When Muriel and Lucien Blais’ grandchildren come to visit they always request the same thing for breakfast: blueberry pancakes with Papa’s syrup.

The Blais have been sugaring — that is, making maple syrup — for three generations.  Muriel’s great uncle Lazarre Bisson started tapping sugar maple trees in the ’20s with his nephew Armand Bisson and the Bisson Sugar House was born.  That was back in the day of hand cranked drills and metal buckets.

Lucien and Muriel Blais when they first started making syrup

Sugaring season starts around March and April when the weather turns warm during the day but still freezes over night.  “Warm” in the north country is around 40 degrees.  On average, it takes 40 to 50 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup.

Little at Bisson’s Sugar House has physically changed since Lazarre and Armand first started. There are still the same benches, same sign, same wood-burning stove, same smell of split birch logs and sap.  Sure, technology has advanced — Muriel and Lucien no longer collect sap in buckets, but use a system of plastic tubing to tap the trees — but for Berliners, Bisson’s remains a fixture in the community.

And the syrup, well, let’s just say that I have been eating a lot of pancakes lately.

StoryCorps  is in Berlin, New Hampshire!  It’s pronounced BER-lin and not Ber-LIN (the emphasis on the ‘BER’ as opposed to the way you might pronounce the capital of the nation of Germany).   The pronunciation was changed, according to participant Paul “Poof” Tardiff, during World War I as a patriotic stand against the German enemy.

Poof is a resident historian here in Berlin, which is also know as “the town that trees built.” Berlin is a paper mill town.  During its heyday in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, five mills ran full time churning out paper goods.  Each spring, according to Poof, men drove logs down the Androscoggin River to supply the mills with lumber.  These men wore spiked boots and worked the fallen trees down river, separating the logs to be delivered to each mill by use of a series of boom piers, or man made islands, which still dot the Androscoggin River.

Paul “Poof” Tardiff

After long, harsh winters in the woods,  loggers and river drivers flooded into the big city during log-driving season, transforming Berlin into a lively - and sometimes rowdy - place. Log drives ended in the 1960s and the last paper mill closed in 2006.

Today, Berlin is the throes of a new phase transitioning from a booming mill town into a smaller, quieter place.  What is next for the town that trees built?  We have three weeks to find out…

This week, the StoryCorps MobileBooth East left Lincoln Center and traded the bustle of midtown Manhattan for a view of the White Mountains and the sound of the Androscoggin River in the heart of New Hampshire’s North Country.

We kicked off a month of recording in our host city of  Berlin with an ice cream social in Veteran’s Park, hosted by station partner New Hampshire Public Radio.

With cones of “Moose Tracks”-flavored ice cream, we welcomed people of all ages to see the MobileBooth and sign up to record a story.  Above, StoryCorps’ Sara Esrick chats up three Berlin Junior High eighth graders.

The MobileBooth East team will be in Berlin until June 25.  We look forward to listening to stories from young and old alike and to soaking up the fresh air of summer in the North Country.

In my short time here in Asheville I have learned that one thing’s for certain: there is always a guitar close at hand, if not a banjo, a mandolin, a stand-up bass, and a fiddle as well. The Hominy Valley Boys walked by the booth during our stay and were gracious enough to play us a little tune. A little send off, if you will. As the accursed expression goes, all good things must come to an end, and sadly, our stay in Asheville has wrapped up.

Stories are rich in Western North Carolina and it seems that nearly everyone has come in to the share a bit of themselves with us. It has been a privilege and an honor to hear tales of tobacco farming, mountaineering, snipe hunts, immigrating from Moldova, love at first sight, the beginnings of All Things Considered, the Blue Ridge Parkway, hiking the Appalachian Trail, losing a daughter, adopting sons, getting older, fighting in World War II, going to Klezmer Kamp, weaving, throwing clay, joining a sorority... the list goes on and on. We have only scratched the surface. Keep on recording your stories, and stay tuned to WCQS to hear what Western North Carolina sounds like.

Enjoy some shots from our time in Asheville…

Katherine y Beatriz vinieron a la MobileBooth en Asheville, Carolina del Norte para conversar sobre su amistad que se ha desarrollado desde aprender Ingles y Español juntas. Katherine le preguntó a Beatriz, “¿Cómo llegamos a ser amigas? Somos muy diferentes, tengo casi el doble de su edad, tu tienes una familia y yo soy soltera y jubilada. Para mí aprender el español es un pasatiempo, para ti es una necesidad para sobrevivir aquí…”

“How did we become friends?,” Katherine asked her friend Beatriz in Spanish during their recent interview in Asheville, NC. “We are very different.”  Indeed, they are different.  Katherine is almost twice Beatrice’s age.  Katherine is single, Beatrice is raising a family. But perhaps their most glaring difference is language. Katherine is a native English speaker, while Beatrice’s mother tongue is Spanish. For Katherine, learning Spanish is a hobby, whereas for Beatriz, she must learn a new language to survive in this country.

Cuando Beatriz se mudó a Asheville de México, ella empezó poco a poco a aprender Ingles con Katherine. Enseñando una a la otra, han aprendido no solamente el idioma de la otra, sino también las distintas culturas. “Lo que me interesa es la diferencia, tengo muchas amigas de mi misma edad y cultura,” dice Katherine. “Creo que nuestra amistad ha mejorado porque tenemos la misma experiencia de aprender el idioma.”

When Beatriz moved to Asheville from Mexico, she began to learn English with Katherine as her tutor. However throughout the course of their studies together Katherine started asking Beatrice more and more questions about Spanish.  Soon they were switching between English and Spanish. Katherine would give Beatrice a lesson in English and then Beatrice would reciprocate with a lesson in Spanish. “I believe that our friendship has improved because we have the same experience of learning the language. “We have a lot of patience for the other because we share the same frustrations learning the language, ” said Katherine.

“¿Por qué querría aprender español? ¿Para conversar conmigo?” le preguntó Beatriz a Katherine. “Si” respondió Katherine, “pero también me di cuenta que el mundo habia cambiado, ahora el mundo pertenece a los bilingües o trilingües,” Katherine dijo. Además, la mama de ella la inspiró a aprender un nuevo idioma. “Cuando ella tenia 90 años, ella todavía estaba repasando su vocabulario en Español.”

“Why would you want to learn Spanish? To talk to me?” Beatriz asked Katherine.

“Yes,” Katherine replied, “but I also realized that the world has changed, now the world belongs to those that are bilingual or trilingual.” Moreover, Katherine’s mother inspired her to learn a new language. “When [her mother] was 90 years old, she was still reviewing her Spanish vocabulary.”

Max Woody has been making rocking chairs for nearly 60 years. Max came to the MobileBooth in Asheville with two of his close friends, Maggie and Zach, to talk about the custom chair making tradition that can be traced back six generations in his family. He still works what he calls “a half day,” that is, 12 hours. Each rocking chair is made to fit, no matter “how tall or how short, how scrawny or how healthy,” the customer. Although the average wait on a chair is 3-5 years from the day you order it, if you are an invalid or pregnant you can get one much quicker, says Max.

As a kid Max remembers playing with his father’s toolbox. Although his dad tried locking it shut to keep him out, he still found a way to undo the hinges and get to the tools. When Max was 15 his father passed away.   The day he died, Max remembers sitting with the toolbox. It was the place where Max felt closest to his father.  After high school, Max saved $850 to buy his own tools and started his chair making business, which he has been doing ever since.

After all these years Max still looks forward to going to work and still loves his customers, in fact, he says, “you don’t have buy anything to visit us, the latch string is on the outside, that’s a mountain term for making people welcome in your abode.” I was welcomed one afternoon at Max’s shop in Marion, North Carolina. I tried out the rocking chairs and heard many more of Max’s stories and words of wisdom.

Need a haircut?  Like bluegrass?  Head over to Drexel, North Carolina.  For over sixty years Lawrence Anthony and David Shirley have been cutting hair and playing tunes at the Sanitary Barber Shop on Main Street.

Lawrence Anthony and his son, Carroll

What started out years ago, with Lawrence and Drexel’s sheriff whiling the time away with their guitars, has turned into a scene.  Each Saturday, anywhere from five to well over 30 musicians will gather to jam in the back of the barber shop, in, as Lawrence likes to call it, “the pickin’ room.”  People have come from all over the county and even as far as England to listen.

David Shirley and his son, Philip

Driving into downtown Drexel, you can’t help but notice empty storefronts.  Both the Drexel Furniture Factory and the hosiery mill have closed, and so have most of the stores that line Main Street. The barbershop is a bright spot for the community, a place where folks can gather and the music’s free of charge.

Seven years ago Bryce was at the top of his game.  He had just made the biggest sale of his career as a car salesman and he wanted to celebrate. He hopped into his car and headed to a friend’s house. “I was going around a back country road doing too many things at once and I ended up going down a cliff.”

Bryce was in a coma for 28 days. Doctors said he never wake up. But Bryce did wake up.  To see him walk and talk today you would never know how close he came to dying. Yet he suffers from what he calls “the invisible injury,” brain injury trauma. His short term memory is faulty, and sequential thinking and timing are hard for him. “Since my car wreck, I’m not quick enough to be a salesman,” he told his friend and advocate Karen Harrington during his StoryCorps interview.  Bryce was gracious enough to share his story along with other survivors of brain injury trauma who live in the Asheville area.

Post accident, Bryce has become what he calls, “a student of patience.”

“Every time I approach a decision to make, I have before-car-wreck-adrenaline-junkie-Bryce and then I have the more reasonable, let’s-figure-it-out-Bryce. And every time I make a decision I have to have a committee hearing. My favorite analogy is: I’m out at a swimming hole and and I ask myself, ‘What do you want to do, pre-car-wreck-Bryce?’

“‘Well I want to go to the top of that waterfall and dive from the top of that rock.’

“‘What do you wanna do post-car-wreck Bryce?’

“‘I’m happy sunbathing on the beach.’

“And I have to mediate between the two sides of myself, so I go halfway up the rock and jump in feet first. It’s not that this isn’t something that everyone goes through. It just seems that much more dramatic to me.  On top of the patience that I have with myself, I accrue the debt of patience or lack of patience from society.”

Today, Bryce no longer sells cars but makes art. He has sketch books full of sculptures and paintings that he intends to create.  His dream is to open an art space for people with disabilities.  “It’s the first decision that I have made in my life that has come from my heart and not from the desire to make money.”

“What do you consider your biggest accomplishment?” asked Ricky Boone’s friend Patty. “That I’m still here,” responded Ricky, “I accidentally set my head on fire in front of thousands of people, I lived through that. I had a heart attack in front of thousands of people, I lived through that. I was supposed to have died ten years ago, the doctors said I had to stop performing and I have done more shows in last ten years than in the previous ten. If you feel that you have a purpose to live for, I think you can.”

Ricky Boone, magician extraordinaire who was born with a rare bone disease in which his skeletal structure went haywire.  Ricky said, “comedy was a way of getting out of the real world, the real world where people see me as someone disabled, and someone to pity. If I can make that person laugh their butts off, they have no time to feel sorry for me.”

Ricky remembers first learning magic from a teacher at school. “He pulled up on a Harley, wearing a black leather jacket and proceeded to show us card tricks. I was hooked.” When the teacher later became the school principal, he would call Ricky into his office over the intercom to where they would exchange magic and card tricks. “I had a pretty good reputation around school because everyone thought I was always in trouble,” Ricky said.

After working at an office for several years, he followed his dream to open a magic shop and dedicate more time to performing. With the economy struggling as it is, owning a magic shop is not easy, but Ricky still walks into his shop some mornings and says, “wow, this is mine.” On a cold spring day in Asheville, North Carolina, my fellow Mobile East team members, Nina Porzucki, Sara Esrick, and I visited Ricky’s shop, Magic Central where he welcomed us and showed a few of his tricks.

Mobile East pulled into town to find Brian, the electrician for our partner station WCQS rigging up electrical outlets to a mossy tree trunk. The tree had fallen in Brian’s back yard so he decided dig a hole in the cement and install it to supply the MobileBooth with power. We learned that the ecological footprint of installing your average electric pole is so much smaller if you utilize a fallen tree rather than chopping one down.

Our first interview in town was with Gary Everhardt, Daniel Brown and Philip Francis, the three past Superintendents of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a two-lane highway that runs 469 miles through the truly Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina and Virginia. The parkway took nearly 50 years to complete and now is the most frequented place in the Park Service. As the men pointed out, Americans love to drive, so hundreds of miles of winding asphalt with no stop lights and lots of beautiful views is just about perfect for most Americans.

We are parked in the center of downtown Asheville and from the trailer door you can see the mountains circling the city.  It’s Spring and the trees are blossoming, the bulbs are coming up and it’s hard not to fall in love with this little town in the hills.  We look forward to hearing the stories of Western North Carolina..