NOTE: The fire referred to demolished Straitsmouth Inn one New Year's Eve.
It was just comfortable and warm up-town for a Sunday afternoon stroll through Rockport. But no, that wouldn't do for the missus. She has to get a challenge out of it somehow, no matter how long or short the walk may be. That's how we found ourselves going the best part of the distance car hopping from home to the Straitsmouth Lifeboat Station of the U.S. Coast Guard. Destination, to glimpse how Straitsmouth Inn may be rising from the ashes of New Year's Eve.
Along the way we had to ford Swanson's Lake, on Marmion Way, the latest and of course as yet uncharted. Coming on it unexpectedly, we would have welcomed the loan of a periscope just for a moment. There wasn't a solitary buoy marker from shore to shore. Parking the jalopy as near to a driveway as decently possible, the three of us -- yup, Molly the boxer, never misses a buggy ride or a romp --started up the road on an inspection tour. That's when we realized all wasn't Florida in Rockport that day.
For here, the howling wind was plenty hefty, reaching in our reckoning as much as 50 miles per hour in gusts. And every gust breathed icicles down our necks. No wonder we weren't jostled by throngs. In fact not even the guardsmen poked their noses out of their duty home. Old Glory flapped and whipped with the strength of defiance we hope will always characterize her and fairly close by flew the Coat Guard pennon, setting off a smartly kept property. Th impressive radar tower rose over everything in the neighborhood, actually swaying in the gale.
Underfoot, it was muddy, icy, hardly a day for stepping out. The thick yellowed brush along the road kept the boxer busy inspecting every reed, snouting in through it, poking along the boulder mass. There was plenty of room to race and bid up with both ears pointed heavenward, hoping to catch the scent of an old or young feline. Such a waste of time.
Across the ocean's breadth, Thatcher's appeared grim and forbidding, snow rimmed, far from lending itself to visitors on a day like this. But there is always an attraction in the twin lights whether or not one was blacked out by Uncle Sam.
We were astonished to see how much Everett Wilkinson and his men have done to salvage what they could out of the destructive flames. He certainly means to make good his promise that there will still be a Straitsmouth Inn come summer. He has the large cottages that weren't touched. He is restoring th burned kitchen and dining room and this building looks good.
Of course to one side is the shambles of the inferno, the snarled bed-springs and bedposts, boilers, pipes, wires and whatnot. Bricks from the tall chimney are strewn around. No doubt when the weather is right, these will be bulldozed and trucked out of there to convert the area again into a place of beauty. The massive ship's anchor, its flanges to the ground, stands guard over it all, the ruins, the restored section, the natural expanse of boulders along the surf-washed shores.
A memorial sentinel on the shore side is the simple but effective tall cross that has a story often told by Rockporters to their summer visitors.
There were days when this area was popular with tautog fishermen, amateurs who enjoyed this sport as much as do the striper sportsmen of today, their surf casting through the night in this same vicinity. As we retraced our steps we saw the first group of similar intruders. With our backs to the breeze, we didn't envy them facing in the wrong direction for comfort. Confidentially speaking, Straitsmouth is a lot more enjoyable to visit in July and August.
J.P.C., Jr.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
To Turk's Head in Winter
A brisk walk of a winter's Sunday in Rockport can be refreshing. Just don't look at the thermometer when you make the start. The wife and I have learned to our pleasure that once on your way, despite the fact that the mercury is down to the 10 mark, the cold becomes a challenge you can't resist. Besides, home never feels better then when the jaunt is over.
We are no Elliott Rogers or John Kieran type of hikers. That twosome and Dr. Melvin Copeland step in terms of miles. Ours are shorties and mean sneaking a gas buggy ride to get to the hop-off.
This time that point was Turk's Head Inn. Having lost too much sleep, inhaling smoke and dodging flaming embers of hotel holocausts on the Cape in the past few years, this battered beagle of the daily bugle eyed the huge garish mass of wood with eyes askance, and a quizzical "You next?" look. We sure hope not.
The sharp orbs of the missus caught two beautiful old wrought iron hitichin' posts in front of the hotel entrance. Horses' heads adorned the top of the slim standards, which still had the rings through which grand old gents slipped the reins to keep the old nag from wandering heather and tether.
We recalled that within these walls, a grand relative of ours, one Denmark P. Clark, once reigned as the general manager and official greeter, and personal friend of such Broadway greats as Sophie Tucker. Denmark, with nothing in common with the dour Dane of Elsinore, gave the Cape Ann Clarks that genteel dash of the manor born.
Old Turk's Head that frigid matinee hardly looked like the place where once the immortal Admiral Fighting Bob Evans proudly strutted with his lady in the gala ballroom when his White Fleet road at anchor in Sandy Bay amid a panoply of lights. That was the array of warships of the early 20th century that circled the globe to show the nation's power of the seas. Ah, yes, Turk's Head has lived some mighty proud days down through the years.
Down through Penzance Road, named by one with a Gilbert and Sulivan crush (remember the "Pirates" ?), we were charmed with the profound blue of the sea, sparkling in its deep freeze, and keenly lined by the border of thick white snow around Thacher's Island and Straitsmouth. No artist could breathe any more life into a canvas than had nature in that striking panorama.
In direct contrast was the grim dirty brown cylinder of the government tower, a mystery even to the natives, and actually a hush-hush installation of Uncle Sam's frontier troops. But its tower shape plants a bit of feudalism in Yankee-land.
Standing gaunt against the skyline right handy to the bleak tower is an equally bleak house whose odd unorthodox shape looks like it came out of a Toonerville Trolley cartoon. No doubt it once was an archtectural grand lady, but in our eyes, it ranks only to Gloucester's gruesome City Hall. They bulge where they should wheeze.
A neighborly hail and we again sneaked, this time into an oasis of a tummy-warmer in a glass. The outside freeze was forgotten. Resuming, we came across the ruins of what was once a stone garage. It took you back to the pix of medieval ruins.
Being power-line conscious, we suddenly were aware that along this picturesque stretch there were poles and wires strung along, just like up country. We had heard so many millions of words in the five public hearings on the Joppa-Fishtown line of the unsightliness of these strings that it suddenly occurred to us that along this ocean front, those poles and lines passed un-noticed until you looked directly at them. Even wires can't dim real beauty!
Streaking ahead of us on this seaside jaunt was the sleek brown-coated boxer, the pedigreed Molly we won in a box of cracker-jack. The gal was really stepping out in the gorse and the heather of the shore-side moorland. Every inch of the way spelled a mystery to her whitened snout. In fact, she even found herself a friendly collie playmate along the way.
But above all else we learned with surprise as we merged into Lozants Place that our Molly had bird dog blood in her veins. For as she plunged deep in the brush out flew, in a panicked state, a covey of five pheasants. The old gal had actually flushed them. An armed hunter in season would have loved that thrill. We just like watching them. We could never pull trigger on so beautiful a sweep of nature on the wing.
Finally we emerged onto what we like to call our old happy hunting grounds --of the days when we were story hunting for the unique. It was the picturesque land of Loblolly, right on the bold Atlantic shores, boulder strewn, where in the old days, Emerson Haskell presided over his oceanside open-air restaurant, and his tall gaunt, ever cheery son, Frank Haskell, succeeded him as the maitre d'hote. Lobster and clams were their forte. And so famous did they become that our nation's President, William Howard Taft, while in office parked his ample parts in a chair at a table on that rocky shore to gorge on Haskell's viands of the deep. Taft was summering in Beverly at the time.
Times have changed. The only symbol left is the shore itself. Prominent is a crude sign reading "No Trespassing" but why anyone would even deign to trespass in the area is beyond us. Them cobbles are had on the arches.
And the increasing cold was all too nippy at our noses and that of the galloping four-footer, so up Ruthern Way we stepped to again hit the hotel and the warmth of the aging gas-burner and home. Oh, it was so nice!
J.P.C., Jr.
We are no Elliott Rogers or John Kieran type of hikers. That twosome and Dr. Melvin Copeland step in terms of miles. Ours are shorties and mean sneaking a gas buggy ride to get to the hop-off.
This time that point was Turk's Head Inn. Having lost too much sleep, inhaling smoke and dodging flaming embers of hotel holocausts on the Cape in the past few years, this battered beagle of the daily bugle eyed the huge garish mass of wood with eyes askance, and a quizzical "You next?" look. We sure hope not.
The sharp orbs of the missus caught two beautiful old wrought iron hitichin' posts in front of the hotel entrance. Horses' heads adorned the top of the slim standards, which still had the rings through which grand old gents slipped the reins to keep the old nag from wandering heather and tether.
We recalled that within these walls, a grand relative of ours, one Denmark P. Clark, once reigned as the general manager and official greeter, and personal friend of such Broadway greats as Sophie Tucker. Denmark, with nothing in common with the dour Dane of Elsinore, gave the Cape Ann Clarks that genteel dash of the manor born.
Old Turk's Head that frigid matinee hardly looked like the place where once the immortal Admiral Fighting Bob Evans proudly strutted with his lady in the gala ballroom when his White Fleet road at anchor in Sandy Bay amid a panoply of lights. That was the array of warships of the early 20th century that circled the globe to show the nation's power of the seas. Ah, yes, Turk's Head has lived some mighty proud days down through the years.
Down through Penzance Road, named by one with a Gilbert and Sulivan crush (remember the "Pirates" ?), we were charmed with the profound blue of the sea, sparkling in its deep freeze, and keenly lined by the border of thick white snow around Thacher's Island and Straitsmouth. No artist could breathe any more life into a canvas than had nature in that striking panorama.
In direct contrast was the grim dirty brown cylinder of the government tower, a mystery even to the natives, and actually a hush-hush installation of Uncle Sam's frontier troops. But its tower shape plants a bit of feudalism in Yankee-land.
Standing gaunt against the skyline right handy to the bleak tower is an equally bleak house whose odd unorthodox shape looks like it came out of a Toonerville Trolley cartoon. No doubt it once was an archtectural grand lady, but in our eyes, it ranks only to Gloucester's gruesome City Hall. They bulge where they should wheeze.
A neighborly hail and we again sneaked, this time into an oasis of a tummy-warmer in a glass. The outside freeze was forgotten. Resuming, we came across the ruins of what was once a stone garage. It took you back to the pix of medieval ruins.
Being power-line conscious, we suddenly were aware that along this picturesque stretch there were poles and wires strung along, just like up country. We had heard so many millions of words in the five public hearings on the Joppa-Fishtown line of the unsightliness of these strings that it suddenly occurred to us that along this ocean front, those poles and lines passed un-noticed until you looked directly at them. Even wires can't dim real beauty!
Streaking ahead of us on this seaside jaunt was the sleek brown-coated boxer, the pedigreed Molly we won in a box of cracker-jack. The gal was really stepping out in the gorse and the heather of the shore-side moorland. Every inch of the way spelled a mystery to her whitened snout. In fact, she even found herself a friendly collie playmate along the way.
But above all else we learned with surprise as we merged into Lozants Place that our Molly had bird dog blood in her veins. For as she plunged deep in the brush out flew, in a panicked state, a covey of five pheasants. The old gal had actually flushed them. An armed hunter in season would have loved that thrill. We just like watching them. We could never pull trigger on so beautiful a sweep of nature on the wing.
Finally we emerged onto what we like to call our old happy hunting grounds --of the days when we were story hunting for the unique. It was the picturesque land of Loblolly, right on the bold Atlantic shores, boulder strewn, where in the old days, Emerson Haskell presided over his oceanside open-air restaurant, and his tall gaunt, ever cheery son, Frank Haskell, succeeded him as the maitre d'hote. Lobster and clams were their forte. And so famous did they become that our nation's President, William Howard Taft, while in office parked his ample parts in a chair at a table on that rocky shore to gorge on Haskell's viands of the deep. Taft was summering in Beverly at the time.
Times have changed. The only symbol left is the shore itself. Prominent is a crude sign reading "No Trespassing" but why anyone would even deign to trespass in the area is beyond us. Them cobbles are had on the arches.
And the increasing cold was all too nippy at our noses and that of the galloping four-footer, so up Ruthern Way we stepped to again hit the hotel and the warmth of the aging gas-burner and home. Oh, it was so nice!
J.P.C., Jr.
Down Dead-End Lane
They said we wouldn't do it. Too cold and blustery for a Sunday walk, according to the wise ones. But they don't know the Rockport Clarks and their four-footed "rocket" on the loose. And along the way we found another couple with mailmen's blood in thei veins and lollypops in their mouths.
Actually last Sunday it wasn't even ear-lap weather. So out went the wife and I and our Molly sashaying out of School Street, musing down Broadway. It was much like March in January and thankful that the rainy Sunday run of 12 had been broken by the lucky thirteenth weekend.
That's probably why the auto traffic was tremendous, defying us to cross Mount Pleasant Street at the foot of Broadway. Folks were emerging from the storm cellars. And all of them were in a hurry to get nowhere.
We had Molly on the leash because of that traffic. The aging waddler has developed the unwise habit of chasing a car if she happens to spot any kind of a dog in it. All she plans to do is to rub noses but the wife and I fear she may get picked up abruptly in the posterior by a following car --and that could be her finale. Part of homework now is plotting how to get her out of that habit before it gets her for good.
You know, for all the anxieties you have with these four footers, Uncle ought to let us use them for an income tax exemption. We do feed and room them without charge. And no child is anywhere near the care. And particularly since this year, the wife and I are losing one important $600 "exemp" because the young man is on his own economically. Maybe he should quit work!
Enough of that. Ahead is a confusing sign to a pedestrian even though clear to drivers. It says "Alt. 127." That to us would mean Altitude 127 aabove sea level. Yet the ocean lies no more than a scant five feet below our land. Looks like autoists are more intelligent in such things.
Ever see those attractive shallow triangular green blinds flanking a picturesque small paned window beneath the eaves of the historic James Gott Homestead on Mount Pleasant Street? Mrs. James Jarvis Gott Tarr the pastor's widow, still resides there. Her years never prevent her faithfully walking every Sunday to attend service at the First Congregational Churh in which the Reverend was once a preacher.
It took us back to the Vermont farm, away up-State, when on a clothesline nearby we saw the row of clothespins clinched on it with nary a shred of underwear or unmentionables clinging to them. Always prepared is the lady of that house.
And that nostalgic old Victorian era street gaslamp highlighting Architect Freddie Westman's home at Number 20 Mount Pleasant Street commands many pleasant memories of the past when as a youngster in Gloucester our face was glued to the window to watch the lamplighter with the long lighted taper flicking on the gaslights. To us then, darkness was again conquered.
By now we were ready to turn onto Mount Pleasant Place, which proved to be Dead End Lane down past Charlie Orr's house with its spacious backyard, "Chick" Marston' retreat with its array of bikes, and in someone else's bailiwick what passed for an old-fashioned privy, a truly winding, fascinating lane of new homes and old homes, the kind of places, this meanderer would be proud to know as our residence. We personally loathe ranch style houses.
All went well until the wife tried to recall how to get onto neighboring Cove Hill Lane. This fattening old fudge-budge found himself impaled in thorny briars and caught with the threat of dropping all of two feet over a Revolution era stone wall. Molly and "Mein Frau" had executed the manoeuvre gracefully. We managed but with one bleeding finger and scarred up brogans.
There's something about those gals that bring red to my cheeks.
But we all made it, more or less a unit to slither down a lane of ice that challenged one to remain upright on his pins Oh, the wife sure can pick some wierdies for a Sunday stroll. What's one broken neck, more or less?
A fascinating feature of that lane in winter was the sound of a cold but gurgling brook. We found it and were told that along with its mossy banks, beautiful violets abound in the Spring. We'll be back there come Spring just to see those violets, not to pick them because we hate the thought of disturbing nature in its success in glorifying the landscape.
From there onto firmer ground, Clark Aveue and the land of the John Kierans, naturalist extraordinary, and also of bright red barberries still on the bushes, and of the grim grey lobster pots stacked mountain high in backyards.
Then for the first time in this chilling saunter we bumped into our first fellow strollers, Patrolman and Mrs. L. Ellsworth Harris who we learned as we talked on Atlantic Avenue, had covered far more ground than had we.
Sissies, aren't we, but how far did you stretch your legs that same Sunday? Better give the car a rest, and your waistline a break by hitting the road for a breather on Sunday.
J.P.C., Jr.
Actually last Sunday it wasn't even ear-lap weather. So out went the wife and I and our Molly sashaying out of School Street, musing down Broadway. It was much like March in January and thankful that the rainy Sunday run of 12 had been broken by the lucky thirteenth weekend.
That's probably why the auto traffic was tremendous, defying us to cross Mount Pleasant Street at the foot of Broadway. Folks were emerging from the storm cellars. And all of them were in a hurry to get nowhere.
We had Molly on the leash because of that traffic. The aging waddler has developed the unwise habit of chasing a car if she happens to spot any kind of a dog in it. All she plans to do is to rub noses but the wife and I fear she may get picked up abruptly in the posterior by a following car --and that could be her finale. Part of homework now is plotting how to get her out of that habit before it gets her for good.
You know, for all the anxieties you have with these four footers, Uncle ought to let us use them for an income tax exemption. We do feed and room them without charge. And no child is anywhere near the care. And particularly since this year, the wife and I are losing one important $600 "exemp" because the young man is on his own economically. Maybe he should quit work!
Enough of that. Ahead is a confusing sign to a pedestrian even though clear to drivers. It says "Alt. 127." That to us would mean Altitude 127 aabove sea level. Yet the ocean lies no more than a scant five feet below our land. Looks like autoists are more intelligent in such things.
Ever see those attractive shallow triangular green blinds flanking a picturesque small paned window beneath the eaves of the historic James Gott Homestead on Mount Pleasant Street? Mrs. James Jarvis Gott Tarr the pastor's widow, still resides there. Her years never prevent her faithfully walking every Sunday to attend service at the First Congregational Churh in which the Reverend was once a preacher.
It took us back to the Vermont farm, away up-State, when on a clothesline nearby we saw the row of clothespins clinched on it with nary a shred of underwear or unmentionables clinging to them. Always prepared is the lady of that house.
And that nostalgic old Victorian era street gaslamp highlighting Architect Freddie Westman's home at Number 20 Mount Pleasant Street commands many pleasant memories of the past when as a youngster in Gloucester our face was glued to the window to watch the lamplighter with the long lighted taper flicking on the gaslights. To us then, darkness was again conquered.
By now we were ready to turn onto Mount Pleasant Place, which proved to be Dead End Lane down past Charlie Orr's house with its spacious backyard, "Chick" Marston' retreat with its array of bikes, and in someone else's bailiwick what passed for an old-fashioned privy, a truly winding, fascinating lane of new homes and old homes, the kind of places, this meanderer would be proud to know as our residence. We personally loathe ranch style houses.
All went well until the wife tried to recall how to get onto neighboring Cove Hill Lane. This fattening old fudge-budge found himself impaled in thorny briars and caught with the threat of dropping all of two feet over a Revolution era stone wall. Molly and "Mein Frau" had executed the manoeuvre gracefully. We managed but with one bleeding finger and scarred up brogans.
There's something about those gals that bring red to my cheeks.
But we all made it, more or less a unit to slither down a lane of ice that challenged one to remain upright on his pins Oh, the wife sure can pick some wierdies for a Sunday stroll. What's one broken neck, more or less?
A fascinating feature of that lane in winter was the sound of a cold but gurgling brook. We found it and were told that along with its mossy banks, beautiful violets abound in the Spring. We'll be back there come Spring just to see those violets, not to pick them because we hate the thought of disturbing nature in its success in glorifying the landscape.
From there onto firmer ground, Clark Aveue and the land of the John Kierans, naturalist extraordinary, and also of bright red barberries still on the bushes, and of the grim grey lobster pots stacked mountain high in backyards.
Then for the first time in this chilling saunter we bumped into our first fellow strollers, Patrolman and Mrs. L. Ellsworth Harris who we learned as we talked on Atlantic Avenue, had covered far more ground than had we.
Sissies, aren't we, but how far did you stretch your legs that same Sunday? Better give the car a rest, and your waistline a break by hitting the road for a breather on Sunday.
J.P.C., Jr.
After the Blizzard - A Walk Along With Others
Although snow hills lined both sides of the streets, the weather was ideal for walking Sunday, so mild that not even mittens were necessary. So the wife and I and our four-footed female boxer, Molly, decided to see some of the after effects of the Cape's record blizzard.
This time for once the hiking urge was not original. There's nothing like a snow deluge to ground folks and teach them that feet were made to move shanks mare and not just to push down on a bar of iron to jump a gas wagon from low to high.
We had hardly emerged from our Rockport doorway to thread our way through the waif-size path the head of the household had shoveled but what we were greeted by the sigh of youngsters turning the snow mounds into a winter playground. Took us back to the days when we had kids just like that.
A touch of snowbound Valley Forge was noted in the pitiful gesture of the stubby little cannon on the church lawn doing its darndest to poke its snout over the drifts. We came onto a Main Street where the road surveyor, Pete Perkins, and his loyal gang of five men had completely cleared one whole side of snow during the day and were just finishing up that phase of their 3-day toil. In fact they had even cleaned the sidewalk for its entire width.
What amazed us was that although we even invaded some back streets on this walk we were able to trod on plenty of bare ground. We got to thinking that their example might well be copied by some other communities. For a space we had given Molly her freedom to roll in the snow, rush up and down the snow heaps but the time had come for the leash for we were nearing the sacred precinct of another female boxer for whom our wheezing gal shows nothing but jealousy. And I'm still no athlete when it comes to separating warring femmes of whatever specie.
Down along Front Beach, the silence of the greyish-blue sea offered a weird contrast to only two days before when it was tearing up the shore with a meanness that only the sea can show. Some of the results were strewn even onto the edge of the road, in kelp, seaweed, and plain debris.
The snow had left a strange pattern along the low stone wall of the cemetery opposite the beach. It seemed like a sullen grey shroud while for a background were the snow-splashed tottering headstones of slate.
Although the walkers were far more than usual, folks were also on wheels once more after back breaking hours of shoveling out their cars. Snow narrowed roads jacked up the danger of being on foot with cars whizzing by both ways. Cleared roads presented the temptation. The fact soon drove us onto a side road, Smith Street, for safety's sake.
The wife and I soon discovered that it was about time we had included this way on our strolls. First we were faced with a tercentennial marker that said John Pool, Sandy Bay's second settler, built the first framed house on the spot back in 1700 and that the same gentleman furnished the lumber that built famed Long Wharf in Boston in 1710.
That was the past. But the street in the present is one of fine, solid homes that do credit to the town. All well kept along with their grounds. Even their dogs were polite. One of their number gave Molly, a 21-bark salute.
Another greeting from somewhere in the area could be taken as a gentle warning to the sniffing stalker to clear out. They sounded much like geese. We were too happy they were not on the loose for we could see our Molly coming out second best. A pinched nose wold ground her for good.
From there up Beach Street onto Granite where he-males still battled with shovels, again out of harm's way down placid Norwood Court, into King and back onto Beach where for the first time we spied a bell buoy washed up on Back Beach along with all manner of ocean spewed debris.
It was a glorious Sunday stroll, one that we know many others enjoyed just as we three did.
J.P.C., Jr.
This time for once the hiking urge was not original. There's nothing like a snow deluge to ground folks and teach them that feet were made to move shanks mare and not just to push down on a bar of iron to jump a gas wagon from low to high.
We had hardly emerged from our Rockport doorway to thread our way through the waif-size path the head of the household had shoveled but what we were greeted by the sigh of youngsters turning the snow mounds into a winter playground. Took us back to the days when we had kids just like that.
A touch of snowbound Valley Forge was noted in the pitiful gesture of the stubby little cannon on the church lawn doing its darndest to poke its snout over the drifts. We came onto a Main Street where the road surveyor, Pete Perkins, and his loyal gang of five men had completely cleared one whole side of snow during the day and were just finishing up that phase of their 3-day toil. In fact they had even cleaned the sidewalk for its entire width.
What amazed us was that although we even invaded some back streets on this walk we were able to trod on plenty of bare ground. We got to thinking that their example might well be copied by some other communities. For a space we had given Molly her freedom to roll in the snow, rush up and down the snow heaps but the time had come for the leash for we were nearing the sacred precinct of another female boxer for whom our wheezing gal shows nothing but jealousy. And I'm still no athlete when it comes to separating warring femmes of whatever specie.
Down along Front Beach, the silence of the greyish-blue sea offered a weird contrast to only two days before when it was tearing up the shore with a meanness that only the sea can show. Some of the results were strewn even onto the edge of the road, in kelp, seaweed, and plain debris.
The snow had left a strange pattern along the low stone wall of the cemetery opposite the beach. It seemed like a sullen grey shroud while for a background were the snow-splashed tottering headstones of slate.
Although the walkers were far more than usual, folks were also on wheels once more after back breaking hours of shoveling out their cars. Snow narrowed roads jacked up the danger of being on foot with cars whizzing by both ways. Cleared roads presented the temptation. The fact soon drove us onto a side road, Smith Street, for safety's sake.
The wife and I soon discovered that it was about time we had included this way on our strolls. First we were faced with a tercentennial marker that said John Pool, Sandy Bay's second settler, built the first framed house on the spot back in 1700 and that the same gentleman furnished the lumber that built famed Long Wharf in Boston in 1710.
That was the past. But the street in the present is one of fine, solid homes that do credit to the town. All well kept along with their grounds. Even their dogs were polite. One of their number gave Molly, a 21-bark salute.
Another greeting from somewhere in the area could be taken as a gentle warning to the sniffing stalker to clear out. They sounded much like geese. We were too happy they were not on the loose for we could see our Molly coming out second best. A pinched nose wold ground her for good.
From there up Beach Street onto Granite where he-males still battled with shovels, again out of harm's way down placid Norwood Court, into King and back onto Beach where for the first time we spied a bell buoy washed up on Back Beach along with all manner of ocean spewed debris.
It was a glorious Sunday stroll, one that we know many others enjoyed just as we three did.
J.P.C., Jr.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Winter on Railroad Avenue
Industry is on the march in Rockport, the wife and I thought as we ambled through Sandy Bay's picturesque streets. This walk was a looper, hanging to the more traveled ways in a continuing effort to break the boxer to traffic perils and mayhap give traffic a bit of practice in dodging the boxer.
It was a tingling afternoon, sunny yet bracing, as we rounded the corner to tramp up a neon-less Broadway. For a winter's Sabbath, that avenue was alive with whizzing cars in both directions. It seemed that everybody and his uncle was taking advantage of the weather to tour the Cape. But a Rockporter who has a car preferred the warmth of the fire barn and the company of other firemen for the afternoon rather than to joust with cars behind the wheel. Joe Rogers is always right at home sounding off on fire matters.
Brittle hoary white with winter were the garden spots of Postmaster Ralph Wilson and retired Frank Lawson on Broadway. Despite their bleakness, though, they still wear a pleasantness that is cheery along the way. Right now, it's catalog studying time for their overseers. The green thumb's a frozen one.
Up past the warmly heated new Town Office Building that is gradually winning its way into the hearts of the town folk and bringing the envy of Gloucester's City Hall family, who spend so many hours in a building where in one room it is equatorial, and the next, Arctic.
The venerable cannon on the Community House lawn, archaic as it may be, offers a never dying example of the pitiful armament of the past compared to the atomic gun of the present. It could only lob an attempt at destruction. But for years, it has offered a challenge to youth to scramble all over it and play gunner's mate.
We noted that Christmas wreaths still adorned some doorways. The Bill Mills' on Railroad Avenue, for one example. To us it offered a cheery post Yuletide look. We'd enjoy some of that atmosphere year-round. Too many times, Christmas is dumped with the tree in the ash can. In that same home we are always fascinated to see windows containing small panes of vari-colored glass. They speak of a proud period in Americana, one that had much to admire. We could well recapture more of it for the betterment of the day.
We were struck with the fact of Rockport's progress, industry-wise, down by the railroad yard. There was the old isinglass factory, chopped down to one story, but no longer rather shabby in appearance. Instead it was real kipper in its one-story, brightly painted exterior. It is now Capt. Paul C. Woodbury's Rockport Twine & Rope Co. It smacks of activity and better still, pay envelopes.
Right next door is the face-lifted J. Raymond Smith lumber establishment, and across the street the Rockport edition of The Building center, bright as a dollar. They add prestige to Rockport.
Down the road apiece is being reared Rockport's latest factory, small but bristling with business, just off Granite Street, close by the depot. It's for "Woody" Williams, a Pigeon Cover-er, for a long time a plant operator on Long Island. Jet plane and TV parts are his business.
Our boxer pal Molly had managed to brush off every four-wheeler in her way as she darted from one side to the other in quest of adventure. She has reached the stage when she respects a honk, even if she is all in a dither over another yapper. Her stub tail is no bumper, that's for sure.
We had just dropped at least a couple of fingers as the biting cold nipped them off because they were exposed, in taking notes. It took us back to our football reporting days, when low temperatures prevailed. We fought the game of the yardlines with numbing digits.
We came upon another lane. This time it was Norwood Court, which runs from Granite Street parallel with Forest Street. It is old Rockport, well worth turning into. First sight to greet us was a huge urn in Story Parsons' yard. It was big enough to be the one where Ali Baba hid his 40 thieves.
Along the way we admired compact homes of today, even of two stories, and wind-blown willows dotting the street. Back drop for this modernity was the old -world architecture of the Finnish Church, austere yet warming with its thin spire.
Like the stork nests of old Holland were five TV antennas on a large old house on a court where tenants apparently like birds so well they spread bread crumbs over the yard.
It was a grand walk. It could have been longer if the chill winds hadn't nipped the wife's toes, and Molly's nose. That's when the blazing logs in the fireplace scored.
J.P.C., Jr.
It was a tingling afternoon, sunny yet bracing, as we rounded the corner to tramp up a neon-less Broadway. For a winter's Sabbath, that avenue was alive with whizzing cars in both directions. It seemed that everybody and his uncle was taking advantage of the weather to tour the Cape. But a Rockporter who has a car preferred the warmth of the fire barn and the company of other firemen for the afternoon rather than to joust with cars behind the wheel. Joe Rogers is always right at home sounding off on fire matters.
Brittle hoary white with winter were the garden spots of Postmaster Ralph Wilson and retired Frank Lawson on Broadway. Despite their bleakness, though, they still wear a pleasantness that is cheery along the way. Right now, it's catalog studying time for their overseers. The green thumb's a frozen one.
Up past the warmly heated new Town Office Building that is gradually winning its way into the hearts of the town folk and bringing the envy of Gloucester's City Hall family, who spend so many hours in a building where in one room it is equatorial, and the next, Arctic.
The venerable cannon on the Community House lawn, archaic as it may be, offers a never dying example of the pitiful armament of the past compared to the atomic gun of the present. It could only lob an attempt at destruction. But for years, it has offered a challenge to youth to scramble all over it and play gunner's mate.
We noted that Christmas wreaths still adorned some doorways. The Bill Mills' on Railroad Avenue, for one example. To us it offered a cheery post Yuletide look. We'd enjoy some of that atmosphere year-round. Too many times, Christmas is dumped with the tree in the ash can. In that same home we are always fascinated to see windows containing small panes of vari-colored glass. They speak of a proud period in Americana, one that had much to admire. We could well recapture more of it for the betterment of the day.
We were struck with the fact of Rockport's progress, industry-wise, down by the railroad yard. There was the old isinglass factory, chopped down to one story, but no longer rather shabby in appearance. Instead it was real kipper in its one-story, brightly painted exterior. It is now Capt. Paul C. Woodbury's Rockport Twine & Rope Co. It smacks of activity and better still, pay envelopes.
Right next door is the face-lifted J. Raymond Smith lumber establishment, and across the street the Rockport edition of The Building center, bright as a dollar. They add prestige to Rockport.
Down the road apiece is being reared Rockport's latest factory, small but bristling with business, just off Granite Street, close by the depot. It's for "Woody" Williams, a Pigeon Cover-er, for a long time a plant operator on Long Island. Jet plane and TV parts are his business.
Our boxer pal Molly had managed to brush off every four-wheeler in her way as she darted from one side to the other in quest of adventure. She has reached the stage when she respects a honk, even if she is all in a dither over another yapper. Her stub tail is no bumper, that's for sure.
We had just dropped at least a couple of fingers as the biting cold nipped them off because they were exposed, in taking notes. It took us back to our football reporting days, when low temperatures prevailed. We fought the game of the yardlines with numbing digits.
We came upon another lane. This time it was Norwood Court, which runs from Granite Street parallel with Forest Street. It is old Rockport, well worth turning into. First sight to greet us was a huge urn in Story Parsons' yard. It was big enough to be the one where Ali Baba hid his 40 thieves.
Along the way we admired compact homes of today, even of two stories, and wind-blown willows dotting the street. Back drop for this modernity was the old -world architecture of the Finnish Church, austere yet warming with its thin spire.
Like the stork nests of old Holland were five TV antennas on a large old house on a court where tenants apparently like birds so well they spread bread crumbs over the yard.
It was a grand walk. It could have been longer if the chill winds hadn't nipped the wife's toes, and Molly's nose. That's when the blazing logs in the fireplace scored.
J.P.C., Jr.
Fall in Pigeon Cove
A Sunday drizzle doesn't make for a pleasant stroll, so the wife and I and our cat-hater cheated on four wheels as we hit for Pigeon Cove to park near the Cape Ann Tool Co. It was to be a short stroll this Sabbath, hoping to stay as dry as the weather would allow.
Below us was a weather-beaten black and white striped barber pole flagging the establishment of the original cemetery commissioner, Johnny Francis, and boasting a nostalgic sign, "Ask for (a hair tonic)" which we trust is not-intoxicating.
Across the lively highway we noted an attractive home-like structure labeled The Story Library. The wife is one of the three who guide it through its bookish destiny. The curbstone border along the properties appeared to have gone on a bender. Not one of the long slabs jibed.
The wife had an urge to poke through Edgemere Road just to see what it was like. Here it was that the venerable Nestor of selectmen, Eli Morgan, long resided. A short road, now hot-topped, leads abruptly to the waterfront. The sea was ugly, frothing with white caps far below the road.
Edgemere Road loops past the home of one Critchet, he of the Gloucester National Bank, we presumed, on the very verge of the Atlantic. We admire a man perched where the sea in all its moods is so close. As we approached this off-street haven, we could see a healthy kitty dash madly around a house. Our Molly has a penchant for felines, but this time the dampers of her snout were down. Kitty took no chances and leaped to a porch top out of danger. To this hour, Molly does not realize how close she came to making the fur fly.
In the Tool Company's yard, we could see a mountain of purplish colored slag that lent beauty to the town's principal industry. We are ever impressed with the austerity of the company's red brick office building that is in such sharp contrast to the dingy gray mustiness of the forge plant across the street.
From here the good wife as usual had ideas to round out the Sunday walk by passing a "No Trespassing" sign. Me, I wondered what if anything of interest could lurk behind the dingy street frontage only to become excited at the suddenness of a hidden abandoned quarry a hundred feet up a woodland path. A mountainous slab of rich brown granite rose from the sylvan pond that winter-times must provide an ideal skating pond, and summers, a swimming pool par excellence. Only thing lacking was a diving board. Who owns it, anyway? The town should for recreation's sake. In the backgound loomed the light poles and homes of Curtis Street.
A few wheezes farther we came upon another abandoned water-filled quarry pit on the other side of the rise. The granite slabs of this one were encrusted with greenery. It was real shallow. It looked as if no one had yet discovered it. Continuing along the wooded path, we found it strewn with fulsome fall-painted oak leaves as we emerged onto Curtis Street, where punkins adorned the door stoops.
A vigorous police dog, male gender, was the welcoming committee for the loud-mouthed Molly. They woofed and they snoofed.
J.P.C., Jr.
Below us was a weather-beaten black and white striped barber pole flagging the establishment of the original cemetery commissioner, Johnny Francis, and boasting a nostalgic sign, "Ask for (a hair tonic)" which we trust is not-intoxicating.
Across the lively highway we noted an attractive home-like structure labeled The Story Library. The wife is one of the three who guide it through its bookish destiny. The curbstone border along the properties appeared to have gone on a bender. Not one of the long slabs jibed.
The wife had an urge to poke through Edgemere Road just to see what it was like. Here it was that the venerable Nestor of selectmen, Eli Morgan, long resided. A short road, now hot-topped, leads abruptly to the waterfront. The sea was ugly, frothing with white caps far below the road.
Edgemere Road loops past the home of one Critchet, he of the Gloucester National Bank, we presumed, on the very verge of the Atlantic. We admire a man perched where the sea in all its moods is so close. As we approached this off-street haven, we could see a healthy kitty dash madly around a house. Our Molly has a penchant for felines, but this time the dampers of her snout were down. Kitty took no chances and leaped to a porch top out of danger. To this hour, Molly does not realize how close she came to making the fur fly.
In the Tool Company's yard, we could see a mountain of purplish colored slag that lent beauty to the town's principal industry. We are ever impressed with the austerity of the company's red brick office building that is in such sharp contrast to the dingy gray mustiness of the forge plant across the street.
From here the good wife as usual had ideas to round out the Sunday walk by passing a "No Trespassing" sign. Me, I wondered what if anything of interest could lurk behind the dingy street frontage only to become excited at the suddenness of a hidden abandoned quarry a hundred feet up a woodland path. A mountainous slab of rich brown granite rose from the sylvan pond that winter-times must provide an ideal skating pond, and summers, a swimming pool par excellence. Only thing lacking was a diving board. Who owns it, anyway? The town should for recreation's sake. In the backgound loomed the light poles and homes of Curtis Street.
A few wheezes farther we came upon another abandoned water-filled quarry pit on the other side of the rise. The granite slabs of this one were encrusted with greenery. It was real shallow. It looked as if no one had yet discovered it. Continuing along the wooded path, we found it strewn with fulsome fall-painted oak leaves as we emerged onto Curtis Street, where punkins adorned the door stoops.
A vigorous police dog, male gender, was the welcoming committee for the loud-mouthed Molly. They woofed and they snoofed.
J.P.C., Jr.
Yelow-bellied Sapsucker Sighted Here
For a pleasant Sunday afternoon walk, the wife and I, a favorite sister and Molly, our boxer, headed for bird-watching country. We started walking at East Stone Haven on South St. The entrance is through two swell-elegant cobblestone posts 10 feet high. The wife recalled shinnying to the top of both cairns just for the sake of being top dog for a "sec."
We saw a pleasant looking litter of fallen acorns. All we needed were some wooden matches without the brimstone and we could see ourselves in the pipe business, a joy we shared with many another growing boy a half century and more ago. It was one way of "smoking" that could never lead to emphyzema, which our dictionary describes as the "dry heaves," born in the weed.
Molly went a-snortin' and a-puffin' with her triple chin lallygaggin' on the dry sod. Then it happened. Not Molly but our sister. The wife and I and the beefy mutt usually pay little heed to the peeps of our feathered friends. But not our sister. All of a sudden she bleated, "There's a red breasted nut hatch on that tree!"
Maybe there was, but all we could see were the same green leaves, some turned rusty, that graced all the trees, the kind we have been raking and burning, and burning and raking, much to the distaste of certain of our neighbors. Not everyone fattens on the smell of smoky leaves like us.
And speaking about leaves, who should we come upon but Tucker Vye, who lives on this Rockport lane and who runs the Addison Gilbert Hospital. He seemed to be happy in his Fall harvesting of leaves and acorns. He admitted to a bumper crop of 20 wheelbarrow-loads, enough as he put it, to start a squirrel farm. His property abounds in boulders. He said his land is part of that noted terminal moraine that sprawls all over Cape Ann and helps skyrocket the cost of water and sewer system installations.
Sandy Bay was within a healthy stone's throw. The fog on the water was thick enough to cut, and we heard the Thacher's Island horn blowing its warning to passing craft. Which brought from Tucker Vye the comment that he missed the old two-tone groaner; there was a horn with character. We agree. So does another good friend, Carol Roehm, who lives just down the street and who called us in to visit. She even let the pudgy four-footer cross her threshold.
Through her picture windows looking into her garden, we really found Birdland. She is an authority on birds. The two birders pointed out a brown thrasher (we saw that one), a woodpecker, then the prize catch of the day, what they both agreed was a yellow-bellied sapsucker What amazed us was that it actually is a bird and not a standing joke.
J.P.C., Jr.
We saw a pleasant looking litter of fallen acorns. All we needed were some wooden matches without the brimstone and we could see ourselves in the pipe business, a joy we shared with many another growing boy a half century and more ago. It was one way of "smoking" that could never lead to emphyzema, which our dictionary describes as the "dry heaves," born in the weed.
Molly went a-snortin' and a-puffin' with her triple chin lallygaggin' on the dry sod. Then it happened. Not Molly but our sister. The wife and I and the beefy mutt usually pay little heed to the peeps of our feathered friends. But not our sister. All of a sudden she bleated, "There's a red breasted nut hatch on that tree!"
Maybe there was, but all we could see were the same green leaves, some turned rusty, that graced all the trees, the kind we have been raking and burning, and burning and raking, much to the distaste of certain of our neighbors. Not everyone fattens on the smell of smoky leaves like us.
And speaking about leaves, who should we come upon but Tucker Vye, who lives on this Rockport lane and who runs the Addison Gilbert Hospital. He seemed to be happy in his Fall harvesting of leaves and acorns. He admitted to a bumper crop of 20 wheelbarrow-loads, enough as he put it, to start a squirrel farm. His property abounds in boulders. He said his land is part of that noted terminal moraine that sprawls all over Cape Ann and helps skyrocket the cost of water and sewer system installations.
Sandy Bay was within a healthy stone's throw. The fog on the water was thick enough to cut, and we heard the Thacher's Island horn blowing its warning to passing craft. Which brought from Tucker Vye the comment that he missed the old two-tone groaner; there was a horn with character. We agree. So does another good friend, Carol Roehm, who lives just down the street and who called us in to visit. She even let the pudgy four-footer cross her threshold.
Through her picture windows looking into her garden, we really found Birdland. She is an authority on birds. The two birders pointed out a brown thrasher (we saw that one), a woodpecker, then the prize catch of the day, what they both agreed was a yellow-bellied sapsucker What amazed us was that it actually is a bird and not a standing joke.
J.P.C., Jr.
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