Peterborough New Hampshire is about an hours drive north of our home in Massachusetts. It's not far and not hard to reach by car. We decided to take a drive there one weekend earlier this year to visit the Peterborough Basket Company. Peterborough Baskets are made the old fashioned way right here in the United States for the past 150 years. On our way there we planned to stop in the town of Jaffrey to visit the old cemetery which was the inspiration for Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town." Jaffrey is situated just 6 miles to the south of Peterborough, six miles that's all. Here's a map so that you can see for yourselves.
http://www.mapquest.com/maps?1c=Peterborough&1s=NH&2c=Jaffrey&2s=NH
The driving instructions look fairly straight forward to me. The way I read it, it's a straight shot on route 202 to get from one town to the other. Straight forward and straight on,straight,straight,straight without so much as a figure 8. Neither a twist nor a turn just costs a little gas to burn for the visit and return.
So it was much to our chagrin to discover that the Main street cemetery in Jaffrey could not be located no matter how hard we tried to find it. We decided to press on to Peterborough to shop for baskets before the shop closed and return to find the cemetery on our way back home. We drove for 6 miles straight up route 202 to Peterborough and found the basket store easily and still open.It was what one would call a true Factory Outlet store, as the factory was actually attached to the store.
After selecting several baskets we headed for the checkout counter which was manned by a rather elderly lady with a blueish purple rinse job in her frosty white hair. She must have been well into her seventh decade of life. At any rate she seemed to have a bit of trouble running the credit card machine and as she fiddled and diddled with it Mrs. Jiffy took it upon herself to ask the lady if she knew where the old cemetery in Jaffrey was. After a moment of hesitation she responded, "I don't know, Jaffrey......I don't go there, I live here in Peterborough." She continued, "I assume it's in the center of town, but I'm not sure, I'm probably not the right person to ask....I live here in Peterborough, I don't go there.....nope, maybe you should go there and ask somebody?" Mrs. Jiffy just stared at her with a slightly bemused look and said, "OK we'll do that." In my mind I could picture the old lady's evil hunchbacked tormentor coming back to re shackle her to the wall in the back room or something.
As soon as we exited the store our conversation immediately focused on the old lady. Amid chuckles and guffaws I surmised that maybe she only travels north of Peterborough or has no car. In reality she was probably quite happy staying in Peterborough forever and ever. Maybe one day she could even haunt the basket shop in the afterlife. An eternity of tidying up the store and arranging the baskets without so much as visiting the Jaffrey cemetery even if she were to be buried there.
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