Innocence Under the Elms (book) by Louise Dickinson Rich

Pam writes: We are in the process of selling our home in Bridgewater and moving into our retirement home on Massachusetts' South Coast. While we are no longer Bridgewater residents, we will continue to search out all things Bridgewater and visit any place we find with the name. 

Before we left our Bridgewater home, though, we read together a book that had been recommended to us by a number of people throughout our 27 years there. Innocence Under the Elms is a memoir that tells of growing up in Bridgewater during the turn of the twentieth century. Rich's writing is captivating and provides a true sense of place and time. Her descriptions of buildings and places we are familiar with but that she knew differently than we do transported us to another time - a time before farms were razed to make room for suburbs (only one farm remains in Bridgewater now), when Bridgewater State University was the State Normal School, and when winters were still cold enough that Carver pond froze enough for ice skating and hockey.

Dickinson's father was editor of the local newspaper The Bridgewater Independent. A free weekly that we could still pick up in paper format when we first came to town, it is now available only online. Louise, her parents, and her sister (Alice) moved several times within town. Each place she described as home was a place we could situate as within a two to twelve minute walk from our home in town. For us, all are part of the same neighborhood, but to Louise and Alice they were worlds away from each other. One house (which she described as out-of-town) was less than a ten-minute walk from the first place she lived ( and just around the corner from our house) but Dickinson credits it with instilling in her a love for nature.

Louise and Alice loved to read, and made excellent use of the town library, to which Pam wrote an entirely separate post on the "Library" Books blog.

James adds: We read this book in the midst of delving into Thornton Wilder's Our Town. We had read the novel Tom Lake by Ann Pachett about a community performance of the play. As we were in the midst of reading Innocence Under the Elms, we saw the marvelous Broadway production of Our Town with Jim Parsons, Katie Holmes, and Richard Thomas. At some point, I realized that the first page of Rich's book describes our town as if it were Our Town. The way she builds a mental map for the reader matches Wilder in cadence, scale and tone. 

We highly recommend this work.

Cape Cod (the book) by Henry David Thoreau

We have a lot of bookshelves, each with many books. Some of these books we have both read (or read together), some only one of us has read, others have yet to be read by either of us. Thoreau's Cape Cod now is officially in the category of read by both of us. James says he read it some (perhaps ten) years ago. Pam has only just finished it. By way of a bonus for this Bridgewater couple, the book mentions our own town - twice!

Thoreau and his companion stop in Bridgewater overnight on their way to the Cape. He mentions "picking up a few arrow-heads there". The only arrow head I ever found was also in Bridgewater - it was left in the basement of our home by the previous owners.

Thoreau meets and talks to a lot of locals as he walks through the Cape. Fishermen, in particular, and not surprisingly, are mentioned frequently. 

I have heard of a minister who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a time as he could tell a cod from a haddock.

For those inclined to read this work it is available for free from Project Gutenberg 

We Band of Angels

Bridgewater, Massachusetts' One Book One Community Steering Committee has chosen Elizabeth Norman's book about nurses imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II as its Community Read for Fall 2013. This book has a strong connection to the town as the story of Helen "Cassie" Cassiani, whose hometown was Bridgewater, is one that is told in this work. Coincidentally, as I was finishing reading this last week, I spotted this obituary for Mildred Dalton in the New York Times. Dalton was the last survivor of the imprisoned nurses. Interestingly, the obituary also mentions Bridgewater, New Jersey.

The Duke of Bridgewater

I recently finished reading Mark Twain's classic tale The Adventure's of Huckleberry Finn. It was the first time in my 48 years that I had read it. I, therefore, had no idea that Huckleberry and Jim met up with two con men, one a snake-oil salesman, and the other a faith-healer who claimed to be the Duke of Bridgewater; and Dauphin (Louis the XVII, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinenette) respectively who had both fallen on some hard times. Jim and Huck fall for the two and "set to majestying" Dauphin to make him feel better, which "kind of soured" the Duke. Huck figures out in short order, however, that the two are not who they said, explaining that "If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt tht the best way to get along with his kind of people  is to let them have their own way."

The Duke of "Bilgewater" shakes hands "Looy the Seventeen"

Read the entire book online here.