Nostalgia

This has been a week filled with nostalgia.  I know, we're only half way through, but that doesn't change the fact that I've been down all sorts of roads to the past.  It started off on Monday when I went searching for a picture of a graduate in the Class of 1945 of Cabot High School.  You see, I'd agreed to do a small project for the Cabot School Alumni Association, and needed to have everything done well before their meeting this Saturday.

Fred was going to recycle in Wolcott first thing Monday morning, so I decided to go along and we'd come back by way of the South Walden Road into Cabot and I'd stop at the historical society building and check out the Class of 1945 yearbook.  It didn't take long to discover that class didn't have a yearbook - there was only the small pamphlet style "Broadcast" with few photos, and none that I could use.  

Going back in those old school records always interests me, and this was no different.  I got the two photos I was looking for, finally, and in the process, remembered names and events I hadn't thought about in years.  I guess that's why people attend class reunions and come back to town for Old Home Day - it's the trip down Memory Lane that gets 'em every time.

I took another stroll back in time when I began to answer an e-mail sent by the son of one of my late cousins, curious about his dad's visits to the farm long before he was born.  I spent several hours searching for snapshots to scan and send with my rather lengthy response to this young man, my "second cousin" I never got to know before, and I was pleased that he responded with more questions and some photos from his collection.   He had contacted me after finding on the internet the little house next door to us that he remembered visiting when he was very young.  

Yesterday I was also working on a photo project using some recently donated early Joe's Pond photo postcards.  I don't go back nearly as far as they do, but I do go back far enough to remember how different the landscape around the pond was when I was growing up here more than a few decades ago.  Most of the land around the pond was productive farm land, and there were far  more trees along the shoreline, and only a few scattered cottages, and none of the cottages had well manicured lawns - people came to camp to rest and relax, not to fuss over flower beds or mow grass.  Back in those days, a camp was really a camp, not even close to being a year around home. This picture shows the shoreline along what is now Sandy Beach Road.  West Shore Road can be seen clearly, the photographer must have been high on the hillside somewhere between Don Encarnacion's and our house, or maybe even standing in the pasture on the Bolton farm where we kids played and rounded up the cows.  As you can see, there is a very open pasture in the foreground, and open fields on the lower side of the road.  The Wilber Ewen farm buildings were just out of sight at the right of the picture, and that's where Pupino's house is now.  Even the marshes where the channel comes into the pond were more open than they are today.  My Grandmother Bolton used to pick blueberries along the channel - they kept a rowboat at a landing about where John and Liz Randall's is now, and there was a favorite picnic spot a little way up the channel where Grandma and probably the younger children (there were ten children in all, and I doubt all of them could have gotten into the boat!) would spend a whole day picking blueberries.  Then, of course, Grandma would carefully preserve them to use in the winter - after she made a few pies, of course.  In those days, they picked berries by the milk pail full.  They were plentiful, if you knew where to look for them.

I've enjoyed being in some sort of time warp off and on so far this week - it has been sometimes lovely, sometimes sad.  But along with all of that, I've heard in "real time" from several Joe's Ponders, too, and learned that Martin and Kate Bertolini are going to be year 'rounders now at Joe's Pond.  They've sold their St. Johnsbury home and will make 66 Cove Road their home.  I also heard from Bryce Montgomery that they decided not to make the trip north from their Florida home this year.  I had wondered why I hadn't bumped into Bryce, and now I know.   Craig "Bugs" Ward and his wife, Patti, were at their camp on Barre Avenue for a while, but I didn't get to see them.  Craig and his brother, Matt, grew up with my kids.  There were lots of good times shared by the boys, and it makes me happy they have continued the friendship.  The Wards were excellent neighbors, and I missed both after Bill died and Jane no longer came to camp.  It's good Matt and Bugs still come occasionally, though.

And then I spoke with Granddaughter Jo-Ann this afternoon, and she's super excited that school is beginning within a matter of days, now.  This mystifies me - I was never, ever, excited to have school start.  For me, it meant the end of a glorious summer spent with my many cousins as they visited the farm from Connecticut, or Niagara Falls or Massachusetts.  It meant putting on dresses instead of shorts, shoes that were stiff compared to being in tennis shoes or sandals, and long hours sitting still instead of being free to wander the woods and fields.  I'm delighted Jo-Ann looks forward to school, and I hope she will find high school even more rewarding than her three years spent at Waterford School.  I'm really glad I don't have to be sad for her like I always was for my kids when we had to leave Joe's Pond to go back to town for school.  There it is again, that twinge of nostalgia . . .

Alumni Day in Cabot is this Saturday, August 10th.  There is a big lawn sale on the common, the historical society museum will be open from 1-3 p.m., so I'll probably finish off the week with more nostalgic journeys.