Thenlong overdue Part 2 of Friends, foliage and babies, babies, babies

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I grew up in Boston by the Atlantic Ocean. I remember hearing my mother' s stories of swimming and diving competitions at Tenean Beach in Boston Harbor. She was proud of her medals and I still have some displayed in my home. She not only taught my brothers and I how to swim but all of her grandchildren too.

After I married I moved to the western part of Massachusetts. Most people don't think of mountains being in MA. True,they are not the grandiose peaks of the Rockies or even the red stone buttes of Arizona, in fact, a true mountaineer would scoff and call them me hills. My first glimpse of the Berkshires in 1962, filled me with wonder. Year after year, each time I drove from east to west I elicited a deep sigh of contentment because I knew I would soon be surrounded by those comforting hills.

So, on a brilliant sunny day in October I made my way from Avon, CT to my brother's house in Whitman, MA, a small town about twenty miles south of Boston. This trip was from west to east on I84 in CT. The plan was to hook up with the MA pIke in Sturbridge. Along the way I savored every golden birch and flaming red maple tree. Their colors made more intense by their proximity to deep green pines. On a whim, I decided not to get on the pike, but to drive through some of the small towns: Southdridge, Oxford, Leicester (pronounced Lester), all towns given their names by the original English settlers. Today the towns are trying to stay alive. Old mills, once the economic backbone of New England, have been transformed into shopping centers or condos. Brick work has been artfully mortared on the sidewalks with welcoming benches placed for tired shoppers. But the benches stand empty and the shops are mostly nail salons, second hand shops, a dollar store, and an occasional tattoo parlor.

Three hours later I arrived. Whitman was once the center of the shoe manufacturing industry in the U.S. It was famous for the Bostonian brand of men's shoes. Its other claim to fame was being the site of the original Toll House. There is actually no evidence that it was ever a working toll house but it may have been an inn which evolved into a restaurant. In 1939, Ruth Wakefield, the owner, decided to make a new dessert. She chopped up a large bar of Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate and added it to cookie batter. It was a huge success but she tired of chopping chocolate. She wrote to Nestle's and asked them to make bit size chocolate pieces and 'voila' chocolate chips were born. The caveat was that she had to give them her recipe and thus the famous Toll House cookie was born. Today the recipe is still on each package. Sadly, the inn burned down and now the site holds a Walgreen's and a Wendy's.

The town is a bedroom community for Boston where people take pride in their schools and most kids participate in sports. Don, my brother, and his wife Cindy, have lived there almost forty years. Their three kids are married and all live within fifteen minutes of their house. ***more on them in the babies, babies section***



The next day I drove to Plymouth. I was looking forward to having lunch with Joel and Bill. They live on Cape Cod. I had met them on my April 2015 trip to Turkey and Greece. Some of you may recall that the trip was rather dramatic because we hit the worst storm in the Aegean Sea in seventy five years. We had bonded because we were the 'singles' on the trip. Both fellows were widowers and this was their first trip sans wives. Joel friendly to everyone and optimistic no matter what the weather was. He was a great talker and put everyone at ease. Bill, originally from Louisiana, was a bit more formal. He had the charm and manners of a Southern gentleman.



So here we were having lunch at Issac's, at a table overlooking Plymouth harbor, on a stunning clear and beautiful October day. We took great delight in remembering the more harrowing moments of the storm. We commented our guide and crew for professionalism. We recalled how generous the Greek people had been to accommodate our group in their homes, even though it was just before Easter. I had a few pictures to show them from the trip which triggered more stories with Joel insisting he had never seen the windmills on Mykonos. Bill and I assured him he had been there and had seen them.

The lunch and visit were all the more special for me because I could gaze at the water. To me seeing the ocean every year is like getting a high powered injection of salt air. Think of 'Audrey' in ' Little Shop of Horrors' and how she perked up after being fed some blood. That is how I feel after seeing the ocean. The weather was beyond perfect: sapphire blue ocean, cobalt blue sky, warm sun, light winds, not even a small white cap ruffling the water. On one wharf the masts of the Mayflower replica ship stood high. While the Captain John and Captain Andy, deep sea fishing and whale watching boats, were at anchor on the town pier. The smell of salt permeated the air and the awk-awk of seagulls looking to scavenge anything they could was background music.

We said our goodbyes and I headed to Plymouth Rock. I've seen it hundreds of times. As a very young child, in the '40's, my family would visit my great Aunt Katie and her scowling husband, James. They lived in the shadow of the Forefather's monument and we would climb all over it. Anything was better than sitting at Katie's house which smelled of cats and moth balls and James giving us the hairy eyeball just because we were kids.

Plymouth Rock was a few streets over and we usually drove by it. The fun of seeing the rock was mainly to watch the look of disappointment on people's faces, especially if they had driven from far away states like Iowa or Georgia. There is some dispute as to whether the Pilgrims ever actually stepped on that particular rock. The one on display was once about four times larger but was chipped away by tourists seeking a souvenir. Today it sits under a large impressive portico part of our nation's folklore.

I walked on a path near the rock behind a reproduction of a 1627 house made of mud, rough plank boards and a thatch roof. Tied up to a nearby wharf was a replica of the Mayflower barely 100 feet long. To think of 135 men, women, children, animals, and supplies crammed into that small space is to give pause at either their courage or foolhardiness. Many died on the voyage over and half died during the first year. They landed in December and were woefully unprepared for the harsh winter. They were homeless refugees who fled injustices in their native country and sought a better life. They would not have survived without the help and kindness of the native Americans from the Wampanoag tribe who fed them throughout the winter and taught the how to farm and fish.

I continued walking to the main wharf for a stop at Wood's Seafood. I bought a pound of lobster meat a quart of clam chowder. It was to be dinne back at my brother's. We do this every year and we do NOT tell their kids that we have this treasure trove of seafood. The basic recipe for a lobster roll is to cut the meat into bite size chunks, moisten with just enough mayo to hold it together, insert into a hot dog roll. The savor the sweetness.

Before I went back to Whitman I visited the beach in Manomet, a part of Plymouth that extends down to the Cape Cod canal. When my family first built a cottage there in 1950, it was wilderness. We had no phone, no TV, no car- just a radio,mbooks, musical instruments, and other kids for company. My brothers and I sold the cottage in 1998 but I still like to visit the beach. I spent my summers running up and down the sand and into water so freezing that you turned red and then blue. I wanted to see the rocks where I had climbed. I sat on a bench on top of a sand bluff and breathed in the salt air. I do this every time I visit MA. I never tire of it.

I found this quote from Salman Rushdie that speaks to me... "He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different color, weaving in and out of each other like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity."

Now to the babies... During the last few years my nieces and nephews have had five babies. It is so much fun to see them all. Enjoy!

Carolyn/ Gunga

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Photos

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Baby 1

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Baby2

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Baby2 ( couldn't choose)

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Baby 3

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Nephew Jon and Twins
Colleen and Caillen

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October day

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Plymouth Harbor

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The silly rock

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The tiny ship

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Manomet Beach

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Loved the blog
Great story about the Toll House cookies!