Cross Currents; Panel on Dixville Notch with William Chmurny and Sally Boland of Plymouth State College

This addition of cross-currents is made possible by a grant from the New Hampshire Council for the Humanities. Today crosscurrents marks the first board cost of a monthly series of programmes taped on location in New Hampshire NH first Tuesday of the month for the next six months. Cross currents will focus on the activities of the New Hampshire Council for the Humanities and its various programs as presented throughout the state. Why has Dixville Notch become the opening gesture in our presidential dance. WM Germany from Plymouth State College. Today's crosscurrents presents a revealing and sometimes not so flattering portrait of this first of the first in boating town and one of its most influential residents. Neil tell it first of the first voting and community in Dixville Notch with speakers William Germany an anthropologist at Plymouth State College and Sally bow and English instructor also from Plymouth State College. Here now is a close look at Dixville Notch.

Our paper is this much. Reflective of an experiment into people from different disciplines doing research gathering data analyzing data as it is a report on that data itself. Nearly everybody knows about Dixville Notch as the first place to record a vote in the nation's first presidential primary. And many believe that they've seen it on television. NBC Nightly News had a man on the spot there last February 13th. People wearing puffy parkas struggled with cross-country skis as Steve Delaney explained how Dixville residents those political gurus of outermost New Hampshire learned the presidential candidates into a perilous quest for a scant handful of votes. Only 25 in last spring's primary. But those votes matter usually all of the presidential candidates visit Dixville and all of the press follow. And we wondered why. Why has Dixville Notch become the opening gesture in our presidential dance. We thought that between us an anthropologist and a professor of English we ought to find an answer of some kind. So we visited the town talk to the voters who live there year

round to their neighbors in Colebrook and Neil Tillotson who owns most of the town. And we came up with four ways of looking at Dixville Notch. Like to first describe to you a little portrait of the voters of Dixville Notch. To say we began by finding out who did vote there Dixville Notch is an unincorporated place of some 15000 acres larger than the island of Manhattan and it's located in the town of Dixville New Hampshire. The entire resident population of the town lives in Dixville Notch. Residents numbered approximately 40 individuals in the 1900 census although only those 25 who have reached their majority and are thus classed as voters. Interest us here. The voters range in age from 18 to 82. Though most are from 30 to 60 years old the oldest voter is Mr. Neil Tillotson. The town moderator and the first to cast his ballot each election night. He is thus accorded the truly unique honor of being the first of the first of the first to

vote in America. By no small co-incidence Neil Tillotson owns Dixville Notch save for one small farm and he also owns a very large part of the town of Dixville as well. Dime an international corporation owns the balance of the town of Dixville say for a small reservation held by the state of New Hampshire. Tillotson also owns the only industries providing employment in the immediate area. The balsams two hundred thirty one room Resort Hotel and Convention Center. The wilderness ski area and a factory of the Tillotson Rubber Company. A wood fire generating plant makes this complex nearly energy self-sufficient as considerable as these are. These holdings of land and buildings comprise only perhaps 5 percent of all that till its unknowns. His other investments include rubber factories in New England Georgia California Canada and Australia. And rubber plantations in Guatemala. The Guatemalan plantations were established when the status of those

he owned in Nicaragua became uncertain after the overthrow of the Somoza regime. Tillotson was and is a supporter of the late dictator who actually became a little late dictator in the process of writing this paper declaring him as a friend of the United States and no better than Mayor Daley. They're no worse. Tillotson also own small boat building shipyards in Maine in Rhode Island and large amounts of real estate including at one time the Boston wharves. He is a major figure in the rubber industry and a self-made multimillionaire from rural origins in northern Vermont who still remains virtually unknown in this age of People magazine. The balsams hotel employs approximately two hundred seventy five people though due to the seasonal nature of the resort hotel business in this area only 60 are on the permanent year round payroll. Of those 60 21 are residents and voters of Dixville Notch the remainder of the permanent

employees live in surrounding villages particularly Colebrook which is about 12 miles distance and commute to work. Seasonal employees are housed in dormitories that are adjacent to the hotel. The Tillotson rubber corporation plant which is about 100 yards from the hotel employs 300 people mostly full time. But of these only two Tillotson sons Tom and Rick who manage the plant are residents and voters in Dixville Notch. The other employees live elsewhere and commute to work. Philip Simms Tillotson himself who lives but three months of the year in the notch and Mr. Nash who owns and works a small farm complete the voting list only two of these 25 voters were born in New Hampshire 19 are registered Republicans and six are registered Democrats. There are no independents in Dixville Notch. And I think.

We discovered that the Dixville Notch voting is something that even an anthropologist would admit is a ritual form of communal behavior and it involves three categories of participants first of all of course the voters and the politicians. And. Not least of all. The press and these three groups intertwined their activities to make the ritual and I want to talk about that in some detail in a moment. But if our Neil Tillotson had not bought the balsams you 953 he says he did that out of middle aged sentimentality. No one would be voting in Dixville Notch at all and so I'd like to tick the grass for a moment just to explain Mr. Tillotson is connection with the place and to point out that he is initiating that ritual. Is an expression it seems to me of the way he feels about the north country that it is his true home.

The Tillotson family have been there a long time Neil Tillotson as ancestors lived there and fought in the French and Indian wars. His great grandfather homesteaded in Dixville Notch and when he was growing up as a store storekeeper son in Beecher's falls Vermont. Neil Tillotson was not in a position to hobnob the resort hotel but he does remember seeing the place when he and his family rented a Surrey and took an outing for a day up in that into the woods. In time. Tillotson grew up and moved away to Massachusetts and took a position with a hood Rubber Company. In the 1930s he went into the rubber processing business for himself and he developed a method for making balloons in varied shapes he was the first man to make a balloon that has cat's ears. So from that he built up the Tillotson rubber corporation.

And this made him wealthy enough to agree when his North Country friends and neighbors came to a summer camp. Up around the Connecticut lakes to suggest that he buy the book which was nearly bankrupt and do this as a part of an effort to preserve the economic base of that part of the state which is extremely narrow and always has been. But Tillotson went one step further he felt that a seasonal resort does not provide a very sound basis for employment. And so in addition to buying out the hotel he installed. A rubber goods factory within about 100 yards of the balsams and he did this. By utilizing a system of waterfalls waterworks dams and manmade water courses that had been installed previously as part of the landscaping of the hotel.

And this gave him the capacity to use hydro power to run the rubber goods factory. And so he provided more jobs than ever before. But when he took up year round residents of Dixville Notch he found he had no place to vote. So Mr. Tilton's Tillotson says he consulted a friend of his who was the New Hampshire secretary of state and arranged to have Dixville Notch designated as an unincorporated place which means that only for the purposes of electing state and national officials Dixville Notch is a town. They have no no other town government and there are no property taxes in Dixville because there are no schools and so forth. Well. When they got to be able to vote the residents thought it would just be fun if they were the first in the nation to do it and so they stablish the custom of gathering for donuts and coffee and apple

cider late on election eve voting at midnight and then celebrating by drinking coffee and apple cider and eating donuts again afterwards. And that as Mr. Tillotson says is the country way. And of course it is also the way of all people in community because sharing food is a way of expressing your feelings of trust and intimacy with other people and it always has been. So for Neil Tillotson I think the voting at Dixville Notch is an affirmation of the north country he grew up in before the First World War. A place that is gone now of course except in memoirs and in the memories of the few people who are left now to tell about it. But the voting means something very different apparently to the younger voters because only Neil Tillotson mention food as

part of the voting ritual. In fact all the other people we spoke to said specifically that they do not socialize at all either before the voting or afterwards. So for them it seems other elements of the ritual have become more important and more impressive. And their account is this that. The voters gather in a room in the balsams hotel called the ballot room. Which is on the second floor of the hotel. At 11 o'clock or so on election eve and the media take pictures. When midnight comes the voter and voters go into their boos all at once because the ballot room is equipped with a separate booth for each voter. And the media then takes pictures. Then they come out of the booth and put their ballots in the boxes beginning of course with Neil Tillotson. And then there are more pictures and the votes are counted.

And then there are some more pictures and then the voters go home to bed and if they did share the food they're too tired to remember doing it. I think it may be possible that the Dixville Notch vote has become so tied into the national media that it now means more the people of the United States than it does to the people of Dixville Notch. Certainly it appears that the Dixville voters are run to death beginning late in the autumn before a presidential preference primary. The politicians head for the notch usually all the presidential candidates visit at least once and each of them or their representatives must be accorded exactly equal treatment which means a social gathering for each so that every candidate has just the same opportunity as the others to talk with the voters. While the voters there do seem to enjoy this reflected celebrity

they seem to get a bit weary after three months of pressing the flesh and talking with the candidates. And of course the media is always there I was interviewing before during and after the election and then after the media is through along come the academics like Professor shm Ernie and myself so that the voters seem to respond almost without thinking. When you ask them why they feel it's so important or interesting that they are the first to vote. And they may say things like well there's no sense in being first unless somebody is there to record it which is true and or they may say someone has got to be first which is true or they may say say well we think it's important to note or they may say it's fun. So you come away feeling that they vote first because they vote first. But the press knows exactly precisely why Dixville Notch is

part of the media ritual. Norman Ableson former head of the Associated Press bureau unconquered says that during the late 1950s the Associated Press and the United Press as it then was found themselves in are in a race to get early election results to their subscribers. So wire service reporters had to find a town that was small enough to get the total vote in and counted quickly and the town had to have at least one telephone so that the reporters could relay photographs and election figures to the wire services. And evidently Norman says reporters in those days spent a lot of time finding a town the right size and then guaranteeing themselves access to at least one telephone which they did sometimes by judiciously distributing booze. So for several years a number of New Hampshire towns were the first in the nation Waterville Valley orange

Millville Hart's Location. Some of these like Waterville Valley grew too big too large in population too to finish the voting and get the vote counted quickly. And so in time Dixville Notch despite its remoteness geographically became a preferred place because telephones are easily accessible at the balsams hotel and soon after that. Politicians began to come into Dixville because they knew the press would be there. And then when the politicians began to flood Dixville Notch more reporters followed. Now we have Bill and I have identified four images you might say or models of the Dixville Notch community in which Neil Tillotson and this ritual voting procedure appear. And we're going to take each one of these and discuss

them in some detail but I'll give you all four of them so you can have them in your head and know what's coming up and you'll know when the end is in sight. We get to that fourth model first of all there is the image which the the media have created in which they have pretty much in their coverage of Dixville Notch reinforced every four years and that is the the image of a rural and uncorrupted Yankee Oracle rooted in New England traditions and verities. The second image is one held by most people who vote Dixville Notch and that is their community as a patriarchal extended family. Third. An anthropological model shared to a large degree by North Country people outside of Dixville Notch. That town is a company town more or less benevolently but

definitely firmly controlled by Neil Tillotson and his selected Representatives that is the voters. And then finally an alternative image to the media's Yankee Oracle and that is. Of Dixville Notch as a land of Oz with a wizard where nature and technology exist harmoniously with each other. So to begin with the Yankee Oracle I'll just take you back to that little circle I pose for you a moment ago the. Politicians following the press following the politicians. It seems that. You can say that that circle began for economic reasons that Associated Press and United Press were simply doing their best to serve their customers but in more recent primaries this explanation doesn't seem to satisfy the media.

If you go out here into the lobby during lunch and look at some of those tapes from the news news clips it's interesting to watch a Steven Laney's report on NBC Nightly News. It was February 18th of last year. In that report Dylan he said that the press and the politicians go to Dixville Notch because the vote there as tiny as it is might indicate how the rest of New Hampshire and perhaps how the rest of the nation is going to vote in the general election. Now of course any Dixville Notch voter will tell you that they just vote first there that's all. And they're quick to admit that they don't often pick a future president or even a future presidential candidate in their primaries. Still Lenny last February compared the Dixville voters to the ancient Greek Oracle at Delphi.

And this perhaps brings us closer to the significance that we Americans seek from New Hampshire's in Dix Hills. First mus. It may be that we are fascinated by that first election return. Because we. Hope that somehow. We can see our and our beginning all at once because if we can see the event and the result of the event the beginning in the end simultaneously we will be able to see ourselves made comprehensible. We will become whole and shapely to ourselves and then we will understand the meaning of our decisions and our actions. And that I gather is how the Greeks use Delphi they trusted that the Oracle would show them how apparently random events fit the pattern that directs things. So the media

seem to want to use Dixville Notch as a link between us and the Americans who came before us. And of course this link also can go in the other direction and be a be be be a bridge between our present and our future. Now the oracle that Steve Delaney is looking for up in Dixville is not of course an actual person as the Oracle at Delphi was but we don't have to work very hard to conjure the Dixville Oracle. I think he's a tall lean man. About 60 years old with a strong English nose and twinkly blue eyes. He's either a farmer or a tinker or a woodsmen or perhaps all three. He is shrewd but honest. He's Uncle Sam before Uncle Sam put on his high hat and got into advanced technology.

And in the curt accents of northern New England he this oracle. Delivers himself to us on election eve and says I don't know who all vote for. I haven't met any of the candidates but once. So like is Delphic ancestor the Dixville Oracle comes out with pronouncements that tend to mystify more than clarify. But that doesn't really matter I don't think. Because we don't go to that Oracle to find out who is going to win elections we have George Gallup for that. Rather we want that Oracle as a figure who can connect us again with our collective identity our sense of our origin or a part of our origin our sense of our fate as we want our fate to be. And there are a good many things in that image of what we wish we were and what we wish to be. There's much to be admired there I mean how can you object

to a national character who's shrewd honest intelligent independent and earthy. No one can object to that. But. If there is really an oracle at Dixville Notch it's not a tanker and the town is not at all. What the media would lead you to think it is. Now as Steve Delaney gives his report on the NBC Nightly News. Your mind. Or at least my mind supplied parts of the town that the camera didn't show. I knew that somewhere in there there was a white church steeple dominating a common and that somewhere back there there was a country store full of angular weathered laconic Yankee swiveling the winter away shrewdly but the camera didn't show that because it's not there. Dixville has no church no store and no comment. All it has is

a hotel or rubber factory several golf courses and a ski area. Well rest is media induced mirage. And those 25 down home up country voters that you see on Delaney's report make their living by renting rooms in the balsams to uptown down country folks for as much as one hundred forty six dollars a day. Including three meals of course. So if the Yankee Oracle exists at all it may exist in Neil Tillotson although I'm not sure of that. But of course the cameras never show Neil Tillotson. The voters of Dixville Notch have a certain self image of themselves that actually goes beyond the voting process itself are all or being 25 people who vote together every four years. They really tend to think of themselves very much as an in-group what

in anthropological terms you could call a patriarchal extended family. Now there's no question that at the age of 82 that Neil Tillotson has achieved the age of a patriarch I don't know how you define people as patriarchs but age is certainly one element and eighty two is certainly old. Yet age alone doesn't account for the kind of esteem and even actual veneration in which Tillotson is held by the members of his extended family and of the people who are the voters of Dixville Notch. In buying and restoring this failing hotel and establishing is significant for this area manufacturing plant he's provided much needed employment in what has been a chronically still is a chronically economically depressed region. With the exception of Farmer Nash every voter owes his present and future livelihood to Tillotson. Moreover they owe their very existence as community members and the voters as voters in Dixville Notch Solita Tillotson. Put simply through his ownership of all of the land in the community.

Tillotson decides who does and who does not live in Dixville Notch and therefore who may vote and who may not vote in Dixville Notch. Theoretically the diamond international corporation could sell off part of its holdings as they have done recently in New York State to private individuals for second home developments or even prime primary homes and thus expand the voting population. However we were assured him phatic lead by several voters that Tillotson has close professional and personal ties with the management of diamond International and that this sort of sell off would never happen. After talking to Tillotson and to the other voters we have no doubt that it will not happen at any time in the near future certainly. Tillotson has been very egalitarian However it is Joyce a fellow residents. These people range from his sons quite naturally who run the rubber corporation planet Dixville through the hotel management to the woman who runs the laundry for the hotel. Each member of the

family is quite conscious of being a member of a select group a group that opposes its definition to Tillotson the parameters of this group are residents employment special perks and certain powers over non members of the group. One special right enjoyed only by residence is hooked up to the cable TV system. Hotel guests and the seasonal employees in the hotel dorms do not enjoy this privilege. And while alcohol sex and gambling are denied to the seasonal residents in the dorms under very dire penalties the same ethic does not seem to apply to the members of the community since they are at least reproducing themselves if nothing else. Voters also have the power to have fired those permanent or seasonal employees of the hotel whom they do not like. Those nonvoters we spoke to have a rich fund of anecdotes of bellhops or waiters who have crossed the the voting laundry supervisor for example or made critical comments about the

community and who were then abruptly dismissed after this was reported to Tillotson. There is also some fear of dismissal and banishment to the outer world among the voters themselves. A fear of angering a fellow voter with greater influence with Tillotson or of angering Tillotson himself converse Lee there is a great desire in their eyes to win praise from Tillotson and increase stature. All of this serves to reinforce Tillotson is predominant position in the family and his control over the relationships among its members. Steve Barber and Warren Pearson are respectively the sales manager and general manager of the balsams hotel. They and two others lease the hotel from Tillotson under extremely generous terms. Barbara Barbara excuse me in particular holds Tillotson in great esteem as a manifestation of the creative Yankee spirit as a self-made scientist the great inventor barbus mother was Neil Tillotson secretary who helped administer his far flung empire.

Barbara tends to see the voting ritual as a homage to this very unique man and is determined to tightly control it lest it discredit diminish or in any way embarrass Tillotson to that end. The voting ritual is kept carefully apart from any association with the balsams even though it occurs in one room of the hotel dedicated to this purpose. Thus there is no hint that tawdry commercialism will contaminate either the voting process itself or Tillotson the person there is. There is no chance that the profane may intrude upon the sacred. In a similar vein. The hotels pays for the public teas at which the voters meet the candidates. Each tea is exactly like every other tea hosted by one of the candidates down to the nature of the pit of force. And no candidate is allowed to supplement the cities that are hosted by the hotel with any kind of larger party for the voters. Although I gather from informal conversations that some

of the candidates for office have attempted to I guess sneak a cream bun behind the back of other people. Barbara right now is very unhappy as is Tillotson with the quality of the media hoopla given to voting on election night. Barbara feels that it's vulgar and demeaning to Tillotson in particular. Tillotson tends to feel that it's demeaning to the process and both in interviews that Sally and I held with them separately were very vocally displeased with the the kind of media coverage the almost chaos that tends to occur on election eve now with much shoving and pushing and falling and pushing and that occurs among the press and among witnesses who come to watch the voting process. Thus this tightly controlled voting ritual accomplishes several ends. First it makes Tillotson its central focus. It causes his selected community to express its

gratitude to him and it certainly reinforces in a very visible way his position as leader of his community. Secondly it reminds the members of the community of who their leader is and that they owed him their jobs their special perks their residency their special powers and any special gratification that they may derive from being the center of attention. On election night it also serves to differentiate the in-group from the outgroup in the eyes of both. Remember that in day to day existence at the hotel in Dixville Notch generally there is very little that is visible that serves to say to do this to separate the voters from the non voters. It is noteworthy I think that the balloting room itself has become a shrine to Tillotson and a place which defines the in-group community. It is filled with mementos honoring Tillotson and establishing the identity of other voters of the community. Their

pictures and quotes from newspaper articles make a zeen articles for decorate the walls and in all directions. In the balloting room at other times of the year special receptions and events are held for hotel employees. The room is never used for hotel events or by hotel guests and it is only very obscurely identified to the uninitiated. It is kept locked at all times when its not being used for some kind of special purpose such as the balloting itself. At the time of our visit it was being used for reception honoring long time employees of the balsams nearly all of whom were voters. Thus its function on Election Day is repeated at suitably rare intervals during the rest of the year. That is its function to define the the inner members of the community from those who do not belong to the voters at Dixville have also labored to keep the number of voters limited so as not to dilute

the special rights or privileges of the current voters. You have too many people who are of a certain class. It's no longer very special or important to be a member of that group. They're also concerned that to limit the voters so as not to cause the community to lose its special standing as the first of the first on election night and thereby diminish the honor that is given to Tillotson in this way. That is if there were too many voters they would have had that they'd have the same problem that Waterville Valley had that led them finally to lose that status as first to the first of an inability to bring everybody into the election booths virtually simultaneously and hence be able to close out the process early enough so as to be able to report the votes it's not simply important to Dixville to vote first. It's especially important to report the votes first before any other place in the nation. And as I say if there isn't tight control given over giving getting everyone to the booths and closing out the voting lists early they would have to keep the polls open and hence not count the votes until

sometime quite late in the day and lose their standing as a consequence. They're also concerned the voters that is with losing control over responsible voting that's another element in this that is their concern that no one vote for exotic fringe candidates voting patterns that would embarrass the community and embarrass Tillotson. Now this control is exercised by control of residency as I've already indicated. It's also achieved by as Warren Pearson the general manager of the hotel puts it by the power of the paycheck and by the fact that all the voters of course control the critical town offices such as supervisor of the checklist. Now on occasion seasonal employees from the dorms some of whom live there for six or seven months of the year have asked to be registered and thus to be a part of the media attention given to voters on election night. To be sure they are technically eligible to register and vote according to Section RSA six five four point one point one of the New Hampshire

state election law. One thousand eighty one thousand nine hundred eighty one Ed.. However they are told by the voters themselves by Barbara Pearson or the supervisor of the checklist that New Hampshire law states that they must buy or rent land or a home in the town in order to vote. They're also warned that if they continue to persist in their desire to be registered as voters that they will lose their jobs and their place in the dorms and hence their eligibility to be considered as voters in the first place. This has always put an end to any attempts to get on the voting list. And there is no one on the voting list who is not there by virtue of Neil Tillotson allowing that person or actually placing that person on the voting list. It is the somewhat ironic that Neil Tillotson himself because he only lives there owns in aggregate about three months of the year. Short periods of time scattered throughout the year that needle Tillotson himself may not qualify as a voter under New Hampshire statute.

I'll close this section analysis with two anecdotes that I think reveal much about the internal relationships of the community of the place of voting in the community and of Neil Tillotson prominence in the community. A few years ago there was an 18 year old voter who was the son of a voter who could not bring himself to vote for any candidate on the ballot in the primary of the time. He told his father he preferred not to vote in that particular primary election. His father reported this to Barbara who talked to the young man and asked that he cast a blank ballot so as not to spoil the ritual of all the voters voting together at the same time and achieving a quick closing of the polls. The young man cast a blank ballot. Mr. Nash's son you remember Mr. Nash's the independent farmer of the exception to the principle I stated earlier that the only people on the voting list have gotten there because of Neil Tillotson Nash as a

farmer owns his land far before Tillotson bought the balsams and the rest of Dixville Notch. Anyway Mr Nash a son got into a quarrel with meet Neil Tillotson shortly before election night. A few years ago. Nash's son owed it to Watson's money owed Tillotson money and when pressure was put on Nash's son to pay up the money that was due he replied that he wouldn't pay and that even more important he wasn't going to vote. So an afternoon was spent negotiating with him to get him to vote so that the polls at Dixville Notch would not have to stay open until after six o'clock. The result. The debt was cancelled and the man voted. So a power works both ways the power of Tillotson over the voters as well as of course the implicit power that the members of the community have over Tillotson and other members of the community. Another way of looking at Dixville Notch is a way that as Sally indicated most people who live outside Dixville Notch tend to view the

community. And this is the image of Dixville Notch as a traditional northern New Hampshire company town. It's sort of the counterpoint to the concept of community that we've just described. In fact some in Colebrook describe Dixville Notch as a barony that is ruled by Tillotson. To be sure the area is physically and psychologically isolated from the influences of the state and federal governments. All town offices are controlled and filled by voters who in turn are dependent on Tillotson for their continued existence as voters. Thus there are none of the usual political checks on authority. The notch has no schools no churches no newspapers no radio station and importantly of course none of the social checks and balances balances that these institutions tend to exert on political authority. Dixville Notch is nearly self-sufficient in its heat its light and its telephone system and thus is entirely free of

external dependence or control by outside utilities. Tillotson further is one of the few employers in an area with a very high unemployment rate. An area that has few social services for the unemployed his employees are not unionized and are paid the same very low prevailing wages of the workers at the mills in the other towns here. Tillotson maintains close personal contacts with the other employers in the area. The power of the pink slip is not only used to discourage prospective voters but any efforts to unionize as well as general griping about Dixville Notch itself. Tillotson is the only taxpayer an employer so it is perhaps understandable that some confusion exists between town government and its operations and those of his business enterprises. For example the town road crew is also the road crew for the balsams Or perhaps it's the other way around because we got different stories from the same person when we were asking them who perform certain town functions and they would scratch their heads and say

we're not sure whether it's the town that plows the balsams parking lot or whether it's our crew that plows our parking lot that also goes out and plows the town roads. There's a very intense rivalry between the workers at the balsams and those at the rubber products factory. There is also some very acute bitterness at the rubber factory about wages the managerial style of Tillotson sons and the status of the employees there. There are no voters to be found among the employees at the rubber Corp. plant even though it employs more people than does the hotel more permanent employees in the hotel. The only voter on the plant workforce was transferred to the hotel in 1056 in there have been no new voters at the Rubber Company plant since now I can't explain the total absence of voters among the plant workers save that this status may be incompatible with the way in which mill workers are traditionally treated and valued by their employers. In this area. Those on the outside at both the plant and hotel

are acutely conscious of the status power perks and economic advantages enjoyed by those who are voters members of the in-group. Thus those on the outside both recognise and reinforce the existence and nature of the in-group. Yes I always treat it as if it were typically a New England village. The Baal Sims is never identified as a hotel. The road rubber goods factory is neither shown nor mentioned and so since we don't have this information we are. Left free to create the place for ourselves which we do out of scraps of Norman Rockwell and. Echoes from. Jefferson's hymn to a republic of sturdy independent yeoman farmers. But of course in so far as the Jeffersonian model republic ever existed in New Hampshire it seems to have disappeared sometime in the

1840s and of course Dixville Notch has never been a Jeffersonian community at all because it's never been in the usual sense a town so it would seem to me that the media has connected Dixville Notch with the wrong American myth perhaps as it exists actually Dixville Notch is a rip a resort with a very prosperous rubber goods factory right in the middle of the resort. But as it might exist in. American mythology Dixville is the wonderful land of Oz as one critic has pointed out. The American great good place is Oz it's a place that's a kind of pastoral utopia full of meadows and brooks and villages and little farms. And although it's full of wonderful technological marvels like the yellow brick road and the Emerald City the technology in

Oz is benevolent and invisible. There's no smoke no order no ugly buildings and of course in Oz everybody loves each other and there's plenty of everything. Enough food and enough clothing enough jewelry enough games for everybody. So although there are a few wicked witches in the remote district Oz on the whole is very pleasant and clean and comforting just the opposite in fact of young Dorothy's Kansas home which Frank the author of the Oz books describes as a great gray prairie where the sun had baked the plowed ground into a great grey mass in Oz. Everything is gray. The grass is grey Her house is gray her and uncle are gray and when she goes she sees green grass and rosy cheeks for the very first time. I think you could say that Americans we Americans have dotted our landscape with

little Oz's places we can go to refresh ourselves after our great daily routines. Disneyland is a kind of intricate fantasy sustained by an equally intricate technology. And I suppose that in a slightly different way places like the Sturbridge Village in the Shelbourne museum are also for those who can afford it. The balsams is Oz. If it's in a park set out of time out of trouble where you can get as much of all of good things as you can possibly hold. And at the heart of this garden you have a machine the invisible factory and that wonderful invisible wood fire generating plant which will keep this little warm no matter what OPEC's does. Of course in some ways Neil Tillotson reminds one of the Wizard of Oz inbounds book The Wizard's hometown is Omaha not Beecher's falls

but his wizardry like Mr. Tillotson. Was founded on balloons because he came to Oz when the balloon he was writing drifted there accidentally and when he got there he says he built the in the Emerald City to amuse myself and to keep the people busy. So I hope Neil Tillotson. Had pleasure in rebuilding the balsams and certainly the whole hotel and the factory have kept many North Country people. Busy. The wizard and Neil Tillotson both are beautifully modest about their accomplishments Baum's Wizard says. I'm just a common man and Neil Tillotson says. I'm just a country boy. However I to my mind the wizard of Dixville Notch is not Neil Tillotson but the media. The cameras in the commentators who take us to they call the small town of Dixville Notch and I think that although they seem to have attached the place to an American pattern that doesn't quite fit.

They might be nevertheless doing us a good turn. You'll remember that in the story of The Wizard of Oz Dorothy's three friends went to see the wizard because they believed that he could supply the lack that each one of them felt for the scarecrow brains for the tin man a heart for the lion courage. Now the Wizard of Oz was not really a wizard at all. My dear he says to Dorothy I've been making believe. I am a humbug. But neither were Dorothy's friends. Lacking the qualities they desired for all along the scarecrow was intelligent. The Tin Man compassionate and the lion brave. Still. They insisted that the wizard confer on them by means of humbug magic. The qualities they thought they did not possess and

only then could they see themselves as they had truly been always. So if amidst all hoopla of Dixville Notch we catch a whiff of humbug we should remember I think one of the lessons inbounds book which is that a little humbug applied in the right direction really can work wonders for people. And so it may be that the media's treatment of the Dixville vote by humbugging us back to our beginning or our primary country in some sense creates the community we call America. Thank you. You've been listening to first of all the first voting and community in Dixville Notch because William and Sally Boland both of Plymouth College and Plymouth New Hampshire following the presentation

Strafford county coordinator of Mondale offered a brief commentary on the speaker's report. I will limit my remarks on Dixville Notch because my association with. Dixville and its voters was limited during the primary. We didn't make our mandatory trip up there to Dixville Notch Chip Carter was there over New Year's Eve. You know one thing that Sally and Bill missed I think about why Dixville became such a good price place for the press was because it's such a great place for a party. And I understand that we did have a very nice party. One thing I must disagree with him on though is that we did invite the Democratic voters from Colebrook there and we also picked up the tab. On our party. So while the hotel manager may say that they have everything they don't want. What I do feel after reading this paper is. I would expand their idea of the Yankee Oracle in the American tradition that's exemplified in Dixville Notch to the whole New Hampshire primary

I think that part of its fascination for the nation is the fact that we identify it to our Yankee origins to the pictures that we see in the history books as children of the pilgrims coming over and making a new life in America. The fact that anything can happen in the New Hampshire primary certainly sense my voting life. We've had four upsets occur in the New Hampshire primary we had McCarthy in 68 McGovern in 72 and Jimmy Carter who knew who he was in 76. My experience with Jimmy Carter. Has been one to show that anything can happen that the American ideal of we can do anything Abraham Lincoln who was a farm boy can be president really does happen I was a political novice in the state any place else I probably could not have gotten very involved in somebody's campaign right in the beginning. Like I did in 76 for Carter becoming delegate one of my feelings at the 76

convention as I watched Jimmy Carter accept the nomination was that gee you know America really is the country I read about as a kid or somebody who had less than four percent name recognition when he started out who largely because of the New Hampshire primary went on to be president and I think it's grassroots nature of the fact that this isn't a media state. You can still meet every candidate you know twice anyway. Part of that and I think that hopefully one thing that will happen as a result of discussions like this one today are that people in the state will remain aware of that and will continue to work hard to keep the New Hampshire primary the way it is. Thank you for this in-depth exploration of Dixville Notch. Its residents and its effect on New Hampshire politics was part of a day long conference entitled primary perspectives recently held in Concord New Hampshire and

organized by the New Hampshire Council for the Humanities crosscurrents is produced by Joshua Landis and Marilyn Blake. This addition of cross-currents is made possible by a grant from the New Hampshire Council for the Humanities.