This post started because I took some photos of cranberries just before I made my usual cranberry relish (with oranges and apples, plus ground ginger) just before Thanksgiving. Cranberries make such a pretty photo, don’t you think?
When I was a young teenager my parents and I moved to Newport, Rhode Island from our home in San Diego, California. My dad was in charge of the technical team (of about 8 families who all moved there) that built the first military computer for the Naval War College* there. A computer that was quite a jewel in the Navy’s crown, for performing strategic war games. It was a huge project, and the computer was housed in a building several stories high, about half the size of a city block. This was in 1955. How technology has changed since then, huh? We moved there for about 2 1/2 years, when I was 14. Having never lived on the East Coast, it was a big cultural change. I went from a junior high school here in California (8th grade), to being the youngster in a high school there (also 8th grade). I began wearing plaids. Wools. Heavy wool coats. Woolen socks. Galoshes. Yuk. Boots didn’t exist back then. We attended a Methodist church. We learned the nuances of clam chowder. We visited the first outlet stores from the woolen mills. I wore Daniel Green shoes. Fluffy petticoat lined skirts. We took lots of weekend trips, which didn’t excite me much back then, but now I realize how fun they really were. We went to Boston, into the hinterlands of Vermont, New Hampshire, Cape Cod, and to New York.
Perhaps I’ve told this story before, so pardon me if I repeat myself. My parents leased an apartment, sight unseen, by mail, a couple of months before we drove across the country. We took a nice driving vacation through the South en route. Across Texas. Biloxi. Key West. (No, Disney World wasn’t there at that time. Neither was Cape Canaveral.) Gettysburg. Washington, D.C. for just a day. Finances were a little tight, I think, so we stayed in motels, ate at very moderate restaurants. We did stay in New York City for one night too, and I got to see the Rockettes. We also ate dinner at an automat. I thought that was ever-so cool.
Finally we arrived in Newport. The apartment was one of two in a converted stable/carriage house on a palatial estate called Chastellux, along Newport’s Wellington Avenue of stately homes (built in 1854 by Richard Morris Hunt). The carriage house apartment was up a flight of steep stairs, had 2 bedrooms. Not a particularly attractive apartment, although it did have some character with a few nooks and crannies. No view, but it was a beautiful location. When it snowed, we were virtually captives because the elderly woman/landlady, Mrs. Lorillard Spencer**, who still lived in the palatial home didn’t want to pay for somebody to clear the interior road, although eventually she was forced to. I thought it was so fun to be snowed in. No school, etc. (That year there was a blizzard that left 5 feet of snow on the ground.) I befriended the older woman who was the landlady’s cook. She was from Sweden, and loved to bake. I remember visiting the cook on numerous occasions. She’d make a pot of tea and I’d help her cook. Well, mostly I watched, but we had a convivial conversation and I enjoyed listening to her stories about her homeland. The only thing I truly remember making with her was apple strudel. On the huge marble countertop in the palatial home’s massive kitchen island (back then palatial home kitchens did have islands). The landlady was not a happy person (as years have gone by I’ve realized that, certainly didn’t at the time). She was grouchy; she was a widow, I think, and lived there and in New York with just her and the cook. The cook went with her when she went to NYC. She did have a groundskeeper too, with the upkeep of several acres (probably 10, I’d guess). Occasionally the landlady would pop into the kitchen. And sometimes she didn’t like me even visiting the kitchen. Mostly because she thought if I was there, the cook wasn’t getting her job done as fast as she should. So I knew if there was any flak from the landlady, I was to leave immediately. And eventually the landlady said “no,” I couldn’t come visit the cook anymore. Sad for me.
I thought the big house, the carriage house, the stiff, unsmiling landlady were all very interesting. My parents didn’t. So promptly at 11 months renting, my dad wrote a letter informing the landlady that we’d be leaving in 30 days. We moved to a small 3 bedroom house closer to town. Where the roads were plowed. We lived there until my dad’s project was complete, then we moved back to our family home in San Diego, where I lived until I graduated from college.
I started out this post thinking I was going to write something about cranberries. All this was leading up to the fact that while we lived in Newport we did VISIT a cranberry bog. It think it was in Massachusetts. I found it fascinating – owned by Ocean Spray. So, tomorrow I will give you some info about cranberries. 🙂
In case you’re interested, I did a bit of online sleuthing:
* The [Naval War] college’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies is central to the Navy’s research efforts in maritime strategic thinking. One of its departments, War Gaming, introduced at Newport in 1887, allows students, joint and fleet commanders, and representatives of the Department of Defense and various governmental agencies to test operational simulations and advanced strategic concepts more than 60 times a year. Utilizing off-the-shelf technologies of video teleconferencing, computer simulation and World Wide Web capabilities, the Decision Support Center offers users an unparalleled selection of information gathering tools to support critical outcomes. . . .[from the Naval War College’s website]
In 1947, the NWC acquired an existing barracks building and converted it to a secondary war gaming facility, naming it Sims Hall . . . In 1957 Sims Hall became the primary center for the Naval War College’s war gaming department, serving as such until 1999. . . [also from the Naval War College’s website]
** Mrs. Lorillard Spencer (Katherine Force Spencer) was the 2nd wife of Lorillard Spencer (married 12/7/1922). But they were very much “in” the New York City crowd. The 2nd wife apparently never had children. She was our landlady, I believe. Her sister was married to John Astor at one time, so the family was definitely connected. The 1st Spencer wife divorced her husband “on grounds of neglect and failure to provide,” according to the ancient newspaper clip I found online from the New York Times. Such interesting, wicked webs we weave.
A year ago: Chocolate Almond Saltine Toffee (oh, SO yummy)
Two years ago: New York Special Slices
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