After dreaming of taking such a trip
for the better part of a year and planning it for the past few weeks, last Wednesday I finally left my home in Burlington, Vermont
for a two day visit to America's Credit Union Museum in Manchester,
New Hampshire. It being northern New England, nasty weather was naturally on its
way, so I hit the road in the early afternoon to avoid the impending
deluge of ice and snow, and arrived in time grab dinner and drinks
with my New Hampshirite friend and fellow mutualist nerd Julia
Riber-Pitt.
After some good beer and interesting
conversation at Jillians (a local restaurant and pool hall), my
mile-long stroll back to the hotel was livened by a parade of
gorgeous old historical buildings. Manchester is a classic
19th-century New England industrial town, with enormous, long
red-brick mills (now repurposed for a variety of functions) lining
both sides of the river that flows through the center of the city.
Indeed, America's first credit union, the original site of which is now
occupied by the museum, was established to serve the French Canadian
immigrants who worked in those mills, and many of the houses that
lined my path were built in that era as well.
