How to get to New Hampshire, that is the question.

Aside from the usual New England prettiness, New Hampshire has nothing to recommend it, and ought probably to be expelled from our enlightened republic. Most of the inhabitants would never notice.

There’s this one thing, though: my aunt and most of my cousins live there. They’re no more New Hampshire natives than I’m a Texan. We were all living happily in Westchester until a couple of late-Sixties catastrophes propelled my father and his brother in different professional directions. Even then, New York was more easily reached from Houston than it was from Hillsborough County.

A visit from me is somewhat overdue, and yet I find myself asking why I, who live in the center of the universe, am not welcoming my aunt and my cousins on visits to New York City. I suspect that the answer goes something like this. The move to the Monadnocks was so traumatic that the appeal of Gotham must evermore be denied. So much so that, until his death a few years ago, my uncle used to take my aunt on annual visits to London (Angleterre) to see the latest shows. There was a certain Bronx-cheering ostentation in this gesture that I never called. I guess I’m doing so now.

I used to visit my relations in Wilton, Lyndeborough Center, and Peterborough so often that they were afraid, as the bumper sticker has it, that I’d take over. But there came a point after which I could no longer drive responsibly. My rigid neck made unsignaled intersections difficult and dangerous to cross. (Wah Wah! Don’t Cry For Me, AAA!)

The very idea of Kathleen’s driving requires a separate entry, but as everyone who knows her knows, it is an absolute impossibility. In any case, she talks of flying to Manchester and hiring a car and driver for the weekend. This rather chichi option has its appeal, and no doubt I’d like to tour the North of Italy in such a conveyance. But I have no intention of pulling up at my aunt’s kerb in a limousine. The simple truth is that I’m unwilling to go anywhere in this sad strange country that I live in that doesn’t doesn’t give me NRA-level freedom of transportation. If I can’t walk out into the street, raise my hand, and stop a taxi, then I don’t want to go there.

As for people don’t want to come to New York City, then they’re not telling the truth when they claim to want to see me. He who is tired of Gotham is tired of RJK. C’est ça.  

 

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Gotham Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.