April 29

A Joyful Noise
By Janet Gillespie

In this appropriately named memoir, the author recalls summers spent in Westport, MA with her family in the 1920s and 30s.  Janet's father, "Pop", is a clergyman (minister in Holyoke, MA, later Dean of the Chapel at Princeton).  Her mother's family owns a several-acre compound overlooking the ocean, brimming with flowers and wildlife.  Each summer, the family packs up the  "Artful Dodger" and makes the 8-hour trip from Holyoke (2 hours today), later aboard the ferry Commonwealth of the Old Fall River Line, to Westport Point.  Once at the point, they'd be greeted by Aunt K, (Uncle) Tink, and the matriarch Baba and - once again - the sky the sea, the trees.  Each day would have its rituals of breakfast, chores, swimming, exploring... "we peeped into birds' nests, picked flowers, examined mosses and lichens, collected shells, watched bees swarming, dammed brooks and climbed trees" (p 101).  She writes of different cooks and other servants who worked for the family, of graping, collecting beech plums, cooking chowder, sailing to Cuddyhunk.  Many familiar places (e.g., Horseneck Beach, Adamsville) are cited.  Janet and her older brothers convince their parents to rent a bathhouse at the beach so they can meet some of the other teenagers in the area.

If there is a hero in this story, it would be Pop, who was amateur naturalist, sailor, Mr Fix-it, often the butt of his children's jokes, but also the unapologetically sentimental heart of the family.  It's not clear how Pop arranged to take off two months every summer, although he is booked for pulpit supply most Sundays, and his religious convictions appear to consist mostly of the thou-shall-not variety (e.g., do not drink, do not smoke, etc), but he is a family man, through and through, and his affection and foibles really make this story sing.

The memoir ends with an epilogue, where Janet describes driving back to the Point with her children and mother in the late 1960s.  The hurricane of '38 knocked down many of the trees and, sadly, Baba, Tink, Pop, and even Janet's husband Ernie, have died.  But the point is full of grandchildren, summer is in the air, and Janet is about to move down to live in Westport full-time, with her new husband, Robert Grindley.