A Rockport Fence Viewer Takes a Stroll

The wife and I had plans for off-islanding to Worcester last Sunday so with our decrepit cat-hazer Mollie we re-timed the usual Sunday stroll to a Saturday Shanks-mare saunter through Rockport's ways.

This time the sailing orders read the shoreline of the former Harvey development along Marmion Way, an area that a thinker named George W. Harvey did much to breathe life into land.

The sun was setting in the rich colors it can only set in Rockport town. The air was crisp and so were we. For Molly, it was like old home week for here was her neighborhood of the good old days when her tiring bones were more virile and her snorting had more oompth or "it" or whatever you below twenty call that sort of thing today.

The wife and I have always been unpaid amateur fence viewers but not in the official sense of a viewer concerned with the barrier trespassing a half inch on the other feller's land. So again we had the joy of noting several varieties of inspiring fences all gathered closely as if they were trying to fence in our sunset so it would always be around to contain happiness on this patch of earth.

First we noted a wrought iron fence bordering Paul Dow's grounds 'Rockport Hammocks.' He makes them, you know, here and in his winter home in Sarasota, Fla. What's more, he uses them to prove to you how restful they can be. Just a plug at sunset!

Right next door we collided with a formal and impressive granite fence, old Rockport as can be, and across the street is the Alice O. Tarr property with a boulder fence that also had the strength of Gibraltar. The wife and I noted that our hefty boxer (65 pounds on the paws) took an entirely opposite reaction to these fences. There was no segregation in her mind when it came to what to do upon meeting a fence -- or a post. A dog's life isn't so bad after all -- if you're a dog.

Then at 44 Marmion Way was a particularly beautiful fence of cobbles set in cement and close by a rustic wooden fence with a blue gate setting off the Tod property. We found ourselves in the land of the late Sam Williamson, the remarkable author who discovered Rockport as a precinct of his "Salt Harbor" stories that graced the pages of the New York Times Sunday magazine, the stories that put so many good Rockporters in Manhattan, like the Tucks and "Doc" Greene among others. Sam's widow Cora, who won fame as a grand opera singer, presides over their shore estate.

As the sun blazed up more and more in the riotous colors of the sun bowing out for the night, we ambled up past the one-time Harvey home later occupied by our high school classmate, Lawyer Dan Harris with its expansive grounds that we felt must have broken somebody's back trying to keep mowed but grounds which our sweet (?) li'l Molly just loved to show how fleet of foot she wasn't The way she sniffed and snorted, we felt she was trying for gophers.

Ahead of us the sea was tranquil, gentle, so different from other seas of Sandy Bay that have torn strong vessels apart and brought Coast Guardsment on their knees in rescue efforts of fishermen and yachtsmen alike. The wife and I looked with longing at the shore and recalled the days of our early courtship gone almost 30 years away when we were able to walk that coast line from the Headlands to the old Coast Guard Base at Straitsmouth. Town short-sightedness let that coastline fall into private hands.

Private or no private, didn't stop our four-footer from making one big dash for that exclusive area when she got wind of something important to her. As usual, her foray ended up with just another huff and a puff. And on that note we wound up in the family antique and off to home and TV land. It was a good soft walk, one on which you too should have been along. J.P.C., Jr.