For January – February and now March!

Duxbury Clam Calling!

The delay has been because of confusion about changing addresses… And it has seemed wiser to wait, rather than to send letters out into a void —- and make mail clerks hate us …

Weather report for Duxbury and vicinity … mostly snow and ice and general messiness of winter, some very pretty to look at and some just sort of boring…. Snow:  ice:  thaw:  more snow, etc. and that’s the way it goes.

Eben Briggs had a fine big announcement about a quarter of a page in the Old Colony Memorial… No.  Not what you think.  He has gone into the old distributing business on his own!  Remember Frank Rogers, artist, erstwhile school-bus driver, munitions-worker, etc. and finally overseas and recently mustered out of the Third Army?  Well, he is now in Southbridge as Art Instructor in the schools there and in several adjoining towns.  As you may have heard (?) the biggest problem for the G.I. is not getting a job but finding a place to live.  For a time they boarded with a very kindly couple name of NOSEWORTHY.  One evening early in the new job this Rogers guy and his wife were walking in the strange new town of Southbridge looking in vain for a place to eat.  At last their eye was caught by a sign on a window across the street – “INSECTS:  LAST MEAL”  … Well, restaurants sometimes DO pick funny names.  They crossed over and found the rest of the sign on the inner angle of the entrance, – “INSECTICIDE COMPANY” so I guess they went somewhere else to eat.

It is hard to jam all the news of the winter in one letter but must stick to the headlines.  One of them was the visit of the U.N.O officials in their search for a place to settle (which is everybody’s problem, today) to Plymouth.  Of course Powder Point would be the place but they just mosied along by bus to Plymouth and stood amazed beside the statue of Massasoit with only a loin cloth on in midwinter.  (I refer to Massasoit, not to the U.N.O.)  To most of us, it is more important what they accomplish than where they settle, as, to quote a letter from a fifteen year old student:  “The U.N.O is the instrument which, if backed wholeheartedly may well mean the salvation of the world, but is no stronger than the faith of the people whom it represents…” (Leonna Cox, age 15, of Lexington.  Little girls and boys like her are also the hope of the world!)

You will all be sorry to learn of the death of Wilfred Olhsson the painter, Island Creek.  Son Henry and wife have moved in with Mrs. Olhsson and will carry on his father’s business.  Mr.Olhsson painted my house when it was built in 1927 and it has not had a smitch of paint since.  Doesn’t need it!  You don’t get many painters like that very often… or paint!  Or men!

Philip Chandler is back and has opened his own Bakery called “Standish Home Bakery” at Hall’s Corner.  1^st Lt. Lloyd Blanchard has brought home a bride from Springfield, Missouri …. No imports noted as yet in Duxbury.  Things go along about as usual – and by that I mean as we have become used.  I find that the war emergency has trained us to lower our standards in some things such as getting laundry back in the course of time and not very well done… and in not expecting much.  This gives us elbow room for some pleasant surprises, as, when a housewife one day lately, went running about the house with a pair of silk undies which had been returned with pre-war shimmer and shine, ironed by hand… (I must add that most ladies don’t let these 3/garments get into laundries, and that this pair got in by mistake!)  Cleaners are speeding up and it is wonderful to get a suit back in a week, when during the war you just didn’t even expect it back until you saw it, and then received it with gratitude and enthusiasm.  Personally I don’t see how laundries and cleaning establishments kept going even on two cylinders but they did, and as it traffic jams and minor inconveniences in which every one is involved, there was plenty of good nature to go round.  The only things that never slowed down or went on altered schedules are the moon, the tides and the pull of the magnetic pole…  Community Forums, supported by voluntary contributions, were a popular success all winter.  They had wonderful speakers, experts on the subject at hand, and it puts Duxbury right on the map.  In Plymouth and Kingston the burning question has been a proposed State Highway which is some day to sneak up on Plymouth by dodging Kingston, either by a route over the marshes or via the back of the town, to the west.  It is nothing immediate and you will probably get home in time to tell them which to do.  The marshes at present look like vinegar-candy, crumbling in big flat pieces all along the edges.  March “came in like a lamb” so of course you know what comes next!

Last year the long lines outside stores meant that some cigarettes had come.  This year it means stockings!  Now and then a few Nylons!  But the shortage of silk stockings for a time made it quite chic to be seen in thin gauzy old stockings with neatly repaired runs.  Some of the ladies of Boston got out their old black stockings, and many wore “gun-metal” which was all the rage in about 1921.  And so it goes.  Hats are rising like dough in a hot room.  Shapes have not yet made up their minds.  They vary at the whim of the ladies.  Some look like Victrola records; others like floor-mops, or like a notion-counter, but anything goes.  I think the trend, if any, is high and astonishing.  I should worry.  I wear a fur turban which was made under protest by the Furrier in the Puritan Clothing Co “out of some fur I had”  (Once some time ago one of you wrote to ask if your Clam was a man or a woman.  Well, now you know.)  He said it would have no style.  Well, neither have I, and my idea, which I did not confide to the furrier, was that under a fur turban I MIGHT be mistaken for a Russian Princess or something.  I have worn the turban for six years, and no one has mistaken me for anything but an old Duxbury Clam.  (I can dream, can’t I?)

The Red Cross Fund is growing like a snowball rolling in a thaw, and it is rather thrilling to know that every individual family is being called on by a qualified R. C. Solicitor and will respond:  The glorious part is that they don’t have to give if they don’t want to, but I believe every community is going to exceed its quota.

DO-DO-DO send your new addresses to Mrs. Charles Day, Millbrook.  And remember if any of you wish to have a communication direct from your Clam, just write and say so… and there will be a V-mail letter on its way the next day.

We all send you our love and we all know how far away some of you must feel.  This part of the Service is part and parcel of the entire war and is every bit as important at this point as all that has led up to the current replacements.  Let us hear from you.  God bless you all.  Write for your Readers Digests if you have not already for we can’t subscribe for you without request from you, and that was your Christmas present which I think some of you have never gotten.

Tardily but with love to every one of you from all of us here.

Your loving old

Duxbury Clam

 

April 1946

 

Duxbury Clam Calling!

During the first week in April, Cardinal Tien of China visited the St. Francis Xavier Mission at Mirimar in Duxbury.  Cardinal Tien is the first Chinese Cardinal, as you all know, and we are pleased to think how when he gets back to China he will have seen Bug Light, the Gurnet, and will have smelled the lovely fresh east wind coming in over Kingston Bay.

Cast up on the shore at Cedarville the last week of March was a 45 foot blackfish.  This provided a fine point in law, for it seems that the person whose property abuts on the shore is the one responsible for the removal of any offensive flotsam (and I believe the same ruling applies to offensive jetsam.)  anyway the decision is to go before the Town counsel and that puts Amedeo Sgarzi on the spot, and he is the Town Counsel himself and what is worse, the blackfish is on HIS BEACH!! Moreover, a picture in the Old Colony Memorial dispels all doubt as to the truth of this fish story; for some reason the caption under the photograph explains most explicitly “This picture of a 45 foot blackfish (horizontal position) and an O.C.M. newsman (Upright position) was taken Tuesday afternoon on the beach off Cedarville.”  Get this right, fellows!

Honor essays at High School Graduation this spring will be given by Jean Barclay, Ann Peterson and Irene Damon.

The Firemen’s dances are going off with the usual esprit and Duxbury is full of activity.  Bean suppers, Forum Meetings, Musicales, Scout Meetings, and of course, lots of parties for welcoming back servicemen. Your turn will come!

We are all rooting for the success of the United Nations Organization.

The boat yards are full of activity, and every high tide sees some fishing boat, dory or cruising-boat hit the water.  This reminds me of the year long ago when I had a little boat named “The Faux Pas” laid up at Bill Taylor’s boat yard to have a centerboard put in.  When we went to get her, very early one March day, Bill set her on the Marine Railway and down she came!  It was just as cute as a bug’s ear to see our tiny little nine-foot dory a-rollin’ down the ways, all by herself.  Just the same way in which you can be very fond of a person who hasn’t all the beauty and style in the world; we loved that “Faux Pas.”  She was the slowest little tub in the Bay as well as the steadiest, and you had to be very tactful about that rock-ballast in the bow, if you took a heavy person to sail, for then you had to find a bigger and better rock to offset the fat.  After all, the bay, the outer Beach, Manomet, Bug Light, Gurnet the beach channel, Gurnet creek and all the beloved places look justa s good from a nine-foot dory as from the deck of a spiffy yacht … (and if you should ask me — a whole lot better.)

Professor de Andrea died last week.  He had lived in Duxbury for a good many years since his retirement.  He has been living in the apartment above the post office for the last few years; somehow it seems nice and “international” to learn that he was born 81 years ago in Smyrna, Turkey, and went to college at the university of St. Joseph in Beirut, Syria!  In Duxbury so many people were born in far away places.  They say everyone turns up in Duxbury, sooner or later.  My next door neighbor was born in Japan!  Another neighbor in Oslo, and so it goes.  I’ve always been kind of mad that I was not born at sea.  However, my Mother traveled mostly on the East Boston ferry … and I actually was born on “Noddles’s Island.”  (Know where that is?  Send a box-top and ten cents to cover postage and I will tell you.)

It is early spring, the forsythia is out, jonquils are up and the grass in sheltered spots is getting green.  Snow is gone.  Birds are here, the song sparrows are singing and your old Clam is getting pretty silly as you see…. “The voice of the turtle is heard in the land.”

We think of you wherever you are and hope that things are well with you and that you “get” your Duxbury Clam communiques… for you are the ones now, who are far from home, but the mileage is just the same in 1946 as it was over the war years.  Wherever you are, in whatever foreign land, you represent the answer to the question “What are the Americans like?”  They are like you, so you’ve got quite a responsibility!  “What kind of a place is Duxbury?”  You tell!

We all send you our love.  Please write in and tell us what it’s like out there!

Your loving old Clam of Duxbury

(P.S.)  “For reasons over which we have no control” please excuse the typewritten signature and no pictures!)

 

Late into May 1946

 

Duxbury Clam Calling!

Greetings to all you dear old Duxburyites in various parts of the U.S.A. and parts of the world wherever you are!  We miss you and we shall tag along early or late, at your heels, if we can have your addresses as fast as they change.  So if you like to hear from Dux. Via your old Clam, write back and tell us where you are, when you are changing location.  Address Mrs. Charles Day, Millbrook.  She is a whiz about getting this letter off, but the addresses sometimes seem to just come out of a hat.

There is not much town-news, because everyone is too busy in gardens planting and preparing for summer food-crops.  Everyone seems to be at it, in the effort to comply with government request for food economy and margin, ever widening, to help our starving brothers overseas in all directions.

Now for a fashion high-light, which I think you ought to know about, lest you see some young glamour girl and misjudge her…. You know time was, when the well-groomed girl would “just die” if her slip showed.  Well, now it is not only all right, but chic, so don’t be surprised if one day you see a lovely lady prancing around with her slip showing and with the hem-line of her dress apparently hanging like a crepe-Suzette, for it is meant to be that way!  So don’t say anything!  Mrs. Day suggested that it is possible that the fashion-note stems from the pride of HAVING a slip, and wanting the fact known.  Many of us have skipped-the-slip, during war years, for want of a slip.

There has been a sort of Nylon hysteria but really Nylons are not nearly as important as they are cracked up to be.  Jimmy Ingalls came down yesterday to tune our piano, and Roy Parks is up a tree throwing down dead branches which have hung there since the last hurricane.  It seems very funny to be able to get these experts when you need them without waiting more than six months.  Getting about in a car is still a treat.  We keep forgetting that we can!  The old Millbrook Post Office, which was rolled off home-base and left near the ghost of the Railroad crossing, has now settled down with a sort of permanent air, has a shop window in which there are Busts of Great Men.  I don’t know more about it than that, at present writing.

Somebody has built a little house on Powder Point, on the corner or Peterson Road near the Happ’s.  It has a huge chimney with four flues.  A large martin-house on the garage, but I was disappointed when I realized that the chimney is “faked” and that the holes that look so inviting for the martins are only painted.  We assume this is a sort of rehearsal and that some day the gestures will become reality.  At present it has an air of “this is what I mean” and is more like a drawing than a house.  It has made a great stir in the community.  What would we do if we did not have something amazing to talk about?  Such as Walter Prince’s wanting to make a sand-pit on a certain side road, and a Meeting had to be called to see if he could or not, so I think it was decided that he could, if he would dig from another angle so that the people who lived opposite would not have to look at a sand-pit for the rest of their days.  That’s fair enough and it is such adjustments as this, made in a friendly cooperative spirit for the good of all concerned that keep the old ball a-rollin’.

There is a fine old Negro Spiritual, which you probably have heard, that starts “Walk together, Chillun, Don’t you git weary” and it ought to be sung more in these days, don’t you think?  The colored race has surely contributed some VERY lively music, and, riding in on it are plenty of very good ideas.  (But I am not referring to boogie-woogie.  I think the latter does not capitalize on ideas, or does it?)!

You ought to hear your Clam at this point, squeaking all over Duxbury with a pair of pre-war (attic discovery) Mexican hurachas!  (if that is what I mean?)  They are made of a sort of interwoven strips of light tan leather and BOY! Do they squeak!   You can hear me coming 40 yards away.  Know anything I can do?  I have tried saddle-soap, talcum-powder and water … but the more I experiment, the louder they squeak.  I think I could use them to best advantage in an orchestra.

The marshes are just beginning to show a faint trace of green around the outside edges.  One morning, you know, you wake up and there they are, all green, quite suddenly.  There is a full-moon about now and fairly high tides.  The birds are all coming back, many of them right on the beak as far as time goes.  I have a friend who records their arrival and so this is really true.  They seem to run on schedule.  The parking space the far end of the Bridge is pretty well gussed up with winter storms and it won’t be long now before unwary motorists will get their back wheels sunk in the soft sand and great will be the whirring thereof.

Among recent inductions are Lewis Randall Jr., Howard Blanchard, Russell Sprague and Richard Washburn.  If any of you now in the service wish to communicate with anyone else in the service whose address you do not know, remember to address it care of Duxbury Service Comm. And Mrs. Day will forward it to the proper addresses, so you needn’t lose track of each other (unless you want to!)   Chester Hubbard’s Australian bride has arrived, I believe, and in Kingston somebody has got an English one!

It is wonderful to see so many of the men home from the war, and don’t forget wherever you are, that you are carrying the ball!  Home is, in a way, just as far away as ever, and your part is just “the rest of the job,” as important as part of a circle.  Lacking the horror of war, still it probably will contain for you plenty of the horror of occasional boredom.  “Don’t forget that your Mother was a McGill.” (That comes from a very popular book which even your Mothers are probably too young to have read.  But it is good advice all the same!)  God bless you all and please take are of yourselves and see to it that Duxbury, as a sample of America, gets a good rating through you-all!  Do let us hear from you!  Everyone sends you their love, through this EXPERT typist and good friend of yours,

(drawing of a clam)

 

Mid-June 1946

 

Duxbury Clam Calling!

Well, High School Graduation is over, again!  This year there were only three boys in the outfit, – Philip Delano, George Taylor and “Don” Washburn.  The Honor Essays seem to suggest “it’s a woman’s world” because they were all written and delivered by girls, “Corrie” Damon, Jean Barclay and Ann Peterson.

The usual Reception and Dance took place on a Saturday evening amid the confusion of a most RUDE thunderstorm.  First this storm sneaked up, instead of piling up the usual thunderheads in the west.  None of the usual symptoms of a June storm!  At about 8 o’clock from ALL directions there broke, suddenly, one of the craziest storms you ever knew!  The lights went off first of all, throwing all Duxbury into darkness.  “Dancing in the Dark” being also “out”, Mr. Scott rigged up a Navy emergency-light, which gave light enough for the moment, but it was not long before the old faithful fixer came along, good old Eben Briggs, with the Fire Department spot lights, and rigged them up for the rest of the evening.  So the dance went on.  No one talked about anything all the next day but the storm.  It behaved as if it were completely off-the-beam.  There was terrifying vivid lightening which did not seem to come from any one direction but lit up everything with a horrid blue-green light, not much thunder but a wind of almost hurricane proportions, blowing down trees and wires and 1doing headline damage all over the State.  WILD!

The next day was Children’s Sunday at the Unitarian Church and they conducted the whole service.  One thing happened which upset the entire adult congregation.  On the platform sat four dignified Sunday School members, – 3 girls and a boy, all aged 12 or 13.  They gave a sort of talk, like conversation, and did it VERY well indeed.  But then, Miss Elliot, the Superintendent, explained to the congregation that this group of children represented the first real Student Council in the Duxbury church-history, whereupon, the Council EXPLODED with giggles and buried their faces in their hands and tried desperately to get back the dignity due their position.  Meanwhile the congregation got the snickums, too, not because there was a thing funny about anything, but just because it seemed so “awful” to snicker, and of course, Miss Elliot laughed too but went serenely on to the next thing on the program.  We all got through the last hymn all right but when the entire Sunday School marched down the aisle and out of church, they were led by that dear giggling little Student Council who just barely reached the outer door before they exploded again!  Oh, well, we were all that way once, and I think we all renewed our youth, rending the giggly little Council very little support!

On July Fourth this summer, for the first time since the War, the Famous “Duxbury Days” will be celebrated.  You’d all better write to your families or friends and remind them to be sure to send you one of the programs, for I can promise you these days are going to be SOMETHING!

I suppose there are lots of engagements and weddings in the offing but the only one I know at present writing is the engagement of Nancy Baker to “one of the Randall boys.”  This certainly sounds vague, viewed as news from home, but I expect Nancy knows WHICH of the Randall boys, even if your clam doesn’t.

The object of this letter is to remind you that the old town has its eye on you with some pride, and that if there is any special form of news you particularly would like to hear, write and tell us what.  Your clam is not much of a reporter, but a sort of stick-in-the-mud.  Our intention is to sort of dog you around over the country of over the world, for what comfort it may be to any of you away from home even if all we say is, “Hey, fellar!  Remember me?”

I’d like to enclose a sprig of bayberry for you to smell, or somehow convey to you the lovely fresh east wind coming up over the mud-flats, or tune you in to the terrific orchestra of frogs which starts up around twilight these days.  But hey!  Nonny-nonny!  It can’t be did.  Write home often!  Duxbury looks pretty good here, but I bet it looks simply the tops from where you sit! Keep your cute chins up and write us all the news!!

We all send our love to you and all the best wishes from everyone at home whose “family” name is like mine –

DUXBURY CLAM

 

July, 1946

 

Duxbury Clam Calling!

Believe it or not, your old Clam is far above high-tide mark at present writing, 125 miles north-west, in Chocurua, N.H.

The famous Duxbury Days July 3-4-5 are over; parades, band-concerts, model-airplane contests and the hose-coupling race of the Fire Department all went off well and the weather was obviously made-to-order.

The last week in June found most of the population up to their necks in salt water in a terrific heat-wave.  The beach was packed with people, day and night, and you may imagine the cars parked knee-deep at both ends of the bridge, at Green Harbor, and all the way down the Point road.  Every jalopy that could wabble on four wheels, and quite a number of civilian-run jeeps!  Somebody had an amphibian thing which sold “rides” toward Gurnet, carrying screeching girls right out into the water like an old turtle.  The lid is off and the traffic on holidays has the effect of having had a sluice opened in a long-dammed river.

The old town is alive with new enterprises.  A marine hardware store has been opened between Shiff’s store and the South Duxbury Post Office.  Cliff Wyman has opened a “package-store” in one end of the old General Store and when food-supplies become more stabilized, he will open the rest of the tore, and carry food, rubber-boots, stationery and al the items his grandfather carried – the good old days are coming back slowly but surely.

There is a Community Theatre in which anyone may take part, directed by Joan Field, grand-daughter of William Seymour, the old actor whom you are all too young to remember.  A new book-shop hs opened, in the barn of the Old Fanny Davenport place; also a lending library called West Winds Bookshop.  Many pretty girls work there on part-time.

The yachts are out and racing schedules are posted.  It is all so gay that your old Clam scurried up into the mountains!

After the sophistication of summer-time, – post-war Duxbury, this country seems tame enough, as to humans, but delectably wild as to nature.  We saw a fox prowling around the farm boundaries, licking his chops in anticipation of a raid on the chicken-yard.  He got two last night.  We see deer tracks on all the wooded country roads, and a fat old bear came rolling along, fortunately more scared of us than we were of him, and believe me that was plenty scared!

A very tragic murder occurred in Plymouth when a Honduran cranberry-bog worker shot and killed a young colored woman in a fit of jealousy.  He escaped to the woods, and during the man-hunt, shot and killed one of the Plymouth policemen, George S. Bell.  Later the Honduran, fortunately, committed suicide.  It was a terrifying few days for Plymouth.

There is very little Duxbury news – everything seems to be going along smoothly at home.  We all think of you with warm sympathy and pride.  You’d lot rather be home, we know, but this is your “watch” and has its vital part in the whole plan of permanent peace after victory.

Let’s hear from you – None of us at home will forget about you!  There’s always “something about a soldier” and that goes for all the other branches of the Service as well.  Your flag is still flying at the Liberty Pole.

Love to you all.  The composite love of all your towns-people.

Your old “Duxbury Clam”

 

August 1946

 

Duxbury Clam Calling!

From a farm in Chocorua, New Hampshire I have a sort of foggy bird’s eye view of Duxbury and am in the position of the guy that complains “nobody ever tells me anything.”  I do know, however, that the long drought was lifted in the nick of time by long days of easterly wind and downpour following some nasty dry thunderstorms of some little violence.  I am among bears for all I know.  People come in from mountain climbing and report bear tracks and one or two have actually seen bears.

I have turned over our dory to my brother to use for the summer and one of the things I miss in the mountains is that dory.  Here it is all canoes… all very well for these parts but once you have been brought up in a good old dory, a canoe seems frivolous and insipid.  The only time I ever used a canoe in Duxbury, we had to leave it at High Pines and walk home.  There was one of those tearing south west winds blowing across the bay and the old thing leaked.  Whereas I’ve been down around Bug Light in my little sailing dory with a stout little spritsail and a cranky little centerboard.  How we used to struggle with that centerboard!  It had to be forced down when it was up and it took the strength of two to pull it up when it was down.  However, I never had a boat I enjoyed more.  I believe you can have more fun with a boat too small to make sense than you can in a boat too big to make sense.  Years ago one of my father’s friends sailed over from Marblehead in a keel yacht wiring father ahead that he would be off Powder Point at ebb tide.  I don’t need to tell any of you old Duxburyites how THAT story ended!  The wire my father sent back urging him to anchor off Gurnet did not get there until the friend had set sail.  He spent two happy days with keel embedded in the sand on Captain’s Flats and as there were seals in those days, they enjoyed a floor show at low tide when the yacht lay over on her beam ends.  Too bad.  My private and respectful theory about the Pilgrims is that the reason they had their first Sunday on Clarke’s Island is that the good ship Mayflower got stuck on the flats in 1620.

We drove over to a neighboring town the other day from Chocurua with the intention of buying a fire-screen for the farm house.  No fire-screen.  We came home, as one sometimes does from explicit errands, with something rather different.  Namely, two cast iron horses’ heads for hitching posts.  Oh, well, they just picked the wrong people to do the errand or something.  One Christmas before the war I went to Plymouth to buy some woolen socks for my nieces and nephews and came home with a steam roller so you never can tell what a Clam is going to do!

The Fourth of July Parade was headed by Col. Abbott Peterson on a charger.  That is all very well, but I am used to seeing the procession headed by our own Eben Briggs and I don’t think it could have been much of a procession with Even on foot.  I don’t know why this was, but I read the description of the parade and there was Eben on foot.  ‘____________ outranked perhaps but never outshone.  Not our faithful Eben!  They all way it was a wonderful parade and a grand fourth.  I wish I had been there to report it to you.

I heard a funny Harvard University story the other day.  A professor, meeting his English Class for the first time in the fall said, “There is one thing I want clearly understood.  There are two words I WILL NOT TOLERATE in my class room. One is lousy and the other is swell.”  A student said, “What ARE the two words, sir?”  This is my idea of a delayed action joke.  I hope you get it.  If you remember your nursery rhymes here is a modernized one.

“The King was in the pantry, washing out his shirt.

The Queen was in the kitchen, sweeping out the dirt.

The maid was in the parlor, eating bread and honey.

Along came a neighbor and offered her more money.”

 

Well if the life of the Army and Navy does not bore you to death perhaps I will.  We all send you our love and bet wishes and hope we shall be hearing from you now and then.  Our next letter will be from home, where I shall find out what’s cookin’.

Via your feeble little clam lost in the mountain country but soon to dig in below high water mark, all your townsfolks send you greetings.

Your old Duxbury Clam.

 

October, 1946

 

DUXBURY CALLING

Hi ya Fellas!

Your Duxbury Clam has had its ears flapping to get news for you until this wind from the flats has filled the entire head of poor dear old Clam, who is now unable to spit even a tiny spout — a really bad state of affairs.

Clam called to me and in its anxiety that you hear from home, desperately appealed to me to send you some sort of message.

Who am I?  Just a green Lobster, whose face is very red because of my inability to do justice to Clam’s Communique.

I sent Frog and Turtle out to gather news from the Salt Meadows, the Bogs and from your rumbling roadways.  I am taking no chances with MY ears.  Stop me if perchance you have heard what follows:

Eddie Soule (Gramp) has “lifted the ceiling” and built an apartment over his Seaview Garage and with his family is living there, in order to be always on the job.  Dick Prince with his family — wife and two children — now lives in Ed’s house in Millbrook.

All four of the Walker boys are now married:  Donald, Kenneth, Percy, Jr. and Clarence.

Richard Putnam and Virginia Schwab are engaged.  This Town is full of romances.  These returned Servicemen seem to have learned more than Military tactics.

You will all remember the pretty Walker girls.  Ellen is married and lives in New Mexico.  Anna is visiting her parents during her vacation from her position in Chicago.

You are all going to be surprised at the apparent ease with which buildings of all sorts have ridden from one part of town to quite another location, sat themselves down and settled themselves in for life.  It is not an uncommon sight to see a house, a section of a house or even a school house riding around as unshaken as a little old lady in a landau.

Last week a number of public spirited people calling themselves the nameless Group put on a Halloween Country dance in the Town Hall, the purpose of which was to raise money for the Organ Fund of the Episcopal Church.  The town “turned out” and it was a great success, everyone enjoyed the party and the Fund was appreciably swelled.

People are getting their red head coverings out of moth balls, preparing for Safety First during the hunting season.

A special Town Meeting has been called to see if the Town will vote to appropriate from the available funds, the sum of $8,000 for the purpose of completing the financial arrangements for the proposed Sea Wall at Duxbury Beach.  The Town originally voted to build this Sea Wall in 1941, but work was delayed because of the war.  Increased cost of construction has made it necessary to increase the appropriation.  The State and County have agreed to increase their proportionate shares and residents of Duxbury Beach area have requested that the Selectmen ask the Town to vote the additional funds necessary to complete the project immediately, so that any further destruction of property may be prevented.

Crops are mostly harvested now, and ambition takes the form of raking leaves.  Of course, I am a water creature – but gazing on land I do admire the tapestry carpet made by the varicolored leaves on the very beautiful back ground of green grass, and, for my part, should never dream of wearying my claws by dragging that riot of color into piles and then burning it into ashes … but every critter must arrange things according to his own customs, sez I.  Try never to let Clam know how dull I have been and I am sure there will be more news for you next month and Clam will tell you which way the wind is blowing at the Polls.

Regards to all of you from all of us

Lobby the Lobster