A Walk Past 700 Cats

Even usually fresh cool Rockport was steaming Sunday when the wife and I and our boxer Molly took a new course on our Sabbath stroll. We left the four-wheeler in the backyard as we ambled up School Street to cross Broadway. They try to tell us, some businessmen, that fewer folks are in town this summer, but that steady line going both ways didn't say so. We ran out of cuss words waiting for a break in that line to span 30 feet in safety.

Up the street we saw a novel sign advertising Tuck-Inn Lodge with the MacKenzie tartan for a soft background (not that the MacKenzies were soft, mind you) and featuring the Tuck coat-of-arms with its three stars and three mystery animals. The sign directs you to the summer places of Albert Tuck. The tartan is the proud plaid of Albert's father, the dentist who was of the Scottish clan of MacKenzie.

Shooting into High Street, we noted again the arbor that full-leaved tall trees made to arch the highway to provide a setting that made the cozy little homes as well as the more ample dwellings more liveable and fetching. At this juncture old four-footer darted straight ahead like a bolt of lightning. "What did she see?" I pipes.

"Never mind!" pipes the missus, "She goes past here every night."

A second later, a pleasant but surely disturbed settler directed us to a high limb of one of her trees where poor l'il kitty had scooted post haste to escape the brown terror. Some day we look forward to a similar l'il kitty chasing that overgrown moose up the same tall tree. It could happen, you know.

In the yard of Preston Wass, in full bloom was a wealth of rich red color, but don't ask us the name. And who wants to know just so long as they were so glorious. Along the same street someone camouflaged an old well sweep with a growth of brilliant colored flowers.

From here into another of Rockport's alluring lanes, this time High Street Court. We came upon an early 19th century home with four fireplaces, owned and occupied by Miss Berthe LaVigueur, whose enormous and stately weeping willow tree stood guard. An impressive old poplar added to the establishment's glory. For Molly, a fetching little mixed-up dog favoring a Pekingese proved of much more interest than the home and grounds.

A neighbor had smartly put a tree to work. He had encircled the tree with a wooden fence, a low one, and inside it, had a play-pen for his youngsters. It made his place look better as well as keeping the kiddoes happy. Farther along on the meandering court we came across the Eddie Abell home where the wife enhanced the entrance with flowered window boxes and an impressive porch. Then by the snug cottage of Gloucester's retired fire fighter, Joe Vierra and his -- or his wife's - petunia and tomato garden, as friendly a living set-up as you'd ever want to see. Joe is one of the striper champs of the Cape. As we merged onto Pleasant Street, we passed by the House of Hodgkins where a novel hide-out for a cookout setup was a matted fence. Smart idea, it seemed to us

The wife in her sealed orders for this Sunday stroll noted a rich growth near the cemetery, so that's where we headed. She ws right, for there was a wide path of brilliant red foliage which the book later told us were actually purple loosestrife, seen from Maine to Delaware in swamps such as this. Nearby were bright hollyhocks in full glory and bracing that same dull swamp.

The sizzle was getting us down, so back we tracked down Pleasant Street toward our School Street. On the way we noted running Molly stop short all of a sudden and stiffen, ears erect, and start to bark her fool head off. Coming up to her we saw we were in front of the home of Orren Smith. Lined in the windows were fanciful images of all kinds of cats. His wife has over 700 of them. To Molly, the likenesses wee sure confoosin', to say the least. And so to home and the beach.

J.P.C., Jr.

A Walk to Caleb's Lane

The leaves were turning and the weather was, too, back to the Fourth of July kind, as the wife and I with our boxer Mollie set out Sunday to walk again the lane to the sea.

Not that I particularly cared to go a-laning when the Braves, my favorite ball club, and the Dodgers were in the home stretch for the Nats' pennant. We'd even suffer through a Bosox spasm just to catch the flashes from the two real battles.

But the wife had other ideas, single track of course, and that was to inhale more of the Rockport atmosphere while the weather lasted. All along the way, announcers were blatting the score, so we had no real gripe coming. Even the good husbands who stayed home and raked up leaves had portables at hand tuned to the right spot.

There are those who say that Labor Day ends the summer on-slaught on Sandy Bay. They should have been here the 27th trying to straddle Broadway. It would take Brigitte herself to stop that double line long enough to reach the other side in safety. Even wary Mollie, the four-footer, almost found herself climbing the hoods to escape automotive vivisection in broad daylight.

Up School Street, down Pleasant, we came up against one of the most spectacular Fall-tinted maples we've seen anywhere in New England. It was directly across from that oddball three-storied structure that thrills outsiders...but not us. Along the way we collided with a sure sign of torrid weather. a gentleman stripped to his waist while he worked on his bright red little car. He had the right idea for comfort. And that car looked swell. We envied him his saving on gas.

From here onto Cove Hill and the sharp climb that Labor Day marathoners shudder at, we noted that the Boy Scout grounds, once the school house's, sported a long spar apparently ready for a spot in the earth to become a flag pole.

Passing Selectman Ernie Poole's homestead we saw cedars growing neat and proper to a degree that made us jealous. Us who are doing our darndest to breather life into the handful we brought down from West Burke, in far north Vermont, out of our farmer host's west pasture. Maybe it's adrenalin, they need.

We'll never get over the weird naming of Rockport streets. All in one straight line, Main Street became Dock Square, begat Mount Pleasant Street, begat South Street, begat Thacher Road, to bounce into Gloucester. we got only into South Street, where we both loved an old-hat stone wall at Number 10 that was the real McCoy. Just plain stones, laid one on top of the other. Real native, no less.

And then we hit the lane to the sea, Caleb's Lane, and read the sign, though there was no explanation if it once belonged to 17th century Caleb Norwood or equally as 17th century Caleb Poole. Both were dominant squires of the period. Rockport Historian Everett Sanborn could probably recite plenty about both.

It's a narrow dirt road flanked at its start by a real old home sporting a white chimney. A road lined for a charming spell with gleaming red barberry bushes on the port side, poignant blue elderberry bushes on the starboard. Those bushes were loaded to the gun'ls. That's why the birds came to them a-chirping their sweetest.

A hidden-old country style barn with rusty horseshoes for decorations over the wide door and across from it, a new home made to look ancient formed an inviting contrast.

Then it came! We began a slight descent, only to be joyously hit by the sight of the sea in the distance, a lone sail showing on a soft blue tranquil expanse. It was moments later as we emerged from the lane that we saw that one sail multipled tenfold and more for this was a day made for marine small fry.

A lane of thick goldenrod and brilliant blue asters, a lane with the new and the old, and with nothing but nature in between, that's 17th century Caleb's Lane. May it forever stay that way for us Sunday walkers. J.P.C., Jr.

NOTE: Boston Braves and Brooklyn Dodgers then.