Last night, that thing was back in the sky—the moon with extra light™️—reflecting in the water. Across the river, someone was shooting a gun. Two cats circled each other in the lamplight, moaning like banshees who could take it or leave it. Invisible apples crashed into fallen leaves. My flashlight caught the cats’ eyeshine before they moved across the bridge. (Yes, cats, too.) Once, a pack of coyotes crossed the bridge, then encircled our house, howling.

A bridge is a way of crossing. Like these shoes on the feet of men who danced on logs as they floated down the rivers of “Maine.”

It’s what happens on my way to a story, when I’m on these bridges (these are some bridges!), that I love, sometimes, more than the “finished” stories themselves, though I like those, too.

New Work in the World

For example, here’s this story I wrote about East of Suez for Eater.

East of Suez is one of the oldest pan-Asian restaurants in the US, housed in an old summer camp for grown-ups in a town that bills itself as “the oldest summer resort in America”—a.k.a. Wolfeboro, NH, my hometown. Waiting tables at East of Suez was one of my first jobs.

A lot can happen on bridges.

In this case, as I researched the roots of Wolfeboro’s summer resort claim (that would end up appearing in one sentence of the story), I stayed up researching Governor John Wentworth (1737–1820), live tweeting to myself (via the Notes app) what I learned along the way. My draft was due in a few days and I knew that virtually nothing that I was learning would end up in the essay but I was enrapt. I was barreling. I could feel it in my teeth.

So I am going to tell you a few things that I learned.

Behind the Story

Governor John Wentworth was the last royal governor of New Hampshire. He built a summer mansion in Wolfeboro in 1768, employing over 150 people—the “first” summer home in that area.1

Apparently, Wentworth’s plan had been to move the capital of New Hampshire to Wolfeboro and to rule from said mansion but he had to abandon it as well as “his” 4,300 acres there because of the threat to his life by “rambunctious patriots” (i.e. a mob of armed men surrounding his mansion, seeking to arrest one of his Loyalist militia members.2

Anyway, Wentworth and his wife, Frances3 fled—to Boston, London and then, to Nova Scotia, where they built an even larger mansion and also, this farm on Long Lake where Wentworth “’employed’ a number of maroons” and “kept” a Maroon mistress.

According to the archives, “The house on the left was built, probably by George W. Colley [Wentworth’s son by his mistress], on part of the foundation of Wentworth's original farmhouse. The house on the right had been recently built by a descendant of George W. Colley.”

Wentworth “expressed an optimistic hope that the Maroons might become successful settlers” and that they simply needed to be “civilized,” a task Wentworth planned to accomplish through “instructing them in the Christian religion.” Eventually, he concluded that the Maroons were not interested in the Christian religion (👏) and he gave up his project.

I haven’t put all the pieces together yet and perhaps I never will but I know Governor Wentworth died in 1820, the same year that his Wolfeboro mansion went up in flames. After the Wentworths fled, the Wolfeboro mansion was seized by the NH government and sold at auction (reportedly including “all the Improvements and Additions of Stock, Furniture, Tools, Etc.”.) One cold morning, the new owner started a fire with a bundle of dry, unused shingles, which exploded up the chimney and came shooting out onto the roof.

The house I grew up in (built around 1812) was just three miles down the road from the mansion (now called Governor Wentworth Highway)—a beautiful road along the lake, one of the roads Wentworth built to increase the likelihood of Wolfeboro becoming the state capital.

I bet whoever lived in my childhood home back then would have seen the blackened sky as what was reportedly the largest home in New Hampshire burned, the flumes of smoke coming from the same direction I stared out at night as a teenager, as I wished myself out of that town.

Every road into Wolfeboro has a sign proclaiming this summer resort business. Every town business’s website seems to boast about it. “Yup, it’s true,” they say, laughing as they ring up another Wolfeboro or “Lake Life” t-shirt, “The oldest summer resort in America!” How breezy Wolfeboro is about this summer resort business!

One thing I realized (“one thing,” lol) in writing this Eater story, however, is that in my decision to leave my hometown at age fourteen for boarding school,4 I effectively turned Wolfeboro into a summer resort town for myself, coming back every June–August to swim, hike, and gaze at the moon and stars while sitting on my friends’ parents docks. I also worked during the summers, including many seasons at East of Suez, where Charlie Powell (one of the restaurant's founders, who I talk about extensively in the story) hired me—despite my very unfortunate hairstyle at the time. 😬

At the end of every summer, I’d baffle my pseudo-sweethearts by insisting on listening to George Winston’s 1980 banger album, “Autumn” rather than the Prodigy while packing up my belongings to bring to Massachusetts,5 feeling quite soppy.6

Those nights—many nights—after my parents went to sleep, I’d slide through my bedroom window on my stomach and sit out on the porch roof and smoke Parliament Lights, often through a plastic, rhinestone-encrusted cigarette holder. I may have thought I was looking out at the 7-11 parking lot across the street from my parents' house7 but now I know I was also looking in the direction of the promise and the demise of the actual oldest summer resort home in America.

I thought I was going to tell you more about East of Suez, the jewels of humans who run it, and what Wolfeboro’s summer resort narrative has meant to them. I guess I got stuck on a different bridge. I hope you’ll read the story. Most of the good stuff is there.

As with just about anything I get fixated on, East of Suez and the Powell family—who have been running it since 1967—have so many rich stories. I’m grateful to have ended up working in that empowering, matriarchal space—a real antidote to many of the things around me during my teens and early twenties.

One of the many lovely things that Liz Powell-Gorai, owner of East of Suez, noted during our interviews is:

“Hospitality is not simply about serving people. It’s about how we treat each other.”

I’m grateful to all the excellent humans I worked alongside and served at East of Suez, and that it’s still going strong in its 55th year. Bringing my kids there every summer has become a highly anticipated tradition. Just a few days ago, they were pretending their dragon figurines were on their way to eat at East of Suez. ❤️

Currents

I recently finished Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez and loved it—by the last story (“The Name Means Thunder”) I was blinking, squinting, crying, shaking my head, putting the book down and up again, in awe. I listened to an interview with Talty on Between the Covers and loved so much the conversation about care and how that shows up throughout the book (as well as all the other directions David Naimon takes the conversation in).

Christopher Deweese is a poet who was in academia for a long time.8 He’s a brilliant teacher, writer, and observer of the world. As fate would have it, he’s now working for the Weather Channel and today, the newsletter he’s been working on launches. I highly recommend signing up for the Morning Brief newsletter. I’ve been excited about it for months and I can’t wait to read the first one. You can sign up here.

Housekeeping

I had planned to time this newsletter with some VERY BIG NEWS that is not about me but about someone I love. The timing is out of my control and I wanted to get this out now because what if nothing is the same after the VERY BIG NEWS is announced? Then what would I have to say about bridges and rooftops and Governor Wentworth? (Stay tuned via Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for this news.)

Also, I wanted to send this out today because I am racing to scramble together enough funds to participate in Paulette Perhach’s Powerhouse Writers program, which starts on Thursday, September 8 (tomorrow, if you’re reading this today).

If you find yourself with a few extra bucks lining your pocket today and you feel like throwing me a bone, that would be very cool. (Venmo is great, so is becoming a paid subscriber.)

It’s also cool to not throw me a bone. There are many other worthy causes out there that are far more urgent. Reading to the end doesn’t make you obligated it just means you have a cool attention span. (How did you get that?)

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Thanks for reading. Be well, friends.

Want to read more things I wrote? A full archive of my published work is here.