It was another warm day, up in the low 90s, so we thought about spending the day near the water.

No, we didn't go to the beach. We're not beach people.

We went up to Quincy, Massachusetts, up to the former Quincy Shipyard, which produced warships during both the first and second World Wars. The cruiser U.S.S. Salem is berthed there. We visited Salem back in November of 1995. It was considerably cooler then. James and I wandered around the ship--they did not have a veteran doing the tours like last time--and it was pretty warm down in the ship's interior (figures--lots of steel plus lots of sun equals hot, hot, hot) while my mom waited in the Captain's wardroom. Part of the ship is fixed as it was when Salem was on active duty, part is an exhibit of ships' memorabilia and there is also an area with ships' models. We also climbed up to the bridge. Sparrows now nest in the the radar and other places on the ships' masts and we saw a baby bird being fed by its mama.

Quincy (in Massachuese this is pronounced "Quinzy") is also the hometown of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, in fact of four generations of the Adams family, so we did the Adams family tour. You first see John Adams' birthplace, and, next door, is John and Abigail Adams' first home. These are the original homes, but the furniture in the interiors are all replicas. The second part of the tour is "Peacedale," John and Abigail Adams' second home, which was handed down to John Quincy Adams, then to his son Charles Francis Adams (the family historian), and finally to Charles' son Brooks Adams, who left the house to the city of Quincy in 1927. (The National Park Service later took over the home.) It's a fascinating place. Everything in the house is authentic. The wallpaper in one room is from 1840. There are pieces of furniture that came from John Quincy's tenure at the Hague in Holland. Furniture that had probably been in the white house. Four generations of lighting, from candles to lamps to gas lamps to electric light.

Each room in the house comes with a fascinating story, and even the extension has a funny story to go with it: the Adams' bought the house because Abigail had visited it as a teenager and fallen in love with it. Once moved in, she found it too small and contracted to have it enlarged. She eschewed the low ceilings and darkness of the original part of the house and asked the contractor for taller ceilings. He told her he couldn't do so without ruining the floor plan of the upper story. She responded, "Well, if you can't raise the ceiling, lower the floor." Sure enough, the floor of the addition is two steps down from the original part of the house.

Outside is a formal garden that was once part of the working farm, a carriage house added by Charles Francis, trees planted by John Quincy--and a library building. This was built to house John Quincy's collection of books. It was at least 20' X 50' and the bookshelves were supposed to only reach halfway to the high ceiling, the remainder to be covered with portraits. Instead, when Charles Francis started filling the shelves, he discovered he had to extend them up to the roof, 2.0'-25' feet up, to fit all the books (the portraits were put on a balcony). The kicker is that on some of the shelves the books are two and three deep!

(Yes, I asked. There are more than 12,000 books. Wow.)

Came home afterwards, had supper, then went out to Oakland Beach for dessert. Oakland Beach is the home of Iggy's, which started life, and was for the longest time, a mere shack near the beach that served doughboys, clam cakes, soda, and other hand foods. They've expanded a bit--they have sandwiches, other seafood now, and even a seating extension. On summer evenings they are packed, and I was amused to see that they now sell t-shirts, which proclaim "I survived the line at Iggy's."

We got a bag of doughboys (you folks in Massachusetts call 'em "fried dough"; I hear New Yorkers refer to them as "elephant ears"--they are bread dough deep fried to a golden color then sprinkled with sugar) and walked down near the beach. A car club was just finishing a get-together and we looked through the remaining classic cars, including a neat little roadster that could have had Nancy Drew for a driver, as darkness settled on the landscape. Many people were still sitting on the seawall despite the darkness, probably reluctant to go home to non-air conditioned homes in the still sticky evening.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:57:00 PM

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