Tonight on New Hampshire Crossroads, we go up to Warner and meet a bunch of guys who are as American as apple pie and Fenway Park, and who measure everything in wiffloids.

Well, it's sort of the field of dreams, the field of nightmares.

For me, it's been like a renaissance in Wiffle ball because I started playing this game probably not too long after the Wiffle ball was invented.

Oh, oh.

Then it's family fun for everyone.

We're off to the Deerfield Fair.

And a look at Native American history here in New Hampshire, both recent history and ancient history.

Hi, I'm Fritz Wetherbee, and this is New Hampshire Crossroads.

Theme Music Presentation of New Hampshire Crossroads is made possible by grants from First NH Banks, serving the financial needs of individuals, corporations, and local governments throughout New Hampshire.

The Union Leader Corporation, publisher of New Hampshire's statewide newspapers.

Delivering a world of color to you every morning.

Upton, Sanders and Smith of Concord, New Hampshire, providing a full range of legal services throughout the state of New Hampshire since 1908.

And Clarion Somerset Hotel and Apartments of Nashua, New Hampshire, where we make living fun.

Today we're at the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, where, as you can see from the banner behind me, they have a brand new exhibition entitled Portsmouth Furniture: Masterwork from the New Hampshire Seacoast, a show organized by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Now, I don't know if you know this or not, but back in the 18th century, Portsmouth was a leading furniture manufacturer, second only to Boston and Philadelphia, and the Society has located literally hundreds of pieces of furniture which are on display in the most gorgeous show imaginable.

I urge you to stop by.

And in keeping with this, on Sunday night, that is the 27th, at 7:00 in the evening, New Hampshire Public Television is presenting a special entitled The Furniture Makers of Portsmouth, which also traces the history of the city and of the manufacturer of furniture there.

I urge you to tune in for that as well.

That also will be repeated on Monday, that is the 28th, at half past 10:00 in the evening.

In our first Crossroads story this evening, we travel over to Warner to a place where you can almost smell the popcorn and hear the roar of the crowd.

It's a very American place, a place where things are measured in, and yes, this is a word, wiffloids.

Music Well, I grew up playing Wiffle ball in my backyard, at home, with the neighborhood playground.

I mean, there’s always Wiffle ball going on and football.

So it seemed like a normal extension when I got a nice flat backyard like this to take advantage of it and give children of all ages a place to come and play Wiffle ball.

It's really competitive in the sense we throw as hard as we can.

We, we, it's not a situation where we let the other person hit the ball.

It's not a slow pitch league where everyone's going to get hit every time up.

We really we really just try to blow the guy away, strike them out, make him sit down real quick if we can.

(sound of ball hitting a fence) Music One day I was working out here and I was hitting the Wiffle ball.

I was standing right about where you are, sort of near home plate, and I was hitting them towards the barn, which was then white, and all of a sudden the wall just did a reversal and the wall turned green, the wall turned completely green and it's 315, about 18ft letters, flashed in white on the barn.

Next day I came home with a gallon of paint and was up on a ladder and started to paint it green.

Music Well, it's sort of the field of dreams, the field of nightmares.

For me, it's been like a renaissance in Wiffle ball because I started playing this game probably not too long after the Wiffle ball was invented back in the mid 50s.

He's out of there, the ball did not stop.

As for the town, I mean the people that go by the park, it's anything from bewilderment to real appreciation.

We had a car from Massachusetts stop two weekends ago, and these guys just sat there for a while and watched us play, and then they said, awesome.

And they gave us two thumbs up and drove on, you know.

Others come by and probably wonder, how old are those kids?

You know, they got beards or what out here.

Music It concentrates your whole week, all the stresses at work.

You release them, but it creates sort of new ones.

It's very competitive.

So I just wish I could move up to New Hampshire.

Wiffle Free or Die.

Not really a Yankee fan, but I figured Fenway, you got to have some some Yankee flavor.

I'm from Connecticut, so I like it.

This is my All-American outfit, don’t want to offend anyone.

A little bit of National League, a little bit of American.

League Play ball!

Music One thing about Wiffle ball, everything is the same.

Every Wiffle ball comes out generally the same.

Every once in a while, you'll find one that maybe a little off center along this seam.

And pitchers love to have that because that means the ball will do really interesting things.

So whenever quality control falls asleep at the Wiffle ball factory in Connecticut, we find one of those balls, we guard it with our lives.

Well, other members on the team, all all-stars, every one of them, and one certainly is John Mimnaugh, who's played since the early days when I first moved to Warner quite some years back.

And he's actually the one who's acquired these seats from Yankee Stadium for us.

His father years ago worked in the Bronx, in New York, and when they were renovating Yankee Stadium in 73 or ’74, these seats were in a pile for a period of time.

And he saw a little daylight and took a couple with him.

And I don't know how he managed to get on the subway with him.

They're quite heavy, but he got these wonderful keepsakes from Yankee Stadium.

Now tell me about the imaginary runners.

That's, I don't get that.

It's the hit and sit league, you hit and then you sit.

The imaginary runners really are, you just keep track of these in your mind.

If you if you walk a batter, he's on first.

If the next guy hits a double, then you know that you have runners on second and third and there's one advance for every base hit.

If you follow with a single, they don't both score, but the runner from third scores, the man on second goes to third.

So it's it's just like baseball, except that you know where the runners are, but they're not physically present on the field.

And as John says, we don't have to worry about pulled hamstrings running out to first.

And sometimes when we get new players, it's a little tricky for them.

If they play softball and they try this game, your instinct so strong, as once you hit the ball, they immediately start running for first.

So we call them out automatically for breaking field rules.

You know rules.

When it's off the wall, John says so in so many whiffloids based on the dimensions of the Wiffle ball box.

But in fact is this not a - Right.

One-fifth scale replica of Fenway Park as a matter of fact.

Not Tiger Stadium, but Fenway Park.

It's Fenway Park.

And the distance from the mound, it's 40ft, six inches.

Everything else is one- fifth scale.

Music A certain unit of time, a certain measurement in space, and then certain rules which once you step on this field, real life, what passes for real life tends to fade away.

And you're in a world where there are spaces and times and rules and structures, really inventions that are adhered to by everyone competing in the game.

And they're very different from what happens beyond those white lines.

Oh, we got him.

Game’s over!

Good game.

All right.

Yeah.

Classic score.

Let’s play two.

This year, the team was able to invest in lights for the Moe Gonzales Fields, and npw they can play night games.

And they would love to get together with any other teams, Wiffle ball teams, in the area or for that matter, anybody who would like to try their hand at playing the game.

They play on Sunday afternoons and on Wednesdays in the evenings right now, right up until it gets too cold to play.

Fall is certainly upon us, and it's the time for the agricultural fairs, a chance to show off your produce and your livestock.

The oldest agricultural fair in America, the very, very first one ever held, was held in Derry, New Hampshire, in 1722.

And New Hampshire's biggest, and some people think best, agricultural fair is the Deerfield Fair.

And in our next Crossroads piece, producer Chip Neal is about to show us some things about the Deerfield Fair.

What do you do when you go to the fair?

You look at things.

Things that look strange.

Things you've never seen before.

Things you've never seen up close before.

Things that are interesting, things you've only seen on television.

The road trot, please, road trot.

These horses are passing by.

Things that you shouldn't eat.

Things that you should eat.

Things that are larger than they're supposed to be.

Things that look very hard to do.

(audience cheering) (announcer inaudible) He has it, how about that?

He has it.

Isn't that wonderful?

And things that just look like fun.

(children yelling) Something else you can do at the fair is talk to people.

Really, they don't mind.

I think they come there so they can talk to people.

This is David Twombly and he is the sheep and swine superintendent.

How long have you been doing this?

You can tell by his hat.

I’ve been doing this since 76.

My father did it since 44.

Running the pig - Yup, sheep and swine.

Sheep and swine.

Well, it's really been good talking to you.

You raise pigs, too?

Yeah, we raise them.

Yeah.

What's your name?

Barry DiMeo.

What kind do you raise and how many?

Well, we raise crossbreeds mostly.

Which is what this is.

That’s one of ours.

Does this have a name?

Yeah.

Yeah, that, the name is Loretta.

Loretta?

Yeah.

Loretta, folks, Loretta.

There we are.

Now, now is it, oh.

What do people need to know about pigs that they don't know?

Besides eating them, I mean, what do they need to know?

Well, they're very clean animals.

Cleaner than most people think.

Loretta is pretty clean.

Yeah, yeah.

They do make good pets too, believe it or not.

They make good pets?

Even after they get older?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sure.

Okay.

What do you think it is that draws people to the fairs these days?

Well, I think they I think they like the agricultural part, especially in the area like this.

I think they like the animals.

They like the animals?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Thanks a lot.

Okay.

You're welcome.

Okay.

Bye, Loretta.

You gotta go back in the pen.

I talked to Joanne Watson, who is a local historian and superintendent of the Fair History Building.

I think the Deerfield Fair is perhaps particularly interesting to me because it started in a centennial year, in 1876, in the 100th birthday of the country.

And I think there were a lot of fairs in New Hampshire that year and it was such a big success that people continued for two more years.

Now, there were gaps in between, but there were intervals at which the fair was held up until the present series began in 1923.

Music Half a minute, Skip.

Back!

Back!

Back!

Back!

Oh, that's too bad.

That black horse slipped.

Get some new shoes on him New tires.

Give him a good hand.

Isn't that wonderful?

Horse 4.

We got one more hitch to go.

(inaudible) They said, by God, (inaudible) They want to know.

(inaudible) It’s getting heavy, I'll tell you.

10,000 pounds on a boat.

And if you include that boat, 11,000 pounds.

He means business, this boy.

I think you got it out, Steve.

Joe Bolduc is retiring this year as superintendent of horse pulling and draft horses.

He's going to turn it over to his son, John.

Now, where did horse pulling come?

I mean, I can think of the plow.

Is that where it came from?

Is that what this whole idea was based on?

No.

A lot of horse pulling came from the old farmers.

I can remember my dad used to get get with the guys on the weekend and they get a talking one thing or another.

I got a better pair of horses than you got.

And and they'll turn around and say, oh no, you ain't either.

And they'll turn around and they'll chain the dump cart wheels, load it up with manure, or load it up with something - Hay and grain.

Chain, chain the wheels and and see who's the winner.

And and whoever may win it, they may win a gallon of hard cider.

The fair has got to be one of the best bargains going.

We didn't even come close to seeing everything.

We missed the cattle barns, the tractor operating contest, craft buildings, the children's petting barn, live music, and even a beauty contest.

We just ran out of time.

But I was not going to leave without visiting the Midway because, well, when it comes to the rides, I'm with these kids.

I'm nuts over them.

Music Well, the Deerfield Fair is about to happen again.

It will be held this year on October the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th.

This is the 117th anniversary of this event, and it continues the tradition of no booze, no gambling, no girlie shows, which makes it perfect family fair.

Our next story is about Native American history.

Now, when most of us think of Native Americans, we think, oh, probably not much further back than the first Thanksgiving.

But of course, there have been Indians here for thousands of years.

And in this story, producer Chip Neal takes a look at Native American history, both recent and ancient, as he pays a visit to some people up in Warner and some folks over in George’s Mills.

(drumbeats) (speaking Algonquian) And in the Algonquin language, that means greetings and how are you?

And it's like the way the law could mean a thousand different things.

My name is Cjegktoonuppa and I am the supreme medicine man for the Wampanoag people.

I come from Cape Cod.

And our story of creation is talking about a turtle that was put down here in this water.

And this turtle allowed all the different life styles to come and live on his back.

And now we call this turtle Mother Earth.

And the back of that turtle is what we stand on today.

And all the life here is put here and each one of them has a way of connecting with the other.

Our connection with each other and our Mother Earth is the same message Native Americans have been trying to share with us throughout the painful history between our cultures.

The first Thanksgiving may have been the beginning of our understanding of Native American history, but for them, it was the end of an amazing history which stretched back thousands of years.

They would have been nomadic hunters and gatherers after big game animals the mammoth, the bison, the horse, possibly reindeer.

And they would have been occupying a treeless tundra here before any modern vegetation came in.

The ice wasn't too far to the north at that time.

10,000 years ago, ice was still present just up in northern Vermont and southern Quebec.

Peter Phippen is an archeologist who has been assisting this man, archeologist Howard Sargent, who has been digging into Mother Earth for some 12 years now on this site on the shore of Lake Sunapee in George's Mills, Howard and his students have uncovered some 10,000 year old clues about these ancient native people we now call Indians.

This side scraper is quite typical of Paleo-Indian technology, and in fact it goes back, you can even see this duplicated in, in Upper Paleolithic of Europe.

A couple of engraving tools, small engravers here, this one of a small engraving spur, and the scraper with two spurs on it on either end.

Now is this something that would be made?

This is intentionally shaped.

All right.

And how would you use this this engraver tool for instance?

Okay, it's going to be used on probably bone or antler that's been soaked.

And then you use that graving spur as a way of, of outlining a harpoon or something made out of bone or antler.

You use this point.

And you use that point and grave down into it until you get through the dense part of the bone.

And then with a wedge, you can snap that piece out, then grind it down to the to the shape that you'd want.

Another important find on the site is what looks like the remains of a long house with three hearths, all dating back to the 1300s.

The dig site has now been covered back over.

What's your conjecture now about the use of this structure?

And you think it was a family that lived here?

I think it's it's probably an Algonquin structure.

I think a nuclear family is using it.

I think it's a winter site, three families with three hearths, all of which contain a large number of, contained a large number of firecracker stones, suggesting that they had pretty intense fires in those.

Perhaps during the day they would keep fire on them and heat those stones up.

Those stones then are going to hold heat well into the night.

So I think it might well have been a winter structure.

Luckily, we have people like Howard Sargent who recognize the incredible depth of the history of the Native Americans, but we also have people who recognize the tremendous importance of the more recent Native Americans’ Earth-based message.

(Native American singing) I think all of us are pretty familiar with all the problems out there the acid rain, the hole in the ozone, and the oil spills and all the other contaminants that are doing quite a number on the Earth.

So we started hope lead that we would have a museum with a voice.

It wouldn't be just a mausoleum to pick a lot of facts, but it would be a museum that somehow showed the relationship of the Indians to the earth.

And from it we could lift out some ideas that made us all aware of it more to take more of a loving attitude toward the earth.

Bud Thompson and his wife, Nancy, opened the Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum in Warner with a dazzling display of Native American arts, crafts, and tools (Native American singing) The net is a dip net, and these are used by the Indians to catch the salmon as they came up the falls, the shad that came up the river.

Now the little decoys, you see, have nothing to do with the net.

But they were used in conjunction with the fish spear that comes from the Great Lakes.

Out of the Great Lakes, the Indians construct on the top of the ice a small teepee.

The idea is to completely exclude the light.

Then a hole is made in the ice, a blanket they lay down so they can lie on it without getting cold, and once your eyes adjust the darkness you can see down the bottom of the lake, and then the little decoys dangle down the hole.

When the big fish come after the little fish, they're speared with the long spear that you see there.

(Native American singing) They tended to live in a territory and work in a cyclical way through that on the seasonal basis.

So there was a good deal of effective use of resources during the archaic time.

Some writers have even suggested perhaps a more effective use of resources than we do today, because they went from one environment to another and they lived under the canopy of heaven, if you will.

And so home was where the resource was.

They moved to it, and that seasonality had real advantages, too, for them.

(Native American singing) Now there's no word in any of the Indian languages for the art or for religion.

The point being, that is not a separate category.

It's all a part of life itself.

These rocks that you see, that outcrop on this mountain, they also had a special being, a special place for them to be here.

And we call them the Rock People because they are rocks and they have a special connection with all other forms of life.

I hope that your time that you spend here will be beneficial to you, and so you'll have a better understanding about my people and about that way in life.

So with this, I'd like to say (speaking Algonquian) and thank you for coming.

(drumbeats) The Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum will stay open through Columbus Day and on weekends right into the month of November.

I called Howard Sargent on the phone this morning.

He tells me that this year's dig, they uncovered some soapstone dishes that date back 3000 years, and next year they will be excavating down to a level that goes back, oh, 10 to 13,000 years to the post glacial period.

Wow.

Well, thank you for joining us.

Next week, we are going to travel over to Wolfeboro and meet Mary Berkus and her friends, some of whom are retired but none of whom are retiring.

Until then, for New Hampshire Crossroads, I’m Fritz Wetherbee.

Theme Music Presentation of New Hampshire Crossroads is made possible by grants from First NH Banks serving the financial needs of individuals, corporations, and local governments throughout New Hampshire.

The Union Leader Corporation, publisher of New Hampshire's statewide newspapers, delivering a world of color to you every morning.

Upton, Sanders and Smith of Concord, New Hampshire, providing a full range of legal services throughout the state of New Hampshire since 1908.

And Clarion Somerset Hotel and Apartments of Nashua, New Hampshire, where we make living fun.

Theme Music