World War II comes to northern Maine - CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS

New England locations are featured in several middle grade and young adult novels published during World War II.  My latest book, Children's Wartime Adventure Novels - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II explores these stories and how they inspired and indoctrinated a young generation too young to fight, but not too young to be affected by a global war. 

In the first of this three-post series, I wrote about locations in western Massachusetts -- Smith College and Mount Holyoke College -- that were settings for two books for girls on officers' training in the WAVES and Women Marines.

In the second post last week, I talked about two boys' novels that show us New London, Connecticut, locations, including the Naval Submarine Base, where young men train during World War II.

Today, in the third and last post in this three-part series, we have a look at a book for girls set in Maine that blends the war and the home front.

Carol Rogers in War Wings for Carol by Patricia O’Malley, is an administrative assistant in a regional airline in northern Maine.  The author worked for the Civil Aeronautics Association from 1938, for Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. (TWA) and was employed by (its later incarnation) Trans World Airlines in the public relations department at the time of the book’s publication.  Ms. O’Malley brings the details of a career for young women as stewardesses and administrative staff to, in this case, a wartime setting

War Wings for Carol begins with her arrival in a rather isolated town in northern Maine where a small regional airport now shares its facilities with an Army Air Transport unit, which gives Carol and the reader a window on the mundane but very necessary non-combat military units which ferry supplies to the front.

Along with the nuts and bolts of airline administration, we are treated to Carol’s impressions of a part of the country with which she is not familiar, and the author describes New England in sometimes lyrical prose.

“The cities were built along the banks of rivers, and the rivers were lined with miles of red brick mills, chimneys belching tall columns of thick black smoke in defiance of an enemy which would reduce mankind to slavery.  For this was the heart of industrial New England, where thousands of men, women and machines had been mobilized into the unconquerable army of American production, where the wheels of democracy turned unceasingly, grinding out implements of victory.”

It is the dead of winter when she arrives on a connecting flight from Boston and Bangor.

“There were farms outside the villages, their red barns dark against the white earth.  In the distance, small hills rose against the western horizon and they flew across the icy Kennebec at Augusta, where the dome of the capitol rises in stately dignity above the very site where the men of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first trading post in America.”

She is to be assistant to Mr. Ingram, the Vice President of the fictional New England Airlines, and because he must travel a great deal, he leaves important duties in her lap, including the hiring and training of new air hostesses.  They are in northern Maine, close to the Canadian border, where they share the airfield with the Army Air Corps, and do some contract work for the military, carrying cargo and supplies along with its regular passengers.  Mr. Ingram hired Carol to take many details off his shoulders.  “‘It’s a big job for a girl and I thought a long time before I made up my mind to take you.  But women must shoulder men’s work, and I suppose we’ll see more of it before this thing ends.’

“After a few minutes of reflection, during which Carol sat quietly, he added, ‘And they always do it as well…or better.  It’s a sad commentary on the stronger sex, Miss Rogers, but it’s true.’” We can hope the young female readers took note of the praise.

The Army airfield is described without hyperbole:  “Two Flying Fortresses and their fighter escorts were making a spectacular showing against its backdrop. On the ground, squadrons of bombers were lining up for reconnaissance practice, and pursuit planes were waddling out of hangers into position for take-off.  Trucks, tractors, jeeps and station wagons sped in and out of the post gates.”

The small town nearby has changed with the war: “Men in uniform were everywhere.  They stood in doorways and they walked up and down, talking.  They filled the drug stores, drinking innumerable cokes and cups of hot coffee.  They jammed the movies and they patronized the shops and brought a wave of prosperity such as the little town had never known before.” Much could be said of many, many towns across the United States during the war.

Another loving passage on New England brings the story through the crisis and past a challenging winter.  “Spring in northern New England is not like spring anywhere else in the world.  She is not a hoyden here, who leaps at your throat and forces you to notice her presence.  She doesn’t hurl herself in your path.  Spring in New England is a perfect lady.  She has been taught how to enter a room and takes her time making an appearance.  She knows that winter lingers, loathe to leave the land on which he had such a long, secure hold.  But she also knows that victory is inevitably hers, so she walks softly and is gracious in her conquest.  She is all the more beautiful because of her good behavior. The snows melt, the hills turn green, the rivers break free from their bondage, and the waters sing as they carry the ice cakes down toward the sea.   The skies are washed, and crisply starched and ironed, and the chirp of the robin is heard in the early morning from the branches of trees that are giving promise of the gracious abundance which is to follow.”

Carol deals with wartime administrative problems, encounters a Nazi spy, and agonizes over one of their military supply planes lost in a winter storm somewhere over Maritime Canada.

Children's Wartime Adventure Novels is available in eBook directly from my online store here.

It is also available in eBook from Barnes & Noble, Apple, and a wide variety of online shops here.

It is also available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover from Amazon here.

******************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War;   

Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts;

 States of Mind: New England, 

A Tragic Toast to Christmas -- The Infamous Wood Alcohol Deaths of 1919 in Chicopee, Mass.; as well as books on classic films and several novels.  Her Double V Mysteries series is set in New England in the early 1950s.  

TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

A ride to Massasoit Spring -- West Springfield, Massachusetts

We salute the Town of West Springfield on its 250th anniversary with a postcard of bygone days, likely the turn of the twentieth century.  The reverse side describes the "primeval forest country" of West Springfield, about an hour from Springfield--and one can see that in a horse and carriage--or even a Model T Ford on rutted, dirt country roads such as this it could have very well taken an hour.

We don't know the name of the route in the picture, and in those days, it might not have had a formal name, but it could have been present-day Bear Hole Road or Great Plains Road.  The Massasoit Springs was a small, rustic enterprise, typical of nineteenth-century tourist sites, that provided a spot for lunch, hiking, and perhaps even the restoration of health by drinking the pure spring water.  If you weren't interested in the restaurant, perhaps the nearby cage in which a bear was kept could prompt you to make the drive.  From around the 1870s to just about the turn of the century, this was enough to bring at least a few tourists any lovely summer day.

In 1906, the area was taken over and turned into the Bearhole Reservoir, and still provides a nice place for hiking.  Any bears seen are likely not to be in cages, however.

******************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War;   

Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts;

 States of Mind: New England, 

A Tragic Toast to Christmas -- The Infamous Wood Alcohol Deaths of 1919 in Chicopee, Mass.; as well as books on classic films and several novels.  Her Double V Mysteries series is set in New England in the early 1950s.  

TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Railroad and the Mill River in Northampton, Mass.

Here are two views of Northampton, Massachusetts, and the railroad running along the Mill River.  The view is from the South Street Bridge.  The above postcard is a daylight photo, and below we have the same scene artistically tinted for night.  Both cards were published by the Metropolitan News Company in Boston and likely printed in Germany, about 1906.

******************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War;   Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts;   States of Mind: New England; as well as books on classic films and several novels. Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

 

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.

Sleigh ride - Gill, Massachusetts

Image Museum website.

 

Thanksgiving brought our first snow of the season, but here is a sleigh ride from long ago, an undated photo taken in Gill, Massachusetts.  Some of the kids' names are listed above.  Do you know them?  Is one of them  you?

Gee Bee Christmas Ornament

This Christmas, Hallmark offers a new ornament for aviation buffs and fans of New England history.  Here is the new addition to the Skys the Limit series of ornaments, the Gee Bee Super 1931 Sportster Model Z.

Aircraft pioneers the Granville Brothers established their fledging aircraft factory in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1929, turning an old farmer's field into a ramshackle airport near Liberty Street and St. James Avenue.  Here they designed, built, and tested their remarkable planes, which broke speed records.

We'll have more on the Granville Brothers and their Gee Bee planes later on in the New Year, but for now, this flashy little tree ornament is a splendid souvenir of days gone by.  It measures 3 and 3/8 inches wide wingspan, 2 inches long, and 1 inch high.  It is a replica of the "City of Springfield" plane, the city's pride and namesake.

Have a look here at Hallmark's website for more information. 

For a little more background on the Gee Bee, in a different way of telling it, here's my one-act play on the Granville Brothers and their airplane factory written as part of a project to educate Springfield school children on their city's history.  It's called Soaring in the City of Springfield.

The Railroad in the Swift River Valley

 

North Dana RR Station (Image Museum site)

Continuing our look at the history of the "lost" towns of the Swift River Valley, now the site of Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts, as well as a nod to National Train Day this coming Saturday the 11th, we feature the railroad that once crawled along the valley floor and connected the dots of isolated small towns.

Linking isolated towns through the U.S. continues to be a major accomplishment of Amtrak today, and no small value can be set on the commerce, and freedom of travel, that a railroad represents to many parts of this nation.






Unidentified men with handcart.

In the old Swift River Valley, the line was the Athol Branch of the Boston & Albany Railroad.  It linked Ware and towns and cities south of the valley to Athol and points north.  In between were the tiny village and whistle stops where farmers, especially dairy farmers, depended on the daily trains to take their product to market in the larger cities.

Greenwich depot.

The rail line left Athol and crossed into New Salem, through a corner of Petersham, then to North Dana. There was a depot at Soapstone in Prescott, and one train was called the "Soapstone Limited".   Another train was more famously referred to at the "Rabbit Run". The line then crossed into Greenwich, past the villages of Morgan's Crossing and Greenwich Village, crossing the East Branch of the Swift River, and then into Enfield, by Smith's Village and finally snaking around the Great Quabbin Hill before it left the valley for Ware.

The train first came through in 1873.  The last trains were run in June 1935.  Afterward, the depots were dismantled, and the tracks were pried up.

Enfield, MA depot - postcard.

It its day, the train traversed the villages mentioned that no longer exist, as well as geographical features like Thompson Pond and Neeseponset Pond, Turtle Pond and Greenwich Lake that also no longer exist.  The train passed in between Curtis Hill and Parker Hill, Mount Pomeroy, and Mount Lizzie.  The tops of these hills remain today--as islands.

That a railroad brings character to a community can be romanticized, but what is clear is that it brings life to a community.

Note: All photos are from the Image Museum website.

***

 

This years marks the 75th anniversary of the dissolution of the Swift River Valley towns of Prescott, Enfield, Dana, and Greenwich in central Massachusetts for the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir.

 

My novel, Beside the Still Waters, is a fictional account of the people in the “Quabbin towns.”  I’ll be posting more about that next week.

 

 



 ***

I'll be speaking at the Chicopee Historical Society, meeting at the Chicopee Public Library on Thursday, May 16th with a PowerPoint presentation about topics from my recently published States of Mind: New England. That book will be available for sale at this event.



New Haven, Hartford & Springfield Rail Service

The old New York, New Haven and Hartford is only memory now, for those old enough to remember, but we have a lot to look forward to in the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield rail service, which will provide Western Massachusetts and Connecticut with improved rail service and expanded connections...and at speeds of up to 110mph, cutting travel time between Springfield and New Haven to 73 minutes.  Oh, to get off I-91 and get on the train.

 

NHHS service will provide direct or connecting service to New York City, Boston, and Vermont.  For more on the New Haven, Hartford & Springfield, have a look here.

 

For more on the restoration and redevelopment of Springfield's Union Station, have a look here.

 

 

 

Hindenburg Over Hartford, Connecticut

Have a look at the Hindenburg flying over Hartford, Connecticut in October, 1936, from what is apparently someone's home movie.  Note the Olympic rings on the side.   In that year, both the Summer and the Winter Games were held in Germany, and this logo on the airship was a bit of public relations.  The following spring, of course, the Hindenburg would explode over Lakehurst, New Jersey.  Here it looms over the Traveler's building.

Chester, Vermont Train Depot

Another Chester, another depot...

A couple of weeks ago we covered the Chester, Connecticut filming locations of the movie "It Happened to Jane" (1959).  Among those photos was the whistle stop Chester depot.

Here's another cozy train depot in Chester, Vermont.  You can stop here on the Green Mountain Flyer.

Like this one.



Amtrak 40th Anniversary Exhibit Train

This past weekend the special Amtrak exhibit train rolled into Union Station in Springfield, Massachusetts. There are six more scheduled stops throughout New England this summer, so if you missed this event, you’ll have many more chances to see it.

Amtrak, the national railroad service for the United States, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and as part of the celebration, this several-car special train is being sent as a kind mobile museum on tour of some of the towns and cities Amtrak services. Climb aboard and walk through four decades worth of nostalgia and memorabilia. Equipment and vintage ads are displayed, menus and dinnerware from the past in the lounge car, uniforms, photographs and videos to see.

There were some freebees offered by staff on the platform, and items for sale in the “store” car on the end.

Lots of train buffs meandered through the train and all around it, taking photos, and kids sharing the grownups’ love of trains. All of this activity much to the surprise of the passengers alighting with their rolling suitcases from the regular train that pulled into the station as this event was going on.

Each weekend for the next six weeks gives New Englanders a chance to catch up with the special exhibit train. Here are the upcoming stops:

Union Station - New Haven, Connecticut: July 16-17.

Union Station - New London, Connecticut: July 23-24.

Amtrak Station - Providence, Rhode Island: July 30-31.

South Station - Boston: August 6-7.

Depot Avenue - Freeport, Maine: August 13-14.

Main Street - Burlington, Vermont: August 20-21.

After that, it’s Albany, New York and points west. For more about Amtrak’s special exhibit train and the 40th anniversary celebration, have a look at this website.

Essex Steam Train - Essex, Connecticut

Our tribute to National Train Day is a bit delayed, but you can be sure the trains at the Essex Steam Train in Essex, Connecticut run on time. Take on ride on this historic excursion train from Essex Station to Deep River Station (where you can then take the Becky Thatcher riverboat up to Haddam and back.)

The train trip is 12 miles round trip, and is fun, educational, and glorious way to watch the seasons change in New England, chugging through some of the prettiest countryside along the Connecticut River.

This is a view that’s been enjoyed by generations of New Englanders, as far back as the first run in July of 1871. This little branch line of track has seen it all.

It had been a link in those days between the state capitol of Hartford, and the shore village of Old Saybrook. In the 1880s the Hartford & Connecticut Valley Railroad joined as a branch of the New Haven railroad.

In the 1950s when the automobile had a lot of new highways to explore, the number of passengers on the old railroad dwindled, trains ran less often. By the early 1960s, only a couple freight trains per week used the struggling railroad line. The last train ran in 1968.

Then, as it so often happens, a group of heroes, otherwise known as volunteers, worked to keep the new owners, Penn Central, from tearing up the rails of the abandoned railroad. The Penn Central leased the branch to the State of Connecticut in 1969, and the following year, the Valley Railroad Company was authorized to use over 22 miles of track for freight and passenger service. The Essex to Deep River steam train run was born.

Come ride this beautiful train excursion yourself and see what life was like on before the interstate, when small towns and villages were linked by a local railroad. For more information on the Essex Steam Train and the Valley Railroad Company, have a look at this website.

Charles Dickens on a Connecticut River Steamboat

Above we have a shot of the “Becky Thatcher”, a replica “steamboat” on the Connecticut River operated by the Essex Steam Train & Riverboat out of Essex, Connecticut. More on that in a future post. For now, let’s travel by a real 19th century steamboat with Charles Dickens.

The noted English author toured America in 1842. We noted his observations on the Lowell factory system in this previous post about the mill girls of Lowell and Chicopee.

A later stop on that trip brought him to Springfield, Massachusetts where he boarded a steamboat for Hartford. It was February, and the winter had been so mild that year, that the first steamboat trip of the year was scheduled early.

That is not to say the river was completely without ice.

The river was full of floating blocks of ice, which were constantly crunching and cracking under us; and the depth of the water, in the course we took to avoid the larger masses, carried down the middle of the river by the current…The Connecticut River is a fine stream; and the banks in summer-time are, I have no doubt, beautiful; at all events I was told so by a young lady in the cabin.

The cabin, he notes, was very small, and the passengers all stood in the middle of it for fear of tipping the boat over to one side or other.

After two hours and a half of this odd traveling (including a stoppage at a small town, where we were saluted by a gun considerably larger than our own chimney), we reached Hartford.

It rained heavily, but “being well wrapped up, bade defiance to the weather, and enjoyed the journey.”

His party stayed in Hartford four days, and later went to New Haven by railroad.

Mr. Dickens makes no mention of their maneuvering through Windsor Locks, Connecticut, so-called because the canal locks on the river built there in 1829 make navigation accessible.

The reason they took the steamboat, so Dickens was informed, was because though Hartford is only some 25 miles south of Springfield, the roads (in February 1842) were so difficult to travel that the trip would have taken 10 or 12 hours by stage.

And that was in the fast lane on Route 91.

License Plates

License plate on a roadster on exhibt at the New England Air Musuem, Windsor Locks, CT.

Maybe you can remember as far back as when new car license plates were issued every year.

Maybe you go back only as far as when they were issued every other year, in the early 1960s.

You probably don’t remember when Massachusetts was the first state to issue license plates in 1903 (New York was the first state to require them in 1901, but it was up to the car owner to obtain them.)

Here is a very interesting site run by a license plate collector, with Massachusetts plates through the years, and with samples of plates from all over the country, and some history about our license plates. They weren’t always made of tin, and they didn’t always come in a standard size. A lot of them are still made by prison inmates in many states.

How many of us entertained ourselves by searching out plates from different states on long car drives? You could call it an American pastime.

Rocky Hill-Glastonbury Ferry - Oldest Ferry Service

This quiet little river crossing is the ferry on the Connecticut River that links Rocky Hill with Glastonbury in Connecticut. It is the oldest continuously operating ferry service in the United States, some 355 years this year.

If you were on the road hereabouts in 1655, you could cross on the raft, propelled by the crew using long barge poles. They tried using a horse on a treadmill once, and then steam power in the 1870s, but today you’ll cross on the barge called the Hollister III, towed by a diesel-powered flatboat, the Cumberland.

She holds three to four cars or trucks (depending on the size of the vehicle) at a time, and if you’re fifth in line, why you just wait your turn. Plenty of people do, as the ferry makes between 80 and 100 crossings a day, especially at rush hour. “Rush” hour may not be exactly the right word, but if you’ve got ants in your pants, that’s just too bad for you.

It’s $3 per vehicle, and $1 for walkers or bicyclists. The ferry runs from May 1st through October 31st. There is no service in the winter. The river tends to freeze. Tough to get the boat through. You understand.

But, it’s May now, so as with so much in life, enjoy it while you can.

For more on the Rocky Hill-Glastonbury Ferry, have a look at this website, and this one, too.

New England Train Routes

New London Amtrak station

This Saturday marks National Train Day sponsored by Amtrak. There are a number of events tied to the celebration, the purpose of which is to foster education and interest on train travel in this country.

Interest in future commuter and high-speed rail systems has accelerated, if you will, with federal rail stimulus funding appropriated to Massachusetts last fall to rebuild the rail line to Vermont. A feasibility study may be conducted on a high-speed link from western Mass. to Boston.

Commuter rail service is spotty in New England where once train travel was proliferate. The new scheme to improve commuter service from Connecticut to Vermont recalls the days of over 40 years ago and the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, when commuter rail linked Springfield to New Haven. The new projected route through Springfield, Holyoke, Northampton, and Greenfield to Vermont is being referred to as the Knowledge Corridor.

Part of the rail stimulus funs will also go to extending Amtrak’s current Downeaster route beyond Portland to Brunswick.

Amtrak currently offers several regional routes which service New England. Have a look at these pages on the Amtrak website for more detail:

The Vermonter, the Downeaster, the Lake Shore Limited, the Ethan Allen Express, the Northeast Regional, and of course the only "high-speed" route, the Acela Express.

Looking down the corridor of a sleeper car.

New England also has a variety of tourist excursion trains which use restored cars from bygone eras to remind us, or give us our first taste, of what train travel was like when it was much more common. Here are a few train adventures you might like to try:

The Essex Steam Train of Essex, Connecticut. The Green Mountain Railroad in Vermont. The Cape Cod Central Railroad in Hyannis, and the Berkshire Scenic Railway from Lenox to Stockbridge, Mass. New Hampshire can boast the most scenic railroads out of any New England state, and here is a website that will link you to a variety of them. The Conway Scenic Railroad in Conway is one of them.

The Green Mountain Railroad at the Bellows Falls station.

Maine has its Maine Eastern Railroad from Rockland to Brunswick, and even little Rhode Island has its Old Colony and Newport Railway. If you’ve traveled on any of these trains, let us know what you thought.

For more on National Train Day, have a look at this website.

You Are Here: New Haven on the Train

You are here: Riding Amtrak south, in coach, as the sign on the Connecticut Commuter Rail platform flashes by: NEW HAVEN.

I don’t know if taking a clear photo will even be possible on one of those high-speed trains that are found in other countries and that are proposed for future operation here in the U.S. But, I can hardly wait to find out.

More trains, please.

The Shunpike - Charlemont, Mass.

Still lingering in Charlemont, Mass. (see Tuesday’s post on the Bissell Bridge), we come upon this historical marker for the “Shunpike.” You can read for yourself that it marks the spot on the colonial road (now called The Mohawk Trail by the tourism industry and called Rte 2 and Rte. 8A by the mapmakers), where 18th century travelers forded the Deerfield River rather than pay a toll to cross over the bridge.

This boycotting took place in 1797, and the movement it began led to the establishment of toll-free travel in Massachusetts by 1810. The 20th century brought us new tolls on the Mass. Pike, but that’s another story.

This Mohawk Trail was originally a footpath carved out of the woods by the natives, then hacked out into an ox road by the English settlers. While this historical marker might seem to reinforce the legend of Yankee tightfistedness, we might remember that so-called “shunpikes” (because you were shunning the turnpike toll), popped up in various other parts of the U.S. as well. This might have been the first, but was by no means the last.

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.