Travelogue film of New England - 1940s

Have a look at a nostalgic view of New England in this travelogue film from the 1940s.  Summer in New England is something eternal.

Or watch on YouTube here.

Mystery series set in post-War New England - the Double V Mysteries

 

Looking for Christmas gifts for the historical mystery lover -- who also happens to love New England?  

My "Double V Mysteries" series is set in New England, beginning in the spring of 1949.  The two main characters -- who will become partners -- are introduced in CADMIUM YELLOW, BLOOD RED.  She is an administrator at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, who has just discovered her husband's infidelity.

He is an ex-con, recently released from the state penitentiary in Wethersfield, Connecticut.  His wife has passed away and his daughter is kidnapped, but the gang who has her assures him she will be returned if he helps them with his particular specialty. He must break into the Wadsworth.  She meets him on his practice run as he literally drops into her office, the same night her husband is found murdered.

They are both suspects.  They have nobody to rely on but each other.  And each has a mystery to solve.

The book is available in paperback through Amazon, but the eBook version is FREE and available through a variety of online shops:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Apple

And a variety of other online shops here.

Give it a try and perhaps you'll like to continue the adventures with Juliet Van Allen and Elmer Vartanian -- the "Double V" duo -- in the rest of the (so far) five-book series:

SPEAK OUT BEFORE YOU DIE (in which a murder occurs in a snowbound mansion in Hartford on New Year's Eve, 1949)

Here at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops.

DISMOUNT AND MURDER (Nasty doings at the Litchfield, Connecticut, horse show, summer of 1950.  Maine recovers from the year before in the "Summer Maine Burned," Oh, and a murder.)

Here at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops.

WHITEWASH IN THE BERKSHIRES (Juliet is blacklisted during the Communist witch hunts. Intrigue and kidnapping in an underground bunker in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts in the winter of 1951.  Oh, and a murder.)

Here at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops.

MURDER AT THE SUMMER THEATER (Juliet must join the cast to help ferret out clues in backstage shenanigans in the summer of 1951 on the Connecticut shore when the lead actress goes missing. Possibly murdered.)

Here at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online shops.

Follow the adventure, follow the clues, and watch this blog for the next novel in the series coming in late 2022!

Dutch Island Lighthouse - Rhode Island

Dutch Island sits in the West Passage of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.  It was originally used as a trading outpost by the Dutch from New Amsterdam (you know it as New York), but the  young United States thought it a good spot to fortify with cannon in case of sea invasion, and these fortifications remained from the Civil War through World War I.

This Dutch Island Lighthouse was built in 1857, to replace an earlier light dating from 1826.

 

A sturdy little 40-plus feet tower nesting on its rock, the light was automated in the 1940s.  Vandalism came in the 1960s and ‘70s, but the locally formed Dutch Island Lighthouse Society came to the rescue and stored the structure.  It resumed operation in 2007.

Have a look here at their site for some great photos and current info, and here for additional statistics and history on this lighthouseand its keepers.

 

Rose Island Lighthouse - Narragansett Bay

Rose Island Lighthouse is maintained by hired vacationers who sign on for a week at a time to keep this historical treasure operating.

You can find it on a small island in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island (home to several small lighthouses, such as the Plumb Beach light we previously covered here.)

Very close to the town of Newport, the lighthouse began operating in January 1870.  It had undergone various restorations and improvements over the decades, but when the Pell Newport Bridge (which we covered previously here) was completed in 1969, that massive structure overshadowed the lighthouse both literally and in terms of acting as a better aid to navigation.  You couldn’t miss it.  That is a HUGE bridge.  The lighthouse was deactivated in 1971, and was abandoned, falling prey for the next 14 years to the elements, and vandals.

 

The Rose Island Lighthouse took on a new life when in 1984 volunteers formed the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation and began restore it to its 1912 appearance.  In August 1993, the light was re-lit and once gain serves both as an aid to navigation and an historical treasure.  It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

You can even stay at the lighthouse.  For more on renting accommodations, or visiting the Rose Island Lighthouse, and some great photos, have a look here at this website, and here for more history.

 

Floating Down Swan River, Cape Cod

Cruising down Swan River on Cape Cod, deep enough only for a kayak or a flat bottomed paddle boat. You wind along watching herons, and gulls, and the occasional artist and easel on the green banks.

Marshes, where the critters live, and kids with pails of clams waving to you from a dock, where they live.

You aim for the narrow opening under the bridge that runs under Lower County Road. Eventually, after a few more gentle twists and turns, you are rewarded by the a sight that certainly should not be unexpected, but somehow is…the place where fresh salt breezes smack you in the face and the water becomes wide, and deep, and suddenly choppy. Nantucket Sound. All yours. Or so it seems for a moment.

But you dare not leave the safety of the slow-moving river in your little craft. You have to turn around and go back.

In another minute.

Rockport Beach Roses

When the Scots poet Robert Burns wrote “My Love is Like a Red, Red, Rose” in 1794, he likely did not envision something as common and prosaic as wild beach roses growing off the rocky coast of Rockport, Massachusetts, pink and white, thriving in the sandy soil, stung by salty breezes.

But, he did mention June, and the seas, and rocks melting with the sun. Close enough.


O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.

Rockport, Mass. and Motif #1

This is Rockport, Massachusetts from The Headlands, and the eye-catching red shack on the wharf is unmistakably Motif #1.

It stands on Bradley Wharf, and what was originally a fishing shack where sails and tackle and boats were stored has since become reputedly the most favorite subject in the world of scenic landscape art. Painter Lester Hornby is credited to have dubbed it Motif #1 in reference to its popularity among artists.

It was built in the 1840s, and was destroyed in the Blizzard of 1978, but a replica was built with all due haste that year to keep alive Rockport’s cherished tourist trademark. Rockport has owned the building since 1945, when the town purchased it from artist John Buckley, who used it for his studio.

The 1938 WPA Guidebook for Massachusetts refers to the color of the building as brown. It would be interesting if know if anyone has knowledge of it being any other color than red.

For more on Motif #1, have a look at this website, and also this very interesting essay on its history.

The Marginal Way, Ogunquit, Maine

The Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine is a footpath running alongside the ocean cliffs for about a mile and a quarter. It is not a strenuous walk, but a most lovely venue.

This strip of land that follows the sea was given to the town in 1923 by Josiah Chase. It begins in the village of Perkins Cove and offers spectacular views of the Atlantic surf bashing on the rocks, on a path that in some spots is a bower of beach roses, cedar trees, and honeysuckle.

A fund has been established to maintain The Marginal Way. Have a look here for more information on the geological history of this natural attraction.

Nantucket Parking Space

On Nantucket, you are perhaps just as likely to tie the dory or dingy or motorboat up to the back porch as you are to park the car in the garage when you get home from work.

Cape Cod Bay

Lingering a little while on Patti Page from our Tuesday post, here's Cape Cod Bay from Dennis, and a solitary beachcomber in the distance at low tide.

Perkins Cove - Ogunquit, Maine

Perkins Cove, a section of Ogunquit, Maine, on a sunny and very hot summer afternoon. Both a working fishing village, and tourist attraction, the genuine scenic beauty sometimes battles head to head with the crowded and the “touristy.”

Settled in the 1640s, and formerly a part of the town of Wells, the fishing community of Ogunquit developed another identity as an artists’ colony, and now is more well known as a resort town.


Some prefer the off-season, some don’t mind the high season, but whenever you go, there’s much here to appreciate and enjoy. Climb up the wooden drawbridge and have a look around.

Old Orchard Beach Pier - Maine

Like a world unto itself, a world on stilts, the Old Orchard Beach Pier has been around over 100 years, first opening to the public in 1898. It has been altered over time, requiring renovation after several storms or fires. A world on stilts can be precarious.

The heyday occurred during the mid-20th Century when the enormous Pier Casino Ballroom showed movies and big band concerts with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Xavier Cugat, and Benny Goodman. But the casino was torn down in 1970 after one too many storms weakened the pier, and the remainder was obliterated by the Blizzard of 1978. Remember that one?

But the Old Orchard Beach Pier rose from the beach again and stepped up on its stilts, and re-opened to the public in 1980. It’s still here, a world unto itself.

For more information on the Old Orchard Beach Pier, have a look at this website.

Ferries to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard

There is that look of expectation on the faces from the people on the wharf as your ferry pulls into the harbor. Something quite unlike the faces of people meeting you at the train station, or the airport terminal, or the bus depot. It might be a glimmer of amusement, of enjoying the novelty of meeting someone, and being met, at the wharf.

There are some places in New England where these meetings are not novelty, where they are commonplace because for so many years, a passage over the water -- of minutes or hours -- was the only way to get there.

Traveling by ferry makes one feel that one has traveled through time as well as many miles. Perhaps it is due to the leisurely aspect of taking a ferry ride that allows us to decompress.

You may travel 20 hours by air and cross several time zones, but only arrive jet-lagged and never have that same sense of time and space travel that you do by boat or ship. We've gone to Long Island by ferry (see here), but today we're off to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

Here are some landings at Nantucket, and at Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. You can fly to both places now, of course, but with the convenience of air travel you lose that enticing greeting at the dock, where all faces turn toward you, whether you know them or not, and suddenly they all belong to you, and you belong to all of them. You are both loved one and stranger, as they peered at you from behind sunglasses, or squint through the reflection of sunlight sparkles on the water to identify you.

The ferry pulls in very slowly, gives blasts, and your anticipation makes it seem that it takes a much longer time to moor up than you think possible. Walking down the gangplank is a silly, innocuous thrill you don’t get at the airport or the bus depot.

Below, an excerpt from New Yorker Walt Whitman’s poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”

Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west -sun there half an hour high -I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to
me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are
more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and
more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

For more on how to get to Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard by ferry, have a look at this website.

Long Island Sound Voyage

It’s not a long voyage to Long Island, New York. But the cars crawl cautiously into the ferries, and the human passengers step briskly up gangplanks with assorted backpacks, duffels, and a few shopping bags, as if embarking on a great adventure.

It can be, with the right frame of mind. Leave New England by water for a few hours or the whole day. But remember to come back.

For more on cross-Long Island Sound voyages, have a look at this website.

Sailboat off Falmouth, Mass.

This view of a sailboat is off Falmouth, Mass., looking across the water towards Martha’s Vineyard. A reminder of our memories of summers past, and a reminder that this last winter is now past, too, even if it doesn’t feel like it, yet. Better days are coming.

Summer Sunset - Last Look

One last look at a summer sunset, in this new era of chilly mornings and leaves the color of flame. One of the interesting things about living in a place with four distinct seasons, is that the season just gone past can seem as distant as the Pleistocene age.

Was it ever really that warm, the sky that golden? Or did we just dream it? Farewell then, as the old movie travelogs used to say, to summer sunsets off Cape Ann, Mass.

Chatham Commercial Fishing

Above is a photo of what goes on at the Chatham, Massachusetts wharf on an average day. The commercial fishing boats come in, unload their catch, and seagulls swarm over the treasure.

Chatham and Provincetown are the two towns on the Cape in which commercial fishing remains as an important local industry. These days the fishermen have to seek their catch farther and farther out to sea.


Here is a link to a site for more interesting information on the history of Chatham commercial fishing and a way of life that is not just a part of some colorful past, but as important now as ever.

Over the bounding main.

Above, a woman rows a dory off the coast of Rockport, Mass.

Below, a sailboat navigates Nantucket Sound with Martha’s Vineyard in the background, while a passing gull launches itself across the sky.


Dories and sailboats have been with us as workhorses and pleasure craft, the object of artwork and handicrafts, gift shop trinkets, symbols of a seagoing way of life, and sense of freedom. Whether propelled by one’s own strength or the gift of the wind, the sense of freedom is perhaps the same.