Nahant

by petemacd

The drive down from Franklin was a top speed sort of trip. I was late and was looking forward to having dinner with Mike Meyer and Barbara Beatty that evening. The Meyer’s house was just across the street from the house I grew up in, (at least until I was eight). When I was a kid, this was the world to me, and the Meyers and the beach right beside their house was a huge deal. Nahant is a very small community just North of Boston and is as close to an island as you’ll find, there is just a causeway connecting it to Lynn. It’s surrounded by the Atlantic and is only 1.2 square miles in area, and I believe the smallest township in Massachusetts by area. The trip went flawlessly and fast, but I was going to be a little late and called to let them know. By the time I got into the area it was dark and then things went south. Running low on gas, I got off the turnpike and did it just a bit too early, and promptly got lost. I hadn’t been there for a number of years, but I know the roads some, and nothing is too far apart. I was a bit north and suffice it to say that I ended up going completely in the wrong direction more than once. I ended up almost in Saugus, for pete’s’s sake. I stopped to get a couple of gallons of gas on the fly and kept moving, finally careening into the driveway way late – something like 8:30. It was really embarrassing; these people had had dinner waiting for hours. They didn’t miss a beat, gave me a glass of wine, and I set down to a wonderful dinner with Mike, Barbara, Mike’s brother Chris and his wife, Marie.

It was great just being in Nahant, but to stay the night at the Meyer’s house was way cool. Mr. Meyer was an architect and this was his house. It looks nothing like any other house around. I can’t describe the style too well, as it wouldn’t conform to any particular one. It was built in 1949 and is a cutting edge mid-century home…very square, and very simple in every detail. This was his baby and makes a pretty cool statement even today. I came to this house when I was first walking, and it is totally familiar – it even smells just as it always has – really cool and comforting for me. Also, Mrs. Meyer was one of my mom’s best pals, and Marjorie and she traveled together to Europe and were best friends until she died. So this was a special place for me to be. Ed Meyer also drove early fifties Studebakers, the beautiful Raymond Loewy designed models that went totally against the gaudiness, chrome and bodaciousness of most cars of the fifties. Loewy designed everything from the logo on the Lucky Strike package (and put the logo on both sides of the package so no matter which side was up when it hit the table the logo was visible), to steam locomotives, the interior of Air Force One and everything in-between…check out his work, it’s easy to find. So even his cars matched the house and spoke to his aesthetic – simple, with form following function.

Some asides…Meyer’s Beach is where my dad used to throw his boat in the water. The boat was a Sabot, which he built in the living room of the house we lived in. It is a fine boat, and he did everything including sewing the sail. Anyway. He would get on this funky old hat with some sort of cushion arrangement, and lift this boat on to his head and carry it across the street and drop it in the water. This is no mean feat. I have never done it myself, and I’m a strong guy. There was a time when we were on the ranch, he was well into his sixties at the time, and walked by the boat and he wondered if he could still do that lift. He went and picked it up and put it on his head. He was walking around like some cock rooster for days afterwards! Anyway. He took me fishing a few times, and off that beach is where I caught my first fish. He had a spinning real and I had a drop line and I got a bite – a big bite. I didn’t really know what I had but it was more than I could handle so dad took it from me and pulled it up, saying that he thought I had hooked a boot. He pulled in this monster fish and I just about jumped ship. Thing was huge to a four year old or whatever I was at the time.

…A bit of background on Mike Meyer. He used to babysit my sister and I and was the coolest babysitter you could ask for. I was just a squirt, so I had to go to bed early, but he would let Debbie stay up late and watch Perry Mason – big doin’s for her. Mike would do drills with her so she could run to her bedroom, kick the brick away from the door and be under the covers pretending to be asleep in seconds. He has always been a great guy. When he got back from Vietnam, he traveled all over the country hitching, buying cheap cars, whatever. He stopped by our house in Los Altos and had a very small knapsack, about the size of a kids school backpack, and a small one at that. He carried an extra shirt and pair of pants and that was about it – He had a great pair of boots, I remember that, but it was my first example in traveling light. I remember sitting on the front lawn with him just before he left and Debbie and a friend left to go someplace, and he made some comment about “College Girls”, and I nodded, trying to be as cool as an eighth grader can be, not knowing what the heck he was talking about. I went with my mom when she dropped him off at the 101 highway entrance and still have the image of him walking down the road with his thumb out and this tiny knapsack burned into my memory. I’ve always looked up to him and still do.


I got to sleep in a room with a view out to Boston. The next morning I got up and went out to the truck to realize that in my haste to make it in the door for dinner I neglected to switch the reefer from twelve volts to propane. Dead battery. So Mike jumps me with his car and I leave it to charge up as we read the paper. The truck is still pretty loud, so it was easy for me to hear as soon as the engine started to sputter. Out of gas. Could I be any worse of a guest? Nobody sells gas anymore in Nahant, so Mike was kind enough to run me over to Chris’s house to get a can and then to Lynn to get some gas. Sheesh – did I feel like a dork. He also took me by the new town wharf on the way back to the house. The town had just rebuilt it on the original footprint, so it looked the same as it did when they used to do the big Memorial Day parade. It was a totally small town parade and everyone that had a uniform would march, both World Wars, the Korean war, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, the high school band, and then a helicopter would come and drop a big wreath into the water by the wharf.

I mentioned that I was going to go to church and Barbara said she would like to go as well. The Nahant Village Church was my grandfather’s church for over thirty years, and I have many memories of him in the pulpit. Most of the time when I was there, I was just reading and re-reading the handout trying to assuage my boredom, but I remember well the Reverend Rosmond MacDonald bringing home his points by slamming his fist on the lectern. This was amazing for me to see, as he was the coolest sort of Grandfather and very calm at home. He smoked a pipe and from my earliest days he let me sit in his lap and light his pipe. Over and over again he would let it go out and let me light matches to light it again. Legal playing with matches! And who was going to argue the point with the minister? He was a great guy, but in the pulpit he seemed a different guy than the one whose lap I sat in. Either way though, behind the pulpit or at the house, he walked his talk and took some very unpopular stands because it was the right thing to do. He totally got it. I have some of his sermons from over the years and a few newspaper clippings about one of his shining moments.

He and my grandmother always lived in drafty old parsonages until they finally could afford to build their own house. In the last one, their next-door neighbors were very well to do and their daughter was away at college. She ended up having a stillborn baby by herself and putting its’ body in a trunk in the basement of her sorority house. This was the East coast in the fifties, and this girl was pilloried and the whole thing was front-page news. This girl was going to be practically strung up, or at least go to prison for many years. Though a very unpopular position, my grandfather saw that this was just a very young girl who had made a horrible mistake, and went as far as talking to the governor to get her out of prison. She did get out and ended up having a chance at some sort of normal life and had one, I believe. That one action says a lot about my grandfather and what he was made of. He didn’t just talk the talk.

Going to this church is special for all sorts of reasons. The last time I saw my grandmother I took her to this church. She was a tiny little thing, but in church she could belt out the hymns without even looking at the words – had just a beautiful voice. She was also a big part of my Norman Rockwellian childhood, and would have fresh homemade cookies and vanilla ice cream and seven-up floats for my pals and me when we stopped by on our walk home from school. At the service we sat next to Mrs. Hall, a woman that knew my mom. The minister made an announcement that I was there and asked me to say a few words. Edie Honeywell piped up that she lived in our house; she and her husband bought it from my parents in 1962.  I didn’t have much, but managed to say a few words about my grandfather. The service was comforting for the ritual and memories it evoked. Afterwards, Catsy Fowle came up to say hi, yet another friend of mom’s. Both of these women were well into their eighties, so it was great to see them both, and wonderful to have these people come and say what a good friend my mom was to them.

It was great to hang out with Mike’s wife Barbara. I’ve always thought her to be pretty neat, but this time I got to spend some time with her one-on-one and had some great conversation. On the way back down the hill from church, she pointed out where Longfellow’s’ cabin used to be. I never knew that he used to spend time just up the street, so that was pretty cool to find out. We enjoyed the same beach, Henry and I! Barbara is a professor at Wellesley College in early childhood education and wrote a book on the history of the subject and different models and theories that have been used over time. Both Mike and Barbara are very smart cookies, in addition to being pretty great people.

I left after lunch and went and found my grandparents’ grave and cleaned it up a bit. I sat with them for a short time and headed North to Rockport, my final destination.