"It was long like a train car. It was all counters and seated about 50 or 60. The grill was right out front. You’d order a hamburg or a steak, and it was cooked right there on the grill. It was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right up until the 1940s."

Picture this. I am enjoying lunch on a crisp September day in a smartly dressed café near the largest center for contemporary art and performance in the United States. I can see the top of a 75-foot clock tower and the red and yellow foliage on the mountain behind it.

Every morning, Rene, a hair salon owner from Gill, Massachusetts, walks across the bridge over the Connecticut River to get breakfast at her favorite place in Turners Falls. "I’ve been coming here for 35 years," she told me, shouting over the chatter and clatter. "It was the first place I ever had a soft-serve."

The sign said, ‘Welcome Home,’ as we drove into Cortland, New York, a city of 20,000, just off Interstate 81, about 30 miles south of Syracuse. The sign seemed strangely appropriate. My wife and I spent our first year of marriage in a basement apartment near the State University of New York College at Cortland, while I finished my last year.

"It looks nice now, but winter is coming," she warned, and introduced herself as Marylou. "That’s why I’m planting these tulips. I planted 32 of them last fall, and 31 of them came up. Planting them gives me hope. The winter is long, but I can sit by my window and wait for the tulips to come up again."

"The diner was one of the landmarks Dad always pointed out to us kids. When I was about 10, we pulled into the parking lot. Dad said, ‘Let’s have a real Vermont breakfast.’"

When Springfield, Vermont native Lena Kazak graduated from high school in 1938, landing a job wasn’t easy. The Great Depression had its hold on this small factory town along the raging Black River, about 35 miles north of Brattleboro.

On a dreadfully cold New England day, I sit at a table that looks out on Main Street, browse the Boston Globe, and scarf down a scrumptious breakfast of French toast and maple syrup. Journalists need a good place to hang out, and the Morning Star Café in downtown Springfield, Vermont is the perfect spot.

Route 116 between South Deerfield and Ashfield, Massachusetts winds like a babbling brook through 13 miles of rural beauty that is breathtaking without being spectacular. I drove it one recent early morning on the way to North Adams, the sun rising behind me, angling its rays on sprawling farmhouses, Wyeth barns, and green, hilly meadows sleeping under the dissipating fog.

I met my friend Marylou in Claremont, New Hampshire about three years ago. It was my first visit to the city, and I was just walking around and exploring. Marylou was planting tulips in her front yard, and we got into a lovely conversation. Since that serendipitous meeting, I have made the annual 90-minute trip to Claremont in the spring to see Marylou’s tulips and catch up on what is happening in what has become one of my favorite small cities in New England. An April visit brought more of its share of surprises.

A narrow, four-story building stands at 26-28 Washington Street, in Keene, New Hampshire. It looks familiar, like thousands of mixed commercial-residential blocks that were built in the late nineteenth century in cities and towns all across the Northeast. But it captured my attention immediately on one of the many visits my wife and I have made to this lively small city with its famous wide Main Street.