Tonight on New Hampshire Crossroads, we meet the woman who was the model for Sally in the Sally, Dick and Jane reading books.

Her name is Nancy Corriveau and she lives in Gilmanton.

Then, cider making the old fashioned way.

A visit to the Leavitt Cider Mill in Pittsfield, where for 60 years the presses have turned out perfect New Hampshire cider.

And, the world as it was after Columbus discovered the New World.

We revisit the current exhibit at the Dartmouth Hood Museum.

The show is called The Age of the Marvelous.

Hi, I'm Fritz Wetherbee, and this is New Hampshire Crossroads.

Theme Music Presentation of New Hampshire Crossroads is made possible by grants from First NH Banks, serving the financial needs of individuals, corporations, and local governments throughout New Hampshire.

The Union Leader Corporation, publisher of New Hampshire's statewide newspapers, delivering a world of color to you every morning.

And Upton, Sanders and Smith of Concord, New Hampshire, providing a full range of legal services throughout the state of New Hampshire since 1908.

Today we're in the community of Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, on the Salmon Falls River.

And the trestle that you see there connects this community with South Berwick, Maine.

This is, by the way, part of the town of Rollinsford, which is one of the oldest communities in the state of New Hampshire.

It was originally part of the town of Dover, and then it became part of the town of Somersworth, and at the beginning of the 19th century they built some mills here, and the place was called Smoky Holler, and the mills here were in competition with the mills in Somersworth, so much so that in 1849 they decided to be their own community, and they took their name from the names of two prominent families in town, the Rolllins family and the Wallingford family, and they came up with Rollinsford.

Our first story is also about history, although it's about a more recent history.

Producer Chip Neal is going to take us back to a time that you may remember, a time of Howdy Doody and The Weekly Reader, and Dick and Jane and Sally.

And as a matter of fact, this first story is about Sally.

Music Ooh, ooh!

I got an idea that will make Pretzel Mary the happiest woman in the world, and we could do it all out on - How much is that doggy in the window?

The one with the waggly tail Let’s travel back in time now to our early school days, where millions of us probably had this common experience.

Here, Spot.

Here, Spot.

Come here, Spot.

Oh, Jane.

Look at Sally.

Learning to read from the Sally, Dick and Jane reading series.

Remember?

Down, Sally!

Get down.

Well, this story is about someone else who was also learning to read from the very same books right around the same time, but there was one big difference for her.

You see, Nancy Childress was Sally.

Her father was the illustrator for that series, and she was Sally, but she didn't know it at the time.

When I was in first grade, I had the same books, and I don't remember connecting the idea at all that I was in the books.

Nancy Childress, now Nancy Childress Corriveau, here with her daughter Nannie, lived in this house in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, along with four brothers and sisters back in the late 50s.

She was 4 or 5 years old, and it was during this time that she and her brothers and sisters posed for her dad, Robert Childress.

He illustrated the Sally, Dick and Jane Reading series from 1958 to 1968.

Dad would take photographs, black and white Polaroid shots in the studio, and we would have to be in all these unusual contortions and and stay there in that pose until he could take the picture and get us just right in the right costumes.

And and then he would paint the illustration from the photograph.

My sister Sue, she lives in Kittery, Maine.

She was the model for Jane.

And the mother in the story was my mother, and the father was my older brother, Brooks, because he was much older and he posed well as the father, and probably our kitty was Puff.

And then for Spot, we had, I believe it was either a neighborhood dog or it was photographs of of a dog they had earlier.

Music Robert Childress was a very talented artist, good at portraiture as well as landscape, and in a variety of media, oil, watercolor, and especially pencil drawing.

These are some calendars he did for GLF, the Grange League Federation, and he did all of this without formal art training.

He was actually a 1936 Clemson graduate in architecture.

Over the years he did commercial art for Coke, Wonder Bread, Frigidaire, Westinghouse, Campbell Soup, and covers for the Saturday Evening Post, as well as major newspapers.

He even helped Duncan Hines get his start.

Now, I didn't even know Duncan Hines was a real person.

A friend of my father's, Roy Park, had an idea to have Dad help him talk Duncan Hines into franchising his ice cream, which he sold out of his home locally.

And Dad was very interested and wanted to know, well, what, what is your idea?

And Roy said, well, the idea is to put his face on every carton of ice cream in every ad, and your job would be to paint the portrait to go on the packages.

And of course, Duncan Hines love that idea.

And it became a huge success.

And now we have Duncan Hines cake mixes as a result.

Music He’d say, open your mouth real wide, look surprised, and we go and he said, no, now make your mouth more O:, and then we go.

He says, all right, now that's perfect.

Hold it.

Now lift up one leg.

Music I had, one day I put my shoes on on the wrong feet, and he was able to catch my motions just perfectly.

And he later used it as a cover for American Weekly.

Where are those shoes?

Right there.

And where's the other one?

There it is.

As you can see, Sally grew up just like the rest of us.

She can even read now.

And she has children of her own, Nannie and Caroline.

Now, what are we missing here?

Sally or Nancy Corriveau even had a chance to teach reading herself.

She taught first and second grade for seven years in Pittsfield, and Farmington.

But she used a more modern approach than the Sally, Dick and Jane series.

It's called Whole Language.

Whole Language is an integration of both systems of of learning to read.

It's the the phonics and the sight word, but it also adds singing and rhyming and jingles and and gets the kids excited about learning to read.

And it's in a large book presented in a large book form.

And the children like to lie down on the rug with it, or the teacher will present it to them up on an easel.

Nancy is trying to promote the Whole Language approach wherever she can, and she has volunteered her services to the National Literacy Foundation.

And in her spare time, she's trying to make some money with an entrepreneurial venture.

She invented and markets this nursing cover.

She calls it Mom's Hideaway.

Girls.

But get Tim.

Go get Tim.

Run, Spot, run.

So, in case you were wondering, Sally is doing just fine.

She's alive and well and living right here in New Hampshire under the alias of Nancy Childress Corriveau.

How much is that doggy in the window?

Oh, Jane.

Look at Sally.

that doggy’s for sale If you think Robert Childress’ paintings look a lot like Norman Rockwell’s paintings, you're right.

The two men were contemporaries.

They were both realist painters.

And yes, they knew each other.

As a matter of fact, Nancy's mother tells the story of going down to visit Norman Rockwell and his wife one time.

And if you'd like to know more about Robert Childress, Nancy has put together a program on his career, which she shows at various places around the state.

The mill that you see behind me is the Salmon Falls Mill.

Nowadays, it's the Daymark Company.

They make thermal underwear, but for 100 years, from about 1835 to 1935, this mill turned out a tremendous amount of fabric, upwards of 6 million yards of cotton cloth a year.

Our next story is also about a mill.

Not as big a mill as the one you see behind me.

It's about Leavitt's Cider Mill over in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, a mill that was built by Reuben Leavitt back in 1930.

Now it's operated by Laurie Houle, who, incidentally, worked for Mr.

Leavitt when she was only seven years old.

And every year, about this time, Laurie cranks up the mill and turns out the real thing, old fashioned apple cider.

Music Well, I started when I was seven years old.

I lived across the street.

I used to come down here and visit Mr.

Leavitt, and I guess I just kind of fell in love with the cider mill.

(apples tumbling out) You cannot buy a mill like this now.

They're all the small modern stuff.

There’s no more of the big old mills around like this that are still operating.

I believe this is either one of the largest or next-to-largest that was still operating in the state of New Hampshire.

What we got is Cortland, Spys, few Macs.

It's a special order for a guy for his barrel of cider.

And we're making about, this here is about 16 bushels, 17 bushels of apples.

Takes about 20 bushels to make a cheese of of, cider.

Music The mill itself has been in business now for 60 years this year, and I believe the press itself is probably about 90 years old.

(inaudible talking in background) There.

Now what we're going to do is roll it underneath the press.

All set?

(no dialogue) There.

That'll be starting to press up here.

(machine whirring) What's happening now is the press is running.

It has 1,250 pounds psi on it.

It presses about 70, 60 gallon at a time.

Cider is running into this holding tank, which holds 150 gallons of cider, which would be probably a little under a little over two cheeses of what's pressing now.

Music I use a special blend.

I usually like to use a winter apple, which is a Northern Spy or a Cortland or something along that line.

They're in a, it's a winter apple, and then you add a few things to it, like a little sugar and a few raisins and it all comes out.

It's a it's kind of a special blend that I've kind of worked on over the years.

And it's come out pretty well.

It takes about three months for it to work, along about the last of February, the 1st of March.

It'll be like a champagne taste and it'll have have the bubbles and the whole thing, and it really works out pretty well.

What do you call it?

It's just plain hard cider.

Music Here you go, Bob.

Try that.

Give it a shot.

I think that's going to make some pretty good cider this year, Laurie.

Hope so.

Hope so.

We'll know about February, March.

February or March, we'll know whether it's good or not.

Know if it's good or not.

Thank you.

Pretty good?

Yup.

Welcome.

Very good Good.

That’s what we like to hear.

Guess we're all set for now.

All set.

Right.

If you'd like to taste Laurie's cider, you will find Leavitt Cider Mill on South Main Street over in Pittsfield, New Hampshire.

And yesterday they told me that the cider that they are making this year is as sweet as it has ever been.

And of course, there are no preservatives.

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, all but one of the New Hampshire Crossroads programs was preempted by the Clarence Thomas hearings.

Well, one of the stories that we had in that segment, we thought was important enough to rebroadcast in order to get a larger audience.

It was the story about the current exhibit at the Hood Museum of Art up at Dartmouth College.

It's an exhibit of artifacts that were brought back from the New World right after Columbus made his discoveries.

They call the show The Age of the Marvelous , and producer Chip Neal visited just a couple of days before it opened.

This exhibition really reflects the influence of the discovery of Americas and of Columbus’ voyages to the New World.

When when Europeans when when Columbus made that first trip, Europeans before that had thought that Eden still existed and that it had survived from Noah's time.

And when Columbus bumped into America on his way to China, it was believed that they had come to Eden.

And the reason for this is it was a continent that was teeming with animal and botanical life, far richer, far more diverse than anything in Europe.

From ancient times, people have been interested in what is wonderful.

They wonder at things.

From around, from the time of the discovery of America in 1492, and it builds up and becomes it explodes around the middle of the 16th century until about the end of the 17th century.

European culture like no time before or Europeans like no time before, demonstrate an interest in anything that's unusual, rare, exotic, strange, anything in a word that can arouse wonder.

Music There was a great proliferation of collectors, not just princes and emperors, but members of the middle class, apothecaries and doctors and lawyers who began to assemble objects in their homes, if they had more room, a palace, they would extend this through several rooms.

And at that time, very different from our own age, Europeans saw an elaborate connections between the world of art or the world of art and the world of nature.

And in fact, many of the museums that were established at that time, and they were called museums or kunst and wunderkammer or or art and wonder rooms or cabinets of curiosity.

And they would attempt to show works of art next to nature's art and or ultimately God's art through nature.

And very often that because it was so much emphasis on virtuosity, the love for finely crafted objects, the artist would try to outdo nature.

So many of these early cabinets or early museums show a conglomeration of objects.

You see natural specimens and works of art side by side, very different from today, where you have natural history museums and art museums.

And these are all these objects are very discreetly separated from one or very carefully separated from one another.

But that came really with the 18th century, when knowledge was compartmentalized.

But in the 16th and 17th century, all of the world, there was the belief that a human being in a lifetime could know everything, have complete knowledge or universal knowledge.

So these museums were intended to be a kind of encyclopedia, where the whole world could be brought into a small room.

Music The collectors were, in a sense, creating a harmony and an order that they believed was reflective of the hidden order in the universe.

Music We have a what a normal tusk, but for a long time, those were considered to be the horns of unicorns, and hence this, unicorns were believed to be able to sense the purity of maidens from medieval times.

Music This page is open to some of the marvels that were natural marvels that were in the Royal Society Museum.

For example, an armadillo from the New World, which was a wonder of the first rank.

Then there is a stone that was voided from the urethra of a man.

A kidney stone?

A kidney stone.

Yes, there were kidney stones were favorite items in in curiosity cabinets, especially if they were big.

Bloodstone was often seen to cure, it was believed that it could cure all kinds of bleeding.

Had miraculous properties.

Coral from very ancient times was believed to ward off evil, and the ancient Romans used to make bracelets for their children and necklaces of branches and hang them on their arms or their or their necks, to particularly was supposed to save young boys from kinds of interests that they didn't want them to have at an early age.

The exhibit seems to have something for everyone, and it provides a unique glimpse of what it was like to live in another age.

An age when a German Jesuit named Athanasius Kircher could believe that fossils were carved by little people who lived inside the earth.

He even wrote a book about it.

It was an age when realist painters tried to fool the eye with trompe l’oeil paintings.

And anamorphic paintings, which become recognizable only when viewed from a certain angle.

Or with special mirrors.

It was an age that can still fool us and amaze us even now.

And then, amber, of course, with flies and insects that were seen as miracles of nature caught right in there.

They're caught right in there.

How did they do that?

Well, that’s (inaudible) nature.

Pardon?

That's nature.

That is the work of nature.

This is this is a natural product.

Yes.

Amber.

With an insect caught in it?

Yes, they’re prehistoric.

I mean, they date back a millennia, and it's a kind of sap.

And it fossilizes with the, the the insects inside them.

It was indeed the age of the marvelous.

It's a time of tremendous information explosion.

Something and I think our age is probably the closest that comes to that.

Music Age of the Marvelous runs now through November the 24th during regular museum hours.

And they will have special lectures and tours and of course, the guided tours for schoolchildren as well.

If you'd like more information, just get in touch with the people at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

Next week, New Hampshire Crossroads will not be on the air due to a very, very special presentation which we are entitling Winter Expo.

And if you are a lover of New Hampshire in the winter time, you are going to adore this program.

We've got all sorts of things here.

We have equipment and ski passes and lodging and hay rides and sleigh rides and romantic weekends and fashions all up for auction.

And beside that, we have some very special programing about wintertime here in the Granite State.

Come to think of it, even if you're not tickled pink about wintertime in New Hampshire, and some of us are not, you are going to just love this program.

New Hampshire Crossroads will be back on the air on November the 8th with the story of Hannah Dustin, who, with two other people, murdered and scalped ten Indians on an island in the Merrimack River and on that island was put up a statue in her honor, which is the very first heroic memorial ever erected to a woman here in the United States.

So until then, for New Hampshire Crossroads, I'm Fritz Wetherbee.

Theme Music Presentation of New Hampshire Crossroads is made possible by grants from First NH Banks, serving the financial needs of individuals, corporations, and local governments throughout New Hampshire.

The Union Leader Corporation, publisher of New Hampshire's statewide newspapers, delivering a world of color to you every morning.

And Upton, Sanders and Smith of Concord, New Hampshire, providing a full range of legal services throughout the state of New Hampshire since 1908.

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