…gently down the
stream.
Or not.
This isn’t a stream.
This is Linnekin Bay,
East Boothbay, Maine in the summer of 1900 or so, and the two boys in the
dinghy are my great uncles. I think it’s Richard and Allen, although I can’t be
sure—they all look pretty much the same in the summer outfits: shirts, pants,
crusher hats and rubber-soled shoes.
There’s an old dock in the background
and seaweed-covered rocks in the fore; I can tell that it’s low tide. The
ground slopes up from the rocks and I can barely see the bottom of a house in
the background; now, one hundred years later, after too much erosion, there’s a
seawall along the shore there.
I think this photo was taken in front of what was called the Red
Cottage—it was where the Gould family went each summer to get out of the
smothering heat of the Boston area—later on, after my grandfather married, they
summered in her family home just down
the road.
My guess is that this
little rowboat is the one they used to run back and forth between the shoreline
and the family sailboat, moored out in deeper water—Allen’s weight has left the
bow high and the aft end very close to the Atlantic! I’ve got lots of photos of
them in the sailboat (they’re wearing shirts and ties in some of them, for
goodness’ sake!).
Ahhhh, summer!
Hope yours is going
well, and that you’ve got secure oarlocks to get you through!
