Winter on Railroad Avenue

Industry is on the march in Rockport, the wife and I thought as we ambled through Sandy Bay's picturesque streets. This walk was a looper, hanging to the more traveled ways in a continuing effort to break the boxer to traffic perils and mayhap give traffic a bit of practice in dodging the boxer.

It was a tingling afternoon, sunny yet bracing, as we rounded the corner to tramp up a neon-less Broadway. For a winter's Sabbath, that avenue was alive with whizzing cars in both directions. It seemed that everybody and his uncle was taking advantage of the weather to tour the Cape. But a Rockporter who has a car preferred the warmth of the fire barn and the company of other firemen for the afternoon rather than to joust with cars behind the wheel. Joe Rogers is always right at home sounding off on fire matters.

Brittle hoary white with winter were the garden spots of Postmaster Ralph Wilson and retired Frank Lawson on Broadway. Despite their bleakness, though, they still wear a pleasantness that is cheery along the way. Right now, it's catalog studying time for their overseers. The green thumb's a frozen one.

Up past the warmly heated new Town Office Building that is gradually winning its way into the hearts of the town folk and bringing the envy of Gloucester's City Hall family, who spend so many hours in a building where in one room it is equatorial, and the next, Arctic.

The venerable cannon on the Community House lawn, archaic as it may be, offers a never dying example of the pitiful armament of the past compared to the atomic gun of the present. It could only lob an attempt at destruction. But for years, it has offered a challenge to youth to scramble all over it and play gunner's mate.

We noted that Christmas wreaths still adorned some doorways. The Bill Mills' on Railroad Avenue, for one example. To us it offered a cheery post Yuletide look. We'd enjoy some of that atmosphere year-round. Too many times, Christmas is dumped with the tree in the ash can. In that same home we are always fascinated to see windows containing small panes of vari-colored glass. They speak of a proud period in Americana, one that had much to admire. We could well recapture more of it for the betterment of the day.

We were struck with the fact of Rockport's progress, industry-wise, down by the railroad yard. There was the old isinglass factory, chopped down to one story, but no longer rather shabby in appearance. Instead it was real kipper in its one-story, brightly painted exterior. It is now Capt. Paul C. Woodbury's Rockport Twine & Rope Co. It smacks of activity and better still, pay envelopes.

Right next door is the face-lifted J. Raymond Smith lumber establishment, and across the street the Rockport edition of The Building center, bright as a dollar. They add prestige to Rockport.
Down the road apiece is being reared Rockport's latest factory, small but bristling with business, just off Granite Street, close by the depot. It's for "Woody" Williams, a Pigeon Cover-er, for a long time a plant operator on Long Island. Jet plane and TV parts are his business.

Our boxer pal Molly had managed to brush off every four-wheeler in her way as she darted from one side to the other in quest of adventure. She has reached the stage when she respects a honk, even if she is all in a dither over another yapper. Her stub tail is no bumper, that's for sure.

We had just dropped at least a couple of fingers as the biting cold nipped them off because they were exposed, in taking notes. It took us back to our football reporting days, when low temperatures prevailed. We fought the game of the yardlines with numbing digits.

We came upon another lane. This time it was Norwood Court, which runs from Granite Street parallel with Forest Street. It is old Rockport, well worth turning into. First sight to greet us was a huge urn in Story Parsons' yard. It was big enough to be the one where Ali Baba hid his 40 thieves.

Along the way we admired compact homes of today, even of two stories, and wind-blown willows dotting the street. Back drop for this modernity was the old -world architecture of the Finnish Church, austere yet warming with its thin spire.

Like the stork nests of old Holland were five TV antennas on a large old house on a court where tenants apparently like birds so well they spread bread crumbs over the yard.

It was a grand walk. It could have been longer if the chill winds hadn't nipped the wife's toes, and Molly's nose. That's when the blazing logs in the fireplace scored.
J.P.C., Jr.