ACONIA, N.H. - The summer of 1999 will be remembered in these parts as a time when the immediate pursuits of life trumped its troubling abstractions. Hot, handsome days of plenty unfold like lacquered fans, and the swarm of presidential hopefuls are newsprint used to start barbecue grills.
''We don't talk about politics now. It's too early,'' said Etta Sweatt, who with her husband, Hartley, owns a farm up in Millsfield that has been in the family since 1877. ''The campaign ought to be two months. If you can't make up your mind in two months, forget it.''
Etta has her priorities right. To hell with the political castes in Concord already obsessed with the primaries next February. Such common sense is reassuring to outlanders who have been stunned by the plumb weirdness of New Hampshire since the birth two centuries ago of what the poet Donald Hall calls ''the nation-state of each farm.''
But what else? If not politics, which will descend on Etta and Hartley Sweatt like black flies later this year, what is on the minds of New Hampshire residents in this final summer of the millennium?
The Globe spent a week traveling from Massachusetts to the Canadian border asking residents this question. The answer, expressed in various idioms, is that people are simply attending to the business of living. This is living you can touch, like a pair of pliers. It embraces routine, and as Flannery O'Connor wrote, routine is the stuff of sanity.
Men and women talk about the weather, the terror and joy of running a small business, the rigors of managing a farm, the deep pleasure of fishing with a child, the zen of tending to their tomatoes. They talk about family in general and children in particular.
Clinton? Hillary? Monica, Kosovo? Abortion? Tax cuts? No.
New Hampshire residents have had it with violence, real or fabricated by Hollywood. They treasure time, rarest of all commodities in America today, and mourn its disappearance from their lives with something approaching panic. Exhaustion, physical and psychic, is rampant.
So they pause, however briefly, to enjoy the small pleasures of life during this sweet season that Etta Sweatt calls ''a good old-fashioned summer we haven't seen in 30 years.''
''People are just living this summer,'' said Mike Majgar, owner of The Beggar's Pouch, a leather store in North Conway. ''They're content, not worried about their jobs. They're trying to have fun.''
New Hampshire is basking in its microscopic unemployment rate, 2.6 percent in June. There is no issue like impeachment to confront. For most, fear is a distant specter. ''These are the best times in memory, and I've got a pretty good memory,'' said Richard Hicks, 73, who owns a hardware store and lumber business in Colebrook. ''If you're not working now, it means you don't want to.''
Life is grand for Bill Irwin, sales manager and the third-generation Irwin at Irwin Marine in Laconia, one of the largest boat dealers in the state. Expensive boats define disposable income. When the stock market tanks, they don't move. But Wall Street is booming, as is the market for big boats (from 28 to 38 feet). Such craft start at $100,000.
''The economy is good. People have confidence in themselves now. Free time means everything to them,'' said Irwin. ''They have the money, so why not spend it? There is nothing major to talk about, so they say, `Let's go boating and have some fun.' There was a couple in yesterday with no intention of buying a boat, but their interest snowballed and they bought one.''
Many of the sprees are rooted in the white-hot technology belt in the southern part of the state, where people stare at computer screens rather than mountains. Chris Conway, who in April bought a small office building in Merrimack for his expanding CEJ Computer Business Systems, wants some of this American gravy. ''The only thing on my mind this summer is finishing this building,'' he said in an office crawling with workmen. ''When you're self-employed, nobody can sleep 100 percent without worrying. I need to pay for all this.''
Conspicuous consumption surrounds him and his wife, a corporate litigator. ''Everyone is buying new trucks and cars, $40,000 SUVs,'' he said. ''That tells me everyone is confident that they're going to be able to pay the mortgages on them. They're spending money like crazy.''
Conway designs work stations, servers, and networks. He looks with delight at the great Y2K scare, which should keep him crazed, and prosperous, well into next year. The dark side of this boom, of course, is the pace. ''There is no time,'' he said, rueful that he can't spend more of it with his 13-year-old son. ''It's 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.,'' he explained. ''It's the same for my wife, and she may start working again after dinner at 10.''
Such hours are increasingly common in New Hampshire these days. The state confronts the same pace of life that exhausts the rest of America. ''I need to relearn how to do nothing. I need to sit among the trees and get away from people,'' said Ruth Kenick, an elementary school counselor in Rollinsford. ''We're all stressed in the middle of summer. So what will it be like around Christmas? We're becoming a nation of A types. We're losing all of the Bs.''
And the good times don't extend to everyone. While expensive jet skis and power boats zigzag across Lake Winnipesaukee like water bugs, the boom so evident in the southern tier of the state fades north of Franconia Notch. In Berlin, the paper mill city you smell before you see, the tension among mill workers over the future of their jobs is palpable. In Pittsburg, hard by the Canadian border, truckers who haul giant logs to mills say the demand for their services is off. And a sizable chunk of the 97.4 percent who are employed in New Hampshire earn less than $10 an hour without benefits or a future.
The US Army recruiting office in Laconia was empty on a recent scorcher but for Glen Sizemore, 17, who will be a senior at Gilford High School this fall, and three recruiters. Sizemore was talking to them about his enlistment, which will occur after he finishes high school. Why, one wonders, would anyone join the Army when there are more jobs than people to fill them in this state?
''It solves a lot of questions I've had since eighth grade,'' explained Sizemore. ''You can make $10 an hour when you're 18, and that looks good at the time. But later on, when you're 30 and trying to raise a family, it doesn't work anymore. I'm not an honor student and probably wouldn't get a scholarship to college. I'd probably be a cook for the rest of my life and work until I'm 70. I want better than that.''
''Most kids don't even think about this. It doesn't cross their minds - health care benefits and retirement,'' he continued. ''They think I'm ruining my life. But my older friends say, `Get in as soon as you can.'''
Joan, a 50-year-old worker at the paper mills in Berlin, understands the urge. Together with her husband, they have more than 60 years on the job there and can't wait to retire. ''We're dinosaurs. These jobs won't exist in a few more years,'' she said. ''Imports are pouring in and the paper industry is going down the tubes. I tell my son, `You get out of here.'''
David Brugnot was born and raised in the same town and somehow loves the place. He is one of New Hampshire's eccentrics who leaven its orthodoxy. At 45, he looks like an outlaw but runs a healthy business he started a decade ago servicing and selling used Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
A veteran of four wives, he harbors great faith in his ability to survive and be happy. Signs reading ''Make Your Own Path'' and ''Lose Your Dream And You Lose Your Mind'' are on his shop walls. He has no time for what he calls ''the crybaby network.''
''No job has a future in corporate America today,'' he said.
''It's not the high cost of living that's the problem. It's the cost of living high,'' Brugnot continued, a cigar poking out of his mouth. ''People around here want the rainbow all the time. They're not poor.''
Brugnot rides with his wife on weekends and plays motorcycle Santa each Christmas. He maintains a glint in his eye. ''I'm going to be in Roswell for New Year's,'' he said, referring to the New Mexico town that is America's UFO epicenter. ''They're going to pick me up.''
No such plans for Wendy Starkweather, 48, a single mother from Peterborough rooted firmly on planet Earth. Starkweather attended last Sunday's lecture of the Monadnock Summer Lyceum series at the town's Unitarian Church to hear a minister address the explosive admixture of religion, politics, and the loss of civility in America. She tried unsuccessfully to drag her 12-year-old son along, because she is deeply concerned about the anger and violence among today's youth.
''This week, I heard tales of guns and drugs in school here,'' said Starkweather, a walking trifecta of musician, preschool operator, and waitress. ''I've lived here 20 years and this is a very special community, but I'm hearing about that. Youth today is very angry and violent. The experience at Woodstock this year is a good barometer of what's going on in our country. I think we're on the edge of something.''
Etta and Hartley Sweatt are consumed with another family issue: their farm, which last year was named one of the 10 most distinguished in the state. ''Our concern is how we protect it from the government and pass it on to someone without them raking us with taxes,'' said Etta, watching the cows in the barn on a closed-circuit television monitor located inside an unused wood stove.
The Sweatts lose money on the 80 head of Hereford they run for beef. The price per pound is lower than it was 20 years ago but their costs surely are not, Etta fumed. Gathering steam, she moved on to the decline of the American family and the loss of values among children.
Her monologue veered toward the end of the world until, in a lovely non sequitur, she mentioned the moon.
''It was full last night and it was simply beautiful,'' Etta recalled. ''Everyone in this family went out to look at it. That's our life. You don't see another house from here. Just mountains all around.''
