Theme Music Hi, I'm John Clayton.

Welcome to New Hampshire Crossroads.

This is the show that tells the stories about the people and the places from New Hampshire.

They're your stories, told by you, sharing tales of your community.

Today we're in my community.

We're in Manchester at the downtown farmer's market.

It's a typical place to buy and sell and celebrate all that is New Hampshire.

Thank you very much.

125 sir.

Also on tonight's program, we're going to Alton Bay on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, for the annual Barbershop Quartet Jamboree.

Gee, what a world this would be Then we'll travel to southwestern New Hampshire to Ashuelot, where we’ll visit a paper company that's been making paper the old fashioned way for more than a century.

It was New England frugality.

Why throw something away when you don't have to?

Then we'll go back in time.

Way back, to the days of the one-room schoolhouse.

Today is Friday, September 13th, 1853.

But first, we're going to the market.

Okay.

Okay.

They made a mistake.

Why do you come to the farmers market?

What do you look for when you come here?

The fruits, vegetables, and the breads.

My best friend, who I've known all my life, works here for Mill Valley Farm.

And so I come to see her and buy some of their products because it's organic.

The reason behind doing this was to bring a lot of vitality back to the downtown.

And so what's happened over the last few years is the market has grown.

It's now established.

People come every week, and we have a lot of other events in the downtown that work in sync with the market.

So we're bringing thousands of people down every week, every Thursday.

And as you can see, this is something that people look forward to.

Try some of the burpless cukes.

For me, it's the best cuke I've ever had.

This is very good for the people of Manchester.

It gives the people who live in the city an opportunity to come and get fresh-picked food.

you want two of each, ma’am?

But as farmers, we try to pick as quickly as we can and as fresh as we can for the market so that these people are getting a good, you know, a good product.

One thing that I just recently heard, and maybe you heard it as well, is that the specialty food industry and agriculture in New Hampshire has grown in the last 15 or 20 years, and it's because of the demand of farmers markets.

Actually, farmer's markets are helping.

They're kind of working in consortium with one another so that the markets bring these people together, they can sell their unique little items, and then they develop a following.

And so in our own little way, we're helping to nurture that a lot.

One of the more popular spots here at the downtown farmer's market in Manchester is Ode to Pickles.

Now you don't just pickle pickles, you also pickle jalapeño peppers.

We do jalapeños.

We marinate jalapeños and we have a hot, spicy pickle.

And we have the traditional, sweet and sour garlic pickle.

And we're continually expanding our line.

And the hot ones are hot.

Yes they are.

This is a good time to go up to the Lakes Region for our next story.

We're going up to Alton Bay for the 50th annual Barbershop Jamboree.

(birdsong) (barbershop quartet singing) Well, Alton Bay actually started back in 1949, which of course makes this the 50th anniversary of the event.

It actually started just out of love of singing.

It started back with the Norwich chapter.

Bill Marsden had a camp up here on the lake, and he invited a few of his chapter friends up during the summer.

And what they would do is they would just go around down to the landing and, and sing a few songs, as barbershoppers typically do when they wind up getting together.

Just give me a while Save me a place Soon I'll be singing both tenor and bass I love to hear that old barbershop style Oh, what a style.

You know that I love to hear that old barbershop style love that old, barbershop style Originally it's, it’s, I say, is vaudeville.

A, a barbershop, if you will.

You'd have, fellows back in the, in the 1800s that would hang around and meet at a barbershop, and they would just take the local songs of the day and they would do what we call woodshedding.

In other words, they have four different parts, and they would harmonize the music to these four different parts.

The lead would have the melody.

I'll be looking at the moon The bass would support the lead.

look at the looking at the moon You have the tenor singing the upper range, the upper melodies.

Looking at the, looking at the moon And then the baritone would fill in with sort of the leftover notes.

I'll be looking at moon I’ll be looking at the looking at the moon But I’ll be seeing I’ll be seeing seeing you Well, it's the SPEBSQSA: The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

SPEBSQSA.

It has 38,000 members from all over the country, all over the world, and from all different walks of life.

What do you do for a living?

I make ice cream.

I sell ice cream.

Okay.

For the same company, as a matter of fact.

What company is this?

That's JB Scoops ice cream.

I also sell ice cream for the same JB Scoops ice cream.

I do not sell ice cream.

Right.

I work as a food service director for YMCA camps here on Lake Winnipesaukee.

And this year, I was crowned official Queen Miss Singer, New Hampshire of America.

I was a Sweet Adeline for 39 years.

And I've been coming up here singing with my quartet.

We broke up many years ago, a comedy quartet, the Versa Tillys and they were wonderful and we have glorious times.

And the barbershop is sort of a most unique group people.

If I could write a song and get the world to sing along How wonderful this world will be You'll see, how wonderful this world would be Gee, what a world this would be I used to work for the town of Hollis in the recycling center.

I'm a schoolteacher.

I teach ninth grade high school in Goffstown.

And I'm a professional daycare person.

I take care of babies.

I’m an insurance auditor and homemaker.

(barbershop quartet singing) The end of every barbershop song has a tag, whether it's a ballad and a nice soft low tag or an up tune with a big blasting high tag.

For after some consideration we can state, consider yourself one of us.

One of us When a woman you love I’ll love you till the day I die The art of barbershop quarteting is is, a little more complex than people would believe.

And it's.

The singing is better.

There's a lot of the same kinds of musical principles as in, you know, popular singing or singing shows or any of those kind of things.

And it's all about.

it's, a lot of it is about vowel sounds.

It's about consonant sounds and synchronization.

And, you know, once you've got those kinds of issues locked in, then you talk about selling the song to the audience, performing in such a manner that you grip the audience or elicit in them the kind of emotion that you're looking for.

(quartet singing) Good.

Thank you.

Can you guys hear the difference?

Do you hear the difference in what's going on?

Because you're going to need to police this, ultimately, you know, when in rehearsal.

You need to kind of do this dueting as a matter of course, and police one another.

The other thing that I was thinking about was the e’ vowel - none so sad or teary Two things.

One: corners tucked in.

Second: tongue down on a lower gum ridge.

Yeah, you know where that is?

So that, try that one more time and see if we can’t clean up that particular vowel.

Other than it was pretty darn good.

What all of this camaraderie and practice and coaching leads up to is the evening performance.

(applause) Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he Oh, when the sun beats down and burns the tar up on the roof Older women, swinging ones make beautiful lovers Yes, they do!

I said, older women Older than me We understand Just past a quarter 2:00 and then we’ll know it's true that a song makes things go right, It’s gonna go right.

Lend an ear, Minor Adjustments is here so we can bust a chord tonight While we bust a while we bust a chord tonight Tonight (applause) (birdsong) Music Welcome back to the downtown farmer's market in Manchester, which really has become more than a place to sell fruit and vegetables.

In a sense, it's become kind of a community gathering place.

One of the unique things that happens here is we get people from everywhere.

And as you know, Manchester has a lot of ethnic diversity.

And on any given Thursday, we can see people here with turbans and fezzes and sometimes shawls and different languages are spoken.

I think that's really the essence of downtown living.

So it's nice that we can help bring that back here.

Does anybody want to pet the chicken?

The rooster?

What is it?

Okay.

Is he afraid?

He won’t bite?

Oh, no, he won't bite.

People, more and more getting kind of removed from the source of their food, aren't they?

Yeah.

A lot of people have no idea where these things come from.

And with the children, the kids today have no idea where this food comes from.

See him?

Is he afraid?

You can pet him.

So we try to, you know, I bring chickens in and and show the kids the chickens and and on Portsmouth on Saturday mornings, the chickens lay eggs there because it's still the morning.

And the deal is whatever kid gets to see the, the egg first gets the egg.

If you're really friendly to your animals, I've got some chickens that come up and sit in my lap and have laid eggs before right in my lap.

I know you're wondering.

This is a European burpless cucumber.

The things you learn on this show.

You're about to learn a little bit of something about paper now, because we're going to southwestern New Hampshire, to the village of Ashuelot.

That's the home of a company called Paper Services, one of the oldest recycling plants in America.

Music Paper Service was founded in 1883, and we produce 100% recycled paper.

Here, it’ll end up as either a napkin that’ll be used for a hot dog stand in New York City, or it will become a piece of paper that will go between glass or a shoe, or perhaps in remanufacturing something else.

Gary O'Neal knows paper.

He grew up with it.

You might even say it's been his life.

Our family has been in it since 1908, and my father and my uncle were here before me.

In fact, so was his grandfather, Clarence O'Neal.

As a young man in search of a job, Clarence found himself working for these men, the Robertson brothers.

A local family, the Robertsons owned Paper Service until 1908.

That's when grandpa O'Neal took over the business.

The business was the best thing that could be in the small town at the turn of the century.

Most of the small town New England was a mill town, especially in New Hampshire if it wasn't agricultural.

And for my grandfather to come from the stables to wear a Eton collar to work every day was pretty exciting.

(machinery noises) Long before it was the thing to do, Gary's grandfather produced all of his paper products by recycling.

When we first started making paper, until the, about 1929, paper was all made from rags.

It was called silk tissue.

Silk tissue was not used very much in this country, but it's a very, very, very fine high grade paper.

Paper that was made then probably still exists.

(machinery noises) As cloth gave way to wood pulp, the paper industry changed.

At this mill, however, recycling continued.

World War Two place demands on New Hampshire's industries and Paper Service responded.

It wasn’t environmental, no.

It was a necessity.

It was New England frugality.

Why throw something away when you don't have to?

And I think that was the approach of my grandfather and the War Department like that a lot.

Because during the war, you didn't throw anything away.

You tried to recycle everything you could.

Because many resources came from parts of the world where they couldn't be duplicated here.

But paper could, and that's the reason it was.

(machinery noises) It has continued that way, from the end of your driveway to here on the receiving docks in Ashuelot, newspapers, magazines, and other paper waste find their way.

Every year, 4 million pounds of trash is transformed into 3 million pounds of paper.

This gooey blend of paper and water ends up traveling on a journey through a series of felt steam rollers.

Incredibly, within minutes, the paper is dry enough to be rolled.

(machinery noises) It's a good place to work.

I mean, it's more like a family, you know?

Everybody knows everybody.

Yeah.

Get along good.

Mills like Paper Service were once the backbone of communities like Ashuelot.

They provided both jobs and tax dollars.

It used to have 120 jobs here.

We now have 30.

Sadly, competition from large mills and cheap foreign labor have idled many of their machines.

Once we stopped using the, the machinery, we sold it to brokers, who in turn sold it to operations in Central and South America, where we encourage the countries there to do something other than sell drugs.

And so we're very happy to bring back product from there to here.

Some of the machines we used to have probably make product and send it back here to the US.

Music Ashuelot has been home to Paper Service for more than a century and Gary plans to stay.

Survival will depend on new ideas and new markets.

There's always a future, especially for a mill like ours that recycles.

I believe that we're going to have a symbiotic relationship very soon with communities that need to have their paper taken care of, and we don't want it all to go to one monolith that does all the waste in the state.

So if we're a viable opportunity for other things to happen, I think that's pretty good.

Music New Hampshire has the ability to reinvent itself.

And I'd like to think that the mill has the option of doing that as well.

Because after all, it's not all lilacs.

It's a lot of granite underneath here.

And it's, it's quirky.

And I think a lot of things can happen.

And I hope under my direction they will.

Music This year, the downtown farmer's market in Manchester has been blessed with great weather, and today is another hot one.

But one of the hottest demonstrations of this week's program is about to begin, right now.

Different pressure for you cooking outside in front of a crowd like this, as opposed to in the kitchen at Fratellos?

I've done it a couple times so it's not as bad, but you know, the first time is really a little nervous because every time you have a camera in your face, it is a little nerve wracking.

Waiting for the vegetables to get cooked a little more before I add the oysters in to finish those out.

Good and smoky.

Now, in addition to the fish, Jonathan, using all these fresh vegetables, is that a good way for some of the people coming to the farmer's market, maybe to get ideas about how to use fresh produce?

Yeah, it's a great idea.

See, I have other vegetables that I don't have room on the grill right now.

Just brush with olive oil and throw on the grill.

Like, I do potatoes on the grill onions, portabello mushrooms, whatever.

You know?

That smells awesome.

All right.

So what everyone is interested in doing is grilling out, so.

And also interested in eating, as you pointed out.

Of course.

Yes.

Well, I mean, I have my trays here.

They're all waiting.

So they have their knife and fork all ready to go.

Now, the farmers market is a real tradition in New Hampshire.

And we're going to visit another old time New Hampshire tradition, a one-room schoolhouse in the town of Jaffrey.

(bell ringing) (bell ringing) (bell ringing) (bell ringing) (children talking) We’re just going to wait for it spaced apart.

Good.

Will you just come right behind him, please.

And we just Inaudible) Wow.

I am Miss Weld, your teacher.

I expect you to pay attention to duty here today.

I expect you not to speak unless I speak to you during school.

Today is Friday, September 13th, 1853.

Franklin S. Pierce is our president.

He's the 14th president.

There are 31 states.

Would you fold your hands and bow for prayer, please?

Our father, who has kindly preserved the scholars and the mistress of this school during the past night, come and grant us continuance of thy protection and blessing during this day.

We cannot spend the day properly - There are four girls.

Each has a book and all seem to read.

All are in the same class and are now set down to see how well they can read their task.

One more.

These girls waste no time.

When they have said their task, they learn to draw on their slates.

Good.

Good reading.

Next.

Then draw some things quiet well, such as a horse or a tree.

Soon the men to see who can draw the best map of the state in which they live.

That’s good.

Next?

Here is a frog.

He sits on a log.

His head is up as if to give a hope.

The frog does not harm.

The boys must not pelt him or hurt him.

Good reading.

Next.

This is a fine day to ride out and talk the air.

It does not look like rain.

Let the pound and see the boat sail.

That's good.

The lofty mountains of the safe Our music shall resound Beginning with (inaudible) (singing) (children playing) Theme Music Delicious.

This should be all nicely infused with the herbs and the garlic and the shallots that are inside the fish.

Anyone need some fish?

You know, in New Hampshire Crossroads, we like to think we bring you the true flavor of New Hampshire.

And thanks to Jonathan Poulin, tonight, we've done just that.

And until next week for New Hampshire Crossroads, I'm John Clayton Okay.

Who's hungry?

Here's a good plate here.

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Theme Music