Day, the Third

Such Excess as Gravity's Revolt

THIS IS PART TWO OF YESTERDAY’S ESSAY ABOUT THE SEARCH FOR WALDO’S STONE.

It is no hyperbole to say that New Boston was, at one time, the Gravity Center of the World. Perhaps anti-gravity center of the world would be more accurate.

It was here, in the 50s and 60s that businessman and gravity enthusiast Roger Babson founded the Gravity Research Foundation in an attempt, he wrote, to free humanity from the bondage of gravity. That’s real. This was a real thing.

And I’m going to tell you about it and him, later in the month. If I were to be perfectly honest, New Boston is such a weird place, I could dedicate the whole month to it and not run out of ideas.

For now, however, our little family came out to New Boston – you could say we were “pulled” here – at the invite of the New Boston Historical Society. Our mission; touch the Waldo Stone.

Lisa and Dan Rothman met us at the museum, a beautiful little building in the center of town that used to be the old library. (The new library is bold and white and big and grand just up the road.) I’d known Dan from a past life as an editor, working with him on some short fiction. Today, they were just local history buffs and they rolled out a big welcome for us – I mean, literally, they opened the museum on a weekend for Little Bean and gave her (and us, but let’s face it, this was about her) a grand tour of the tidy, but jam packed New Boston museum.

An aside: I adore local historians. As a general rule, few people go out of their way to visit these small, unassuming places that are open only a few hours a week and consist mostly of diaries of farmers writing about pigpens. To work at a village historical society is a master class in passion and the belief that the important things – the life and death stuff; family, food, kids, morality and mortality – take place right here, right on a main street, any Main Street. I swear to you, there’s as much to learn from the life of a school teacher in 1900 rural America as there is from anything in the Smithsonian. Give them a chance.

“Do you want a tour,” Lisa is saying to my daughter as we walk up the front steps, “or do you want to go right to the stone?”

Little Bean looks up at me and shrugs. Despite her general outgoing demeanor, she can be shy in more formal places like this.

“Shall we just go right to the Face Stone,” I say.

She nods. Lisa smiles and gently places a hand on my daughter’s shoulder and guides her down a sloping ramp to a small, unassuming nook at the bottom of a shelf display.

And there it is. Orren Waldo’s Face Stone.

“I really had to think about where this was,” Dan whispers in my ear. “Honestly, I don’t think anyone has ever asked to see it.”

The stone looks exactly like the picture, maybe 12- or 13-inches round. It’s propped into a groove in another stone that keeps it upright. It has a tag on it and some information about Waldo. And I notice a large crack in the top of it. The stone has not survived this past 100 years completely intact.

My daughter kneels before it, like at an altar. She looks up at us.

“You can touch it,” Lisa says.

And she does. She runs her hand briefly over the nose and forehead, warm fingers against the rough granite.

And I think to myself, how remarkable. A century ago, a rural farmer had it in his head to build a wall and dug this stone from the dirt, like endless farmers before and after him. But this time, he took a picture and that has made all the difference.

What do you suppose Orren would think if he was told that in 100 years, a little girl fascinated by rocks would seek out this one stone – would spend the day searching for it. This one rock. This connection.

Orren’s stone will become permanent now, as our third rocks Field Guide, “NH Rocks That Rock: Oddities” will feature the Waldo Stone.  

We move on. The Rothmans are perfect guides, letting Little Bean interact with the history they hold so dear. They hand her a cannon ball. The set up ancient candlepins and let her bowl right there on the floor of the museum. She rings an old school bell as loudly as she’s able.

It is history in her hands, alive and organic.

After, we visit a Little Free Library, then stop at the local country store and pick up some Fruit Loops, and then we go for ice cream.

All this because a farmer many, many years ago, on a whim, thought a rock looked like a face. Life is connection.