We had a nice Sunday, if one part of it was too short.

James wanted to go to the Quonset Air Museum again, and Friday, Saturday, or Sunday is the only day they take guests, so we went today.

Poor Quonset Point is the "little museum that wants to." They have high hopes for it, a small collection of planes, a--sadly--badly done half dozen display cases (the plastic coverings over badly photocopied pages have been hung crookedly), a loyal contingent of volunteers, a grass-pocked expanse of asphalt, and not much else. We wandered around and looked at the planes for a while, including a Navy "Hellcat" that was dredged out of the water around Martha's Vineyard and not much of the fuselage is left.

If this had been some tiny, minor depot somewhere, the fact that it's rotting away probably would be just a factor of time. But it's a shame there's not more here and more been done to even preserve at least a quarter of what once existed, because for five long years Quonset Point was one of The Places of the second World War. The place roared, three shifts ran, the word "Quonset" became so well known that it attached itself to a hemispheric metal building called a "Quonset hut" everywhere in the world. The fight was fought well here, and the buildings remaining are now rotting and seedy instead of being honored. It's sad.

We went out to Newport afterwards, which was probably a bad idea. Newport in the summer is an anthill anyway, but on Sundays it's a zoo--especially with the tourists taking advantage of the free parking at the beaches. Half the cars we saw were from out of state: New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut predominating, also New Hampshire, Texas, and two cars from Georgia. I compounded the error by directing James to drive out to the shore rather than having us eat lunch first, so we had to abandon our first attempt and go in search of food.

We lucked out on the way back; on our second orbit of Brenton Point we found a parking space and crossed the street to avail ourselves of the blessed cool for a while, watch the kite flyers and the seagulls, and the antics of a spaniel-cross. James was restless, but I could have sat there breathing in the salt air and being cool forever. The weather was quite horrible today, up in the 90s again.

After a short stop back at my mom's house, we had supper at Bassett's Inn (formerly just The Inn), a seafood and more place near Oakland Beach in Warwick. The food as always was delicious and ample.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:53:00 PM

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