Old-time shows broadcast nightly

By Richard P. Carpenter, Globe Staff

IF YOU GO The inn at Maplewood Farm is at 447 Center Road, PO Box 1478, Hillsboro, NH 03244; telephone 603-464-4242; fax 603-464-5401; the Web address: www.conknet.com/ maplewoodfarm/. The inn is open from May through October, with the last two weeks of October featuring a ``War of the Worlds'' Halloween package that includes gift ray guns. All four suites have private baths. Rates for a suite, double occupancy, with king- or queen-sized bed range from $75 to $95. A two-bedroom suite, quad occupancy, costs $115 to $125. Rates include breakfast. There is also an 8 percent state lodging tax. No smoking or pets are allowed. Children are welcome with prior notice, and many become old-radio fans as a result of their stay. If you like the radio in your room, you can buy it. Our G.E. cost $70, and I might have purchased it if my wife weren't watching. In addition to all the radios, there is a television hidden in a parlor cabinet, but even then there are old-TV videotapes such as ``Dragnet.'' Lots of games are available. And there is a gift shop where, not surprisingly, old-radio tapes are among the items. The Franklin Pierce Homestead is on Route 31N; telephone 603-478-3165; Web address is:www.conknet.com/~hillsboro/ pierce. A nominal admission is charged adults. Hours are daily, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., in July and August, and weekends only in June and September. The homestead is open Memorial Day weekend, July 4, and Labor Day. And although there will be no gala this year, the homestead is planning talks and special events, including a candlelight tour in the fall. The 11th annual Hillsborough Balloon Fest & Fair, featuring three days of family entertainment, will be held July 9-11. For more information, call 603-464-5858 or visit www.balloonfestival.org/. Hillsboro has one more claim to fame: It has been called the flying saucer capital of America because of many sightings there. But folk singer Tom Rush, who grew up in Hillsboro, says most of the sightings were by one man who usually spotted the saucers while bringing his recently emptied liquor bottles out onto the porch. - RICHARD P. CARPENTER

HILLSBORO, N.H. - Suddenly it was 1948. The voice on the old G.E. radio belonged to a genius named Orson Welles, who was telling a tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.

Then it was 1853, and President Franklin Pierce was holding court at his boyhood home, enthralling guests with the story of his triumphs and tragedies.

And then it was time immemorial, with the wind dancing through the trees, water splashing over rocks, cows lowing, birds twittering, and squirrels chattering.

Such time travel is effortless when you visit peaceful Hillsboro and stay at one of the nation's most unusual bed-and-breakfasts, the Inn at Maplewood Farm.

The B&B is unusual not because of its considerable charm, but because it's also a radio station, broadcasting dramas, comedies, and (shudder) tales of terror from the Golden Age of Radio in the parlor and four guest suites - and nowhere else.

Although just 31, the proprietor, Jayme Simoes, has been a fan of old radio since he first heard a rebroadcast in Chicago when he was 13. ''It was so unusual to hear people talking to each other on the radio then,'' he says. He began to tune in every week, became hooked, and is now the owner of some 50 vacuum-tube radios, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s.

Thus, when he and his wife, Laura, bought the 1794 home, then converted it into a bed-and-breakfast that opened in May 1993, he came to the right place. Hillsboro, it turns out, is the home of Piexx, a treasure trove of old radios and other electronic nostalgia. The proprietor, Christopher Sieg, set up the a 100-milliwatt broadcasting station at the inn, and now all that guests need do is tune to 100 AM on the 1940s radios in the four guest rooms or the one in the parlor to hear an evening's entertainment featuring ''The Lone Ranger,'' ''The Green Hornet,'' ''Captain Midnight,'' ''Suspense,'' ''Fibber McGee and Molly,'' or so many other splendid shows that are part of Simoes's collection of more than 1,000 broadcasts. And this is accomplished in a way that would amaze even radio's Chandu the Magician: with a transmitter smaller than a pack of cigarettes, linked to a carousel of five compact discs containing the evening's shows.

''We imagine the America that listened to the radio each night as a very different place,'' says Jayme Simoes. I can attest to that because I grew up during radio's final glory years. I remember waiting eagerly to hear Chester A. Riley proclaim, ''What a revoltin' development this is!'' and Jack Benny's friend Mr. Kitzel outline the formula for a perfect hamburger: ''Wid de peekle in de middle and de mustard on top!'' I remember my father faithfully tuning in to Bing Crosby's show to hear him sing about the blue of the night meeting the gold of the day. And I remember my brother and me daring each other to listen to ''Lights Out'' - with the lights out. With programs like these, and the need to visualize, radio exercised the mind. And then television came along and often did the opposite. What are today's TV viewers going to remember decades from now: Ally McBeal falling into a co-ed toilet bowl? But I digress.

It was a soft, sunny afternoon when my wife, Linda, and I arrived at the 14-acre Maplewood Farm and were shown to our room. She was enchanted by many things: the knotty-pine walls, the antiques, the quilt on the bed, the gas-powered fireplace, the grandfather clock that gave the right time twice a day (a joke older than radio). I liked them, too, once I was able to take my eyes off the room's radio: a 1948 General Electric Model 115, complete with glowing tubes that take a minute or so to heat up and an authentic low hum. Simoes, who is happy to accommodate radio requests, agreed to start the programming early that day, and I could have listened all afternoon to the programs, which included ''Suspense'' (featuring Orson Welles in the chilling ''Donovan's Brain''), ''Dimension X,'' ''Richard Diamond,'' and others. But my wife couldn't. ''It's a beautiful day,'' she said, so I turned off the radio and we we went out to see Hillsboro.

There's a lot to view in this town of 4,000 people, beginning with the dozen ''field-tenders'' right outside the inn - Holstein cows who appear courtesy of Eccardt Farm, just 15 minutes up the road and one of the last family-run dairy farms in southern New Hampshire. The clanking of cowbells seemed a joyful kind of music.

Where to go: the small but bustling downtown with its several antique shops, dining spots, and that old-radio store? The neighboring Fox State Forest with its lake, mountain views, and 20 miles of hiking trails? The Franklin Pierce Homestead, boyhood home of America's ''forgotten'' 14th president? Eventually, we would hop into the car and visit them all, but first it was time for a half-mile walk (some of it uphill) to Hillsborough Center, which appears much as it did in the 1780s. The sights include a pewter shop, an 1818 schoolhouse, and a lost-animal pound - fortunately the rock-enclosed structure is no longer operating or my wife would have no doubt brought home a lost animal. More sights: the town common, period homes, gravestones from the early 1800s with their lugubrious verses, and two white clapboard churches - the kind so closely associated with New England. All afternoons should be so peaceful and pleasant.

Then it was into the car to enjoy the downtown (and to note that Hillsboro even has a nostalgic diner, Caron's) and to relish the outdoors as we rode over double-arch stone bridges and got out to look at brooks that really do babble. Ordinarily, we would have also visited the Pierce homestead that afternoon, but, as serendipity would have it, we instead went to a special event there in the evening: the annual gala honoring President and Mrs. Pierce.

It was a night of cocktails, canapes, entertainment, and, of course, history. A talented twosome named Harold Fernald and Priscilla Triggs Weeks impersonated the president and his wife, Jane Means Appleton Pierce. They talked about Pierce's rapid rise, becoming a US congressman and senator, a brigadier general in the Mexican War, and, in 1852 at age 48, the youngest elected president at that time. But tragedy followed the Pierces down the paths of glory: Two of their children died very young and the Pierces witnessed the death of their only surviving child in a terrible train accident. As she told the story, Mrs. Pierce wept.

But this was primarily a happy occasion, filled with dancing, folk-singing, a classical concert, and tours of the 1804 home with its big rooms, hand-stenciled walls, imported wallpaper, and myriad artifacts. One highlight was a demonstration of the grand hammer-dulcimer and virginall by a true renaissance man named R. P. Hale. We were in good spirits as we drove back to the inn in time to catch the final old-radio programs of the night.

Morning brought breakfast in the bright kitchen, where Laura Simoes's teapot collection is on display. (If we chose to, we could have had breakfast delivered to our room in a basket or dined outside in the orchard.) Until last year, Laura joined in preparing breakfast, but now she has a new job as director of publicity for New Hampshire tourism. So it's up to Jayme now, and that morning he did a fine job with a little help from German John's bakery in downtown Hillsboro. Breakfast consisted of coffee, juice, Stonyfield Farm yogurt, melon, and a selection of German John's treats such as kuchen-streudel and fruit-filled rolls. Those bakery products were so good, in fact, that before we left Hillsboro, we stopped in at German John's to buy more.

I left town thinking about the introduction to ''The Lone Ranger'' radio show, which referred to ''those thrilling days of yesteryear.'' After our stay in Hillsboro, I would change that to ''those delightful days of yesteryear.''

Published 05/02/99 in the Boston Suday Globe's Travel Section.