Around the Loop

It was the Sunday before town meeting when the wife and I decided to take a walk around the block in Sandy Bay without our two-ton boxer in tow. Our Molly was still stuck with her tomato juice anti-skunk treatment and who are we to share such a scent with the world. Molly is at an age when she should be more choosey of her friends.

The air was brittle but the March sun was bright and it was no pain to be afoot. Round School, up Broadway past many a familiar scene and home we went, knowing that within many walls along the way were friends who chose to browse over what might be the last Boston Sunday papers for awhile. Which made us unhappy to think of our Boston newspaper friends who would be minus that friendly weekly check in the interim through no doing of their own. As we passed St. Mary's from our irreverent lips of long standing, we dropped a prayer for an early end to that workless period. But who hears a heathen?

We recall that old saying by Lord knows who, "If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" We seemed to recall it was the title of a book popular in the flush Twenties. A glance along the roadside indicated Spring was awhistling for attention. All the snow was practically gone--not that Salty Owens of Public Works and his gang would let it linger. The little left was hardly fit to drink. Instead there were puddles, puddles, puddles, which if consolidated could mount up to several days' supply of usable water, that is if you are a puddle drinker. We're not, even though Molly is an avid guzzler of such surface supplies.

As we approached the town parking lot, we realized it was the time for the pause that refreshes, that is for a defogging of the extra pair of eyes if we expected to stay on course. As much as we deny advancing years, there are times when we get it right between the eyes, as our old TV pal Gunsmoke might snarl.

On our street we had seen few parked cars this Sunday afternoon, which surprised us because of the clear weather but on our far from gay Broadway, the car traffic flow was tremenjus, which convinced us that our town constabulary, top gun Jake, must get our vote come the next night for his radar. Our neighbors agreed and he got. Says the song, what Lulu wants, Lulu gets (or is it Lola)? In our town that song goes what Jake wants (police-wise, that is) Jake gets. That's why we can sleep nights, peace-wise.

But to get back to the bunyon beating, again we admired how well policed are the grounds of the post office and the town office building, showing that those custodians, once known as humble janitors, have a real pride in their work.

Up past the Methodist Church, a massive edifice in sheer white with an architectural design including a great circle within a triangle. It is part of the Rockport scene.

We reached the third prominent church on this pristine Broadway (cleansed as never was that Manhattan path to perdition). It is St. Joachim's, that we view with its hot-topped strip marked "Clergy,"which means that only the car of the good Father can rest there as he in church tries to pull the sinners away from that ol' devil.

Never meeting a fellow soul on foot on this short walk around the so-called Rockport Loop, we passed the stately old home of our late family doctor, Ezra Eames Cleaves, a great country practitioner, who laughed at us when in the '40's we were knocked out by the mumps an ailment that males should never get at that age. Medicos like our Dr. Cleaves, and our Dr. Earl Greene are (unhappily to us) fading from the scene. They only die rich in the worship of us common folk. And don't you forget there are still some of us common folk still breathing.

Down Main St. we eyed a sign on a barn in old English lettering, "Antiques Etc." Only a school teacher like Gert Abbott Hutchings could have thought up such a sign. Cute is the word.

But the piece de resistance was the Al Remick house on this Main St. with its Christmas wreath and its string of colored Yuletide lights on the front door proving that our Al or his good wife, or both, believe that Christmas is 365 days in the year, not one day or week. We buy that, and the sight of it gave us a joyful lift as we continued our amble to home and the nasty leering look from a Molly we had rudely snubbed because of nose trouble.

Anyway we had fun of a Sabbath matinee, why not you to trim that waistline?

J.P.C., Jr.