Three Years and Counting

The Point has been as quiet as the skies and posting for the sake of posting is not really the point.

We have been here three years now.  The rewards of the place have deepened considerably and they were already considerable from the start.  This is a place I know now; a place that when I hear a bang my mind's eye  can provide the damage. A place where each creek in a step is familiar, each light in a window is a time of day to the minute, each rotation of the light is a deep breath before sleeping.  This cottage and this tower and these grounds fit me (I think all three of us) like the oldest pair of slippers and the worn out jeans and the moth eaten sweater and the brutalized baseball cap that you would never, ever, ever think of throwing away.

The history has become a part of us and we hope us a part of the history.  The celebration last year and the work to resurrect the shed and the utility room were like a movie road trip that reveals some unknowns about the characters and resolves itself with a new kind of bond.  I can see the flowers to be arranged in the gardens already.  I can see what I would like to do with some dicey spots in the kitchen.  I can see it is time for a paint job in places and I can clean this place from top to bottom in about 30 minutes without cracking a sweat.  And in case it sounds like I am getting jaded, let me assure you that every morning and every night there is another chance to notice the blue of the ocean, (yesterday the blue of a Bic pen cover) or the less than flame, more than  orange color of the sun in the west, or the more than murmur, less than rumble of the water on the rocks out front here as they remake the ocean side beach one more time.  It is a constant sensory extravaganza, sound, sight, smell, the knock around of the wind the other night had the house shaking again nearly as bad as the first week we were here and I was seasick in bed. The place is in my bones, and yet it is still teaching me something, still exciting, still a challenge, (birds got into the Tower and trashed the place; a purple red berry mess all over the auxiliary light), still a place to plan and share and care for, be diligent about. I don't get sick of the old stories and I know I am going to get some new ones as the season changes and the crowds thicken.

Pretty fast three years I'd say. Lots to do and lots of growing.  Thanks for checking in from time to time to see what's going on.

No Corn Cob Pipe or Button Nose

As the snow less winter continues to unfold, I was struck today by how quickly accustom we have become to it. Low temperatures are still the rule but a clean track for the cars, no banks to struggle to see around, and a whole set of different muscles we haven't had to use at all, has made this as memorable as a winter with drifts up to the eaves.

People are out and about.  Today a women in 2 inch heals walked all over the beach at low tide photographing rocks and impressions in the sand.  Kids have been photographed on the sea wall; some bundled up against the wind, many not so bundled up. Yesterday I saw a rabbit cross the road as I was driving off the point.  What he and his brothers are eating right now is anyone's guess.  (Grass I planted last fall is green but there isn't much of it.)  There is a filler plant in the garden by the flagpole that seems to have grown since the fall though; I noticed it today when I considered going out there to weed.

That's the kind of winter it has been.  The Groundhog isn't back in the hole yet with his feet up and I am thinking about weeding. The New England Fatalist in me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Will March be the craziest month ever?  The Blizzard of 78 began 34 years ago tonight and today there is a moon that matches the light in the Tower. Are we destined to pay some kind of a price for being able to clean up the yard and go the dump in a sweatshirt?  Haley headed across the parking lot in slippers and no socks today and I only  winced a little.  The cat has spent nearly every night out and if there are rabbits around then he has probably had his share of mice to chase.  Its weird.

A year ago there was five feet of snow on the ground and my boots were getting old.  I had a new bag of salt at the ready and three shovels for each of us.  Maybe the history lesson is that you never can tell.  Or maybe March will shut me up about the weather.

Long Time

The blog has been on the back burner as the day jobs have stacked up.

It has been pleasantly quiet on the Point.  The holidays passed, basketball resumed, I have thought that this small task and that have not been worthy of a report.

One project that has emerged is a collaboration between Julie and I with some photographs she is taking.  On their own, they may be the basis for the Historical Society calendar for 2013.  We are going to tackle that challenge with some help from our friend Nancy. 

What I have been fooling with at odd moments is adding in some special effects to the raw material of Julie's shots.  Here are some examples:

The goal has been to enhance the light or the bring out a detail through cropping. They are pretty good to start.  I am having fun learning how to put them through the software to a different advantage. 

Remember that you can click on any picture to make it bigger.

In the Gallery

Even December mornings have a unique feel to them here. 

The colors this morning were like those in Surrealist painting.

 I got to the kitchen sink and knew I had to take a few shots.

Perfect Day for an Elf to Visit

A wonderful tradition was extended another year.

Flying Santa began visiting Lighthouses and Coast Guard stations in 1929.  We welcomed here to Cedar Point today around 2:30 this afternoon.  A great crowd was managed perfectly by the Scituate police and fire department and no one went home with out a smile.  Julie's photographs are below.  I  will be adding in some video taken from the ground and from the Tower later.  You will want to check back to see the sweep of the helicopter as it delivered Old Saint Nick to Old Scituate Light.

Santa arrived roaring out of the sun from the south and circled Lighthouse Park and the Light twice before swinging into place in the center of the parking lot.  He was met by Betty Kincaid and Dave Ball of the Cedar Point Association, and then Julie, Haley and I were feted with glorious gifts just as the keepers of the most remote Lights once were.  A bag filled with fruits and nuts and sweets to tide us over through the long winter ahead.  I can guarantee we will not fall prey to scurvy here!  I also received some amazing photographs and documents connected to the history of the Light.  That package was signed Ebenezer Osbourne though. He was last seen serving here in 1849.  I will need to figure out if I have a ghost story here after all.

Attending to Santa was Dolly Bicknell, the daughter of the New England icon Edward Rowe Snow. She shared some thank you notes that her father held onto, including one from Scituate Keeper Jamie Turner.  I was even more thrilled when she passed those on for me to scan for the Historical Society.  You see Dolly with Santa in the second to last photo above.

The kids were in awe of the helicopter as much as they were celebrating the visit of Father Christmas.  It was one elegant bird.  Below is a shot I got where you have the technology of today in the foreground and the technology of the past in the back.  There were more dials in there than you would see in a nuclear reactor.  Some kids were able to climb in for a minute or two and have a picture taken.  I doing that next year for sure.

Curiously we ended up with a zillion candy canes once again.  Either Haley has sticky fingers or Santa was even more generous than last year.  Stacked together you would have one very long barber pole.

Check back in a day or so when I get the video edited and see for yourself the rush that this event brought to Cedar Point once again.  Every day here is a gift and this one had many, many bows on it.

Behind the Scenes

I noted last week that I had my hands on a wide angle lens to take a shot on behalf of Google.  I took some others too that will give you a peek at the Cottage layout.

 




Remember that you can click on any image for a larger shot.

Next Sunday we have the annual visit from Flying Santa taking place here at 2:30 in the afternoon.  An earlier notice had said the date was Saturday but the rendezvous has been put back a day.  This is always a thrill for anyone who visits Cedar Point or who lives here.  Cross your fingers that good weather will welcome the Jolly Old Elf to the Jolly Old Light.

You Pick!

Last week Google's Cambridge office contacted the Historical Society with a request for a photograph they could duplicate for a wall size poster.

I looked through what I had and I sent a shot on.  The response was a request for a wide angle, high definition image.  I set out to get one.

First I had to visit our neighbor Linda who had the wide angle lens I needed.  A trip to the top of the Tower though revealed that I had some work to do to make that lantern presentable.  Birds get in there from time to time and they leave their mark.

I started by disassembling the lantern.  I brought it down stairs where I gave it a scrubbing.  This set of images shows you the before and the often asked question about the size of the bulb. The next set you see is the lens apart and reassembled.

With the lantern back in place I turned my attention to the windows.  I have cleaned them all four or five times now and it was a perfect day to go outside for that chore.  The wind was down and the squeeqee/towel combination took the brine right off. The prize here was this great shot of First Cliff in the reflection.

Working up there also let me adjust the web cams and rework the wires.  I wrote about moving the cameras in the last post and you will want to check in there when a storm is on.  The look North is a great shot that includes the ocean and the drive off up Rebecca Road.

The three shots I sent to Google are below.  Let me know which you would choose in their shoes.

The final chore of the weekend was to meet my obligation to hang a Christmas wreath on the Tower and on the house.  I am pleased to say I was able to do it on my own this time and do it right the first time.  A photograph of the Tower with a wreath was described to me as an iconic Scituate image.  Come on down and get one for yourself.

Thanks to Ronny and Cindy Simon of R&C Farms for the beautifully assembled wreaths.  Consider them when you are shopping all year round.  Drop by the Little Red Schoolhouse too and check out the cards, books, and other items for the holidays.  Each purchase helps the Historical Society in its mission of education and historic preservation.  The Schoolhouse is open 10-4 Monday to Saturday.

New Perspective

Have you checked out the web cams lately.  I have made a move.

Taking the suggestion of a neighbor, I took the Harbor Cam and pointed it north.  The harbor has emptied out for the winter and the action in the upcoming season will come from the northeast the way it always does.

Just today there has been a significant spillover and the road is once again filled with seven or eight inches of rocks.  Fred Flintstone time again here on  Cedar Point.

The camera is set so that it is possible to watch the clean up that just began.  As I was typing I heard the sound of a front end loader begin its scrape across the roadway.  If you were clicked into the camera you could watch it live.

To give you one last look at the harbor I have put together a time elapse video that begins in April and ends in early November.  Watch the moorings fill up and empty out again by clicking this link.

I have done some research into a camera that could be controlled on line to pan and zoom.  I hope that just after the first of the year I can bring something like that on line.

I would love it if the word went out that checking in with these camera was the way to check out the waves. About a month ago now I saw five people knocked off the seawall by a rogue wave, all of them older than I am.  Drenched and embarrassed, but thankfully not hurt, they made their way back to their cars.  One woman may have voted for Truman in 48.  She should not have been where she was.  The cameras are a remedy for that.  I get queasy thinking about the day when someone does get hurt out there.

My father regularly described his academic success in these terms, "I belonged to the half that made the top half possible."  Watching people watch the waves makes me think he would have a great deal of competition today.  The bottom half gets bigger with every storm.  Tell them about the cameras before someone, especially a kid brought here by a dense parent, finds him or herself in the water.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Extreme Makeover - Lighthouse Edition

Back in August the Utility room here at the Lighthouse went under the surgeon's knife. Needing more than just plastic surgery, this room had been the neglected Cinderella of the house since 1930.

 Take a peak at this link to a You Tube video to watch the transformation. Then click back to read the rest.

The project had a great number of challenges. There needed to be a coordination of efforts on the part of the general contractor, the plumbing contractor, the electrical contractor, and the heating contractor. Working around an historic site was another. Each party had to be aware of the potential to discover a relic or a clue to how the room was used over the years. We had evidence of the store on site in the records from the twenties and thirties. We eventually found a LaSalle Club Orange Soda bottle cap and a advertisement for Schraft chocolate.  The Schraft sign was an astonishing find as I was digging below the floor.  It somehow survived there more than 70 years. There was also evidence as I noted in an earlier post that the room had been a cobbler's shop.

I also found several names carved into the wall boards and the studs. Iggy and Belz had a dart board and Vareika's ace foreman cut out those boards for me while working on the shingling of the western wall.  You will see that next time you visit along with a piece of sheet rock I cut out from the years that George Downton was marking the storms and the cats here at the Lighthouse.

The name Roy was also carved into that same wall and a little digging revealed that in the 1920 census Roy Spear lived here with Captain Cushman. Roy was the brother in law of Cushman's daughter and he and his family were listed alongside the Captain's as boarders. I am thinking the Belz noted above was a nickname for Ellsworth Spear.

The biggest find of all came when Wood Electric needed access to a stairway that had been blocked off when insulation was added to the cellar floor in the mid 90's. I had been told to leave that door alone, but when we had to open that path for the project I jumped at the chance to take a few pictures. While taking my snaps of as old a door as there is in this place, I noticed that the stairwell walls were lined with cardboard. Peeling a piece back I found printing and my adrenalin began to climb. Retrieving a staple puller, I popped out light nails to reveal movie posters from the Satuit Playhouse. I eventually uncovered seven of them, four in pretty good shape. A quick trip to the Google machine uncovered that the August in question was 1945. These were posters from the week the Second World War ended.


In the last few weeks that stairway has been reworked into a closet. My brother in law took on the task for us and gave us a way to tuck a few things behind a door when the need arises. Deciding to retrieve the last of these movies posters I found another one. A week earlier, different movies, and a date that no history teacher forgets: August 6, 1945. Hiroshima. The Atomic Bomb.

Though not in as good a shape as the prior finds, this one will share a spot in the renovated room. The stories we have to tell are growing still.

A major part of this project was the replacement of the heating system. Shawn Harris Enterprises arranged for the donation of a boiler, an oil tank, and an indirect water heater for the Cottage. We are ever grateful to Shawn and to Smith Boilers and Roth Tanks for their generosity. 190 feet of copper were used in the rebuilding of the heating system. Having researched the burst pipes that Betty Foster and her family lived with here, this upgrade was 30 years over due. What had been a mess of crossed and corroding pipes is now akin to a perfect copper sculpture.

 I can say the same about the work Tom Galligan and his plumbers did on their side of the job and Charlie Wood and his right hand, Charlie B. on the wiring. There was Knob and Tube in the walls of this room. Prior to this project I would have told you Knob and Tube were an 80's Punk band, but I found out that it was an old and currently (pun intended) dangerous kind of wiring. The junction box that was created to clean up this mess is a plain masterpiece of organization and efficiency. I was dazzled as I watched him work on it.  We were very fortunate that Charlie was available as our neighbor Jerry Houghton originally was awarded the job in the bidding and had to withdraw at the 11th hour when he broke his wrist.

The room also had the floor taken up, planed and finished and reset in place. Above is the diagram that the star of the whole project, Vareika foreman Chuck, drew early on and worked from as the floor came back in. The floor is amazing now and a review of the video at the top of the post would prove me out.  What was a blueish gray painted floor, in part covered by a white vinyl tile and an odd navy mesh rug, is now a glowing  in the afternoon sun pleasure to slide across in your stocking feet.  If the restoration did only that it would have been stunning.  The ceiling was raised roughly 6 inches, light fixtures were found that fit the period when the room was once a store, new wall and trim colors went up, our washer and dryer were united side by side in a new spot, as at the start the washer was against the shingled wall and the dryer in the corner by the electrical panels.  Current codes have that as a no no and I was thrilled to bring them together as a Siamese match.

What had been an eyesore and a hazard is now a room we can enjoy, work in, and use to teach the story of this amazing place. I have already brought a bunch of books into the house that I had dragged away to storage.  Through the hurricane of late August and the subsequent power outage, through the looney tune wedding guests who came strolling up the walk to use the damned Porta Potty, through the unexpected need to replace half the roof when we discovered ceiling boards drenched through like sponges,  through the search for a plasterer who could abide the regulations that came with the job, through the who knows how many welds it takes to snake 190 feet of copper and the patience of pulling wire after wire to a new destination, through the fun of speculating just what secret the place would spill in a given day, the project was never boring and always teaching.  What's next in year 201?  Check back here to find out.

We Have A Winner

Late in August Carolyn Bearce approached the Historical Society with an idea and a painting. Mrs. Bearce offered the painting as a prize in a fundraiser for the Lighthouse. Sales of tickets began with the Lighthouse Anniversary Dinner and continued through the last Open House last Sunday. My sister Lee gave the jar a shake and pulled the ticket just before 4:00. Marie Sullivan of Scituate was the winner and she picked up her prize on Tuesday afternoon. Julie did the honors with the camera while I made the hand off. The Society wants to thank all who participated and offers its collective congratulations to Mrs. Sullivan.

Don't Try This At Home

One part Smash Up Derby, one part Open House.

Preparations began early for the last open house of the season.  Running the vac, hiding the sweatshirts, laying out the few things we put on sale each time, setting up the renovated Utility room to serve as the gate, these things take time and as a result we missed the big crash.

This was the scene at 12:40 when I finally made it out of the house in an attempt to drop Haley off at the Bates House on Jericho Road where she was going to volunteer today.  An errant driver, (ya think),  had put his car up on the seawall and it became the event of the day.  He was not hurt badly as when he was removed from the car there was not the sense of urgency one might sense if there was a critical injury.  He can be seen here on the right of the frame, his neck immobilized and the EMT's readying to move him to the ambulance.  I was only a few feet away as they rolled him down the sidewalk and would describe him as a 50 plus gentleman who had one of the worst days ever. And wait for the bills to start rolling in.

Black humor emerged along with speculation as to how one could have arrived by car in such a spot.  "Maybe he needs a new GPS."  "Doesn't he know you can't drive to Dublin?"  "Is that the new Ford Escape commercial?"  The truth of the matter is likely to be a lot less funny.  The fence that forms an angle with the handicap parking spot was clipped by the car before it did its Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang act.  This could have been much worse if the usual crew of bicycles and baby carriages had been in the neighborhood.  I don't know enough physics to figure it out, but he had to have been flying.

The story then shifted to how in the world were the authorities going to remove the car from the wall.  Our tours had begun by then so I was cut off from most of the on the spot reporting.  Julie and my sister Lee picked up the slack.

Having decided that the first flat bed truck sent to remove the car would not be adequate, those in charge shifted to the heavy lifters.  Here you can see them rigging the car.

And at last it was up and off the wall. 

Kudos to Julie for working her photojournalistic magic.

The highlight of the tours today was a visit from a couple related to the third light keeper Ebenezer Osbourne.  They brought information that indicates that one of Keeper Osbourne's sons was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in the Civil War.  William Henry Osborne was wounded at Mulvern Hill, returned to the battle despite his wounds, and was wounded terribly a second time.  While the couple were here I was able to check the census records for 1840 and saw there that Osbourne had a son of the appropriate age.  It is another example of how each day this building pulls out another remarkable Scituate story or connection.  I thank Ms. McKenna for her contribution.

With luck there will be a heating system in this cottage once again on Tuesday.  The renovation is quite close to its finish and I am eager to get the giant pod out of the driveway. 

I am even more eager to be rid of the Porta Potty. Last weekend, while Julie and I ran out to move the laundry from washer to dryer, an entire wedding party came up the driveway, turned the unit in order to use it, (I had turned it so it was blocked from use,) and rattled Haley with the racket they made. 

I came back and thanked them profusely as they sat in their bus waiting for the bride and groom to head onto the reception.  I thanked them again and again for ignoring the four different signs that mark the property as private, and for having the nerve to move the unit, and mostly for thinking nothing of spooking my kid.  I told them they were a wonderful bunch of guys who probably thought of themselves as brilliant.

It was not the first time I thought that some members of a wedding party were only invited in order to be sure that they weren't going to break into the house of the betrothed.  What happened to being a class act? Three weeks ago a young man walked into the house at 3:30 in the afternoon, in a tuxedo and with a beer in his hand.  I turned him around and muttered down the driveway that there are all kinds of stupid out there. 

I wonder if any of those guys owns a Ford Escape in need of some repair.