Okay, let’s finish this up, shall we?
You never have to worry about finding a good place to eat wherever there are politicians and/or lawyers around. Lunch is part of the job description for both groups, with the lawyers usually picking up the tab. Show me a politician who pays for his own lunch, and I will show you someone out of office. The zone for the various Concord politicos only extends a block or two around the State House before the caliber of dining establishment reverts back to Subway, Chinese take-out, and a burrito place that looked promising enough that I probably would have gone there if nothing else turned up.
Directly across the street from the State House is a place called The Barley House Tavern, a gastro-pub with a menu based on the sort of food my brothers and I ate in the various pubs we visited in Ireland, but kicked up a notch from simple pub grub. They were pandering to the teabaggers that day with a “Tax-Free Burger” special, advertised with a large banner in front, but the prices on the menu were a little steeper than your average crankpot will pay for a burger and fries. When 90% of your clientele are charging lunch to the expense account, it doesn’t matter if the burgers cost $12. Unsurprisingly then, most of the people in the restaurant were wearing suits and similar business attire, yakking on cell phones or poking Blackberries, and the bits of overheard conversation were all insider baseball. While I was eating, one teabagger couple came in and sat in the booth in front of me. They were carrying their homemade signs, which they tried to stuff under the table, and they weren’t too happy that the fish and chips had curry in the batter. Even though I wasn’t carrying a sign, I’m sure they and everyone else in the place assumed I was a teabagger, too, and it made me die a little inside. I whipped out my iTouch and tried to make myself look terribly busy checking e-mail and Twittering in hopes that I could undo the damage.
The “tax-free burger”, which turned out to be a burger topped with thinly sliced prime rib really did not sound all that great to me. I mean, maybe Rush Limbaugh needs to top his red meat with more red meat, but that’s 50% too much beef for normal people. Instead, my eye was drawn to one of their house specialities: macaroni and cheese made with cavatappi pasta and a cheese sauce made with Guinness, topped with buttered breadcrumbs and served with a grilled marinated chicken breast garnished with some salad greens. It was sinfully rich, with just the slightest hint of bitterness from the stout ale. The chicken breast was also tasty, although it got a little charred. I hope I can come up with a reasonable replication of the cheese sauce, because it made for a superior dish of mac-and-cheese.
Well-fed, I waddled back into the main street to find that every last teabagger, public employee, gay-basher, and even the three liberal ladies were gone and downtown had turned into a vast emptiness. There was even ample on-street parking! The State House grounds were restored to their usual stately quietude, without the slightest hint that anyone had been there less than a hour before. Once I got over the astonishment, it occurred to me that this was the more typical scene on North Main Street, not the swirl of hot-blooded political adventurism I’d stumbled into. Were it not for the photographic evidence, I might have believed I’d imagined the whole thing.
Half a block down from the restaurant was a sign pointing down a wide alleyway that indicated I would find the New Hampshire Museum of History. A large stone building sat at the end of the alley in a sort of park that sits along the edge of the Merrimack River. The NH Historical Society converted the building, which was originally a warehouse, into museum space in the 1990s. It is quite modest compared to other local history museums I am familiar with (I am thinking specifically of the Maine State Museum), but the exhibits are about par for what one would expect. You begin with a timeline from the aboriginal Abenakis who occupied Central New England, through the early English colonial period and so on right up to a present-day diorama that features a prototype of the Segway. There is little remarkable about New Hampshire’s history, as it has always existed in the shadow of Boston and the rest of Eastern Massachusetts, but they convey some tidbits of info that don’t get much attention at the museums here in the Big City. I wouldn’t plan a day around going to this museum, but, like with the space museum, it was easy to see making another day trip to Concord with child in tow to visit this venue.
In all, the downtown portion of my adventure nearly coincided EXACTLY with the 2 hours I’d paid for on the parking meter. Four quarters bought me 120 minutes, and when I returned to my car there were 4 minutes left. And that even included taking a moment to duck into a coffee shop for an iced coffee for the road. I’d left home that morning not knowing quite what I’d do, but headed back for home utterly pleased with the little adventure that revealed itself to me.
Tomorrow, it’s Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and I am once again expecting to simply wing it; if it turns out half as well as this inaugural road trip, I will be very pleased indeed.
