Summer of '56 - Chappaquiddick and Blue Hill

The following summer was split between the Vineyard and Blue Hill. We spent the first two weeks at the Dike House on Chappaquiddick. The house was quite isolated, located at the end of a long road consisting of two dirt tracks with a grass hump in between. The road ended with a small parking area just past the Dike House, right before a small humpback bridge built from railroad tie-like material. The road did not continue on the other side of the bridge; the bridge led only to sand dunes. The only people who drove over the bridge were surf fishermen with four-wheel-drive cars that could be driven on sand.

It was an eventful two weeks, fun but unlucky. The crabbing was excellent although my uncle Frannie did get a nasty bite from a blue claw as he was trying to take it out of the crab net. His hand bled considerably. One day I left my favorite baseball glove on the roof of our Plymouth station wagon. Naturally, the next time my parents drove into town the glove fell off and was lost. I dropped and broke a new fishing reel the same day I bought it, and our outboard motor vibrated its way loose and dropped off our dinghy into the creek as we were motoring back from a fishing trip. Fortunately we were almost home and were able to locate and retrieve the motor the next day, although we couldn't use it the rest of the time there and had to resort to rowing. I wonder how much of this bad luck was foreshadowing as the locale was to become infamous when Teddy Kennedy drove off the Dike Bridge in 1969. That bridge was our playground; it was a hundred yards from the house. We fished and swam off it daily. I have a very strong opinion about the Kennedy incident.

After Chappaquiddick, we headed back to our old stomping grounds, Blue Hill. I always loved the drive up to Maine. My mother and I played animal whist incessantly. This was a game where you counted animals seen along the way, different animals being worth different amounts of points, first person to 100 points wins. Cows were worth 1 point, horses 3 points, dogs 5 points, cats 10 points, dogs in automobiles 25 points and cats in windows 100 points. There was no problem seeing lots of animals in those days since a good part of the drive was on rural roads.

Our animals were good travelers. Few cars were air conditioned in the mid-50's which was fine with our dogs. They loved to stick their heads out the car windows as we drove. Even Puddy liked to travel. She would meow for maybe the first five minutes then settle down in her bed and enjoy the rest of the trip quietly. Her cat carrier was a bushel basket.

We rented the Byers's house, friends from Andover, MA. The house was not your usual summer rental house; it was a large, formal home. A typical downeaster named Knute lived nearby. He was a local handyman/fisherman and a real character. My friend John and I spent lots of time with him.

I believe this was the summer I learned mumbletypeg, a game in which you made a knife stick in the ground by flipping it off your fingers, throwing it over your back and making it "jump the fence," your hand being the fence. In those days, every boy carried a knife. Not so today, although a good sailor still carries one.

This is the first summer I don't remember any of my brothers being there. It had been a while since Davie had spent the summer with us. He left Harvard to join the Marines when the Korean War started and had lived away ever since. Far and Rob had summer jobs out west digging pipeline trenches for oil companies.

We had several sets of cousins in Blue Hill, my mother's first cousins Guy Hayes, Bart Hayes and Ruthie (Pooh) Hayes and their families. Guy Hayes owned a large, red farm house just south of Blue Hill. He had 6 kids, 3 girls and 3 boys. Lucy, the oldest, was my age. I could whistle but couldn't tie my shoes. Lucy could tie her shoes but couldn't whistle. We competed to see who would master the other's skill first. She won.

We spent the next two summers in Blue Hill as well. That's for the next blog.