Random Stories from the Past

John Goffe’s Mill

 In 1744, John Goffe built a saw and grist mill in Bedford on Bowman’s Brook. This is the same brook in which our children swam in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It flowed through the back part of our animal hospital property on Old Bedford Road. Several miles east, Little, my horse, and I would ride on the bank of the brook and play in the flowing water in the late 1940’s. From there, continuing three more miles east, the water of Bowman’s Brook was held back by a twenty foot high dam, forming a ten acre pond and waterfall. Water flowing over the dam drove the big water wheel that supplied the power for the mill. As children, Tony and I swam in the pond. We used to walk along on the top of the two foot wide and twenty-five feet long dam to then dive off into the deep water on the pond side.

As I think about it now, our playing on that dam must have been quite dangerous.

George Woodbury, whose family owned this property for generations, was an author who wrote a history about John Goffe’s Mill. This best seller was the narrative about his restoring the crumbling ruins of the stone grinding flour mill building and of his refurbishing the machinery of the grist and saw mills. George, an eighth generation direct descendant, inherited his family’s derelict mill in 1929. Twenty years earlier, in 1909, the old dam had collapsed due to a spring flood.  His family had owned and operated the mill for almost two centuries. George renovated mill and it was again in operation during the 1940’s and 1950’s, turning out ground flour and pine furniture.

Today, a Quality Inn and the Wayfarer Convention Center are on the John Goffe’s Mill site with walkways over the falls and a gift shop that sells quaint art objects portraying aspects of the mill.

George was highly versatile. Now let me describe an equally unusual project of his; mechanically reconstructing his 1917 Stanley Steamer. This rare, unique automobile used water heated to steam as its source of power. He was a brilliant, inventive engineer and devised remarkable technological advances as he rebuilt the engine. His book about his Stanley Steamer odyssey also became a best seller. An amazing fact about the Stanley Steamer is its top speed. In 1907, one was clocked at 150 miles per hour.

I can remember elderly George arriving at our house in the summertime to visit Mummy and Daddy in his very special, shiny, yellow with black trim, antique roadster. This unusual car would be hissing clouds of steam as it turned into our driveway.

His visits were always exciting.

However, even more unusual to Tony and me was the appearance of George Woodbury’s face. He always had a beard. I remember that sometimes it was a goatee. Growing up, even into my early adulthood, he was the only man I ever had seen that had a beard!   (Except Santa Claus).

Last night I mentioned this to Nifty, who is fifty-two years old. She was dumbfounded.

A Stanley Steamer Car

Our first truck that we used to pull our first trailer. Stevie is in the foreground.

After having enjoyed our first ever horse show so much, I was then determined to take Stevie to more horse shows. For safety reasons, we couldn’t continue transporting Aloysius in the back seat of our car. We bought a very beat-up, old, two-horse trailer. It looked terrible but with fresh, red paint and a little fixing up it worked out just fine to transport a little, Shetland ponyTo pull this trailer, my only choice was our dilapidated farm truck. We normally used it mainly for projects around our property. This rusty, dented, old, 1937 Ford dump truck with no muffler even had holes in the floor and springs coming out of the seat. Both vehicles looked as though they should be abandoned in a junk yard. However, I was confidant that I could handle this rickety rig. I didn’t really care what it looked like. I didn’t have any other choice. At least, we could get to a horse show. Besides, what really mattered was the pony inside the trailer. The truck and trailer would only go forty miles per hour at top speed. Putting up with such slow progress just showed how much I wanted to go to horse shows.

From the beginning, Stevie and Aloysius soon became a favorite pair with horse show judges. The first year, even though this tiny twosome was very young, with Aloysius just three and Stevie only four, they did very well. Week after week, in small shows, they would ride in pet pony classes against much larger ponies and older riders who were up to fourteen years old. In fact, Stevie and Aloysius often won first place. Near the end of our first show season, I decided to take the pair to the Lancaster Fair, which had a large class A horse show, one hundred and forty miles away. The judge had never seen Stevie and Aloysius before. This would be challenging! 

I was concerned that the old truck might have a problem going up the very steep hill outside Whitefield, New Hampshire. Even though I made a ‘running start’ the truck barely chugged to the top. I think we were traveling about two miles an hour by the time we made the hill. With that obstacle over, I thought there would be no more problems. 

Not so. We were about to have a significant mishap. In the line of slow traffic, when we were approaching the gate at the Lancaster fairgrounds, I heard a loud crash and scraping sound behind me. I looked in the mirror. Somehow, the trailer had separated from the truck and had come to a stop in the road directly behind us. Fortunately, an open, auto repair shop happened to be on the side of the road beside us. 

How could we have been so lucky not to have had this accident when we were going down the highway at 40 miles per hour? The trailer fell off and yet stayed right in the road behind our truck. This happened next to an open garage! The mechanic at the garage said he would fix the problem that same day. And, furthermore, we were within walking distance to the fair. 

I saddled and bridled Aloysius. With Stevie in the saddle, I led them toward the horse show gate, carrying a water pail full of the necessary things that we would need for that day. We walked by the line of the fair-bound traffic that was now at a stand-still. In just a few minutes we were inside the grounds. Fortunately a stall was available, which I immediately rented for the day. 

After the pony classes were over, I left Stevie at the fair with friends and walked back to the garage. The truck and trailer were ready. I drove across the road to the fairgrounds and picked up my champion passengers. 

That day, Stevie and Aloysius had their ‘biggest’ win ever. They won all three of their classes; Pet Pony, Trail Pony, and the Championship. Each class was large, having at least fifteen ponies competing. 

What a day!

Trip, 7 years old

Every Easter morning, at the crack of dawn, our children would jump out of bed and rush downstairs to see if the Easter Bunny had come during the night. Yes, again he had been there. An Easter egg or jelly bean was hidden in every nook and cranny of our living room.

I always got up extra early to make sure that the younger children started collecting the candy first so that the hunt was fair for the littlest ones. After breakfast, at 7 am, they were allowed to eat their candy. Only on Halloween and Easter were they permitted to have all they wanted. The children would happily sort their jelly beans into different colored piles, swapping one color for another, and counting how many of their favorites they had.  While they did this, they ate jelly bean after jelly bean.

Later that morning, we would dress up in our Sunday best clothes and drive to the ten o’clock service at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church where we would meet Mummy and Daddy. I was always proud of how nice the children looked and how well they always behaved during church services. We all sat together as a family filling an entire pew, about half way down the isle on the right side.

One especially memorable Easter in 1962, about thirty minutes into the service, seven-year-old Trip, started to fidget. I asked him to sit still. He replied that he didn’t feel well. Then I told him, if he really were going to be sick, to go to the bathroom. He settled down and appeared to be fine.

Just as Mr. Gannon, our priest, started the sermon, Trip jumped up and ran down the right aisle toward the door to the parish hall at the front of the church. To get to this door he had to go to the far left corner, crossing directly in front of the altar. When he reached the pulpit from which Mr. Gannon was speaking, Trip stopped.

Right there, in front of the entire congregation, he threw up and threw up and threw up! There were jelly beans everywhere. There were red ones and yellow ones and green ones and orange ones.  Some were slightly digested, gooey blobs, but most were whole.  How could he have eaten so many!  The service stopped while several men tried to clean up the candy with mops and buckets of water. This did not work! All the jelly beans just rolled everywhere when they were pushed with the mops. They finally used a dustpan and brush. Trip had recovered long before the jelly beans were cleaned up and the service was resumed.

This was, indeed, a memorable Easter!

This story will be a mixture of facts about Uncanoonuc Mountain combined with memories of my experiences there.

Uncanoonuc Mountain, 1321 feet, in Goffstown, New Hampshire, eight miles from my Bedford home, was historically, for a brief period, an important snow train ski area destination. In the 1930′s, many skiers from Massachusetts took a snow train from Boston, fifty miles to the mountain. After having arrived at the area, the eager skiers rode up one of skiing’s first incline railroads (built in 1905 as a summer resort attraction) to the summit.

The resort had been further developed to become a ski area in the early 1930’s. The vertical drop is 700 feet. The main ski trail was three-quarters of a mile long.

The maximum capacity of the train was 300 skiers an hour. In one day in 1935, 1100 skiers were taken to the summit. Uncanoonuc was the first mountain in the United States to be served by a lift other than a rope tow. The railroad did not operate during or after WWII; but skiers continued to use the trails, hiking up and skiing down.

The resort had been active with ski carnivals and ski races all through the 30′s, and then started up again after WWII in the late 40′s even though the railway was not then in use and ski racers had to climb. In fact, I remember, in 1949, being a spectator in a large crowd at the eastern USA downhill and slalom championship.

When Tony and I skied there with Daddy in the 40′s, along with groups of his friends, we had to side-step, with our skis on, packing the slope of the long, steep, wide section of the S-26 trail. I cannot remember the time duration of that chore, but I bet it took hours.

In my early teens, I recall skiing there with high school friends. These were the days we didn’t go ski jumping. A new road went to the top starting at the back side of the mountain. We took turns driving, picking up five or six skiers at the end of the trail, circling the mountain on an eight mile ride on back roads and then on up the mountain road to the top. If we timed it right, we could get three runs before dark after school got out.

Daddy, who was an expert skier, (an Olympian plus somersaults off jumps) had broken his arm when he was at Dartmouth. That had been his only sports injury. When he was about fifty, he was talking to friends at the top of Uncanoonuc as he was about ready to ski down. For some reason, his skis slipped out from underneath him and he fell down hard!  His collar bone was broken quite seriously.

During the summer, I would go with friends to Uncanoonuc Lake located near the bottom of the ski trail at the base of the mountain. At the near end was a clean, sandy beach with clear, cold water. As teenagers, we preferred the far end where there was a nine foot-dam from which we could dive. We never saw anybody else anywhere on the lake. I never understood why this beautiful lake was always deserted.

Years later, the children and I hiked up the mountain several times in the fall.

Occasionally Jonnie would drive all of us to Uncanoonuc to see the sunrise. The day would start before dawn when he would bring with us freshly baked, hot apple turnovers from the Granite Street Bakery. Our kids currently remember also going there in the late afternoon. Those times Jonnie always brought a large order of fried smelt from Newton’s Fish Market that we all would eat while we watched the evening city lights of Manchester come on.

Aloysius and three year-old Sam after winning their first Pet Pony class. Her feet are in the stirrups correctly. A rider's feet should be placed in this position to avoid being dragged should she fall from her pony and catch her foot in her stirrup.

When I was six, in 1938, I started riding lessons at the Back Acres Riding Club with Mr. Havey. At the time, he owned a lovely estate quite far out in Bedford that had a unique stable constructed of stone. An excellent, white-railed, riding ring was nearby.

Next to the ring was an indoor riding arena with bleachers for spectators. We were allowed to ride in this building when the weather was very rainy or snowy.

I remember one incident clearly, in maybe 1940. Being with a group of young riders, led by Mr. Havey, I started down one of the narrow, dirt roads. My horse’s name was Chocorua, a chunky bay with a wide blaze. Of all the horses, he was my favorite, gentle and usually dependable. I was riding at the rear of the group, happily chatting with one of my friends. All of a sudden, for some unknown reason, Chocorua whirled and took off at a full gallop back toward home. It was the fastest I had ever ridden. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop him. I almost fell off when he swerved to go into the stable.

The stable door was quite large. However, the door of Chocorua’s box stall was only high enough for a horse to enter; but not with a rider on his back.

As he charged into his stall, I was violently knocked off by banging into the top of the stall doorway. I flew backward, right over his rump and on down, hard onto the floor. Fortunately, both my shoes were untied and stayed in the stirrups while my feet slipped right out, leaving me free to be swept off. If my feet had been caught in the stirrups, I might have been seriously hurt. Luckily, I had no injury at all from this dangerous accident.

For years afterward, I never tied my shoes when I rode.

One of the first riding skills I always taught my children, starting when they were as young as three years old, was for them to have their feet positioned in their stirrups properly to help avoid any accident that might happen with their feet getting caught.

French's store - note.. our church to the upper right, behind the store

In 1869, French’s store was built in Bedford Center, located at the bottom of the long, grassy hill from our Presbyterian Church. It mainly was an animal feed store. In addition, one could buy gasoline, groceries and farm tools. Their ice cream was the best. Vanilla, chocolate and strawberry were the only three flavors. I remember Fred French piling as many scoops as he could on a cone for ten cents. Balancing it carefully, sometimes we had to use both hands as my friends and I would take our mountains of ice cream outside. Sitting on the wooden steps, we ate this delicious treat as fast as we could before it melted on a hot summer day.

After this country store burned down in 1963, the lawn in front of the church was extended all the way down to route 101, which, at the time, ran through Bedford Center.

Another fun activity at French’s store, is that, in the 1930’s, when Tony and I were small children, we were allowed to go back into the very large grain storage space at the rear of the building and jump around on the big stacks of hundred-pound bags of grain as though we were in a gym. The bags were brightly colored with geometric and flower-printed patterns. The grain in the bags provided a wonderfully sweet, pungent aroma filling the air, a memory that is clear in the minds of Tony and me to this day.

For many years, most grain bags had been made of white cotton. About 1925, the grain companies realized that the farmers’ wives had been using this soft, white fabric to make undergarments, baby clothes, dishcloths and many other utilitarian items. The manufacturers began offering feed bags in appealingly printed designs. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, as many as three million women in this country were making their own dresses, children’s school clothes and men’s shirts. Leftover scraps were saved for quilts and doll clothes. Grain companies hired national artists to create the art work for this unusual promotional market.

Many boys and girls in my grade school wore grain-bag material shirts and dresses to school and were delighted to do so. This homemade clothing was comfortable, colorful, fashionable, and furthermore, the children had a varied wardrobe.

One winter, when I was in the seventh grade, several of my friends and I belonged to a 4-H Club. As a project, I made an apron and a pair of pajamas out of feed bags. It took me all winter to complete this task because I had to sew all of it by hand. I did it but I was not very good at it. Sewing certainly was not my favorite thing to do. Mary Carr, the 4-H leader, was quite strict, and criticized my work a lot. That took all of the fun out of the project. I think that she hoped that her group of children would win a prize at the county fair. For sure, the pajamas I made would never have won any kind of a ribbon.

However, that same winter, I did learn to knit, which I loved. I made a large, light-blue, cable-stitch, ski sweater. I remember that it had four cables on the front, four on the back and one cable on each sleeve. It was my favorite sweater and lasted for years until I really wore it out. Time after time, I mended the holes in the elbows. Finally, the wool in the whole sweater became so threadbare, it was beyond repair. I had worn this sweater for so many years that now, sixty-five years later, Tony still remembers it.

This sweater meant so much to me that I even chose it to wear for a family picture-taking event.

It was a sad day for me when I threw the worn out sweater away!

My beloved sweater.

Sam, age three, eleven years after the story below, showing Aloysius at the Manchester Riding Club, in the same ring with the same single rail.

In 1957, with four-year-old Stevie as the rider on Aloysius, the first horse show for our family ever entered, was held at the exclusive Manchester Riding Club, about four miles from our house. We had no trailer. Trusting Aloysius was loaded into the back seat of our family car, an old Oldsmobile. He jumped into the car with no hesitation.

There was not enough room for the pony to stand on all four feet so, on his right side, he folded both of his right legs, front and hind, and rested them on the back seat. He braced himself, balancing on his two left legs. Stevie sat close to him holding his halter. Comfortably settled there, this good pony traveled contentedly toward the horse show. Excited with anticipation, I drove slowly down the road. I didn’t know it at that time, but this would be the start of all eight of our children competing on Aloysius in horse shows for the next twenty years.

In the Pet Pony class, our first class ever, only four ponies were competing. They first walked, trotted and cantered around the ring. Stevie and Aloysius did just fine.

Then, the judge told the riders to REVERSE! Correctly, Stevie asked Aloysius to turn toward the rail. When he had only had gone half way around, he hesitated. Stevie urged him to continue but there must have been a misunderstanding. It seemed that Aloysius thought he was supposed to walk straight ahead. The single rail of the ring was high enough for Aloysius to go under it. And he did!

There was just enough room below the rail for tiny Aloysius to go under but not enough room for his little rider. Stevie was pushed off by the rail, back over Aloysius’ rump. She was left sitting in the dusty ring with Aloysius standing quietly on the outside of the ring, looking at her. I was so proud of what a good sport she was, eager for me to put her back on her pony to finish the class. Of course, she came in last. Nevertheless, she was smiling, very proud of her fourth place ribbon.

At the end of the show, Stevie and Aloysius once again were loaded, in the same way, in the back seat of our Oldsmobile. With Stevie affectionately patting her beloved pony’s head, I happily drove home and Aloysius made the trip without any problem.

Our first horse show had been an outstanding success!

I don’t have a Halloween picture of Tony and me. This photo is of the next generation, Trip and Stevie, with a pumpkin, at about the same age that we were in the 1930’s, when we went to the Fisher’s on Halloween.

Esther and Harry Fisher owned a chicken farm and an apple orchard. They were a very nice, elderly couple that lived up a hill on Meetinghouse Road about a quarter of a mile away from our house. (The Jenkins and then the Girards lived there afterward).

Even though Tony and I were quite young, (perhaps four and six), we were told we could go by ourselves on Halloween to the Fisher home. So…. we were going to walk alone to their house after dark on Halloween night.

On Halloween Day, Daddy carved faces in our pumpkins and put real candles inside. It was exciting to get dressed up in scary costumes. The best thing of all was that we were going to be allowed to go out after dark without our parents. Daddy lit our pumpkins. What a thrill to see the carved faces turn into glowing Jack-o-lanterns! We were kissed good-by and we were off. It was very dark.

This was a big adventure to walk on the road alone at night. We were a little afraid. Mummy and Daddy watched us from the lawn as we walked all the way on the unlit dirt road up the hill to the Fishers. They opened the door in answer to our knocking. Both of them raved about our costumes and our candle-lighted Jack-o-lanterns, told us that we were very brave to be out by ourselves on Halloween, hugged us and sent us on our way back home.

Across the road from the Fishers was the Gault farm. Louie and Abbie Gault were old, reclusive and not friendly. From time to time, I had seen Abbie haying with her work horse in their fields. I never saw Louie. We had been warned by older children that he only had one hand and he would ‘get us’ if we ever went near their house or barn. We really didn’t like walking by their barn, which was close to the road. This was especially spooky at night.

As we started home, I noticed that the huge, decrepit door on the Gault’s barn was open a crack. Getting up courage, I decided to cross the road and peek in. When I got to the scary door, it was so dark inside that I couldn’t see anything. I pulled hard and it opened a little more. I stared into pitch black darkness. Then, something moved. I could barely see a moving shadow and then a face loomed out of the darkness just inches from mine. IT WAS LOUIE!! He had been watching us.

I screamed at the top of my lungs and so did Tony. Terrified, we dropped our pumpkins in the road and ran home as fast as we could right straight into Mummy and Daddy’s arms. I never had seen Louie before and never saw him since. And, I never looked in the barn again!

Peter as Sir Lancelot rides in on Aloysius

In 1965, I was called by the Boy Scout leader asking me to be a den mother for the Cub Scouts. I said, “I couldn’t possibly be one. I don’t know anything about it.” He replied,” I saw that ten-foot, up-side-down snowman that you and your kids made last week. Anybody that could make that happen could be a den mother.” I agreed to be a den mother. Of course, Trip (9) and Peter (7) became cub scouts.

The 10-foot snowman in our front yard

Each month, a national project theme came through the scout leadership. One theme especially memorable to me was to prepare a skit about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. For a solid month, the boys happily worked on their costumes. They constructed their helmets and armor from plastic bleach bottles sprayed-painted silver. They built their swords and artfully decorated shields from heavy cardboard covered with aluminum foil. These kids worked really hard. They were very excited because not only was their armor looking realistic to them but, more importantly, Aloysius, our pony, would play the part of a medieval war-horse. Even Aloysius would have a royal costume and armor on his head. They really liked what a surprise this performance would be. I asked them to keep it a secret and they did. The boys were so motivated that they had no problem memorizing the words of the skit I had written.

The monthly meeting was held in the evening at the Bedford Presbyterian parish house. When it was our turn to perform our skit, with an audience of about one hundred people, there were gasps of amazement as Aloysius, our pony, entered with Peter riding as Sir Lancelot and Trip walking along at his side as King Arthur. The rest of the den followed in their shining armor as knights. One cooperative boy was beautifully dressed as Lady Guinevere in a light-orange, flowing gown and a high, conical headpiece of the era. They marched up the isle alone to the stage where they acted out their play not needing my help at all. It was so good! The boys were great! Aloysius was great! Our wonderful pony came through again, having behaved perfectly throughout the show. At the end he stood patiently during the cheering and clapping, as though he realized that part of the applause was for him.

I never thought to ask permission to take Aloysius inside the parish hall. I doubt that it would have been granted but the skit was huge success. For many years afterwards people would mention it to me. There aren’t many parish houses that have had a pony inside.

Years later I had a pleasing reminder of this event. A young man I did not recognize came to our home. He then explained that he had been a cub scout in my den, remembered this skit, and he thought I was the best den mother there ever was.

Tony during the the first summer of the pond

Behind our carriage house was a two-acre swamp. A few years after Mummy and Daddy had  bought our house in 1933, Daddy got the idea to build a pond in the center of our ‘down-below’ land. He saw a number of advantages. Starting from the ‘height of land’ to the south exists a mile-long, gradual watershed, flowing down Liberty Hill, and through our property, ending in our swamp. This constant water source, created springs and underground fresh water steadily flowing through our land.

First, a pond would help control the flow and drain the land around the carriage house. Second, we would have a large source of water in case of a fire. Further, his children would have a place to swim at their own home. Finally, a nicely landscaped pool would enhance the lower section of their country home.                 

In the spring of 1939, Daddy, in great contrast to his daily intellectual work in his elegant law office, laboriously dug up the wetly heavy loam surface by hand. He had to dig ditches to drain the deepening water so it would flow down to the beginning of the swamp. When he had shoveled down to a depth of about two feet, he hit ledge. Then he dynamited, quite bravely, I now think. After lugging out the broken rocks, the entire floor and three sides if the pond were solid granite. Against the fourth side (the south side) he constructed a wall of large fieldstones, cemented to be mostly watertight. Small cracks did exist, allowing a constant flow of fresh water that kept the pond filled up. Fortunately, the water did not seem ever to leak out. The pond stayed full naturally, clear and clean all summer long.

Daddy installed a cleverly designed drain in the lowest point so the pool could be completely emptied for the necessary spring cleaning. On the emptying day, Tony and I (and Alice when she was old enough) caught every water creature we could find. We put them in pails and carried them down to the swamp where they could continue their happy lives. Lots of fun! Alice, today, remembers the spring cleaning day as her most favorite pond day of the year. Maybe that reveals a bit why she became a biology professor. For refilling the pond quickly, water was piped down from our house three hundred feet away. The pond seldom needed that well water except to fill it faster after it was cleaned.

When the pond was refilled, it was a clean place for us to swim. It always had a constant supply of fresh spring water. The pond stayed magically clear for the whole season. We never needed a filter or any chemicals. The solid granite bottom was made up of different depths and most of it was smooth. On the east side, Daddy constructed wide entry steps of heavy granite slabs. The pool was five feet deep there.

Me jumping into the pond

However, a bit further out, under the water, there was an abruptly rising, two-foot ledge with a wickedly sharp, ninety degree, upper edge. In today’s world, few parents would allow children to dive into such danger. We knew exactly where that ledge was and no one ever struck it with their head. Some places were uneven from the blasting, but we knew every inch of that granite pool floor and seldom even had a stubbed toe. While the pond was maybe only three feet deep in the center, it was also five feet on the far side and that is where we did most of our diving. A high boulder there was our diving platform. Tony and I never had an accident.

Fifteen years after my pond picture above, when I was 24, here is Stevie at theBowman Brook swimming hole that was on our Animal Hospital property where our children grew up.

We also had fun swimming in brook-fed swimming holes in Bedford within bicycle distance. When we were teenagers, we went to two local, abandoned granite quarries which were over 100 feet deep. Great for diving! Occasionally, we were driven to Baboosic Lake, eight miles away. We enjoyed hanging out at a rustic pavilion and on the playing beach. Swimming races three hundred feet out to a wooden float was a popular challenge.

Tony and I learned to swim and dive well at the Y’s in Manchester during the winters. I recall that the municipal pools in Manchester closed down due to the polio threat when I was in the seventh grade. This was the same polio threat that caused me not to be tutored in the summer when I was skipping the eighth grade to go to high school.

I vividly remember the first time I ever saw a private, symmetrically rectangular, in-ground, outdoor pool. Other than two small country stores, Bedford then was so rural that there were no other commercial enterprises. A notable exception was Yvonne’s French Villa, an elaborate, fancy spa that catered to celebrities of the era such as Gypsy Rose Lee, Bette Davis and Peter Lorre. When I was in the seventh grade, the 7^th and 8^th grades (this group was only about six children) had an outing in the late spring to visit the spa. We traveled by foot, a long walk of two hot, dusty miles. Once there, I not only saw this lovely pool, but also I actually swam in it. Perhaps what made this pool such a surprise for me to see was that it was painted in brilliant turquoise.

As the years went by, Tony, Alice and I left home for private schools. Our pond slowly evolved away from being a pristine swimming pool. Mummy and Daddy changed it into a habitat for ducks and geese; rare gold fish and colorful water lilies. Eventually, this wonderful pond fully naturalized, continuing for many years as a happy home for Mummy’s beloved, handsome frogs and turtles.

I don’t think that Daddy ever expected that his pond project on the edge of the swamp would be such a success for so many decades. The pond is still there in 2011, after over seventy years.