A Walk With The Wind - Cape Pond Ice

After all, it was a mighty strong and frigid breeze whipping all over the place Sunday and you just can't blame the wife and me if we voted unanimously to cut short our walk. That's why with our four-footed she-devil Molly, we gassed up Broadway and Main Street to the headwaters of Cape Pond.

Parking the four-wheeler before the majestic stone gates of another period, that of the late nineteenth, we dismounted to buck the Arctic blast to enter the path. Elegant stone wall and impressive granite gates are a throwback to an imperial age. We thought we were entering an Astorial estate and expected at any moment to see Great Danes come bounding down the road. That, Molly would have loved to see. There's been hamburger ground before our watering orbs.

Inside, a tawdry sign screamed "No trespassing by order of Water Department." But who can read signs on a Sunday stroll? To our right was the controversial town garage that began as a heatless, sans-convenience resting place, for town trucks, et cetera. The design is pleasing, the space within ample, but the tenants were too few for economy. A peek inside revealed the town grader,the sweeper, a truck of the water department. That left over two-thirds of the space vacant. Surely, the town must have more equipment that could be housed in that garage. At least there is the hearse of 1836 that the public paid for.

Not caring a toss of their head about this were three young ladies, who after an effort got a kite off the ground, only to have an interfering tree latch onto it and wreck the frail thing. The kite fliers were Dianne Breakell, Paula Currier and Judy Karcher. The wind that swept it off the ground also snared it into the tree limbs. But they had fun just the same.

A look at the 60-foot standpipe showed it was installed in 1894 by the Cunningham Iron Works Co. of South Boston at the same time that the town reared a 2 and a half story wooden house nearby wherein resided the water department superintendents including the late Lewis Sanborn, and afterward the present super, Matt Hautala. We can't help but think that the town had a pretty good deal letting the super live there rent free but at a reduced salary. But the super is happier owning his own home, with no one to tell him when and where he can hang a picture in the house, or add on a closet for his books.

Continuing down the hot[topped road, with Molly ferreting out new smells, sniffing the ozone for scent of new friends or foes, we descended the rounding hill to come upon one of the most beautiful sights in Rockport, spacious winding tree-bordered Cape Pond. Off in the distance the pond was girt by stately dark green lines, while in the foreground were pale ashen grays of wintered trees along the shimmering banks.

The wind-rippled deep blue waters showed an extensive open expanse that far off in the narrows was white-coated in ice, as it was just to the port side of us. Back to us came the memory of hundreds of Cape Anners swaddling in winter garments, guiding horse-drawn ice cutters harvesting a crop for the Abbotts to be bought by the Gloucester fishing boats or stored for household use. 'Member those ice cards with the big black figures, 25, 50, 75, 100, which you turned to tell the ice man how many pounds you wanted ice-tong'ed into your ice chest? That was when the ice man cometh without sin.

And right alongside us, skipping with a song down the hillside was the brook from nowhere, or probably more truthfully from Elliott Rogers' land of Dogtown babbling into the pond. It was a friendly brook, just a-walking with us that Sunday afternoon.

Then down to the pond itself right beside the old pumping station, electrically operated. Beside it stands a 60-foot brick chimney as useless as a Trojan horse. It was all the rage in the days of the steam boilers. And just as out of place is a wooden coal bunker right beside it. So, too, a weird looking shed cover to a hydrant in the vicinity. Atop the shed is a spiked adornment that was probably the last word when gas lights were a-sputtering.

The walk was hardly a distance worth noting, but for the smashing Arctic blasts. But for the family pooch, it was not without its triumphs. On the way back to the car, she had her golden opportunity to snout out three other mutts with whom she exchanged excited tail waggings with two, and a stiff upper lip with the third. Only a wire fence saved the fur from flying, and our town reputations as law-abiding citizens from going berserk.

J.P.C., Jr.