Randy Spencer sits on the porch of his 80-year-old log camp on the shores of West Grand Lake in eastern Maine, and points to a rocky promontory just beyond the guest cottage. “That’s Moot Point over there,” he quips. That’s the kind of humor you might expect from a fishing guide who’s also a singer, […]
Magazine
Family lore has it that Ken Gloss’s first spoken word was “book.” How could it be otherwise? His father, George Gloss, made the Brattle Book Shop, in business since 1825, a local landmark. But Ken has put his own stamp on the place, too. With his frequent appearances on Antiques Roadshow, he’s today’s most recognizable […]
The Rayes run the last remaining cold-process stone mustard mill in the nation, using an ancient technique they say enhances mustard’s natural flavor. (Other manufacturers cook their mustards.) These massive millstones have been grinding seed since 1900. They once served the sardine industry, making mustard only for canning. That changed in 1990, when Nancy Raye, […]
We start arriving at dusk, setting out lawn chairs and blankets in front of the bandstand. We may hear the Temple Town Band perform in any number of small New England towns, but we’ve come here because their music is one summer sound that binds the generations. The first Temple Town Band was founded in […]
To say Dick Pulsifer makes boats is to say Stradivari made fiddles. Every year for the past three decades, he has painstakingly crafted an average of three finely made small boats, plank by plank, at his modest workshop outside Brunswick. And these beguilingly simple boats — he’ll be completing #104 in 2008 — are treasured […]
In 1905, the Thomas Brayton family hired Joseph Carreiro to create gardens on their estate overlooking Narragansett Bay. He clipped the first green animals out of privet, yew, and boxwood, and tutored his young son-in-law, George Mendonca, who created his own legacy for more than half a century. Eugene Platt now carries on under the […]
On Thursday nights from May through September, this quarter-mile racetrack features cars that vary from your standard 380-horsepower types to, well, those that aren’t far removed from the junk heap. Which is pretty much what Ken Squier, former racing voice of CBS Sports, envisioned in 1960, when he turned a tired old dairy farm into […]
E.W. Hobbs has been a constant at Salem Willows Park since 1897. When Priscilla Hobbs was a child, she watched her father and grandfather pop their famous buttered Hobbs popcorn on the same century-old equipment that she and her brother Charlie use today. “I tell my grandkids to start learning those machines,” Priscilla says. “We […]
It’s early at Katama Airfield, the largest (and one of the oldest) grass airfields in the country. Mike Creato, who’s been running Katama for the past 5 years, learned the ropes from his grandfather, who owned it for 40 years before selling it to the town of Edgartown and The Nature Conservancy. It’s one of […]
Jeremy Frey’s baskets aren’t just works of art, but small monuments to perfection. He splits brown ash into thin strips, then weaves them into a creation that’s both feather-light and sturdy. He may spend up to a month creating a single one; pricing starts at about $95 and averages $300. Look for Jeremy at Bar […]
Paula Marcoux brings the 17th century alive for visitors to Plimoth Plantation as one of the dedicated staff who painstakingly maintain the Mayflower II, a full-size replica constructed in England in 1957 to reenact the original 1620 voyage across the Atlantic. Last year, to commemorate the ship’s 50th anniversary, Paula worked with the brewers of […]
He got his first model train when he was 5; it was an American Flyer and he still has it. More than 50 years later, Bruce Cloutier is still into trains — right up in the cab, in fact. Following 32 years of elementary-school and college teaching, Bruce turned his summer train job into a […]