I’m Your Man

Hello from the Gurnet again. Today is Saturday November 18th. The air temperature is 43. The ocean temperature is 55 degrees. The sky is black. There is no wind for a change. The tide was very high and it was not easy to walk in the sand full of rocks.

I did not expect to have to clean Duxbury beach again so soon. Two days ago I did a pretty good job.

There was so much to clean, that with the two fisherman lobster catch boxes that I found, I made a train and pulled them along the sandy beach all the way from beyond Tall Pines to the second crossover. I found rope from off of some of the lobster buoys and connected them. I drove my pick up down to pick every thing up after my three and one half hour eco walk.

Look at this piece of pottery that washed up. Looks like Pilgrim stuff to me.

Hey! They just found a tintype in North Carolina of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, the man who shot him dead.

Stranger things have happened . . .  such as an old man was seen Saturday morning pulling two boxes along the beach filled with litter.

Cigarette filter butts on the Kaibab at the Grand Canyon to plastic bottles in Sicily near a closed tuna factory. As Leonard Cohen used to say, “ I’m your man."

Gurnet & Saquish 2017

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Buenos dias amigos y amigas. It is so foggy this morning that you cannot see from one end of the Gurnet Bridge to the other. Ok, ok, you call it the Powder Point Bridge, but the sign says Gurnet Bridge 1898. The every-other-day walk out to The Gurnet is uneventful. Almost no one is on Duxbury beach today because of the cloud cover, except for a few fishermen from the shore.

I decide to take the pot-holed gravel road back to where my pickup truck is parked. Almost immediately I come upon about 30 Boy Scouts, possibly walking out to the Gurnet Lighthouse to sit and have lunch. Around the lighthouse it is all grass, and the dirt mounds protect you from the wind. In 1776 there were six cannon here that fired on an English warship. My barber Carol says you can rent the lighthouse and sleep overnight. How much fun would that be?

Sandy and I were at the Plymouth or Gurnet Light last Saturday with Robin and David Armstrong. We sat in chairs on their strip of sandy beach property, facing Plimoth Harbour. It is only three miles from here to where the Mayflower is floating. Warm food, cool drinks . . .  September on Saquish. Wow! What a treat! 

 

On the way out, it was a full Harvest moon so David drove us past the foxes and rabbits, right up to the lighthouse. November will bring snowy owls and coyote. The past two nights in the casita I have been serenaded by two owls. One is a saw-whet and I didn’t get the second one’s name. Maybe a boreal. Who-who was it?

Just before Tall Pines, even though I am wearing earplugs, and before I can say Bob Marley, I hear steel drum music. My first thought is Duxbury teenagers, sitting in their Jeep with reggae rather than rap music, just over the second beach cross over.  That was my first thought. My other three thoughts were …

• Because of the hurricane, the music is coming up all the way from Foxy’s on Jost Van Dyke

• There must be a Morgan, pirate-looking, sailboat sitting off Clark's Island.

Or . . .

• There is a older gent, driving his old pickup slowly, while pulling horizontally a large steel I-beam, which is smoothing out the gravel road from the bridge to Saquish.

Google says Foxy’s was leveled last week. There is no wind for a sailboat this beautiful morning.

So what do you think I heard?

- Tocino         

A friend to the universe -- just don’t break the beautiful silence by greeting me

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P.s.

Saturday October 28, at the Gurnet Bridge. I am walking out toward the Gurnet Light once again. It is the oldest wooden lighthouse in these United States. Of the 33 parking spaces, there are only seven available at the west end of the wooden bridge in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Well not really. All seven are full, but I kind of squeeze in and hope for no ticket. Denzel Washington is shooting his new movie, called Equalizer 2. Columbia Pictures has been shooting on Boylston Street in Boston, but they have a large set in the Brant Rock section of Marshfield. Rumor has it he is staying near the Fairview Inn, at a summer rental house called Shangri-La, on Ocean Street.

Monday they are shooting at the Powder Point Bridge, and that is why all the parking spaces are full. One of the larger trucks says on its side “Rain For Rent.” The pipes run right into Duxbury Bay . . .  to pull the rain water, I guess. There are porta-potties and a golf cart that says “Production” on it. Maybe the coolest things are the wind machines.

Did you catch the movie “The Way Way Back,” with Steve Carell? The Gurnet 1895 or Powder Point Bridge is in this film too. Carell plays a real rat in that one. You might enjoy it. Being the way you are. Just kidding. He owns the General Store in Marshfield Hills.

P.p.s.

• Dennis from North Carolina and North Adams is writing a book that will include a story about a kid that I grew up with, Russell Roulier, a grunt Marine, who was killed in a foxhole that was overrun in Viet Nam. He found me from a blog that I did seven years ago. YCMTS up.

• Yesterday I had lunch at El Sarape with an Army veteran of Viet Nam.

• I almost got in a fight at a bar in the liberty town of Oxnard California while in the Navy Seabees near Port Hueneme, California.  That was my closest scrape. I did manage to get Tex Ritter’s autograph.

• I told you already about the phone call at the end of June. “Hello. When I was 16, my mother told me that your brother is my father? You could say that that has sort of filled up the summer.

- Bob Bacon          

the very first person to EVER say  "you can’t make this stuff up." (I even edged out my friend Tom Donovan, who was the very first person to develop the Five Second Rule about dropped food.)

The Gurnet

Christmas Day Was the last time that I walked out the five miles to The Gurnet from the Powder Point Bridge into Plymouth. And that's the truth. Today is a sunny, almost warm June 11th, 2016. Duxbury Beach itself is six miles long and probably the best beach on the South Shore of Boston. It has almost no stones and the sandy beach is wide. Today the Atlantic Ocean is up to 55 degrees. That is what the chalkboard at the Ranger Station says, at the east end of the bridge.

 

Behind this brick wall is the oldest clay tennis court in the United States. I know because I redid the swimming pool and driveway.

Along this shore are oak trees. The rumor is the acorns came from the bilges of the Mayflower and the Speedwell.

Sandy and I have lived here for 44 years and in all that time no one has called the Gurnet Bridge the Gurnet Bridge, We always refer to it as the Powder Point Bridge and so does everyone else. But history says Gurnet is correct.

Close but no cigar.

“The only good indian is a dead one.”  Toch-away, a Texas Comanche chief, thumped his chest and  said, "Me good injun." General Philip Sheridan said, “The only good indians I ever saw were dead."  Not, "the only good indian is a dead one."

The junction of Careswell Street and the railroad tracks that used to run through our yard was called officially Webster Place Depot in the 1800s. It was mainly used for travelers to summer in Green Harbor and everyone referred to it as Green Harbor Station. The  largest hotel stood exactly where Mamma Mia’s stands today. It was called The Webster.

Daniel Webster lived on Webster Street. Holy cow, what a coincidence.

"Play it again, Sam." Humphrey Bogart did not say that to Sam. He said, “You played it for her, now you can play it for me. PLAY IT!"

By the way Sam, Dooley Wilson, was faking the piano. He was a drummer. You CAN make this stuff up.

There is a photo of me running here years ago in my green Bill Rogers running suit. Do you remember those? It was taken by a professional, and was printed in the Duxbury Clipper Newspaper. Donna, Randy, John and I ran this beautiful route for thousands of miles. Low thousands, but still thousands.

I start my walk from the parking lot at the west end of Powder Point Bridge, near the tennis court wall. I pull my ball cap way down so I don’t have to greet people. This is impossible if you are wearing it backwards. You don’t still wear your hat during dinner with the family, do you? Pulled way down is exactly what Ben Affleck did on the flight from Fort Myers to Boston last March. Sandy recognized him anyway.

The first group of people you see are the fisherman, both in the water and off the bridge itself. At this time of year they are trying to catch striped bass -- stripers.

 

Not far from the bridge, you can see Myles Standish monument in the distance on Standish Shore.

 

 There are two crossovers to get to the beach with your 4WD vehicle, to spend the day ($300 per year).

 


Almost to the Gurnet, this is the view that you get. It always reminds me of a Clint Eastwood movie set. 

First there's the Gurnet with the ancient light house, Plymouth Light.  Locals call it Gurnet Light. It is the oldest wooden light house in the United States, built in 1768 when we were still English.

 

It an be seen for 17 nautical miles. Gurnet was named by the English, who were reminded of a similar place where there was excellent gurnet fishing, at a harbor in England. Originally called the Gurnets Nose. In 1776, it was fortified and called Fort Andrew.

  

When Samuel de Champlain 

 

arrived in 1606 to map the Gurnet and Clark's Island, he found thick pine forests and native Americans fishing for cod. Halfway to Gurnet there is a section of greenery called  High Pines.

As you can see from the photo, they are long gone. The Indians and the tall pines, but not the cod.

Tall Pines in Spanish is pinos altos. Pinos Altos also happens to be a town in New Mexico, close to Silver City, where by the way Billy the Kid's mom is buried.

Jack Nicholson’s mother would sometimes call him a son of a bitch. Jack thinks that is funny.

Windsurfing on a beautiful day, near Saquish.

 

Next is Saquish, which juts out into Plimoth Harbour.  

Beach dinner/fire on Saquish with the Armstrongs.

In the heat of the summer we drive out here with David and Robin, and picnic on the small piece of beach property that they own.

There are all kinds of shore birds  and ducks along this beach rose lined dirt road. 

 

Barb and John have recently become birders and really know their stuff.

A willett.

Piping Plovers OMG! 

Today I saw a pair of willets. 

Another willett.

Last weekend down at Allans Point in Westport, I saw them for the very first time. I am pretty sure these were the exact same birds. Believe it or not there are loons here but you would not recognize them from the ones you see on the lakes of Vermont or Maine.

That is Clark's Island, named for the second in command, being first mate, of the Mayflower. So it really should be called John Clarke Island.

Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's here and Henry David Thoreau waded across Duxbury Bay to get here at very low tide on his famous long Cape Cod walk. Pilgrims held some of their very first religious services on this small island.

A whale is buried right here. I saw them do it. Well what do you do with a beached dead whale?

Walking back, across the bridge again.

You could join me some time If you can walk ten miles. But I do have my rules …….

• No good morning, buenos dias, or buen dia greetings. We are trying to get away from the madding crowds.

• No backward hats.

• You can’t bring Buddy or Fido or Flipper with you.

• No chatting, as we are enjoying the desert-like peace and quiet.

 You know what ?  On second thought . . . 

su servidor    

Roberto Francisco Tocino

I know 177 people's birthdays.