Down a Nameless Lane - Pigeon Cove

The deluge had subsided this Sunday afternoon, and the wife and I and our four-footer decided we could chance a stroll in the North Village. So into the wheezy home cab we tumbled and set off along Beach Street in Rockport past a beach strewn with sea-red kelp, debris of all sorts, and three prone bikes plus a lonesome gull. Winter had left her mark along this shore.

Debarking on Granite Street at the old stone office of the Rockport Granite Company, we found this end of the Cape derelict of snow. The sight was a happy relief to us. We ambled past the cozy home of a lady who bought the house just so she could get an uninterrupted view of the broad Atlantic. There before her this day of days was an unruffled calm blue sea with the gentlest of white foamed surf lapping Salvages. A strong touch of Spring was ruffling through our balding hair. Even our menacing boxer Mollie felt the lure as she fairly whizzed over the terrain, once off the leash.

We came by the little domicle of George Caffrey at 52 Granite Street within which rested the faithful town servant who surrenders many hours of winter to keep our roads open in the heavy snows. No matter what he earns in those hours, we are most thankful he is willing to give up his tranquil hours just to serve us. It's so nice to snooze in bed and hear him shove through our street to breach an auto path. Maybe we don't pay him and his enough.

Nearby through striking blue gates we saw a well arranged array of flush evergreens beautifying 56 Granite Street now owed by an artist from Providence, R.I. Anthony what's his last name? We forget. But we never will forget what a grand job he has done to improve the neighborhood. A good citizen, that man.

And we noted that Hugh Smith had built himself an immense granite wall in front of his property at 103 Granite Street, a massive work that will outlive him and all of his. It would even defy a 20th century Jericho. We saw that the town fathers went beserk in numbering this main drag through the mighty proud North Village. On one side we came across a number 60 and directly across the way was 103. What a jump into space. So we found ourselves bumping against Number 103 with a full grown pilot house smack dab in the middle of a field bordered by a stone wall and a picket fence. The long granite slab atop the sone wall fascinated our penny pinching philosophy. At least we knew that no salty skipper would ever blast his orders from that wheelhouse, here or thereafter.

Here's where our normally friendly boxer met up with two speaking acquaintances, a shepherd and a collie dog. With canine fleet trailing us, we left the hardtop public way to enter a just as hardtopped but private way running between where two single tracks ran down to the sea in the old days, taking cars laden with tons of stone to be loaded onto sloops bound to the big seaports of the eastern seaboard.

We came upon mammoth granite slabs forming the pier, a 19th century setting harboring a mid-20th century low slung bungalow home framed in a natural gurgling brook that rushed in cascade style to the ocean. To its right was a beach of large bright pebbles splashed with weather-bleached driftwood, just aching for a glowing fireplace.

We had come to Professor Roger Hardy's Cove domicile, fronted by a solid granite cookout that is arbored by a Japanese-effected arch and protected by an old-fashioned stone wall that climbed at least 15 foot. By now us folks had reached mud row yielding to a false promise of Spring. For Molly and her rollicking yappers, it was a heaven of Chinese wrestling, growling and just plain sniffing. We were on our way down the un-named road to a grout pile left by the granite men of the past when they decided the gold had left the dust.

The wife and I met up with the next neighbor down the road, Norm Fitts, ex-newsman and fellow Yalesian, and his good wife, two folks who have carved a handsome seaside-terraced villa out of hardscrabble and rubble and a flabby granite business power house, ugly skyscraping black sooty smoke stack and all. Norm showed us a picture of the misery of 1900.

We were told that one of the outlanders settling in this strip of God's Heaven had the idea to christen this hallowed road, Water Margin Road but he failed of a second. Then we merged onto Pigeon Hill Road where the Fitts claim residence.

The Sunday wanderers and their meow chasers had landed plumb into a haven of nine-lifers. And when they spotted the trio of barkers, we could see those cats rush for the niches in the rocks along the shore. Ourselves we found delight in touring through the Fitts' home to see how two happy people could transform that power house into a divine dwelling with expansive fireplaces, rustic shelves, heavy ceiling timbers, and so appointed with staunch antique desks. The wife and I and even our four-footer admired their taste.

JP.C., Jr.