Tool Company to Andrews Point - Part II

Here we are again, the wife and I and our four-footer Molly with the Cove's Bill Reeds and Walter Johnsons continuing along the shore path of Pigeon Cove fringing the deep blue Atlantic. If you are like us who thought the town of Rockport had lost all its shore line you should have been there. We must have walked nearly two miles on that shore-skirting stroll without once trespassing.

At one time we were rubbing elbows with a well groomed hedge of the Ingalls estate. Then we passed in front of a spacious backyard occupied by a most attractive lady wrapped in a lawn chair enjoying the late season yachting scene and smiling at her Cove neighbors' greetings -- our guides. Real folksy!

Our selectman was mighty proud of the several town ways to the shore that he and his confreres over the years had been able to rescue for the town. We gained respect for him and his with every telling. This one we came to emerged from Phillips Avenue down through the Pingree property to the rocks. The woodland way merged into the sea. He told us about the Rev. Arthur Howe Pingree and how he gave his life to save others in a drowning tragedy.

Next we passed a common stone where the imprint of what must have been a tablet stood out like a sore thumb. We recalled that this must have been the tablet facing the sea placed in tribute to the late famed American poet, William Rose Benet. But what had become of the tablet? The wife and I recalled him and his wife, Marjorie Flack, as friends, though poetry is as hard for me to take as was castor oil in my tender years.

Ahead was a mass of gulls whitening ocean-swept boulders. What particular morsels attracted the flock to that area was beyond us. But at least we were protected from their unsavory air bombardment especially since I for one sported my Sunday best. Being gulled out from the air is not to this gentle hiker's choosing. Not with the current cleaner's prices.

There's one outstanding quality about four-footers like our 60-pound charge of dynamite. They can put to shame their supposedly more intelligent two-footers when it comes to rock scampering. While we were threading our way with old maidish caution from crag to crag, she was leagues ahead, snorting her way into new adventure. When I say "we" I really mean me because the rest of the party, including the missus, showed Alpine blood.

We passed outgrowths of spruce and pines growing along the shore and came across driftwod that would bring raves from he-men with large fireplaces. Driftwood that was whitened by time and the sea. Gnarled shapes that reflect ages.

Industrialist Walt and Town Leader Bill are not birders in the true sense like law-giver Larry Jodrey, but for the occasion both sported powerful binoculars to scan the horizon, Bill mostly to keep watch over the antics of the skin divers, Walt to bring into the focus the Isles of Shoals. They even let us take an occasional peep and to us, a glimpse at that far off patch of sea-going tug bound for Maine-iac land was much more fetching.

We came along Chapin's Gully, as Bill described it. And to us it looked like a miniature Rafe's Chasm with the sea swirling angrily in. Then to a cookout in the rocks where the Andrews Point folks hold their annual shore spread for the chosen ones.

Beyond was the exotic house of stone built by one George Bray with a companion smaller stone home on the grounds. The rough-faced stone and a wall added to the grimness of the construction.

One of the shore's marvels next faced us. Extensive veins of quartz in the ocean side ledges gleamed in the Fall brilliance. No one could explain it except to blame it on that glacier spree of ages ago. Our "selectman" had to admit he had been assigned before Christmas-times to come and chip off some for presents to amateur geologists in the family. As a good father, he did so. We would, too.

Ambling along a beautifully built stone wall standing seven feet tall we finally made Hoop Pole Cove. Neither guide could tell us why the name. But all of us had to admire its loveliness with its picturesque brown snails tht youngsters of Bill's and others love to color for keepsakes -- even for ear rings.

And finally to the Walter Johnson homestead for good old Svenska java and the richest softest sponge cake you ever tasted. Marie is a grand cook as well as a friendly guide to us of the South Village. The wife and I and the menace can truthfully say it was our best Sunday walk. Now we know why Cover-ers say they have the best. To that we heartily say Amen!

J.P.C., JR.