GASPEE POINT

A hurricane borne in the subtropical heat of the West Indies howled up the east coast in September of 1938, a month before my thirteenth birthday, siring a tidal wave that scoured clean the campground at Ocean Grove in Swansea, Massachusetts, where our family had spent summer weekends from the time I was six. Partnered with winds reaching one hundred twenty-one miles an hour, it demolished or swept out to sea the wooden floors and frames built by the campers to accommodate their house tents. Five hundred residents of southern New England lost their lives in its fury.

To my dismay and that of my sister, Ruth, our parents broke the news that the owner, after seeing the destruction, announced the permanent closure of the campground. We could no longer anticipate piling into the back seat of our old Plymouth on the weekend before Memorial Day for the drive to Ocean Grove to check our campground spot and greet our summer friends while my mother and father and the other families set up their tents for the coming three months. That first sniff of salt air as we drew near to Ocean Grove would become a cherished memory, along with our Sunday night goodbyes to our friends, part of our childhood that could no longer exist.

Gone would be the lazy days of lying on the beach or racing our friends into the waves or roaming the area surrounding the campground while our parents relaxed, knowing we would take care of each other. In later years, Ruthie confessed that although she loved me she also loved those weekends when she wasn't required to keep an eye on her little sister. At Ocean Grove, she could enjoy just being herself. She admitted that she mourned the loss of her summer freedom.

That summer, not realizing our good fortune in having places to swim in Cumberland, we reluctantly adjusted to fresh water, splashing in a widened section of the Abbot Run river. At times, my father drove us to Hunt's Bridge which reached over Abbot Run in Adamsdale, Massachusetts, a village set on the border of both states. As a last resort we walked to New River, a bulb-out of the Blackstone River whose deep and swift-running waters had lured textile manufacturers in the 1800's. My mother frowned on that because the mill owners used the Blackstone as a sewer to wash away their waste, a common practice before Americans began taking care of the environment and before the Blackstone enjoyed a clean bill of health.

She had also heard rumors that farther up the river bank a group of boys had slung a rope over a tree branch which allowed them to swing out over the water and drop into it, stark naked and boisterous. Wanting to verify or dismiss the rumor, we crept through the bushes one day, peeked and hurried back, giggling all the way. We never confessed it to her but she was right about that, too.

It isn't surprising that we lunged at the chance, in the summer of 1941, when Aunt Betty asked, "Would Ruth and Vi like to stay at our cottage with us next weekend?" Their daughter, Marian, a good friend to both of us, was an only child and a year or so older than Ruthie. The family cottage at Gaspee Point sat in a colony arrayed along a bluff overlooking Narragansett Bay, a few miles below Providence. Our pleading looks convinced our parents and they both agreed we could do it.

On the Friday night in July that our parents took us to Gaspee Point, Marian was waiting to greet us and we all rushed to sit on the beach. After a chat to catch up on each other's lives, she remarked, "There's a family renting the cottage next to ours. They're from Cumberland." The last name wasn't familiar to us so she suggested we go to the cottage and meet them.

Besides their mother, Annie, and their father, Henry, the family consisted of three sons – Jack, 20, Tom, almost 19 and Don, soon to be 15. Their ages dovetailed almost perfectly with ours. Hollywood could not have improved on that set-up. Tom was smitten the minute he met Ruthie. Don gave me a big smile and Jack and Marian had already become good friends.

They had been about to go swimming which sent us back to the cottage to quickly change into our bathing suits. We all scampered down the wooden steps to the beach and splashed into the water, giving us a better chance to get acquainted and to learn that they had just moved to Cumberland from Seekonk, Massachusetts. That accounted for the fact that we didn't know them. When we were called in for our evening meal, Don asked, "Will you be back later?" I liked his looks – about five feet, eleven inches, with wavy light-brown hair and a nice build – so I nodded.

After supper, the others decided to take a walk. I met Don and suggested we go with them but he wanted to sit and talk. Alone with him on a darkened beach, I panicked, wondering what to do next. I needn't have worried. He took care of that by asking whether I liked to wrestle but gave me no chance to answer. Before I realized what was happening, he had wrestled me to the sand and was laughing, pretending it was a big joke.

At that point in my life, not much had come of the crushes I'd had on boys, except for a quick, shy kiss once in a while. None had reached this stage. Besides that, my parents, though kind and loving, were not overtly demonstrative. I'd been hugged and kissed as a small child but that ceased when I reached my teen years. This type of intimacy, especially with the opposite sex, scared me. I had never known a boy as aggressively familiar as Don and breathed a sigh of relief when someone called from the top of the stairs, "Violet, are you down there? We're going for ice cream. Do you want to go?" I pulled away and jumped up, making a dash for the stairs.

We didn't return to the beach that night. On Saturday, Marian showed us the tennis courts and taught us the basics of the game. Back at the cottage, we saw the boys and waved to them. They had company but yelled they'd go swimming with us later in the afternoon. That night, we all sat together on the beach, laughing and talking.

Sunday came much faster than we had hoped and so did our parents, it seemed. They visited with Aunt Betty and Uncle Ted, for a while, giving us a little more time to be with our new friends before we left for home. I waved to anyone in general who might be standing around, wondering when I'd see Don again. Since he'd be a sophomore and I'd be a junior in Cumberland High School, the chances were good that we'd be meeting again.

1941

New subjects, the glee club, basketball games and the smugness of being a junior all occupied my mind in September at Cumberland High. As a junior, seasoned in the logistics of finding the classrooms and retrieving the right books from my locker for the next class, I felt somewhat superior to underclassmen such as Don and didn't make it my priority to look for him, assuming I'd see him at some point, maybe at a basketball game. Since it was our only school sport and Cumberland held the state Class C Basketball Championship for several years, it didn't surprise me to see him sitting in the stands one or twice that fall, but, as I told Ruthie the next day, "He left with his buddies before I could say anything to him." Actually, I had hoped when I saw him that he'd wait and talk a while but we were both unsure of ourselves and the opportunity slipped by.

In my sophomore year, I won an all-school essay contest with my entry, Fun. The win gave me a modicum of prestige and I was asked, as a junior, to be an at-large reporter for our school paper, The Chronicle, a position which held my attention as I listened and looked for stories to use.

The only puzzling part of winning the contest was that the teacher in charge of it took me aside to ask, tactfully, "Did you see this or read it somewhere?" Confused as to what she meant, I shook my head and told her I hadn't. That she was asking whether I had plagiarized it didn't occur to me. Years later, I could smile, flattered that the judges considered my essay good enough to make them suspect plagiary.

One other consequence of the win came when my English teacher asked whether I would be willing to switch from the Commercial to the College Course. "I can almost guarantee you a scholarship in Journalism," he told me, but he might as well have said he could send me to the moon. My goal was to get my diploma and find a job as quickly as possible. My father had lost his job during the Depression and been forced to apply to the WPA, President Roosevelt's program to put America to work. It's highly regarded in today's world because of its legacy of public works projects, but my mother and father considered it welfare and even though it kept us from starving to death, their pride suffered. My mother hated standing in line at the library to receive free food but did it to keep something on the table. All of that ran through my mind when I declined the offer and didn't bother to tell my parents about it.

On October 11th, my birthday cake held sixteen candles, a major milestone in my opinion. "I'm old enough to drive," I crowed, "or get working papers and a Social Security number," both heady thoughts. I did get working papers and a Social Security number but learning to drive would have to wait a few years.

December showed up on the calendar. "I wonder what we'll sing for Christmas," I commented to my best friend, Louise, referring to the glee club and church choir. We gave no thought to the war in Europe. Television had not yet become a staple in every living room. We heard about the war on the nightly radio news or read of it in The Pawtucket Times or the Providence Journal, but only saw the catastrophic results in our local theater, watching The March of Time, or Movietone News or Pathe News. It only affected us in the way that a distant roll of thunder might, unsettling but not threatening. It was "their" war, not ours. Thousands of miles of ocean kept it far away from our shores.

On Sunday, December 7th, Louise and I lay sprawled on the living room rug at her house, reading the Sunday paper. "What happened?" we asked in unison when the music of Kay Kyser that had been playing on the Philco suddenly stopped and an announcer said, "We interrupt this program to bring you a bulletin from the NBC newsroom in New York." Her parents came into the room to stand near the radio. The announcement continued, "President Roosevelt has said in a statement today that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from the air. This bulletin has come to you from the NBC newsroom in New York." That was it. That was all. The music resumed, but something had shifted. The faraway war had found us. What did it mean? "I think I'll go home," I told them. I needed the comfort and safety of our house and my family so I could fully absorb the solemn words of the announcement.

The following day, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress and the nation. "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan," he told us, in part, ending his address with, "I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire." In later news, we learned that two thousand, four hundred three people had been killed and one hundred eighty-eight planes at Hickam Field had been lost to strafing by Japanese pilots. Also, out of a total of eight battleships the Japanese damaged, four had been sunk.

The war was "ours" now! I wanted to do something but where would I start? Slowly, America began preparing for whatever lay ahead. A friend of my mother's told me, "We're folding bandages in the basement of the Universalist Church." I joined them for a few evenings to fold large gauzelike bandages to be put into medics' kits for field use. The government donated gray yard to anyone who wanted to knit knee warmers, mittens and caps for the Ski Patrol who would be defending Alaska where the Japanese were expected to begin their invasion. My mother, who had knit all of our mittens and skating socks, immediately obtained a supply in order to start knitting. At school, a few students organized rallies to sell war bonds and stamps. We collected aluminum foil (which we called tinfoil) to toss into the collection bins set around town. We followed the directions to remove both ends of empty tin cans and step on them to squash them flat for our metal scrap collection. I asked one day, "How do these become ammunition or whatever for our troops?" No one seemed to know but we were willing to keep collecting them and we groaned as we told the story of the piles of scrap metal that sat for months on India Point wharf in Providence until the Japanese bought them up a few years before Pearl Harbor and probably recycled them into ammunition to be used against us. The first fumbling days of "what shall we do?" gave way to organization as our government issued pamphlets and aired broadcasts to help us fit into the war effort. Ration books entered our lifestyle.

We hummed new songs. "Any Bonds Today?" and "Let's Remember Pearl Harbor." Gas rationing meant no one would be teaching me to drive until after the war. One frigid morning the reality of the fuel shortage hit home when our school's allotment for that month ran out a day too soon. Our teachers allowed us to wear coats and mittens to class, but the absurdity of it didn't occur to us until we reached typing class. We all laughed, along with the teacher, when a few of the boys tried in a smart-alecky way to strike the keys with mittened fingers. As soon as Miss Roy, our principal, announced, shortly after that, "All students are excused for today," we scurried to our lockers to drop off our books, don our hats and boots and rush outside, chattering and shivering.

The good news of the season reached us fast. "The ice is in. Robin Hollow is safe for skating." We pulled our skates out of the attic, tied the laces together and flung them over one shoulder for the mile and a half walk to Robin Hollow. We could leave behind for a while the grim news of the war with its shortages and uncertainties to glide across the ice at Robin Hollow and pretend to be Sonja Henie for an afternoon.

The Brothers

Before the Pawtucket Water Supply Board dammed the river known as Abbot Run to form a sizeable reservoir in the late nineteenth century, the 40-acre area that dipped down into a hollow was home to a thick growth of hemlock, cedar and pine trees. The earth under the trees must have attracted a lot of worms because robins gathered in large numbers. Town residents dubbed it Robin Hollow and passed the name on to the reservoir that inundated it and which froze over in the chilly New England winter. Signs around the reservoir asked residents not to swim in it but nothing prevented us from skating on its surface.

The boys had already started their hockey game on the ice nearest to the dam and the bridge that spanned the water tumbling over the dam when Ruthie and I sat on the bank of the reservoir to put on our skates. "Wonder why they always play there?" I thought, but soon answered myself. It was near the road and easy to reach. It had an element of danger because of the thin ice close to the dam. Best of all, though, it left the rest of the reservoir open for the skaters, meaning that nobody would interfere with the game or vice versa.

I didn't have long to wait for an answer to my next question, "I wonder if the brothers are here?" Tom glided up to do a quick turn in front of Ruthie. "Is Don here?" I asked. He pointed to the hockey game. I laughed and skated off to find friends and enjoy the sunny winter afternoon.

Someone started a whip and a friend called out to me, "Come on." That meant catching up to the line of ten or so skaters flying over the ice and gripping the waist of the last skater. The whip was similar to a conga line, except that the leader picked his or her own time to suddenly veer, sending the speeding skaters arcing over the frozen surface. The last person in line ran the risk, if a grip was lost, of being flung across the ice. That turned out to be me but I was able to keep my balance and dig my skates into the ice to slow my momentum. I didn't see Don that day but on the way home, as we walked through the lengthening shadows, Ruthie said, "Tom asked if he could call me and I said he could."

"He seems like a nice guy," I said, adding, "I think I like Don." That word was used when a girl wanted to know a boy better and maybe become his girlfriend. I had liked boys in the past but nothing had come of it. With my meager skills, I had not attracted their attention. One boy, Billy, showed up in our sixth grade classroom when his family moved to Cumberland. I was smitten and told my cousin, Sam, who wanted to help. The next time he saw Billy, he put his fist under Billy's nose and growled, "My cousin likes you. You like her back, or else ..." Needless to say, I was mortified, especially when Billy chose the "or else ..." I was careful after that not to admit to anyone when a particular boy caught my eye, but I knew I could trust my sister and knew she would understand.