The MBTA commuter Newburyport/Rockport line to Rockport
Boston is much quieter and more relaxed than New York. However, after almost two weeks in the frenzy and madness of the big city I am longing for a calm place. I decide to take the MBTA Newburyport/Rockport line to Rockport, Massachusetts.
Boston North Station
I see few people in the streets of Boston during the half hour walk to North Station. The station is hidden on the ground floor of a modern business and shopping complex. You can only enter into the waiting area when you present a ticket to the readers at the gates. I look for ticket machines but do not see any. A giant of a guy in an orange security vest offers me to print one if I pay by card. However, I want a return ticket. He gives directions to the ticket counters somewhere in the corner of the cavernous structure. At the ticket counter they will be able to give me a return ticket valid for several days. It costs me 24 $. Only later I find out that MBTA offers senior discounts of 50%. So there is still a remnant of social attitude in US society.
MBTA commuter train in North Station
With the ticket I can indeed open a gate and get into the waiting area. There are comfortable benches with little tables. A couple of kiosks sell refreshments. This station is the southern terminus for several lines of the MBTA commuter network to the north and the Amtrak Downeaster up north along the coast to Portland and Brunswick. As usual, I am 90 minutes early and have plenty of time to observe the surroundings.
The waiting hall
The station is a low, dark and depressing space. Everything, except the fake-wooden benches, seems to be in dark gray to black. Most light comes from the advertisement panels which also sometimes offer departure information. The big overhead train departure panels seem to be out of order. There are plenty of others but from a seated position they are not very well visible when the view is blocked by other waiting passengers. However, every departure is also clearly announced several times by intercom.
Pigeons in the waiting hall
Glass sliding doors give access to the platforms. Since the departure track is only announced around 10 minutes before departure nobody has any reason to go there. It is good that they have these sliding doors. It is very cold outside and each time a door opens a cold draft immediately takes possession of the black space.
My first female Santa Claus
When I arrive there are more pigeons in the waiting area than humans. One of the sliding doors even opens when a pigeon, from outside, toddles up to it. The pigeons disappear when more passengers arrive for a train about to depart, and reappear as soon as they have left for boarding.
Commuter train 109 ready for departure
Meanwhile a big crowd starts to assemble. Most of them have roller cases. A big group assembles one by one, all welcomed by an, in particular loud, blonde woman. She seems to have adopted the role of the group entertainer. Everybody else stays rather quiet. Eventually the Amtrak train to Brunswick is announced on Platform 10. Most of the occupants of the hall file to the sliding door and disappear. The pigeons come back.
The passage between engine and carriage
Eventually it is time to board the train to Rockport. There are only few travelers for the train of 5 cars, two of which are double deck. The train is pulled by a huge Diesel engine which even has a door at the end to allow the conductor to pass between engine and train. All in shiny stainless steel with purple and yellow decoration. The door of the carriage facing the engine is open. Neither are the other doors locked during the trip. A situation which would be seen as a reason to cancel the whole ride in a Europe where care for the security of the individual has been taken over by the authorities.
Inside of one of the vintage carriages which probably already were used by the Boston anf Maine Railroad 50 years ago
I mount the stairs to the upper deck of the front double deck car. The seating space is separated in comfortable red suede benches for 3 and 2 per row. Unfortunately all the windows are dirty, scratched or foggy. I settle down at one of the cleaner ones and look forward what is to come while I watch a couple dressed as Santa Claus walking down a train on the other track and waving at the people seated inside.
The highway spaghetti above the exit of Boston North station
Sharp on time the train eases slowly out of Boston North station. The line is overshadowed by a labyrinth of highway bridges. This is where all the past investments have gone. Under the bridges a collection of rubbish and redundant material, car bodies, sleepers and rusty metal parts. The northern suburbs of Boston resemble a collection of industrial archaeology interrupted by stagnant stretches of swampy water.
The sign indicating that the seat is occupied
The conductor interrupts my contemplation through the dirty and scratchy windows of the upper floor of the double deck car. He punches my ticket and then fixes a piece of paper to my seat to make clear that it is occupied and the ticket checked. The people in front get a red piece of paper – they get off earlier.
Station stop with the short platform of the correct height to the left
Many of the stations along the line have platforms which are too short for the train. The conductor announces that passengers leaving the train at those stations should come to the first or second car to get off. In case of disability, the conductor would take care that the train would pull up to such a position that the handicapped passenger can get off at one of the other doors as well. Another thing unheard of in Europe.
Bar blocking the part of the train not stopping at the high platform
The MBTA commuter trains are operated by Keolis. Keolis is a company owned to 70% by the national French SNCF railway company. Fortunately they did not introduce French habits yet. The trains are on time. The material is old but works. And they still use, like all American railways, the bell next to the horn. European train drivers, who only have horns, are afraid of using them in stations because they are so loud that people might jump on the track from the shock. The bells are also loud but because of the constant sound people are well prepared when the train moves in.
Marshland outside Boston
The further we get away from Boston the friendlier the view gets. Many of the stops are surrounded by towns with fashionable 2 story New England style wooden houses with verandas and balconies. The bare trees offer a glimpse into the differing quality of back gardens which would not be available in summer. It also uncovers the third-worldly amount of rubbish hidden in hedges and culverts. It is a world adopted for cars. I did not even know that you can buy your donuts from a well-known seller via a drive-in which in addition is surrounded by an over-sized parking lot.
Lakeside homes on the way to Rockport
The train stops briefly at Salem, the town which prides itself with their outrageous treatment of witches in a time when the witch hunt had already disappeared even in catholic Europe. After Salem there are more and more vistas of beaches interrupted by rocky headlands decorated with precious mansions, usually with their proper boat deck. In between there are lots of swamps on both sides of the line. There is ice on the water and traces of white frost in the ditches. Barren trees dot the sodden brown meadows.
Arrival in Rockport
When we arrive at Rockport and I try to get out of the first door I discover that where I want to get off this far in the front of the train there is no platform. There are no stairs between the floor of the car and the asphalt below either. I jump and realize how high a train can be. Rockport has a big station. There are at least four MBTA trains waiting for action, maybe because there is less traffic in the weekend.
The short platform in Rockport
This also was an important line for freight traffic. Today only a rusty crane is a reminder of the time when heavy blocks of granite where shipped from here. But more about that later. Like in Europe, all the freight sidings along the line are gone.
Rusty old crane in the station yard in Rockport
European stations frequently have an AED to help fast treatments of heart failures. Here they have a box to dispense Naloxone, a medication for instant treatment of drug overdoses. I would have expected that here in the countryside.
Maloxone dispenser in the station in Rockport
It is a 10 minute walk down a gentle slope to the motel I have booked in the center of the town and I immediately have the impression that I like it here. The streets are lined with well-kept mansions, many with Christmas decorations in the garden, the entrance or the windows. Some display the flag at their front door.
Eagle house motel
The motel seems deserted. There is a welcome note posted to the office door displaying my name, the room number, the Wifi code and instructions where to leave the key on departure. There is only one car on the parking lot. Maybe all the others came by train? I will soon realize that I am the only guest during my stay.
The main shopping street in Rockport selling junk
Rockport is situated on a kind of peninsula between the sea with a smaller old harbor, and a bigger harbor in an inlet with several wharfs. It is low tide and the bigger part of the port has lost its water and is covered in muck. The narrow part of the town between the two harbors is called Bearskin neck, and on the map it looks indeed like the head of – well maybe a dog. There is one long street lined with tourist shops on both sides. Most advertise themselves with signs announcing fine art, gallery, souvenirs you want, accessoires, gifts. One shop is called happy whale toys. In between a limited number of restaurants which all seem to close very early on Sunday. Where will I finally find a reasonable dinner and the fishermen’s haunt to have a drink?
One of the typical mail boxes
The other parts of town between Main Street and Broadway are just lovely. It is difficult to find anything ugly in Rockport. Barren trees looking like giants separate houses clad in shingles or wooden boards separated by white picket fences. Everybody has put some decoration around his plot. Colorful ceramic fish decorate the neat walls, there are windmills or swings for children in the garden, granite benches to take a rest and of course, the funny mail boxes with their arms outstretched when there is mail inside. And behind every gap between the houses you see the sea. At the corners the typical fire hydrants, here they are painted yellow.
And one of the typical hydrants
A graveyard overlooks the beach. Simple flat gravestones set into a meadow gleam in the last evening sun. I wonder about the stories of all these graves. How many have found their end at sea?
Rockport cemetery overlooking the sea
From death to fun: the next green space is called millpond meadow, where a bandstand waits for musicians to play. It is winter, it is cold but you can imagine how people rest on the meadow or the beach next door and listen to music being played live on the platform.
Bandstand on millpond meadow
But for winter time Rockport has got the Shalin Liu Performance center. A historic building has been turned into a theater. The backdrop behind the stage is the sea – the back of the building is an enormous window. Unfortunately I am too late for the afternoon performances of today.
Main street Rockport
Most of the other buildings along Main street are art galleries. The Rockport art colony houses around 30 galleries. In contrast to most of the restaurants and cafes they are all open.
I watch a fishing boat sailing into the harbor and walk to motif #1, the most photographed spot in Rockport, a red shed on one of the wharfs on Bearskin Neck. The boat moors at T-wharf across the water and a truck pulls up. With a crane they unload lobster traps, boxes, which might contain life lobster and load other containers which might contain bait. Laughter drifts across the water. When people laugh they should be happy: maybe they had a good catch.
Unloading a lobster boat
Each area has their own specific design of lobster traps. Here they are standard size mesh covered yellow boxes. A sign explains how a lobster trap works. Next to the lobster traps there are the buys used to mark the location. Each fisher has his own color pattern.
Motif #1
Night comes early in winter. Too early, really, to have dinner, but I did not have anything during the day and I am starving. I look around and discover a place called Fleur cuisine. From looking through the front windows I see a couple of people seated at a bar with a number of television screens displaying sports at the wall. It does not look very inviting. It seems to be a restaurant but from the front it looks like a fast-food joint. I circle around but cannot see the back which is above the water of the port. Google seems to confirm that it is a serious restaurant with good reviews. I try my luck and enter.
While I file through the door the girl behind the counter already shouts welcome at me. She has watched me circling around the premises to check it out. It turns out that there is a big room with tables for diners in the back, decorated with art and the imitation of an open fireplace. It is warm and feels cozy.
Whale cove white ale in Fleur cuisine
I order clam chowder and lobster ravioli. There is no local fish on the menu. Salmon is farmed and they indicate that their sea brass comes from Chile. But they have local beer brewed in Rockport. There is “Pescato” Italian pilsener, Jetty Juice IPA, Whale cove White Ale and East by Northeast IPA. I try two of them and I am satisfied. Time to go home and go to sleep. There is nobody left in the street at 8 pm.
Red Skiff cafe
The next morning I end up at Delisi’s red skiff cafe. The place opens at 7 am. At 8.30 I am the only guest. They offer the reliable American breakfast fare at a very reasonable price. Coffee refills and three eggs sunny side up with hash browns, toast, sausage and bacon. A perfect start of the day. That is what the local fishermen must have thought. Later I will hear that the place used to be open at 5 am. At that time it was packed with the local lobster fisher who had a coffee before going out. With most of the fishery gone it is not worth to open so early.
American breakfast
While I eat my breakfast I overhear the conversations of the staff at the counter. The house next to the cook’s is for sale. He is afraid that somebody from outside will buy and use it as a vacation home. No local with an income of <50.000 $ will be able to buy it. The cook is proud that his dog had barked at all those interested at open day. Rockport is slowly turning into a vacation colony of the rich of nearby Boston.
The quarry in Halibut point state park
Rockport was once famous for its granite. There were quarries allover the countryside and the rock was shipped from the little coves around the peninsula to destinations allover the world. All the quarries are closed but there is a self guided walk at Halibut state park, around 5 km to the north of the town center. I have learned that a bus is supposed to leave from the main square but when I walk there I cannot see the sign for a bus stop.
The quarry fills up if the water is not permanently pumped out
I ask a lady walking her dog whether she knows where the bus stops. She explains a location somewhere around the corner, but then suggest to drive me to the park. She will quickly walk home and get her car and pick me up at the christmas in the center of town.
The coastline at Halibut point
Margret is a therapist. Her work starts at 10 am and she has got just enough time to drive me to the state park and show me a couple of sights on the way. There is the granite pier, a little harbor from where the rock mined in the quarries was shipped. She drives to under the granite Keystone bridge, an impressive construction which still carries the traffic on highway 128. The narrow space under the bridge gives a ringing echo to all sounds you make. Whispers from one side can be heard at the other. Water seeping from cracks in the rock has turned into cascades of icicles. While we continue I point at all the fancy houses lining the road. All summer retreats mostly bought by rich people in Boston. They are rarely there. It is one of the potential means of income for the locals to maintain these houses and gardens. Only 40 families still live from lobster fishing. The main income is from tourism.
Winter plant
Margret drops me at the parking lot of the state park. The center of Halibut state Park is a quarry which has filled with water after it was abandoned. Ducks quarrel with sea gulls about the right to be on the water. The quarry is overlooked by a structure resembling a lighthouse which serves as a visitor center. It is closed but there is a leaflet available with a map proposing a self-guided walk.
Million $ beachfront vacation homes
Granite has been mined here since 1840. In the early times the methods for mining and splitting the granite in neat blocks and plates were rather primitive. The result is an enormous grout pile extending down to the shore. On some of the remaining blocks you can see the marks of drills to split them apart and dog holes for the clutches of the derricks to hoist the rock out of the quarry.
Keystone bridge
Later steam engines were used to drive the drills and operate the derricks. There was also a little railway and the Rockport Granite company bought a little steam engine called “Nella” to bring the rock to the pier for shipping.
Icicles under Keystone bridge
The Rockport granite was mainly used for building purposes and in flat sheets as pavement. Only the grout was used for piers and dams. With the introduction of concrete and steel construction and the use of asphalt for roads the need for granite declined. The economic crises in 1929 was the end for the Rockport Granite company.
Fled ledge quarry
Now people enjoy the quiet rugged landscape. I see a bright red bird with a crest and a birdwatcher with an enormous lens points out that it is a cardinal. For him it is normal, they are everywhere. For me it is special. I walk down to the water’s edege as far as possible. The Atlantic ocean is quiet and innocent waves pound at the rock.
Carson's quarry
Margret has pointed out that there are more, even bigger quarries behind Keystone bridge. On forest paths I find my way through the jumble of rocks around two enormous ponds. The ponds are now used as water reservoirs for the drinking water supply of the area. It is a nice hike. I don’t see anybody on my way.
Pigeon cove
The granite was shipped overseas from granite pier and pigeon cove. While the first is surrounded by pleasure boats covered in plastic for winter storage, the latter still is an active fishing port. A couple of people are at work at a wooden shack with a sign “Pigeon Cove Fishing Cooperative”. Next to the buildings are a coupling of hoisting cranes. There are a number of huts housing the equipment of the fishermen. Otherwise the ground is strewn with an untidy assembly of lobster traps, buoys, plastic barrels, buckets, pallets, containers with ropes and discarded, rusty metal parts of engines.
Moored in the harbor is a number of small fishing boats. Two men leave a boat with a black hull named “spirit” and row in my direction. Robert is 67 and Steve 69. They fish for lobster, but now, due to age, only for fun. In winter they don’t go out and now they are busy loading lobster traps onto Robert’s truck to store them at his house.
Buoys for marking lobster traps
Robert’s grandfather immigrated from Germany around 1870. He later went back to fight for Germany in the first world war. His last name is Moretz. With his German origins Robert is eager to practice some German. He learns on his i-pad, but has nobody to practice.
Hoist for loading the boats
They have been fishermen all their lives. Recently only lobster is left. They used to go for other fish. First the cod was gone. There was still haddock and Robert remembers that he went out just before daybreak and sometimes they were able to catch 1000 pounds of haddock in a few hours. Then the big industrial trawlers came. Each year the fish became smaller and smaller until they were all but gone. Then there were the sardines. He remembers huge schools of Sardines, sometimes close to the shore. Now all gone.
Gloucester, the next town, has been one of the biggest center of fishing along this coast. They still have a couple of trawlers but they hardly never leave the port any more. Robert hates farmed fish. They put them full of chemicals, otherwise they wouldn’t survive. And even more they are fatty and don’t have any taste.
Buoys for marking lobster traps
The Pigeon cove cooperative now counts 25 fishermen catching lobster. There are many more up in Maine but licenses are hard to get. Robert is a strong advocate for strict regulation and quotas. Only restriction and conservation zones might help to let the fish population recover. In New Foundland they have completely banned cod fishing and it took 30 years for the cod population to slowly recover. Iceland even fought a war with the UK to protect the fishing grounds.
The sea can be rough here. Robert points at the towering pier built from discarded granite protecting the harbor. Originally it was built in 1831. In a big storm in 1978 the pier, which has stood for more than 100 years, was swept away and the harbor destroyed. He points at a house with a red roof, the one closes to the pier. It was Mrs. Anson’s house. It was split in half during the storm. Another big storm hit in 1991. It was called the perfect storm. There was a blizzard which blocked people in their cars on the interstate for days. It cost the lives of six fishermen on board of “Andrea Gail” from the neighbouring port of Gloucester. The storm and the loss of the boat became the topic of the non-fiction book “The Perfect Storm” by Sebastian Junger and a Hollywood film starring George Clooney.
Cape Ann tool factory
Across the harbor is a huge, abandoned, rusty industrial plant. It was a foundry producing tools and machine parts. “Cape Ann Tool factory” I discover later as an inscription on the last empty, but functional building. It was established in 1880 and went out of business in 1987. Since that time the buildings disintegrate. It even built parts for Lindbergh’s plane “Spirit of St. Louis” and of the lunar lander.
Even tourism in the area has declined. Robert recalls that in 1960 the streets of Rockport were full of visitors lining up for boat trips. New the few who still come mainly are from overseas. Asian visitors who find their way up here. Instead there are the investors who buy ocean-side homes of up to 9 million dollars but they are never there.
Robert and Steve go back to their lobster traps. He wants to get home and practice on his guitar for their next band gig. I walk back to the center of Rockport. It is Monday and the few Sunday visitors have disappeared. Even most of the galleries are closed. Some of the tourist shops wait for visitors in vain. Just in time before they close at 4 I find a bakery cafe for a hot tea and a piece of cake.
Main street Rockport
I know what I will eat tonight. I go back to Fleur cuisine. They welcome me like an old friend. I haven’t had one for a long time but I order a lobster. It is some work to extract the meat but it is delicious. And it goes well with a glass of Whale cove white ale.
Lobster and another white Ale
After I get back to the hotel I long for another drink. Everything is closed now, the streets are quiet. I walk up to Cumberland farms, the convenience store. I search the shelves and fridges for some beer. With such an excellent local brewery there must be some to buy. I find all kinds of soft drinks, different ready made cans of coffee, but no alcohol. I ask the attendant, a young guy with a ponytail. No, they do not sell alcohol. The next place to buy beer is the liquor store in Gloucester, almost 4 miles away. Man, I travel by train. So, no beer in my cozy room. I will stick to water. Disappointed as I am I even forget to buy chocolate as a replacement.
Harbor entrance Rockport
Instead I count 7 churches just a stone’s throw from my room. The Saint Joachim church of the Parish Holy Family, the Unitarian Universalist Church, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, two First Congregational Churches and the First Baptist Church of Rockport. Non is open at this time to give some consolation. Instead I go to the beach and smoke a cigarette. I wanted to have a quiet place and I got it.
Winter sunset Rockport
The motel is next to a church. Every hour I hear the comforting sound of the bell…. And fall asleep.
Rockport old harbor
Sources:
Rockport old harbor
