Postcards don't give a full picture

The last of the Indiana license plates disappear about the middle of New York State.
Oh, sure, we’ve spotted one or two as far north as Maine. But those are unusual.
Just back from a few weeks in southern New Hampshire (recently-published columns were written in advance), I’m struck again by how many of our friends and neighbors in Indiana and Ohio have never ventured into New England. Lots of folks say it’s on their one-of-these-days list, but haven’t gotten there yet.
And most of them have a preconceived image of what I’d call “postcard New England.”
That’s the New England with village greens and white steepled churches and venerable old residents dressed as if they came out of an L.L. Bean catalogue.
That New England exists, but it’s only part of the picture.
For us, “postcard New England” is probably best expressed at the annual church fair we try to attend in Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire.
In fact, Jaffrey Center looks like a postcard. There’s a green space, a white clapboard meetinghouse and an old brick church. The church’s fair is its primary fundraiser of the year and is about as low-key as you can get.
Members of the congregation of people in the little community bring in artwork and old prints from the attic for sale in the church. There’s a bake sale just like a million bake sales in the Midwest.
In the meetinghouse, the focus is on antiques, and I use that term very loosely. Old stuff would probably be a better description. Some fans of the Jaffrey fair try to get there early to get the best items; we tend to go at the end of the day when $1 will get you whatever you can stuff into a paper grocery bag from tables at one end of the room. Other items drop to half-off about the last hour.
Outside the meetinghouse, there are kid games and a dunk tank and rides around the village in a Model T Ford.
As I said, it’s the living equivalent of postcard images of New England.
But just as life in the Midwest isn’t all bucolic farm scenes and rosy-cheeked children and farmers who talk like Wilfred Brimley, life in New England has another side.
Twice during this vacation we paid a visit to “laundromat New England,” which may be just a few miles down the road from the postcard version but has a dynamic all its own.
The laundromat version looks like the laundromat version of everywhere else. The place is dusty, and there’s lint in the air. Some of the machines don’t work, and the dryers don’t do a very good job.
And the folks making use of the place don’t look like they came out of an L.L. Bean catalogue. They’re working people, trying to get by, stretching their pennies.
Instead of L.L. Bean, you’re likely to encounter a “Duck Dynasty” T-shirt.
Some folks, it’s clear, are wearing the last clean clothes they own. That becomes apparent when the guy with the cowboy hat whose car sounds like it needs a new head gasket takes off his shirt and throws it in with the rest of the load.
Chances are, that’s not the image you had in mind when it comes to New England. But it’s just as real, and strange as it may sound, that’s part of the charm.