Along the Big Pit - Granite Company Barn

Pigeon Cove again called to us that rare perfect Sunday, we gassed it over to the starting point, Quarry Road. We got to the entrance but never set foot on the road itself. That walk will have to wait. For when we spied the "No Trespassing" sign, we decided to be real proper and ask permission, for to the left of us, we spotted the land owner, Dr. Douglas T. Davidson, whose home was across the way. The good Doctor --we've known him these past score of years -- arrived from Delaware with his physician wife the night before and was getting things shipshape.

He was working around an ancient barn boasting windows with 80 small panes of glass. Within was a suite of fetching rooms which he labeled Quarry Motor Lodge, the type of summer hostelry repeated over and over again through Sandy Bay that have built up for this locale as the place in which to spend a summer by the seashore. The barn was once the stable for the old Rockport Granite Company where the stalls for oxen could still be seen, stalls later housing stalwart horses to haul granite slabs. In fact, the stable even prided itself upon a real sick stall for horses down with fever or whatnot. They called it a box stall in those days. That barn was solidly built with massive timbers capable of supporting a skyscraper and mighty well pegged.
We saw big quarried stone done with a chisel to make flat wedges rather than the conventional round wedges. That barn was built to withstand the ages. It sure outlived the granite company that was finally floored by higher operating costs and changing type of building construction.

But it was time to do some leg shuffling, so up the road went the good missus and our adopted mutt Molly into a glorious white clouded sky and the fairest of weather. We were at Big Pit, an abandoned quarry filled with the clearest of water, 400 feet long, 100 feet across and at least 20 feet deep, where kiddoes used to go swimming and got spanked for it. Tree-lined it was worked for scores of years and then as it filled after being abandoned, it furnished drinking water for the tugboats that came into the Cove to haul the granite-laden barges. Those were the days of a busy Pigeon Cove. Industry was really jumping all over the terrain.

All this gaze into the past had no lure for our thundering gal. For Molly the fun was in the Hell-bent-for-leather racing through the brush and the briar, nuzzling for excitement, birds to flush out of the heather, strange wild animals to cover. Yup, she was ready for anything, ears cocked, nostrils quivering, fangs bared. But well we knew that if she ever came face to face with a quavering victim, she would wilt as a lady should wilt. Molly's a baby at heart.

We found ourselves in wild flowerland at its best, nostalgic buttercups, lavender geraniums, bluegrass in all its austerity, strawberry and blackberry blossoms, wild lilies of the valley that rimmed the edge of the Big Pit, soothing star flowers, wilder cherry blossoms, all bringing the reverence of Spring closer to us.

By this time the inevitable woofing dog in the distance brought us back to grim reality and the fear of another major skirmish between Molly and"it." Again we saw visions of losing another good Cove friend. This we can ill afford. But it never happened. It was just another voice, aeons away for which the wife and I were so relieved.

The three of us had relished another perfect walk into Sabbath land in Sandy Bay, renewing old friends and old beaten paths. Try them yourselves some day to know how good your feet can treat you, if you will but treat your feet of a Sunday afternoon in Rockport.

J.P.C., Jr.