The Perfect Day
James Taber
November 13, 2025
The leaves are dropping and so is the temperature, it's that time of the year when the holidays are approaching. To me it's a time to reflect and focus on family. I have been blessed with a large family my whole life and I especially enjoy them during the holidays. The family members that are still here and the ones that have passed on.
The one that I especially miss during the holidays is my beloved mother Maddalena Grace (Profita) Taber. It was about this time of the year when I stopped by her home in Newbury, Vermont to pick her up and just go for a ride together. At the time she was 82 years old, getting a bit frail physically but still sharp as a attack mentally.
I remember helping her up into my Ford Explorer and thinking how tiny and light she was. We decided to go on a nostalgia tour so we took a right turn to Wells River and then a left turn heading towards Groton. Along the way we swung into Blue Mountain Union School and I told her some of the naughty things we used to do when we were in school and mostly got away with... ha ha.
We pulled into South Ryegate and took a drive up by the Fiske Farm and then over the little bridge to her old house on the left where she and my father lived for many years. It still looked in great shape. On the way back out to 302, we looked at the old South Ryegate store, my mother always liked Steve and Tom the proprietors and so did I for that matter... great guys.
Then we headed on to Groton which hasn't really changed all that much since I was a kid except for the people. We took a ride up to the old place where I grew up which is still in the family and is now used as a camp and sat there for a spell and reminisced about all the years we spent there. On the way back through Groton, we pulled in and looked for a moment at the old building that my parents had a little market in for a few years.
And we started circling back towards home but then decided to take a left turn in South Ryegate and head up through the back roads a little bit and stopped and checked out a little plot of land that we had lived on briefly. That hadn't really changed much either but we did not linger there as across the road in a pasture there was a massive pile of cow manure and we were down wind of it!.
Our last stop on the nostalgia tour was going straight up the road from there a couple miles to what used to be the old Aldrich farm. Along the way we saw a beautiful pair of Palomino horses running around a field. We did a drive by the farm chatted about a few of our memories from there and then headed home.
To finish off our tour we stopped for ice cream in Wells River. When we pulled up to my mother's front door and parked, she said you know Jimmy, your vehicle rides a lot nicer than Bryan (brother) and Brads(brother-in-law) trucks!.
And to me that was the end of The Perfect Day!.
James Taber is a frequent contributor to The Bridge Weekly. He lives in Woodsville, NH.
The one that I especially miss during the holidays is my beloved mother Maddalena Grace (Profita) Taber. It was about this time of the year when I stopped by her home in Newbury, Vermont to pick her up and just go for a ride together. At the time she was 82 years old, getting a bit frail physically but still sharp as a attack mentally.
I remember helping her up into my Ford Explorer and thinking how tiny and light she was. We decided to go on a nostalgia tour so we took a right turn to Wells River and then a left turn heading towards Groton. Along the way we swung into Blue Mountain Union School and I told her some of the naughty things we used to do when we were in school and mostly got away with... ha ha.
We pulled into South Ryegate and took a drive up by the Fiske Farm and then over the little bridge to her old house on the left where she and my father lived for many years. It still looked in great shape. On the way back out to 302, we looked at the old South Ryegate store, my mother always liked Steve and Tom the proprietors and so did I for that matter... great guys.
Then we headed on to Groton which hasn't really changed all that much since I was a kid except for the people. We took a ride up to the old place where I grew up which is still in the family and is now used as a camp and sat there for a spell and reminisced about all the years we spent there. On the way back through Groton, we pulled in and looked for a moment at the old building that my parents had a little market in for a few years.
And we started circling back towards home but then decided to take a left turn in South Ryegate and head up through the back roads a little bit and stopped and checked out a little plot of land that we had lived on briefly. That hadn't really changed much either but we did not linger there as across the road in a pasture there was a massive pile of cow manure and we were down wind of it!.
Our last stop on the nostalgia tour was going straight up the road from there a couple miles to what used to be the old Aldrich farm. Along the way we saw a beautiful pair of Palomino horses running around a field. We did a drive by the farm chatted about a few of our memories from there and then headed home.
To finish off our tour we stopped for ice cream in Wells River. When we pulled up to my mother's front door and parked, she said you know Jimmy, your vehicle rides a lot nicer than Bryan (brother) and Brads(brother-in-law) trucks!.
And to me that was the end of The Perfect Day!.
James Taber is a frequent contributor to The Bridge Weekly. He lives in Woodsville, NH.
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