A West Coast Kid in Massachusetts: Aunt Helen Goes to the Beach

The following is Part V of a series drawn from memories of Massachusetts as a young boy. Although I grew up in Southern California during the 1950s, I traveled to Massachusetts several times with my mother. She referred to the West as the "frontier"; she called Boston, Massachusetts, "home."

Return to Part I  Part II  Part III Part IV

As snow turned to slush and slush to green grass in the Spring of 1951, Aunt Helen's farm became a universe of outdoor wonders for its young guest. For a three year-old, the area behind the farmhouse might as well have been endless space. There were no fences and I moved in any direction without constraint.  I docked occasionally at my space station, an old garage and work shed with musty smells, hand tools and an oil-soaked floor.

Even greater wonders lay just an orbit away at the Duckworth farm. Mr. Duckworth (I can't remember a first name) cares for Aunt Helen when she needs a man's hands to take down the storm windows or fix the back door screen. I enjoy his pat on the head and the three older children that come to play with the new kid on the farm.

The greatest prize for this child rests in the Duckworth barn. The green John Deere tractor is parked there and in itself is a busy box of levers and wheels and tires that smell like a new mowed lawn. But the Deere is not the grand prize. Proudly parked astride the tractor is the Volunteer Fire Department's fire engine! I remember Mr. Duckworth lifting me over the chrome to the seat next to the driver, the same seat where the Dalmatian mascot rides in the Rheingold Beer advertisement. Bliss on planet Duckworth.

I remember enjoying many quiet and much less dramatic times with Aunt Helen. Born at the close of the Nineteenth Century, her generation witnessed first hand the birth of our Technical Age: telephones, automobiles, airplanes and a cornucopia of gadgets designed to liberate humans from mundane chores and increase our leisure time. I believe most of this passed by Aunt Helen as uneventfully as the last fading winds of a nor'easter. For one thing, leisure time is anathema to the Puritan lifestyle. She had been the wife of a Protestant minister in rural Massachusetts and dutifully filled each day with chores and devotion. Aunt Helen never drove a car or flew in an airplane. As I mentioned previously, she heated water on the stove and chilled food with ice in an icebox. The new television craze never blinked black and white shadows in her parlor. If she had a radio, I don't remember ever hearing it play. The Korean War raged on but unless Mr. Duckworth mentioned it, those events were as remote to Aunt Helen as melting polar caps on planet Mars.

I do remember one technical innovation that excited her. I know this because she showed me many times. With failing eyesight due to cataracts and age, it had become increasingly difficult for Aunt Helen to thread a needle. Sewing was central to her day of small but cherished accomplishments. Losing the ability to sew would most certainly challenge that stoic New England resolve.

A woman of few words, Aunt Helen silently beckoned me to come and see a most clever invention. Between her thumb and index finger I saw a shiny diamond shaped wire with a strand of thread passed through the diamond. She effortlessly passed the flexible wire through the eye miraculously threading the needle. She turned to me and said, "You see, now I can sew!"

One day, and probably at my mother's request, Mr. Duckworth came to the back door. He knocked politely and asked, "How about a drive to the beach? It's a nice spring day."

As unassuming as this invitation may seem, Aunt Helen had never been to the beach. She had never seen the Atlantic Ocean, smelled an ocean breeze or felt sand between her toes. After some coaxing from my mother, we were off to the beach with Mr. Duckworth and his kids. At my early age, I can't tell you where we went or how long we stayed. All that I have from that day to aid my memory is a photograph of Aunt Helen sitting on a pillow watching ocean waters lap the shore on a calm sunny day. There is a faint smile on her face and shoes on her feet. Aunt Helen saw the Atlantic but her feet would never touch sand.

More to come…

Cheers,

Colonel Possum

22 July 2006