Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, some wry exchange with a stranger or acquaintance… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and strikes a contributor as interesting or funny or poignant—or that makes us appreciate living here.

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Dear Daybreak:

I'm a Friend of the Quechee Library, where I volunteer. A few months ago, I was asked if I would prepare a scrap book of library history with materials including photographs, newspaper clippings, and flyers that had been saved by our past librarians. It's been an interesting and rewarding project for me as I learned not only about my local library but so much about Quechee itself.

While doing some online research, I happened across this newspaper article, dated December 18, 1909 from a Woodstock newspaper called Spirit of the Age. The opening of the Quechee Library in a new permanent location made front-page news. The details in the article are fascinating. It was a treasure to find.

Cheers to the libraries. Cheers to the newspapers. And cheers to those who microfiched and, later, digitized these articles so we can continue to read them in 2025.

Spirit_of_the_Age_1909_12_18_Page_1.pdf

— Jane Meunier-Powell, Quechee

Dear Daybreak:

It's 4 am on a Monday and I am the first car on the road driving through a fresh dusting of snow in the Strafford valley. In the back seat, I can hear my baby laboring to breath in an eerie pattern I now know is a signature of croup. My tires are slipping more than expected, sending my heart racing despite my best efforts to keep calm. To soothe my nerves, I run my hand over the divots my dog's nails have left in my center console cover and focus on how the snow that my car's only headlight is illuminating looks just like glitter on the road ahead of me. And it really does.

An hour later, I'm in with the doctor. 'This is croup' she says. 'Poor baby.' She orders all the necessary panels, steroids, and nebulizers. She is so kind. As we wait for the medicine to kick in, we marvel at my baby together. He is so chubby. So sweet. He repeatedly pulls at the doctor's mask to play peek-a-boo. She knows he's sick-sick, but lets him smile in her face anyway. 'This age' she says, 'is why I had four kids.'

After another round of medicine and eight hours of monitoring, my baby and I are on our way out of the hospital. We stand aside as the doctors rush to meet a serious injury coming into their trauma bay. From the words they are calling out to each other, I can tell there's been a car accident. I say a prayer under my breath and step outside. There is no snow on the ground in Lebanon.

On Thursday morning I'm back in the car. It is just before 6 am and I'm heading into my office at the VA. This is the first time I've left at this early hour to accommodate the new and 'efficient' full-time return-to-office policy. I left my baby, now much improved, at home in my husband's lap and tried not to imagine his two-year-old brother waking up and asking where mom was. In my periphery, I notice at large mass on the side of I-89. It's a bear and she's been struck dead by a car. I've travelled this route to my office weekly for four years now and this is the first time I've seen anything to corroborate the bear and moose caution signs that line this corridor of the highway. 'I guess I just haven't been going in early enough,' I say out loud to myself.

At 3 that afternoon I'm rushing home to make it back to Strafford in time for nursery school pick-up. I'm not far from my exit when I feel my car jolt and then, in my rearview mirror, see something hurtling behind me on the highway. Then I feel my wheel blow out and my car involuntarily swerve into the lane beside me. Only by luck, there is no car travelling there. I right my course and bump along on my rim to the shoulder, and then the exit, and then a parking lot where I finally exhale. I call my husband and tell him I'm okay but need him to pick up the boys and deliver our one family car jack to the highway exit. 'My God,' he says. 'Of course'.

When he pulls up and wraps his arms around me and I see my boys beaming in the backseat, I feel compelled to count my blessings. Quickly, I subtract one from the tally when I realize the family car jack is broken. My husband on his belly, trying in vain to turn its crank, my kids now rebelling in the backseat, I look around for any other car that might be inhabited in the lot. There are none.

Five minutes later, a man from the house across the road notices that we need help. I watch with some trepidation as he comes out from his garage, which for the past four years has sported a foul-language political sign to all passersby. But he approaches with a smile and immediately joins my husband on his belly to assess the situation. He is so kind. He agrees that the jack is kaput, and without hesitation goes to get his own. In a few short minutes the old wheel is in the back of my car, but we've all taken notice that the driver-side wheel is about to be stripped as well. The problem is the car, not the tires. 'This is a terrible time to buy a car,' I say. 'It never is,' says the man 'but hey- at least you're okay.' And of course, he's right.

It's Friday near noon and I've just signed the papers on a loan for my new used Subaru. Fortunately, the dealership had a car in stock whose price had been significantly reduced due to a minor accident history. After moving the car seats and my VA parking tags into the new vehicle, I turn on the ignition and begin to drive away, saluting a farewell to my old car in the rearview mirror.

But all of a sudden, I'm crying. And not a little. I'm really sobbing. Because my dog has been gone for almost a year now, but his nail marks are still in that car and now I'm just leaving it behind in a parking lot. I'm crying because some things cannot be saved. I'm crying because I haven't cried yet all week and, dammit, I just miss my dog.

I get my tears under control as I head onto the ramp on 89. I pass my office, which I will be back in every Monday before dawn until it is decided that my position isn't 'efficient' enough, or at least until one of my kids gets sick again. And of course they will. But neither of those things will be decided today, so for the moment I try to enjoy the early spring weather and an uneventful ride home.