March - 2017

Granite State of Mind, #59: Canobie Lake Park, Salem

Joe Pace

Mar 31, 2017

Granite State of Mind, #59: Canobie Lake Park, Salem

I have such mixed feelings about New Hampshire's big old theme park. It's got everything you're looking for in these places, with rides and midway games and all the rest, but it's also got a lot of what makes tourist traps like these unbearable, with long lines and overpriced food. And the crowds! New Hampshire Republicans may buy into the whackadoodle conspiracy theory about buses of Massachusetts voters streaming across our southern border to commit voter fraud, but they're

Granite State of Mind, #58: String Bridge, Exeter

Joe Pace

Mar 30, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #58: String Bridge, Exeter

There are two ways across the Exeter River in town. And yeah, I've got some love for the modestly named Great Bridge where the dam used to be (you know, the one they put our names on during the 2003 renovations), but the String Bridge is a far more interesting and romantic structure. Spanning the water where the Exeter becomes the Squamscott, the String Bridge has been through a variety of incarnations since the 1640s. I'll defer to town historian Barbara Rimkunas for her exc

Granite State of Mind, #57: Great Island Common, New Castle

Joe Pace

Mar 29, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #57: Great Island Common, New Castle

New Castle is a funky place. It's the smallest town in New Hampshire at less than 2.5 square miles, though less than a square mile of that is land - more than 65% of the town is ocean. It's also the only town in the state existing entirely on islands (Great Island plus a few others). First settled in 1623, it was part of Portsmouth until its independent incorporation in 1693, with Rye part of the town until 1719. Fewer than a thousand people live there, and those who do are m

Granite State of Mind, #56: Friendly Toast, Portsmouth

Joe Pace

Mar 28, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #56: Friendly Toast, Portsmouth

Earlier in this list I mentioned some of the great traditional breakfast places in the New Hampshire seacoast (Betty's Kitchen, Rogan's, the Country View). The Friendly Toast wasn't on the list because it's not a traditional breakfast joint. It's not a place I think of going for a heap of eggs and bacon before a tree job, for instance, and I can't picture a bunch of old townies sitting in a booth there drinking coffee all morning. It's more of a late-night munchies and late-m

Granite State of Mind, #55: Seahawk Field, Cooperative Middle School, Stratham

Joe Pace

Mar 27, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #55: Seahawk Field, Cooperative Middle School, Stratham

In the fall of 2000 I joined the Exeter Seahawks youth football program as board president, twelve years after having played for the Seahawks as an eighth grader in 1988. Instead of coaching with the 8th grade varsity, I became an assistant on the fifth grade team as a way to get to know families when they started with the league. The following seven years were a lot of fun and fellowship mixed with a little heartache. The organization boasted some of the most dedicated paren

Granite State of Mind, #54: Hampton Cinemas, Hampton

Joe Pace

Mar 26, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #54: Hampton Cinemas, Hampton

I've spilled a lot of ink on another movie house in the seacoast, and I'm sure I will again before this list is finished. But I can't talk about going to the movies back home without a tip of the cap to the dead-and-buried Hampton Cinemas. When I was a kid and it was time to take in a picture show, we'd more often than not head into Newington. But once I hit junior high and high school in Exeter, the Hampton Cinemas became more of a draw. A quick shot down Route 27 brought yo

Joe Pace

Mar 25, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #53: Berlin, NH

When we first moved to western Washington state, we were greeted by a certain odor along the stretch of I-5 between Olympia and Seattle. A sulphurous, unpleasant smell the locals refer to as the Tacoma Aroma. It was a familiar fragrance to anyone who'd ever visited Berlin in New Hampshire's north country: the smell of pulp mills. Like the Puget Sound some 3,000 miles to the west, New Hampshire's White Mountains were once a thriving lumber, paper, and pulp producer. Founded in

Granite State of Mind, #52: Thompson Hall, University of New Hampshire, Durham

Joe Pace

Mar 24, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #52: Thompson Hall, University of New Hampshire, Durham

Today we inaugurate a new president at the University of Puget Sound, the culmination of a project I've worked on for the last six months. As the event arrives, I'm forcibly reminded of another presidential inauguration at another university, more than twenty years ago. I was fortuntae enough at the time to be serving as student body president at UNH when we inaugurated Joan Leitzel, one of the best chief executives any university has ever had, and one of the great mentors in

Granite State of Mind, #51: Swasey Parkway, Exeter

Joe Pace

Mar 23, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #51: Swasey Parkway, Exeter

There are a lot of places I love in Exeter - and unapologetically so, as there are so many places there worth loving. Among these is Swasey Parkway, the tree-studded greensward alongside the Squamscott River stretching from downtown toward Newfields Road. It's one of the town's most beautiful venues, with perfect views of that quintessential New Hampshire skyline, the distinctive steeple of the Congregational Church and cupola atop the Town Hall reaching modestly skyward in l

Granite State of Mind, #50: Pleasant View Drive, Exeter

Joe Pace

Mar 22, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #50: Pleasant View Drive, Exeter

In 2010 we left New Hampshire for Sarah's military medical career, and we've had a few addresses in the seven years since - two in Maryland while she was at Walter Reed and two in Washington during her time at Fort Lewis. None of them have felt particularly like home, though we've known friends and shared plenty of love and laughter in thoseplaces. When I think of home, I mainly think of my folks's place in Stratham, but also of this place in Exeter that we lived in from 2006

Granite State of Mind, #49: Prescott Park, Portsmouth

Joe Pace

Mar 21, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #49: Prescott Park, Portsmouth

There are few places in the seacoast, indeed in all of New Hampshire, where the past and the future come together with the vibrant energy of Prescott Park. It's a place steeped in history, from the Puddle Dock to Sheafe's Warehouse, where privateers lurked and prostitutes worked, where the waterfront character of a city thrived with shipbuilding and smuggled goods and the early stirrings of revolution. Almost eighty years ago two schoolteacher sisters deeded the funds to buy

Granite State of Mind, #48: Astros Field, Stratham

Joe Pace

Mar 20, 2017

Granite State of Mind

Granite State of Mind, #48: Astros Field, Stratham

There's no way that's the real name of it - I just made that up. In fact, I doubt there ever was a name for that ballfield out behind the old Stratham Voc-Tech off Portsmouth Ave. It was a fetid, swampy place, hot and swampy and buggy. (Aside: Why were all my youth athletics plagued by mosquitoes? Between this place and the football practice field in Exeter, it's a wonder we didn't have malaria outbreaks.) It was our place, though, the home field of the Washington Senators of

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