…mother and child, reading in the Toadstool bookshop garden

Toadstool Books. Peterborough, New Hampshire. Downtown Peterborough, New Hampshire. The heart- now- of downtown Peterborough. The heart of it, at least for me. The very heart of it. At least for me. But then, I’m a writer. So books…

…they aren’t the only place you live, if you’re a writer. But if you write books, well…

How could any place, or the people who run the place, matter more to you?

And that’s still true, and that’s not to make any less important all those other equally wonderful places and people in downtown Peterborough that make it- if not unique, very unusual. This is a downtown that is still a downtown. When the general store went out complaint was made that now you couldn’t buy a pair of underpants or pantyhose anywhere in Peterborough. Yes you can- now- at Underneath It All…

Well, another subject for another time. The other wonderful places in downtown Peterborough that make it that rarest, now, of all small towns: a place where the shopping district, the stores, the services vital to getting along in life- a place to buy food, a place to buy clothing, a place to get your car fixed, a place to have breakfast, lunch or dinner- or all three-a local museum…

And for me, most important of all, a bookstore.

A big bookstore, as it turns out. The largest independent bookstore in all of New Hampshire, as it turns out- or as the page turns- as you open the Toadstool book and turn their pages.

With two branches! Also! In Keene, to the West! And in Milford, to the East! Not a chain. But they’re holding hands, so to speak.

But it was Toadstool there, at the heart of Peterborough, that along with the Unitarian Church, just down the street- beautiful building, 1825- the Unitarians had a history of slavery abolition and civil rights belief- just down the street in the heart of downtown, that made Edie and me want to move to Peterborough- or failing that (this was the height of the pre-2008 real estate boom) made us want to move to someplace nearby.

There was Toadstool, ensconced in the old A&P supermarket building on the same ground that the Boston and Maine railroad station had once stood. Imagine that, a bookstore the size of a supermarket in a town of 6000.

What kind of magic made that possible?

Well, Edie and I didn’t know, that summer day we wandered into Peterborough, wondering if this might be the place where we could move to, once Edie retired from her day job, and so setting us free, with career done, to live someplace we just wanted to live, with no thought of having to be somewhere near…

Well, that’s a big change. And you want to pick the right place. Of course it’s driven partly by economics. Santa Barbara has nicer year round weather. And in Santa Barbara-where we knew nobody- and we’ve never been there… but that was out… in Santa Barbara we couldn’t afford a doghouse. To live in.

And you know, there are parts of metro Boston where we’d have been limited to a converted two car garage. Maybe.

But that really didn’t matter. Because we both really wanted to live in the country- a small town. This was our chance to not live near a city. And in that pre-2008 real estate boom, we had to find someplace within 90 minutes travelling distance so we could look at the house before someone else closer by had already bought it the hour after it went on the market.

And I did know Peterborough and the Monadnock region. Somewhat. Because in the early days of Charles Merrill’s Commonwealth School, in Boston- I went there. Charles would have the entire school- all 100 or so of us, the four high school grades- up to his farm in Hancock, NH- not far from Peterborough- where the girls would sleep in the hayloft, the boys in the milking parlor- and never the twain shall meet. Sort of. They did- but that is another story.

So I already knew that Monadnock region. Sort of. I loved Charles’ farm. I didn’t need the barns- and he hadn’t any livestock- it was his and his wife, Mary’s- weekend and summer place.

But that south facing Cape on a hillside in New Hampshire, that part of New Hampshire…

Much as I loved Columbia, and wanted to be in New York City- I didn’t want to live in a densely urban place most of the time. I remember writing to Charles, junior year at Columbia,  that someday I hoped to have a small Cape on a south facing hillside, like his, someplace in that part of the world.

Well, with Edie retired- 45 years later- that kind of place became a possibility, and first Edie and I thought Peterborough. Maybe a house in one of its outlying residential neighborhoods.

We could walk into town to Toadstool, buy socks at the shoe store, groceries at Roy’s Market, printer paper at Steele’s Stationery… and so on. And so on…

But those Peterborough houses went faster- during the real estate boom- than you could say “I’ll buy it.”

So with Marcia Neuhardt, our realtor at Peterson Real Estate, we began looking at the surrounding towns: Hancock. Temple. Francestown.

And then this place in Dublin.

Well, that’s another story, too. But it was Toadstool Books, at the heart of Peterborough, the market town that was the commercial and service and religious center for all the surrounding, much smaller towns- and had been that center for more than 175 years- it was Toadstool that made the difference in where we wanted to live, where we wanted to be near.

Toadstool. Along with the fact that people could hold silent peace vigils on the steps of the Peterborough Town House (aka town hall) without being ejected or having too many eggs thrown at them at the height of the Bush2 imperial ascendancy- the invasion of Iraq- that convinced Edie and me that wherever we lived in that region- whichever town- we’d find friends, because it would take the kind of people we were likely to like, and for them to like us- to support a bookstore that big- named Toadstool! In that somewhat removed, off the beaten path part of the state, in that part of the country.

We didn’t yet know Holly and Willard Williams- who’d founded Toadstool. We didn’t yet have any idea that Toadstool had grown- the fungus spread! To Keene and to Milford!

But we just believed that if that place could flourish- granted it took people with Holly and Willard’s rare gift for sharing literature- then Edie and I thought we might be able to find a home, a real home where we might feel that in time we might someday belong, because some of the people we met wanted us there.

I suppose you could say we’ve become part of the fungus.  Mushrooms of words- read and written- rather than that other symbol- the mushroom shaped cloud- the opposite symbol of the peace those vigilers sought on the steps of the Peterborough Town House.

And all of us doing our best to keep it that way. Spread the spores. Dampen the ground with not hard rain but tears of joy.

© text and photos copyright Peter Tuttle. all rights reserved.