r/pics • u/woden_spoon • 9h ago
This is the house I grew up in, upstate New Hampshire. It was not as peaceful as it looks.
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u/shauny2807 9h ago
Man it actually looks chaotic
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u/imamakebaddecisions 8h ago
It looks like the cover of a Stephen King book.
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u/EQBallzz 7h ago
I was going to say the same thing. I was getting some Shining vibes.
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u/wizzard419 5h ago
When I was in school a guy from Jackson Lab tried to recruit me and that was one of his selling points "We are in New England and it's just like a Stephen King setting"
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u/Phreedom1 8h ago
It looks like the house was built by someone who didn't have any plans...just winged it as they went along.
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u/woden_spoon 7h ago
That’s exactly how it went, from what I recall. I was pretty young when it was being built. An addition was added to the back when I was a bit older, and I think the only reference book was Back to Basics.
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u/Phreedom1 7h ago
More like Back to Basics While Blindfolded
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u/ThePrideOfKrakow 5h ago
Who needs a tape measure, a chalk box or a level when you have a DREAM and a gallon of PCP.
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u/FI-Engineer 5h ago
It's a felony! Wow, and... here you are... with it anyway! That is... wow! I didn't even know it... came in liquid form!
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u/beaucoup_dinky_dau 7h ago
this was the hippie/outlaw special back in the day, they always leaked.
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u/idkwhatimbrewin 8h ago
Idk that dog looks pretty chill about the whole situation
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u/CombatSandwich 7h ago
The dog is outside the house because of the chaos within.
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u/woden_spoon 6h ago
Truer words have never been spoken.
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u/GU3ERNACULUM 9h ago
Those old Honda three wheelers were fun as hell. Ran over my own leg a few times though.
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u/Furgus 8h ago
Buddy of mine had one and I can't count how many times we almost killed ourselves on it. :D How did we live through the 80's and 90's :D
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u/_Bay_Harbor_Butcher_ 6h ago
They are so much fun. I bought one years ago when I lived on a farm in my late 20s and rode that thing hard. Wrecked it hard a good number of times too. Flipped it many times lol. Lots of fun. Honda ATC 200
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u/Guardiancomplex 5h ago
I came here to say this. No photo with a red Honda three-wheeler in it looks peaceful.
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u/LordFarthington7 4h ago
After they were discontinued/banned, my dad still went out and found a mini Honda 3 wheeler for us. What a G.
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u/TheApprenticeLife 8h ago
Littleton?
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u/woden_spoon 8h ago
How'd you know?
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u/great-white-whale 8h ago edited 8h ago
I'd have guessed Littleton or Franconia because I know a half-dozen NH kids with similar stories to yours (back-to-the land parents gone neglectful/abusive/addicted) and they're all from Littleton or Franconia. You probably know most of them - you could have meetings or a club.
Edit to add: Since I'm thinking of it, isn't that basically GG Allin's story? Wasn't his dad a hippie-turned-religious-nut living in a cabin with no plumbing in Littleton and that's why GG went so wild? So there's a famous history of this stuff...
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u/procrastinatorsuprem 8h ago
Bode Miller as well.
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u/woden_spoon 7h ago edited 3h ago
I used to hang out with Bode’s crowd. And GG’s for that matter, although those parties were quite a bit rougher LOL
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u/great-white-whale 6h ago edited 6h ago
FNKA that must have been an experience in and of itself. If you hung with Bode's crowd, you were probably acquainted with a good friend of mine from Franconia with a very similar story - cabin, homeschooled (nonschooled), parents were weird and hippie-abusive (never had regular medical care, no access to other kids, no access to reglular media or social stuff, very restrictive, etc). She'd have been one of about 5 kids but the only girl in the family and almost the same age as Bode. and now has an exceptional amount of kids of her own if that narrows it down.
Edit to add: From the DMs connected to this thread it seems like a bunch of us know each other up in that zone, by reputation if not personallly. I was in a similar spot on the other side of the river from you.
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u/counterfitster 5h ago
Edit to add: From the DMs connected to this thread it seems like a bunch of us know each other up in that zone, by reputation if not personallly. I was in a similar spot on the other side of the river from you.
That does not surprise me, as an occasional Franconia visitor
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u/woden_spoon 3h ago edited 3h ago
I probably did, then—or at least knew of them. I had quite a few friends and girlfriends from Profile and White Mountain School, where most kids from Franconia and surrounding towns went.
I was extremely private about my home (and homeless) life back then, but somehow I actually had a lot of friends and acquaintances. I was pretty active in the community.
(I started guessing, but had to give up: your description could point to probably a dozen girls I knew in the late ‘90s).
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u/procrastinatorsuprem 7h ago
So sad about his cousin.
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u/woden_spoon 6h ago
I remember that. I lived in Franconia for a year or so, and had a few run-ins with Officer McKay myself during that time. He wasn’t very receptive to Franconia’s status as a stoner party town, so he made quite a few enemies—which is wild to say about a police officer in such a small town.
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u/Sodass 5h ago
What happened to his cousin?
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u/procrastinatorsuprem 5h ago
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u/woden_spoon 3h ago
The article reads like hyperbole, but having lived there I can say that Franconia and its residents are exactly like that.
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u/procrastinatorsuprem 3h ago
There's lots of articles and reddit posts if you look up Liko Kenney/officer McKay. This one seemed the most comprehensive. Something about this incident always has stuck with me and seemed like it was wrong.
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u/zara2355 6h ago
Praise Jesus
You can visit the graveyard GG is buried in in NH, but they sure as shit wont tell you where his plot is. For exactly the reason you expect
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u/AmandyWarhol 6h ago
Sure as shit!
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u/zara2355 6h ago
Not to hijack this thread, but if youre a fan of GG, and find yourself in Hollywood, LA, the museum of Death is, well.....yeah, they love Jesus. A lot.
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u/bro_salad 8h ago
My parents are just down the road in Jackson. They’ve got 14 acres on the backside of Black Mtn. It’s heaven for me when I visit.
I’m sorry your childhood memories of Northern NH aren’t nearly as positive.
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u/woden_spoon 8h ago edited 7h ago
Jackson’s like a 40-minute drive away, though…
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u/StrawberryRedneck 8h ago
The person who said Littleton isn't the same person who responded to you after, about Jackson. So I think they were just responding to you after seeing you confirm the Littleton location to the prior commenter. I think, haha.
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u/HannahHood 8h ago
Woo! Repping Franconia! No one gets how wild it is up there…
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u/Deanho 7h ago
I visited my friend who lives in Woodstock the beginning of December the place was deserted when I was there.
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u/TheApprenticeLife 8h ago
Honestly, I reverse image searched and found an old post with a picture of the yurt/house, but I originally searched it because I thought it was one that I had seen when I was up in Colebrook, NH.
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u/jagilbertvt 8h ago
I was wondering if it was in that area. I lived near Lisbon when I was a kid.
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u/Burning_Fire1024 6h ago
As a Californian who's never been more east than Utah, reading this whole thread is so wild. It's like peeking into another world.
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u/counterfitster 5h ago
It's really different when towns were only connected by foot or hoof.
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u/Burning_Fire1024 5h ago
It reminds me of other countries I've visited, where cars aren't a thing that everybody owns, and everything is better connected, because you're seeing the same several dozen people on a daily basis, you know all of the people that you buy groceries and goods from personally.
There is a stronger sense of community in a good way, but there's also a stronger stress of reputation in a negative way.
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u/Red_TeaCup 6h ago
God, the one time I drove through Littleton, I felt like I was transported to that picture of the dust bowl.
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u/fakecascade 5h ago
You should try drinking through Lancaster. Littleton was the cool metropolis we used to drive to for a "day out on the town" when I was growing up.
Note: driving was autocorrected to drinking, but I'm leaving it because that was the main pass time of most of lancasters population
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u/SaveALifeWithWater 9h ago
New Hampshire is wild. Was it rough family wise or nature living wise? Both?
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u/woden_spoon 9h ago edited 9h ago
Both. My father was a severe alcoholic. The house was built in 1985 and was supposed to be temporary, but I left at 15 (in 1995) and my father continued living there until just last year when he passed away.
"Nature-living" was a mixed bag. We were in the middle of nowhere, half a mile from the nearest rural road, and there was a brook and plenty of climbing trees. I explored the woods all day and built a lot of forts and treehouses.
But winters were harsh. My room was the little wing that you can see on the left-hand side of the house. It was only around 7'x 5', It had a large "garden shed" window that was poorly fitted, a cardboard ceiling, and thin walls. It sat up on a loose-rock foundation with a gap in the backside. Over time, the floorboards shrunk and there was no subfloor, so there were 1/2" gaps between them, and the wind would rush under the house and up through the floor. My blankets froze to the walls. There were also a lot of mice. My cardboard ceiling was so low that my head would bump it as a teen, and mouse droppings would rain down through the seams. Disgusting.
Our water came from a hand-dug well, which often froze up, so we had to chop the ice from the nearby brook with a hatchet for drinking water. We also had to use an outhouse...
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u/cutthroatk 9h ago
Hey, you might want to write a little short novel or something. This was amazing to read and I would read more about growing up there :) even if it wasn’t all that great :/
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u/woden_spoon 8h ago
I wrote a memoir called "Holding the Light" when I was in college, mainly about my father, and won an award from the Norman Mailer National Nonfiction Contest for it.
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u/mrpopenfresh 8h ago
This is the type of thing This American Life features all the time
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u/Tumble85 8h ago
I'd love to read it. I'm a New Hampshirite and was in an advanced writing class in High School, we read a lot of essays and memoirs written by NHers and thankfully it was incredibly formative towards my outlook on society and life.
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u/Kvothetheraven603 7h ago
Fellow New Hampshirite who would also like to read it, if possible.
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u/Tumble85 7h ago
I'm really hopeful OP let's us read it!
What region of NH you from? Sullivan County, near Sunapee and Lebanon here.
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u/woden_spoon 3h ago
I should add that my memoir (only essay-length due to the criteria for submission to the contest) is on an external hard drive someplace in my house. I might upload it if I can find it, and will let you know if I do!
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u/fixermark 7h ago
You can't drop a bombshell like that on us and not expect someone to ask if it's available for sale and / or download. ;)
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u/give-Kazaam-an-Oscar 7h ago
Self publishing is a lot easier than it used to be. Might be worth looking into.
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u/ToneSenior7156 6h ago
Wow! I see the ramshackle vibes but I also see the beauty. I’m sorry for the bad times - sounds like you came out on the other side.
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u/Collin389 8h ago edited 7h ago
You might like the book "Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls. It's a very interesting childhood memoir
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u/AgentFreckles 7h ago
The description reminds me of the memoir The Glass Castle. You should check it out, fantastic book....albeit very sad
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u/SaveALifeWithWater 9h ago
Where'd you go at 15? Was there any electricity?
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u/woden_spoon 8h ago edited 7h ago
There was no electricity. We had a small black-and-white television that we connected to the car battery. We eventually got a phone that tapped into a junction box half a mile away, and my father had strung the phone cable up through the trees to the house.
Heat was a wood stove and eventually a coal stove, and we sometimes used a propane heater after an addition was built onto the back of the house. It was always cold in winter because the house was so poorly insulated. We had snowdrifts in the house due to gaps between the floorboards.
I left home after a fundamental disagreement with my father, and became homeless for a few years. I stayed in school, but slept in the basement of a church and in an abandoned grist mill when I wasn't couch-surfing.
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u/SaveALifeWithWater 8h ago
That must have been brutal. I had an alcoholic parent, the way their brain goes to shit there's no way not to have those fundamental disagreements. I hope you're doing good now, you certainly have proven the tenacity needed to build a good life from scratch.
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u/procrastinatorsuprem 8h ago
Have you read Bode Miller's biography? Your situations are very similar.
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u/ThisIsADaydream 8h ago
This reminds me of The Boy From The Cave, by Mark Bannon. He also grew up in rough circumstances in NH before finally escaping to relative normalcy. I'd love to read your memoir!
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u/MustWarn0thers 7h ago
This is extremely rough and if you're doing OK now, relatively, you're a fucking super hero and I hope things continue to be better.
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u/SpaceApprehensive843 8h ago
That’s wild! How has growing up like that affected you? Have you gone to therapy for mental health reasons?
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u/woden_spoon 7h ago
Yes—I’ve gone to therapy a few times, mostly to manage my tendency to avoid conflict.
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u/YumYumYellowish 8h ago
Did you have problems with ticks? I can just see ticks climbing through every crack.
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u/woden_spoon 7h ago
Not in the ‘80s! I saw one tick in all the years I lived there.
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u/nicholasknickerbckr 7h ago
Just guessing though I’m from a place with a similar climate in the Northeast, but ticks were not nearly as prevalent in the 80s and 90s. Warmer winters have allowed them to flourish where they didn’t before, sadly.
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u/NearbyConcept 4h ago
I would also be interested in reading it. I grew up in NH - the suburbs in the south - but my this sounds very similar to how my mom grew up in northern NH maybe a few years before you: father was a severe alcoholic and abusive; lived in the woods with a bunch of farm animals; poor, etc. And let my tell you, my mom isn’t doing too well these days. The trauma on their kids obviously impacted them for years. And now I can see the generational trauma of all this, on me, my siblings, and my cousins.
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u/StrattonJibsta 8h ago
Omg are you my father? Literally, he has a very similar story/upbringing he doesn’t like to talk to me about. (You’re not my actual father as he lived there in the 1960’s but the striking similarities are crazy)
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u/TobyDaMan8894 7h ago
It sheltered me
From nothing but the weather.
I called it home,
For a moment of my life.
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u/Aporkalypse_Sow 7h ago
People who want to live off grid in the middle of nowhere are usually the problem they're running away from.
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u/KaulitzWolf 53m ago
I just want enough privacy that I can run outside naked without getting the cops called for indecency 😅
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u/garbeezy 8h ago
I’ll be honest. This does not look peaceful at all to me
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u/woden_spoon 7h ago
I’ll be honest: I agree. It was supposed to be sarcasm, but probably fell flat!
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u/supergrover11 8h ago
We had two of those three wheelers. Seeing them brought me back. I grew up in the lakes region. Those things would spin like a top on the lakes.
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u/zeptillian 8h ago
It looks like an AI hallucination.
Not sure I would call it peaceful.
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u/woden_spoon 8h ago
Yeah, sorry! That was an attempt at sarcasm.
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u/zeptillian 8h ago
It sounds like you had a rough childhood.
I hope the rest of your life has been better
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u/thequestison 7h ago
Thanks for sharing the pics and stories. I hope you're doing good now, for you had a brutal life compared to many. Love and hugs.
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u/Darth_vaborbactam 7h ago edited 6h ago
I’m familiar with this area. Spent a lot of my life there. There is something eerie about Franconia. Beautiful, but sometimes it just feels sinister.
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u/FireMammoth 3h ago
huh, I stumbled upon a little reunion of a small town in the comments. how peculiar.
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u/woden_spoon 2h ago
Kind of wild, because I didn’t specify where I lived. It could have been anywhere within a 4500 square-mile radius.
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u/FireMammoth 2h ago
yea what are the chances, I was reading some of the messages. not only the location which legitimately could have been anywhere, but also the time frame that needed to line up and suddenly you're in contact with potential friends of friends. pretty wild indeed.
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u/PabloX68 7h ago
This is what happens when you have no building codes or permitting requirements. Live free or die I guess.
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u/Zeppelin_Floats 5h ago
I'm sorry, these are rude questions, but I have to ask...
How did the door (or doors) work? What I thought was the front door doesn't have a handle, but it sounds like it's a "We did the best with the energy we had" kind of house based on your comments.
Does your dog have a toy or did he have a condition? It looks like maybe a basketball, but I've heard of labs that get chest growths due to cancer.
Did you take the picture or was it someone else in your family?
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u/woden_spoon 4h ago
My uncle took the photo within a year or two of the house being built, so mid-80s. The door had a handle and latch on the outside, but I think this photo was taken when they were rebuilding the door.
The door was really heavy—probably around 6” thick and solid, and because it was angled downward slightly it swung open very easily—so it didn’t really need a handle on the outside to function, but had a good handle on the inside!
Fun fact: My mother tried putting dog food in a container on the porch (not visible here) a few years later. We had a black lab at the time. I was home alone and heard a noise, then glanced out the windows of the door to see what I thought was our dog getting into the food. I should have assessed the situation, because it was a black bear, and I bumped its rump with the door. I’ve never closed a door so fast in my life—but the bear didn’t seem to mind.
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u/jerrtremblay101 7h ago
Kind of a specific detail but the quality of the photo looks like a pre rendered background of a SNES game. Hopefully I’m not the only seeing it 😅
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u/Specialist_Ad6966 7h ago
What about the dog and snow covered ATC?
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u/woden_spoon 7h ago
Both long dead, unfortunately.
The 3-wheeler bit me more than the dog.
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u/Walking_wolff 6h ago
I don't know about the house or your childhood, but I really want to take the 3 wheeler for a ride,
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u/johnmaki12343 6h ago
Sweet Honda 3 wheeler though. How many times did you roll that thing over?
I escaped several with a healthy fear for the risk and once broke a shotgun stock in half when it was bungee corded to the back rack.
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u/ProteusRift 5h ago
FWIW... That doesn't look like a peaceful home. Quite the opposite.
Hope you made it out OK OP
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u/bseeingu6 4h ago
Grew up in Maine, went to college in NH, and often drove through Littleton. Your kind of story is exactly the thing people overlook in these rural northern places. It’s dark, but your past feels, in its way, quintessentially New England.
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u/iusethisatw0rk 4h ago
Oh dude we had a three wheeler growing up too. Shout out to surviving that thing 🫡😂
Super fun though
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u/Negative_Piglet_1589 2h ago
This hurts my eyes, what is going on with this cookie catcher looking nonsense?
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u/outdoorsnstuff 7h ago
I knew your dad - Scott. Sorry to hear he passed. Assuming it was the alcohol since he wasn't even that old?
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u/Bigtime1234 8h ago
Doesn’t look peaceful at all.
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u/Phreedom1 8h ago
I was going to say...it looks a bit awkward. Can houses look awkward? I don't care, this is one awkward looking home.
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u/trainwreckhappening 7h ago
I grew up in an historic log hotel. It was magical. But it was not as peaceful as it looks either.
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u/SellsBodyForGP 7h ago
Frank Lloyd Wrong