This week’s column will be an extended reminiscence.
I was not yet four when my father got ordered to Fort Devens, Massachusetts. There was no on-base housing available for us, so my father looked for a cheap rental house. He found a wickedly cheap rental west of Fort Devens, out a country highway called Leominster Road. The house was at the end of a 600-yard driveway from the highway through woods and past a field of tall grass gone to seed stretching out in front of the house.
My favorite thing that happened, as my mother bounded up to enter the house, was her reaction to a black racer snake crossing in front of her on the porch just as she got there. She screamed. I knew right then I was going to love the house.
It was a two story house built of cinder blocks. It also had a basement. There was a garden area on one side and in front just to the right of the porch was a sandbox for me. It had an incredibly leaky flat roof. During rains, water dripped down all over the house all the way to the basement. Hence, it was wickedly cheap.
I was allowed to walk the 600 yards back toward Leominster Road. But I wasn't allowed to wander along the road. This meant I was effectively isolated unless my parents drove me away from the house. There was a house with children around my age just a half mile back toward the town, but I never went there. However, there was a house with an old married couple on the other side of the road and a quarter mile further west. When my parents needed a babysitter, I got driven to the old couple’s house and left in their care.
I’ve forgotten their names now. I’ll guess Robert and Martha.
It turned out Robert was the landlord of the house we were living in. What I found really interesting was that he was a retired farmer and that field out front of the house was land that he farmed.
Robert and I hit it off after he taught me it was OK to ask questions. You see, when I met him I was afraid to ask questions because my father always yelled at me and called me stupid for not already knowing the answers I was supposed to know from birth. Robert figured that out from watching my interactions with my father when I was being dropped off the first time. As soon as my parents drove away, he told me my father was wrong to stop me from asking questions. Next thing I knew he was answering all sorts of questions, like why the sky is blue and what causes rainbows. He then moved on to why Robert quit being a farmer.
The answer had two parts. First he got to where he could get Social Security. Second, the farming on his land was awful. He said in that part of Massachusetts, the main crop is rocks. Every year at the spring thaw the fields would be strewn with new rocks that had to be cleared and he had to do it.
I felt sorry for him, but he laughed and said it was all right, he’d worked out a way to make money off the land. He was eventually going to sell the land to a gravel company. Let them harvest the rocks. He was just waiting for a good bid.
That made me feel sorry for myself. I liked the house by the woods and I thought it was going to be torn down to make room for the gravel company. He said, it won’t happen soon. Your parents will get housing on base before any company moves in and sets up operation.
He was right. He didn’t get a deal with a gravel company for the whole year and a half that we lived at the house in the country.
But about 55 years later, using satellite images on the internet, I was able to find the exact spot where the house had been on the long driveway from the road. It was at the end of train tracks leading from a warehouse. A further internet search found it was owned by a gravel company.
Robert must have got his dream.
Dr. Wes is the Real Change Circulation Specialist, but, in addition to his skills with a spreadsheet, he writes this weekly column about whatever recent going-ons caught his attention. Dr. Wes has contributed to the paper since 1994. Curious about his process or have a response to one of his columns? Connect with him at [email protected].
Read more of the July 26-Aug. 1, 2023 issue.