Bernie's Beat. . .

HERE'S A CLASSIC TALE OF THE GOOD FOLKS WINNING OVER BAD POLICY.

Here I sit looking out our cabin window about 25 feet from the shore of pristine Lake Umbagog. It is a huge lake, located way up north in a small town of Cambridge, New Hampshire at a place called Paradise Point Cottages on Lake Umbagog.

I know the area and the lake well. Polly and I have come up here for many years.
At this great cabin site, the kayaking, fishing, eagle watching and scenery are like the people in these parts. Wonderful.

There is no telephone in the cabin and cell phone service doesn't reach here. The nearest daily newspapers are many miles away at the general store in Errol and every business there shuts down by 6:00PM or earlier.

We have come up to Cambridge many times. While up here and not on the water, we take side trips to check out other places, see what's up, see what's new and to see what the local gossip is. You'd be surprised at the stuff you can come up with.

During our three-day trip last week, I came into the middle of a great local story taking place in nearby town Colebrook, a town west of Errol. It isn't a big town, but bigger than Haverhill or Wells River, certainly a whole lot bigger than Piermont and its main street is longer than Bradford's.

I love good local stories, especially when they have a happy ending with the antagonist losing and the heroine winning. That's the classic American way of a good story. Here's such a good story I just found:

Seems a group of Colebrook residents, plus some of the elected and appointed local, state and national officials came together and prevented a real economic catastrophe up here.

On Colebrook's main street, there is a great Boulangerie (French bread shop) and Belgian chocolate shop affectionately known as Le Rendez-Vous. Owner Marc Ounis and his lady friend, Verlaine Daeron (both very, very French) opened this quaint shop eight years ago. They bought an abandoned bank building and fixed it up into a gorgeous café and bread shop on the street floor. They live upstairs over their popular business.

It is a delightful place to come in and relax in the stuffed chairs and have a French coffee and pastry or break into one of his delicious loaves of authentic country French bread.

Here's the condensed gist of the story as it was unfolded to me: The lady, Verlaine, recently went back to Paris to renew her visa that allows her to stay in America; the US Embassy in Paris rejected her application saying the bakery back in Colebrook doesn't make enough money to warrant her staying here. So, with the bad news that she could not get back to Colebrook, the bakery was set to close. End of the story.

No, not end of story. Colebrook residents became very angry about this diplomatic visa nonsense and went into immediate action to save the shop and get Verlaine back into town.

Colebrook's Beno Lamontagne, an all around good guy in town and a close personal friend of the French couple, found out about the fiasco and told his boss, George Bald, the Commissioner of the New Hampshire Resource and Economic Development Commission. Bald took the problem to Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Judd Gregg and other heavies in state and federal government.

Colebrook residents were incensed and mounted a huge letter-writing campaign that finally impressed embassy officials to reverse their decision and immediately issue the visa and allow Verlaine to come back to the bread and chocolate shop.

She came back into town last Sunday night to big fanfare, once again to be among her friends and her beloved Marc, the classic bread maker of the Northcountry.

Keep your eye on Colebrook as this proud town continues to welcome back a resident from the clutches of uncaring bureaucracy. Like all small towns I know of, residents know who to call, how to get action and how to win when things go the wrong way and it seems that evil will triumph over good.

Polly and I talked to Marc and he is thrilled at his town's reaction to Verlaine's predicament. He is happy his bakery can remain open and be a part of the local business community and economic base.

Beno Lamontagne is a former selectman in Colebrook and knows his way around state and local government. He said the town is putting together plans to give Verlaine a huge "Welcome Back" extravaganza right down the middle of Colebrook's Main Street.

While we were in the shop talking to Beno, he fielded a telephone call from the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and had spoken with the Boston Globe and New York Times newspapers about the story the day before.

He said he wants folks to know how important one small business is to the community. He knows the cloth of Colebrook is woven with the thread of small local businesses and their owners, like Marc Ounis and Verlaine Daeron.

He knows that in a so-so economy, everyone matters; maybe not to the bureaucrats at the American Embassy in Paris, but up here in the wilds of America there are a lot of people who appreciate simple things, like a good loaf of French bread.