Sunset Over Jamestown, 1965-1969
Mother told me, somewhat sarcastically, “For four years you’ve complained about missing the snow. You’ll be happy to learn that we’ll be moving back to Rhode Island when school is out!” She was not nearly as excited about moving back as her 13-year-old daughter was.
People speak glowingly of sunny California, but I honestly felt that I’d been robbed of the best snow years of my life, being stuck in an irrigated desert for four years. I recall sadly gazing at the silver snow disk collecting cobwebs in the garage. No one I knew in Orange County even owned a sled. They might have swimming pools in their backyards and bicycles or skateboards they could ride all over the neighborhood on Christmas morning (without chains or snow tires). But they didn’t know the joy of building a snow fort and pelting each other with snowballs, making snow angels, or getting stuck chest-deep in a snow drift and having to be pulled out by the bigger kids. They couldn’t imagine the feeling of bright red, stinging cheeks spread apart by the biggest smile possible as they squinted and romped in a shimmering frozen wonderland.
Did I enjoy living in California? Of course I did. But, there was no “beach scene” in my life. We lived a good hour’s drive from the nearest beach. But, I also missed wintertime. I missed white Christmases. I missed the excitement of the changing seasons. I missed rivers with WATER in them and verdant green grass.
I returned to Rhode Island with great hopes, excitement, and a large serving of fear. It’s hard to leave friends three thousand miles behind, understanding that you probably will never see them again. But a military brat must learn to adapt. At least this time, I was returning to a place where four years earlier I had left friends behind. I hoped to reconnect with some of them from third grade. So, we’d be “back” but not exactly as before. There’s a big difference between third grade and eighth grade. And this time, instead of living in Middletown, we’d be living in Newport. (Without the ‘City Limit’ signs, you wouldn’t know when you left one and entered the other. But they were separate school districts).
I had crystal clear memories of my old friends from elementary school in Middletown. Once we got there, I pulled out my address book and began calling them. Barbara Ehrlich still lived around the block from where we had lived at 24 Kay Boulevard, a house that sat directly on the line separating (or joining) Newport and Middletown. When I called, she pretended to sort of remember me and kindly invited me to a party at her house, where I was reintroduced to some of those old friends, and where I met a couple of new friends with whom I’d go to school in Newport. That was a nice start.
But first, we had to get there. We had to move into our new home, Quarters 8 on the corner of Jackson and Monroe at Fort Adams.
I was happy to breathe the coastal New England air and to feel it on my face. After four years of brutally hot dry air in Southern California, the ferry ride across Narragansett Bay from Jamestown was as exciting as anything. I left the car and walked up front to feel the salty wind in my face and watch the dark green frothy waves push up around the ferry’s bow. Initially I complained about the fishy smell and wondered how people could live with that constantly in their nostrils. Soon, that became the smell that one day I would miss the most.
When we drove up to our new home, I found a huge stately white clapboard house with black shutters, two stories plus a large cellar. The duplex was one in a row of about ten on the western side of Jackson Street, built around 1876. They were said to have been designed by Thomas Jefferson, but considering he had died fifty years before they were built, that is questionable. The house was built along the highest ridge of the narrow peninsula between Brenton Cove and Narragansett Bay, with unobstructed views of the cove on the east and the shipping lanes of the bay on the west. I often fantasized about the history and people who had lived there before me.
It was immense, with stairs leading to more stairs, leading to more stairs, halls and rooms leading to more rooms, and tall ceilings like I’d never seen before. And we were to live there! It didn’t matter that it was a duplex. Our half was huge! It was grand! The yellow stucco ranch style house we’d left in California could have fit into this four times! Just to be wrapped inside such a house, high on a hill surrounded by such an unimaginable view was like living in a fairytale. Immediately, I fell in love with simply being there.
I had the privilege of choosing my own bedroom, for the first time not having to share it with my sister. I could choose the large one with the gorgeous view of sunrise over Brenton Cove, or the smaller back room with the sunset view over the bay. I selected the back room. It was private, separate from the other rooms with its own back hall. One of its two windows opened onto a roof over a back extension. I could climb out onto that roof and watch the ships coming and going.
Across the bay, I discovered an incredible house, accessible only by boat. I didn’t know it had a name. It was simply the house on a rock island off the shores of Conanicut Island (commonly called by the name of its town, Jamestown). I’d never imagined such a place could exist, but once spotted, I permanently commandeered my dad’s binoculars so I could watch and dream of living there. How amazing to ride out hurricanes and storms there with the waves crashing against the rocks and spraying all three stories of it on all sides! It was the stuff of dreams! Lacking the Internet, back then, I couldn’t just “google” it and find out about it. It was simply looming out there, beckoning to me. It was DECADES later that I discovered it still existed and had a name, Clingstone. And for as long as I’m alive, it will be that wondrously exotic place where I would love to live.
But Clingstone was only one point of wonder. That back room was the right choice. It was my sanctuary, where this flat-chested, skinny, late-blooming girl endured the angst and shyness of that first year, 8th grade at Thompson Jr. High. I could experience the solitary beauty employing all the senses; the glorious clear view of the bay, up and down. I spent daytime hours watching the ships and sailboats. Except when skies were stormy, I could watch the sunset behind Jamestown with all the shimmering, colorful play of light on the waves and sails below.
The only building between our house and the bay was the single story, wood frame Teen Canteen. It stood on the far side of an empty field where we’d play touch football. Beyond it was just a narrow road clinging to the edge of the cliff. Day or night when I sat on the roof, I could feel the ocean breeze (or gale) wrap around my body and blast through my hair, and then there was the smell and taste of the salty, humid air. At night I’d look up at the stars or across the bay at the lights of Jamestown, focus up the bay to my right at the bridge construction and watch the two Jamestown/Newport ferries pass each other mid-bay. To my left, I could see the empty expanse where the bay joined the Atlantic. Best of all were the sounds. I counted the minutes and seconds it took for the wake to crash on the rocky shore after a thrumming destroyer, aircraft carrier, or oil tanker passed. And in the fog or a storm, there were the clanging buoy bells, the ceaseless and extra loud crashing waves on the shore, the ships’ whistles, and the plaintive BEEEEYOOOOOOH of the big fog horn. This was my heaven and these were my lullabies.
Except on the stormiest of nights, there was the constant, rhythmic pounding of the pile driver laying the foundations for the Newport Bridge, which when it opened would be the third longest suspension bridge in the world. And once the towers were in place, I watched them string the cables across them, installing the catwalks with the swaying string of lights connecting them as they hung the support cables for the suspended roadway to come. Those lights were like Christmas every night. The bridge construction lasted just about the entire four years of our stay there. Only a week or so before we moved away, the bridge was opened and the two ferries between Newport and Jamestown were retired. Happy for commuters, but sad for people like me.
Ordinarily, even when snow was falling, I slept with my bedroom door closed, windows open, and radiator hissing, lying under 20 pounds of wool blankets. I didn’t want to shut out any sensation. Of course, I had to close the windows for storms. The single-paned windows rattled like nobody’s business in a nor’easter. There was a huge old tree in the side yard by my dormer window. One morning I woke up to find it gone. Undulations along the hedge top showed where it had blown down and rolled until it came to a rest in the middle of that field beyond our yard. I never heard it come down. I never heard the engines from the fire station, cattycornered from my window, race out, sirens blasting, during the night. Despite the combination of deafening sounds, I slept like a baby.
All of this fed my soul, so by 9th grade I’d freed myself of shyness enough to fully enjoy the people and culture of that multi-ethnic, yet close-knit community. My many challenges, friendships, and love interests all played out to the music of the bay, the shipping lanes, Rogers High School Band, and of course, the Beatles, the Bee Gees, Loving Spoonful, and the Cowsills (Paul, was in my Geometry class).
I could write dozens of stories about trespassing explorations in the Old Fort (restricted though it was), hikes around Cliff Walk, the decimated Old Jamison Estate, or riding out to the Aquidneck Lanes to play duckpins. I fell in love with Moby Dick, Billy Budd, and a range of other old nautical movies and books. I would not exchange a moment of angst or a month of being on restriction for experiencing that magical place and time. Having found it and being torn away to move to Quantico for my Senior year felt like ripping a hole in my soul. And yet, the magic remains, and my soul did not spill out.