By Edie Clark

[In Yankee’s 75 years,I don’t think we’ve had a writer with a more loyal readership than Edie Clark, whose Mary’s Farm column has brought readers into the intimacies of living in a old house in rural New Hampshire.--Mel Allen]

I first started working at Yankee in February of 1978. I was hired to do proofreading two days a week. I was living in a house my husband and I had built with our own hands on a piece of land in Winchester, New Hampshire. We ascribed to the principles of Helen and Scott Nearing, champions of the simple life. I drove an old VW beetle that had no heater. My several layers of socks and heavy boots prevented my feet from freezing while driving the 34 miles from Winchester to Dublin. I had been a book editor in Philadelphia and aspired to be a writer but was willing to do whatever it might take to bring in a little income to support our homestead. My first hour at Yankee was always spent thawing out, putting my feet on the baseboard heater and rubbing my hands together to get the circulation going again.

I didn’t know much about Yankee, thought it was a magazine for old people. But I gradually realized that most everyone on the staff was in their late twenties, like me. Proofreading the articles, I became interested in the content and started thinking about stories that I might write. I had never thought about New England as a whole, but I had always loved the spirit of the place. In the Nearing-inspired house that my husband and I had built, we had a composting toilet called a Clivus Multrum, a Swedish invention that was being marketed in the United States by a surprising entity, Abby Rockefeller, daughter of David, granddaughter of John D. I went to interview her in her Cambridge home, parking my rusted Volkswagen in front of her aristocratic manse. I remember being extremely nervous, not only because it was the first time I’d ever gone out on assignment but also because of the possibly daunting woman I might find behind such a famous name. She came to the door in bare feet, feet that obviously rarely wore shoes. With her warm smile, she immediately put me at ease. My story about Abby and her water-saving enterprise became the first story I ever wrote for Yankee. After that, they came fast and furious.

I often tell people that I do not write for a living, I drive. Most issues of Yankee since the 1980s have stories that I wrote, little humorous quips about eccentric folks as well as multiple-part series about land development and another about water pollution. On occasion, to conceal the fact that I had written too many stories for one issue, I wrote under the names E. Sterling (my middle name) and Alice Herbert (a pseudonym Yankee kept on file for such instances).

In pursuit of stories for Yankee, I have driven the Golden Road, dodging logging trucks, all the way to the Allagash; walked part of Vermont’s Long Trail; canoed the West Branch of the Penobscot; and straddled the Canadian border, looking for the Fourth Connecticut Lake which turned out to be an insignificant beaver pond but, nevertheless, the source of the mighty Connecticut River. That was the end of my journey along the length of the Connecticut which took me all of one summer to complete and even longer to write the five-part series on the river that appeared in 1985-1986.

I’ve poked into the gardens of many who have since passed away but whose gardens still live with me as I work in mine. I’ve sat in numberless kitchens, jotting down recipes and enjoying the delicious results. I’ve sampled an array of chocolates for a Valentine’s Day issue, judged an apple pie contest, a chili contest and a pudding contest, and I’ve attended a wild game supper in Vermont (one of the few assignments I was unable to complete. I just couldn’t stomach the fare.) I’ve profiled a passel of small towns, as if they were people. I’ve driven all over Vermont to find out why it was considered endangered and I’ve driven the length of the Canadian border, from Alburgh, Vermont, to Quoddy Light at the tip of Lubec, Maine, to see why or from what we need to be protected. I’ve taken a perilous ferry to Newfoundland and gone further afield, to Iowa and Alabama and California, to name a few places, all in pursuit of stories for Yankee Magazine.

Along the way I’ve interviewed old log drivers and beekeepers, stood by while an enormous wood-burning kiln was first built and then burned, in order to fire river clay into fine, colorful bricks. I’ve walked through the interior of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, wearing total-body protective gear while my tour guide was telling me the place was no more dangerous than a cake mix factory. I’ve interviewed bishops and movie stars, a Vermont copper miner, the man who developed the seed for the now-infamous Giant Pumpkin, a 96-year-old newspaper columnist, the similarly ancient daughter of a slave, as well as an elderly chicken farmer whose sight was restored when he was struck by lightning (but by the time I got to him, he had hired a Hollywood agent. End of story.). I’ve sat in the living room of a man whose wife was shot and killed by a deer hunter, leaving him with their twin daughters, who toddled around us as we spoke.

In these long thirty-two years, millionaires and men out of work have opened their homes to me as well as an entire congregation who would not leave their church when the bishop ordered them to in order for the church to be sold. For several nights, I slept in the pews with them and, eventually, watched them being forcibly removed from the church by the police, some of whom had tears rolling down their cheeks as they performed their duty. I also celebrated with these congregants when they reclaimed their church, where they continue to worship. (On that story, it was hard to maintain objectivity. It was as if it had been scripted by the devil.)

I attended services at the Mother Church of the Christian Science Church, read their scriptures and studied the life of Mary Baker Eddy in order to write about the case of a child who died while in the care of faith healing. Over these long years, there have been stories about gravestone robbers and gravestone carvers; Jesus trees and a comatose teenager from whom thousands sought healing; fish decoys and duck decoys and magicians who bring ducks out of thin air. The stories are as endless as the colors in nature. Every story has widened my circle and deepened my understanding, of life and of the human race.

To my surprise and everlasting delight, what started out as a way to make ends meet while my husband and I tried to live off the land became my life. I’ve driven way more than a million miles, worn out eight cars, divorced one husband and lost another to cancer, lived in five different houses, most of them in the same town, survived cancer and (hopefully) Lyme Disease, and my hair has turned white. In all that time and through all those life experiences, there has been one constant: Yankee Magazine. In the first issue of Yankee, founder Robb Sagendorph stated as his mission: “the expression of and perhaps indirectly the preservation of that great culture into which every Yank was born and by which every real Yank must live.”

I was born and raised in New Jersey so I am not a “real Yank.” But I have lived most of my adult life here in New England and have been everlastingly inspired and educated by my work for Yankee and by my listening to Yankees. It’s been my privilege to somehow participate in the expression of, and hopefully, the preservation of that great culture.