at the left from Moultonboro in the upper right.


Visser place, Lee Road, Moultonboro, circa 1962


Visser place, Lee Road, Moultonboro, circa 1962


Dooryard winter morning


Homestead Farm orchard in blossom with wooden bridge over Halfway Brook, spring 1963


Moultonboro place bathroom renovations, 1963


Moultonboro place kitchen renovations, 1965


View of Halfway Brook from the Smith/ Richardson place in Moultonboro
, circa 1910 postcard


Halfway Brook flooding beneath the Lee Road bridge by the Lower Pasture


Horace Richardson haying our field, circa 1962.


Ted Roth with sons and helper picking up the hay.


Moultonboro Bicentennial, 1963


Frostbiting with Charles in Center Harbor Bay,
circa December 1966


Launching Tenacity at Center Harbor, 1967


Sailing Tenacity in Center Harbor Bay, circa 1968


M.V. Mount Washington, 1970

  Note to readers