It;s been a long, long time, in fact, since courtin' days, that the wife and I on a Sunday stroll have straddled the Gloucester-Rockport line on a "foreign" strand that us folks refer to as Good Harbor Beach. In fact it was our four-footer's first contact with that summer mecca.
Of course we cheated a wee bit this past Sunday by gasolining through South Street and Thacher Road down past Lee Saunders' candy place and the gull-filled pond that may become a motel site of the future.
The wife confessed, as we alighted onto the beach, that there was a pungent smell of Spring in the air, blending in with the strong rich aroma of a New England sea. The white-capped ocean foam had a soft roaring strength to it that seemed to feed us new life. It was a " A God's in His Heaven, all's well with the world," day, and no mistake about it.
As we crossed the dunes of Good Harbor, our eyes strayed toward Witham Street and the site of the motel-looking place they still call an inn, a comely architectural development for the area that we could not help but recall a rugged Yank who served his fishing village so well at Boston's Beacon Hill that they called this state representative, "Dogfish" McIntyre. The owner of Good Harbor Beach Inn of that day got his monicker from the fact that "Ed," his real name was forever even in vain battling for a bill to rid the waters of the pesky dogfish that raised havoc with his home town pals' fishing gear.
Again with an eye into the dim past, we could see that fun-loading wooden trestle cutting across the beach marshes from the Duffy's Oaks area on its merry bouncing way to Long Beach and pickle limes and Ben Clark's Military Band. Yup, we liked the front seat of the open trolleys with its jounce a second. Oh, nobody really lives it up today like that.
Down to earth, we reveled in the ball our heavyweight boxer Mollie was having as she corraled two companons, both males, both rough housers like the paunchy dame. One appeared to be a cross between a shepherd and a police dog, the other a full blooded police dog, both beautiful and spirited. All of them growled gutterally, but the three were big and so us folks like to think they can take care of themselves. Why lose a hand on a Sunday afternoon!
Along the way was a hugh trunk of a tree, ghastly white, shouting the story of maybe centuries of exposure to the elements on this and other strands along the eastern seaboard. Time can take them many miles. In fact, what is time to such relics of the sea.
Letting the eye rove outward and over, we collide with an oil tanker sliding by on the horizon, sleek, slim and relentless on her race down the coast. Another orbal sweep hits us into a showplace of the past, the famed Sherman House on the west point of Good Harbor. Set on a rocky bluff its 19th century garishness, what with its covered widow's walks, its elaborate piazzas never fail to arrest the eye especially with what the wife called its Chinese pagoda-like effect. To us, it was a setting for grim gruesomeness. As for the beach itself, evidence in abundance whacked us that erosion was rampant, that the state and city better get busy soon or there would be much less Good Harbor.
Our Molly, rid of her admirers was by now frisking with a sad sack of a forgotten Christmas tree on the beach at the tide's lapping edge. We just let her rustle and bustle. Good for her. By us, ambled young couples arm in arm in the same beach rumble of courting that once stirred our innards.
Healthy youngsters saw in the beach a chance to try out their Christmas bows and arrows and were sending the shafts into the targets banked against the sands. That was fun, too. Yes, we were living it up on Good Harbor, which we know honestly was actually Nugent's Strand because George Nugent had the best claim to it and its uplands until he sold the whole beach to the city about 1938 for a goodly sum. After all, he didn't need the whole beach for bathing, did he?
J.P.C., Jr.
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