Katie Williamson
Eng 81: Sharlet
2/24/15
RE: Hanover Instagram Essays
Ben and Jerry’s  Carnival I-Scream  Noodle Station
There’s still a painted ice cream cone outside the building. Instead of a vibrant pink,
it’s now faded. It has new yellow-gray spots resembling mold. A Ben and Jerry’s was here
five years ago. It meant Free Cone Day in April. Free Cone Day was like a holiday at my high
school. My classmates and I would plan out our whole day around our ice cream. Some kids
only had morning blocks open and had to go at 11am. I could wait until after lunch. April
isn’t always a warm month in New Hampshire, but no day was too cold for free ice cream. I
scribbled my name to sign out. Reason for leaving? I left it blank. I pushed through the
double doors to the outside. Ben & Jerry’s was five minutes away if you walked, fewer if you
ran. The line still appeared much before then, winding down the ramp into the sidewalk.
Today I walk up the ramp and one of the clerks asks me if I’m coming inside. The
sign reads, “Noodle Station.” Before that it was Carnival I-Scream — a wanna-be
amusement park booth and ice cream shop. It failed at both.
“Have you been here before?” she asks.
The question catches me off guard. “Yeah,” I reply slowly.
The layout of the store is the same as before, but stoves and countertops have
replaced freezers. “Thank you for supporting a local, family owned business!” a sign reads. I
sigh and order a house made lemonade.
The woman at the counter looks disappointed. “Do you want any boba? We have
strawberry, mango, passion fruit…”
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“I’m sorry, what?”
She makes a small circle with her thumb and index fingers, the shape of this “boba.”
I pass. No gummy tapioca balls in my lemonade, which costs $3. It arrives with a
plastic film on top. I break through the surface with an enormous yellow straw. The clerks
have disappeared to the other side of the store. I miss the sticky counters and smell of fresh
waffle cones. I miss the long lines and having discussions with strangers about the best ice
cream flavors. A clerk walks in and I try to joke with her about nobody wanting pasta at
3pm. She nods with a sad smile.
“Friday and Saturday nights are the busiest,” she says. She continues humming to
herself and refills containers of chicken and garlic. The rubber handles of the sauté pans
are perfectly angled at 45º. They serve tapioca in lemonade.
Campions’ Women’s Store  Starbucks
Hanover’s never been a franchise town. Yet the notorious dark green awnings still
found their way to the corner of Lebanon and Main Street. All I see is a huge space filled
with a huge ego. The walls, the countertops, the shelves, the smell of roasted coffee: dark.
It’s the kind of place where you have to think about how many calories are in your tall
vanilla latte: 200. The kind of place where everyone is on their laptops: emailing. It’s a
working place. For serious people.
Six black and white photos of Main Street are captured behind thick black frames in
a center portion of the café. An ode to a quaint town that could have only existed in 1913 or
1956. Little white plaques explain the images, confidently asserting a history that isn’t
theirs. I hate that I don’t know this history. That I’ve never seen these pictures.
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I reluctantly order a chai tea. A barista asks me if I want the “classic” version or
another kind that I don’t understand. “The Teavana is spicier,” she says. Her eyes flash with
excitement. I stare blankly at her.
“I’m the girl with the bottle of sriracha at her side,” she adds.
“Yeah, I’m not like that,” I reply. I try to laugh with her. I stick with the classic.
Before Starbucks, this space hosted Campion’s Women’s Store, a large assortment of
clothes, makeup, bags, and other trinkets. I wasn’t particularly attached to the store, but
these grey walls and hard benches make me wish for Vera Bradley purses and palates of
Clinique eye shadow. It was one of those errand stops with my mom. Somewhere in the
middle of the to-do list – just passing through. She only went in to pick up her makeup gift
bag as a part of her monthly subscription. Sometimes I got to keep some of the samples of
perfume or lip gloss. Now I buy my own makeup. And I have to listen to my friends rave
about Starbucks. It’s become a popular study spot or meeting place for coffee in the
afternoon. I sigh and roll my eyes. My friend’s confused. “What? Where else would I get
coffee?”
Buon Gustaio  Sushi Ya
There used to be a real Italian restaurant in town. That’s how I liked to think of it
growing up. Whenever my parents told me we were going out to dinner at Buon Gustaio, I
would pull out my finest dress for the occasion. I used to dream of being sophisticated. Like
Europe. Walking into that restaurant felt like being transported to Italy. Our family would
sit at a rectangular table with booths against three sides in the dim lighting of the room. I
gave my order to the waiter. “An Italian soda, please.” I believed this drink only existed
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within the confines of that very building. This was Italy. Then came the main course: neat
little duck slices overlapping on my plate surrounded by a rich, fruity compote. Later my
mom would make a similar dish at home. I’d ask for it on my next couple birthday dinners.
Two years ago I became a vegetarian.
Standing on that street today, a new building stands firmly in its place. Out of the
corner of my eye, I see a thin, older man walking towards me. He strolls behind me and
scuffs his feet to a stop on my left side. “What a nice picture, a restaurant street sign,” he
says. I glance over at him and see his wire framed glasses and long protruding nose. I
explain I am working on a project. “Well I thought it must be something like that,” he says,
raising his eyebrows at me before turning to walk into a nearby store. I look up again at the
street sign. Sushi Ya Restaurant: Korean & Japanese Cuisine (Sushi). Walking inside there’s
a display of delicate china, packaged seaweed, honey tea mix, and chopsticks. It smells like
soy sauce and something oily that I can’t identify. But there’s no duck or Italian sodas on
their menu. They don’t know what they’re missing.
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Bagel Basement  Allen St. Deli  Metro Café
It used to be run by hippies. Well, that’s what everyone said in town. The menu was
a beautifully decorated chalkboard, one where you read the whole thing just to see what
colors and fonts they chose for cream cheese spreads, beverages, and egg sandwiches. I
ordered the same thing every time I went. A fresco bagel with cream cheese. Unwrapping
the paper and seeing a plump bagel cut in half was a simple joy. The cinnamon sugar
crystals stuck to my hands and my tongue as I took a bite, cream cheese squishing out the
sides onto my hands. It was always a mess and always fantastic.
But the first bite was the best. It was in that moment that I tasted the flavor so
deliciously unusual and barely perceptible in my sandwich: onion. What some might find to
be a problem at any other bagel store was exactly what I craved. Cross contamination was a
step in making my sandwich that couldn’t be skipped. That was one of the things I loved
about the Bagel Basement. Even when you knew what you wanted, they gave you
something better. Now everything is wiped clean. I tried going to the new Metro Café this
past week and found it to be closed three days in a row. Peering through the glass, I could
see tables and chairs piled up in a shadowy corner and abandoned countertops. The
chalkboard menus are ordinary. And the cream cheese, well, it probably tastes like cream
cheese.
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