The Long Day's Journy Into Summer

The Long Day's Journey Into Summer by Pamela Thompson

The Sibleys packing up for their summer journey north resembled the Joad family heading west in The Grapes of Wrath. The Joads were escaping the dust bowl of Oklahoma and we were escaping the summer polio threat of the 50s. Our mode of transportation was a source of embarrassment to us kids – the two-toned Willy’s Jeep. Little did we know how very avante garde our parents were, the Jeep being the precursor to the SUV craze of today.

Dad would spend the night before our departure stacking the roof of the car with luggage and equipment and meticulously arranging and rearranging the bags in the back, leaving a mere 18” square space on top for Buff our Irish Setter. At 4:00 AM the next morning we were awakened and herded into the Jeep for the five-plus hour drive to Deep Cove. Buff was coaxed and cajoled into his tiny space where he curled up and slept for the duration. Pussy Willow the cat was allowed to find her own cubbyhole. We children jockeyed for our positions – those prone to car sickness getting the window seats.

The Jeep was the most dependable of our pathetic string of cars so we usually made the trip with few stops – the normal pit stops to accommodate small bladders or motion sickness mishaps. The big treat on the trip was the breakfast stop at Moody’s Diner in Waldeboro. We were tired and cranky but happy to be released from the car for pancakes or waffles in a real restaurant. We also knew that we were almost THERE!

Driving down the peninsula and filled with anticipatory excitement we watched for familiar landmarks. The first was the Knox Mansion, the great white house dominating the turn onto the peninsula. Further on there was the lonely, white clapboard Finnish church on the left, the glimpses of the St. George River with rolling fields on the right, the railroad tracks, Harjula’s Dairy and the big left hand curve where we all shouted in chorus “Wiley’s Corner,” through Tenant’s Harbor, past Alva’s garage and the Village ice cream parlor (fondly remembered for their banana splits) and finally past Drift-In Beach, down Glenmere Road and into our yard.

The house with its peeling yellow paint looked forlorn sitting in its sea of waist high hay, its windows hidden by heavy wooden shutters. The process of opening the house seemed interminable to us kids, anxious to begin the summer, but first things first. After bags and supplies had been lugged inside which was cold and damp from winter hibernation, Dad began the chore of removing the shutters to let in light and sun. Mom had to get out the linens for the beds, set up our primitive kitchen, haul furniture onto the porch, fill kerosene lamps with oil and most important, check all nooks and crannies for mouse nests. Inevitably one would be found, often with tiny, squiggly, blind, pink babies which would make us girls squeal with revulsion, then cry with concern when taken away to be “disposed of.”

Our responsibility was to get the water. As Jonathan and I were the oldest we were the ones in charge. We collected the metal buckets and rope and headed to the well. The rope was tied onto the handle, the bucket lowered into the well to be filled with the icy cold water from the underground spring. Our first attempts were not successful, there being a definite art to the lowering of the bucket so that it did not just bob around on the surface but actually sank. Usually a minor skirmish occurred at this point, each of us sure we had the correct technique and competing to see who could get a bucket full of water up first. The worst part of the job was carrying the heavy, full, metal pail back to the house, over uneven ground, cold water sloshing onto our legs and into our Keds. An indelible summer memory has always been of wet, soggy sneakers.

Once the chores were all done and the house had taken its first warming breaths of the season we were able to settle into our summer of adventures and misadventures at Deep Cove.