Chapter 3 Version 3
1961
Boys explore – that’s just what they do. There is no reason
– no goal – no end point. They just can’t help it.
There are fields of corn, grass and weeds where butterflies
and worms can be caught. There are ponds where frogs and pollywogs hide in
green slime. There are streams where trout are too sly to be caught. Crayfish inhabit the banks of the stream and can be found if a net can sift through the
roots of the plants that love being at the water’s edge.
With a mountain in your backyard and a major river only a
bike ride down East Street, there were recreational choices some boys can only
dream of but here they were part of life.
“Mom, I am going up the mountain – see you later” and a
sunny summer day was started with choices galore. Mount Tom was not technically
a mountain but it was a large enough hill to qualify as a mountain in a child’s
mind. Whiting’s Peak had cliffs of hard angular volcanic rock and a TV tower if
you wanted to go all the way to the end of the trail. The cliffs were made of
purple basalt that filled a rift valley caused by continental drift 200 million
years ago. The basalt stretches in a thin line from the Vermont border to New
Haven on Long Island Sound. The volcanic rock weathers into a reddish brown
color that is particularly pleasing to view with a crisp blue sky and the green
of the forest. Stories of rattlesnake encounters on the cliffs made children
wary but not wary enough to avoid hiking on the cliffs. There were some nature
exhibits with rattlesnakes that were caught locally. If the wind was blowing
from the west which was not often, it encountered the cliffs and an updraft was
formed. A child could toss out a substantial log and the wind would blow it
quickly over the child’s head and it would land some distance behind. The fun outweighed
the danger – it always does. Elsewhere on the Mt. Tom Range, Goat’s Peak had a
rusty metal observation tower with a sweeping view both north to Vermont and
south to Springfield and Connecticut. There were also streams with salamanders
and Lake Bray was plowed in the winter for ice-skating. Today the trek would be
to the east end of the Mt. Tom Range to Mt. Nonotuck.
The attraction at Mt. Nonotuck was two-fold. First were the
foundation ruins of an old resort at the summit. The story passed down from
child to child was that it burned down when the proprietor of the resort was
disposing of the carcass of a horse by burning it and the fire got out of
control. The resort burned down to the foundation and was never rebuilt. The
rocks used in the foundation looked to be locally sourced to avoid the cost of
getting the building materials up to the top of the “hill”. The foundation was
built to last and was about three feet thick so it was good to climb on and had
some arched window holes and door openings where you could imagine Indians were
peering in from the other side.
And secondly there was the view to the north. The
Connecticut River flowed down between Vermont and New Hampshire and into
Massachusetts looking for a gap in the range so that it could continue its
passage south past Hartford to Long Island Sound. That gap was right below Mt.
Nonotuck where the old village of Mt. Tom was located between Mt. Nonotuck and
Mount Holyoke. The village was high up enough to avoid the yearly flood that
made settlement on the flood plain hazardous. The flooding provided the best
and arguably the only good farmland in Massachusetts. The valley was dotted
with white patches of cheese cloth covered fields of shade tobacco next to red
barns with vertically hinged boards for ventilation when the tobacco was hung
inside for curing. The shade tobacco was used exclusively for the wrappers of
fine cigars and provided summer employment for high school age students.
Until 1840, the Connecticut River made a meander in the
shape of an ox bow – a U-shaped piece of wood that went over an oxen’s neck so
that it could pull heavy loads. In 1836 Thomas Cole completed the famous
painting of the oxbow that hangs in the New York Metropolitan Museum of
Art from the top of Mount Holyoke
looking west. But four years later, a major flood cut a new channel directly
into the water gap at Mt. Tom. The oxbow became a pond fed by the Mill River
passing west of downtown Northampton and the Manhan River which flowed east through
Easthampton with the excess water in the Oxbow going into the Connecticut River
at Mt. Tom village. The Oxbow made an ideal fishing and frogging spot for young
anglers to hone their skills. The Connecticut River itself offered some good
catfishing for the more adventurous. By the 1960’s Mass Audubon’s Arcadia
Wildlife Sanctuary included some animal and bird exhibits near where the Mill
River entered the Oxbow. The Audubon Sanctuary also hosted a 4H camera club for
junior high school aged children that John joined with his plastic Kodak
Brownie camera. All of this could be seen from a bird’s eye view from the top
of Mt. Nonotuck. The sunsets were probably spectacular from that vantage point
west to the Berkshire Hills but it was at least an hour’s walk back home and
you don’t want to do that in the dark.
But exploring was not limited to the outdoors.
One morning John was staring inside a shoebox he found on
the top shelf of the closet he shared with his parents. Pictures, papers coins
and a sailor hat were overlooked as he reached inside to pick up a pewter
colored item that could have been mistaken for a rocket. But he knew what it
was. The end was pointy and heavy. No, you are not going to put this into a six
shooter. This was a serious bullet. This was a war bullet. There were some
smaller bullets too. These were copper colored with rounded tips. These were
the kind of bullets Davy Crockett used, he concluded as he reached for the
metal object in the leather covering.
There was a snap to keep it from falling out of its leather
holder. He picked up the object by the handle and knew the feel of the
lacquered leather grip. The same feel as the Estwing hammer handle but this was
lighter than a hammer. He snapped open the short leather strap that held it in.
Slowly he drew it out. Running his hand down the top of it, he came to the end
where the blade came to a point. Turning the blade sharp side up, he ran his
finger over the blade at a 90 degree angle to test its sharpness just as had
done so many times with his pocketknife. It was sharp – very sharp. He put the
blade back into its leather sheath and then back into the shoebox with the
bullets. But before he put the shoebox back onto the closet shelf, John slid
his hand inside the shoebox and pulled out the sailor’s hat. It fit. Off he
went looking good in his newly found white hat.
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