Chestnut Hill Farm

Des fragments de souvenirs lui reviennent de son ete passe sur une ferme alors quelle avait huit ans. Elle se rappelle les plaisirs de marcher pieds nus dans le fain, de monter a cheval sans selle, de laver la vaisselle a la pompe, de cueillir les haricots. L'influence de cette famille rurale a marque ses annees a venir. Some sixty-five years ago I first went to the Farm, along with my older sister, Kitty. I was eight. Our father had been an officer in WWII, and subsequently had to go to some sort of army camp each summer. Our mother, with our little brother Billy, went up north to stay with a friend. So Kitty and I were sent off to the Farm. I don't recall that there was an explanation for this, though I know that our parents were friends-of-friends connected with the Farm. But there we were, heading up a long tree-lined lane toward the farm buildings: a big old barn to the right, with a stretched-out house behind it on the crest of the hill. Pasture and hay fields to the north, crop-fields to the south. Cows, a horse, hay, beans, corn. The real thing. But the first reaction we had was one of terrible homesickness. Right away, the first night, we wrote desperately to our mother that we could not stay here, though we had a lovely room to ourselves with two little white beds and lots of books: she must come and rescue us. Within a short while, however, we got some sense of how the wonderful Farm worked, and of its occupants. First of these was Hazel Marnie Albertson--the nurturing grandmotherly presence who presided over the south end of the house, which included her formal garden, and who immediately took us under her wing. Her garden was surrounded by blue spruce, with a mown lawn and reflecting silver ball on a pedestal in the centre. Mamie's book-lined living room stretched the width of the house, overlooking the garden, with windows all along the sunny south side. In the middle of the house, and the family, running back-and-forth, there was Jeannie, Mamie's hard-working, frazzled daughter, who got the food on the table, and the dishes washed, and the house generally taken care of. Then at the north end, close to the barn, there was handsome, tanned, and sometimes surly Kay, Jeannie's husband (and Lester, his helper), who worked the Farm. They took their meals, silently, in the kitchen, while the rest of us ate at long tables on the big outside porch, facing west and overlooking the Merrimack River. After the meal, and as the sun set, the tables would be converted to a dishwashing assembly line: one warm basin for the rinsing, a hot one with suds for the washing, and a then a boiling one (fresh off the stove) for the final rinse. I especially liked to be in charge of the last basin, and with tongs to lift out the steaming dishes and put them in the rack to dry. The Farm seemed to be a sort of bed-and-breakfast as well as a farm, since there were quite a few visitors staying there besides my sister and me. Amongst them were two pleasant young actors who were doing summer stock in nearby West Newbury--one was Martin Balsam; I would have liked to contact Marty to learn more about his Farm time, but sad to say, he died in 1996. The other was a very kind and very pretty woman whose name I've forgotten, but who did my braids in lovely special ways, especially for the evening we went into town to see their performance. She wound the two braids around my ears and pinned them in place. It was my first experience of feeling elegant (and the last for many years). But at the other extreme was Harry, who'd had a lobotomy, and just wandered around. He was not scary, he was just not there--I guess parked by a relative who didn't want to have to deal with him. I can see him very clearly, to this day, paunchy in his plaid shirt, with glasses. I don't recall that he ever said a word. It seemed to me, even then, that it was Jeannie who really kept the whole thing going, though Mamie and Kay held power at the Farm's opposite poles. …

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