Comments

While visiting a cousin in California April 9th, I showed him the Danvers Herald website and my recent column. Someone had added a Comment below the column. We both enjoyed reading the comment and recognizing that it was written by another cousin who lives far away. We all remember that pond in Danvers!

Today I re-visited the webpage and discovered another Comment. [To view the Comments page, click here.] I wrote in response:

Thanks for your comments! I enjoy reading about YOUR memories, too. So many of us skated, or tried to, on that pond. I remember awkward attempts with double-bladed skates tied on the bottom of my boots. My grandfather (William S. Nichols) also skated with clip-on skates, but he was good at it. My parents loved to play ice-hockey, both on this pond and down on the meadows (off Spring Street? and next to former railroad bed). My mother was proud of her hockey skates -- never used figure skates. I was happier when I finally had my own figure skates, tho I never was as avid a skater as my mom. We also skated on a pond on Ferncroft Road. That's where I learned to skate backwards [see my first Remembering Danvers column, March 1, 2007].

We were very fortunate to grow up with so much space to play in and explore. The pet racoons were mine, found in the trees nearby. Yes, I remember the cows grazing in the fields across the street. My mother told me she once saw a cow looking into my baby carriage; she was worried that I'd be scared, but I was smiling. I recall a Mr. Hooper bringing the cows, and once he stepped on a beehive and had to be hospitalized to recover from all the stings. Years later I remember the sadness of so many cows killed all at once, and the oddity that one calf survived. How strange that the lightning reached the cows down in that hollow; they must have been very close to a tall tree.

I'm glad the little pond survives. So much else has changed beyond recognition.