Mass-ive Adventure: Day 3

Boston would not be Boston without Dunkin Donuts. Apparently, everyone eats them out here. This is evident in the fact that you can find one on pretty much every corner (surprising since I don’t remember seeing very many obese people). There may not be any gas stations, but by golly, they have doughnuts. We drove to the coast to Marblehead, Bucket’s old stomping grounds, and the first thing we did was pick up a box of 25 Munchkin doughnut holes. Oh yes we did. We would eat on them all day, sucking down every single one. After we had stocked up, we headed to Salem to check out our digs for the night, family friends of Buckets who were going to Maine for the weekend and were kind enough to let us take over their house for the night. They are amazing, and again, I was greeted with even thicker Boston accents! What’s an “r” anyway? Loved it. Our first stop of the Saturday adventure was to Waterside Cemetery, the cemetery where Charlie St. Cloud in the book works and lives. We had to see it, of course, and Bucket also wanted to say hello to her grandparents who are buried there. True to Francis luck, on our way out of the cemetery, the Saab got stuck going up the hill. The tire was off the ground stuck in a snow bank, and no matter how much we tried, the rubber just burned behind us. Our first stop in Marblehead and we were already defeated! Between laughing and panicking, and attempting to push it up the hill (yes, we did) and dig out the tire, we were loving it! Finally I got in the driver seat, and with Thompson luck ahead of us and Francis luck behind me pushing, we got the Saab up the hill and out of the cemetery. This was the mark of the beginning of an incredible day!

            We drove around for awhile, going out to the Neck of Marblehead, where we saw castles and houses bigger than the state itself. But it was beautiful! We also saw Marblehead’s grand lighthouse, which, well, wasn’t so grand, but a lighthouse nevertheless! Next we ventured into Old Town. We were walking among houses built in the early 1700s, belonging to fisherman and original townspeople. While it may have started out as a working-class city, it, like so many New England coastal towns had become a little hoity toity and the Old Town was flanked with little expensive shops and restaurants. It was incredible, nevertheless, and I even found out each spot that Bucket had peed her pants or kissed a boy or gotten in trouble. It was extremely enlightening. (:         

            During this whole time, I had been worrying about the cost of going to grad school in Boston if I were to get accepted. As we were going up to Sewall Fort, the place where they hid the US Constitution from the British during the Revolutionary War, a mailman got out of his car and started talking to us in his thick Boston accent. He asked us where we were from, told us something about George Washington’s hidden rum (??) and then asked what we were doing. I told him I was looking at grad schools, to which he responded – without hesitation – “Don’t worry about the money. You’re only this age once.” With that, he basically tipped his hat, wished us luck, and got in his car and drove off. It was like a little angel had come to address my exact worry about going to school in Boston. And it was in the form of a Marblehead mailman.

            Two ponds later, we reached yet another cemetery (do I sense a disturbing trend developing??). But hold your horses, because we found a tombstone from...are you ready? 1692. That's right. That's a six first, not a nine. Fate would have it that we would run into Wilmot Redd's grave, the only "witch" from Marblehead hung in the Salem Witch Trials. She was but a lass. I felt a special kinship. No comment. Anyway, Old Burial Hill was beautiful and it was so serene as our day was approaching dusk. Dusk meant dinner, and the growling in our stomachs met dinner NOW (those munchkins go straight from your stomach to your butt, I tell you!) Having been highly recommended by a man who knows his food, we headed to a small roast beef shack in Salem. Upon opening the doors, we were blasted by the aroma of FRIED GOODNESS. We must've stared at the menu for hours, because finally a guy standing near the corner began to talk to us, hoping to help somehow. We asked him what was good there, in what must've been strange accents, because he said, "You're not from around here, are you?" I wanted to protest, but I knew it was true. He recommended the "Regular" and so that is exactly what we got...with a side orders of fries and onion rings of course. When the food was spread out before us on the table, the site was as though a cow had been slaughtered before our eyes and cooked to perfection. BBQ sauce dripped down our faces as we devoured these sandwiches like heathens -- but happy heathens, nevertheless. So we got a picture, naturally. A man in the shack took it. And they say Bostonians are so cold!

Well, after that bombshell of a dinner, our wearied bodies needed a rest, because on the agenda later that night was Maddies, the local Marblehead bar down by the waterfront. And we needed to bring our A game for that one. When 9pm rolled around, we headed into Marblehead and entered another world -- one with which Bucket and I are quickly becoming familiar. It was dark, and loud, but Bucket knew the bartender, so it was indeed amazing. We ordered Shirley Temples, and who would have known that Joey could make the best Shirley Temples on the northeastern seaboard? He told us that it was his first time, in fact, and that chances were good that it would be his only time. We thanked him oh so much. 

Bar life was good. Sometimes it suits me. Should I be worried? Meanwhile we still smelled like fried goodness, which after the goodness is gone, merely smells like fried staleness, which is absolutely and utterly disgusting. So what to do? We threw our clothes in the dryer with a million dryer sheets (don't tell Jackie and Phil!) and awaited the results until morning...........