More Tales from Barnstead: Thanksgiving Open House
As I was carefully dodging fallen branches on my blowy-snowy trek down the back roads today, I could just barely make out a white, hand-painted sign on the side of the road. At the corner of a (relatively) well-traveled intersection, there, scrawled in black lettering, was an invitation to a Thanksgiving Open House at somebody’s home. Not a real estate open house; not a business open house; a Thanksgiving dinner for anyone in town with nowhere to go or nobody with whom to spend the holiday. The generosity of such an invitation was stunning to me.
When I got home, I popped on Facebook and noted that there was a recent post in the Barnstead community group; as I have found myself doing more and more often lately, I opened it up. There, for all the 1,300+ members to read, was another open invitation from yet another Barnstead resident for Thanksgiving dinner at her home.
People sometimes make fun of New Hampshire as being “backwoods” or “hickish”, or they complain about “civilization” being too far away from a lot of the little towns. I contend that my backwoods corner of the state knows exactly what being civilized really means. I <3 my little ‘burb.