The Witch City

As my cousin points out, Salem receives a lot of publicity during the Halloween season, due to the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Tourism booms and crowds of people descend on the Witch City to attend various Haunted Happenings and visit cheesy tourist traps. Restaurants and bars are filled to capacity by folks looking to party and celebrate Halloween in a ‘spooky’ atmosphere, while Wiccans, witches and pagans come to feel a non-existent connection between their current practices and the ravings of deluded Puritans dead these past 300 odd years.

I am never in Salem during Halloween season. Perhaps I’m missing a really fun time. Perhaps I’m being petty – after all, I don’t live there and the tourists undoubtedly pump scads of money into the local economy. I’m certainly being territorial. I have deep roots in Salem – my mother’s side of the family hails from Salem, and many of my relatives still reside there. Part of me resents all these ‘outsiders’ flocking to ‘my’ city and trampling over the scene of precious memories in order to celebrate a meaningless holiday.

Yes, I know I’m a misanthropic curmudgeon. These are some of my recollections of Salem.

This is the Hawthorne Hotel. My aunt and uncle had their wedding reception there, and I can remember attending. I must’ve been two or three at the time, which makes this practically my oldest conscious memory. I have a picture from that occasion, of my cousin Jim and I, dressed up in some unfortunate Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits courtesy of our mothers, having a rather earnest conversation for a pair of toddlers. It’s perhaps my favorite picture.

This is the Peabody-Essex museum, newly renovated, remodeled and reopened. Back in the day it was two separate museums, the Peabody and the Essex Institute. After he retired from the GE plant in Lynn, my grandfather worked at the Essex Institute. I can remember Grumps taking me down to the museum to introduce me to the staff. I can also remember sitting on the front steps of his house, waiting for him to return from working his shift there. The house was (and is still is) at very top of the hill on Mt. Vernon Street, and from the front steps I could see down to the bottom of the hill to where Grumps would round the corner and start uphill.

Some other things I remember about my grandfather…

He had an impish sense of humor. The living room of the house on Mt. Vernon Street had a working fireplace. I remember my grandfather getting my attention during a family gathering there and tossing some firecrackers into the fireplace on the sly. I remember the ensuing uproar. Gram was not pleased.

Grumps had a workshop in his basement. He bought some child-sized tools for my cousin Jim and I to use down there. To the best of my recollection, we mostly put them to use making wooden swords to hit each other with.

Old-fashioned metal garbage can lids make excellent knightly shields.

Luckily, Jim and I emerged from these tilts with all of our eyes and fingers intact. The only lasting damage done on Mt. Vernon was when the little girl down the street took a shovel to my nose, leaving a scar that remains today and slight bend to my nose.

My difficulties understanding the opposite sex go waaaay back.

When I was child, my family and I would go to Mt. Vernon Street every weekend. At least it seemed like every weekend, though in actuality it may not have been. Every evening before I went to bed, Grumps would ask if I was going to get up and help him make the coffee in the morning. This seemed like a weighty responsibility to me, to be allowed to share in such an adult undertaking.

I love coffee.

Grumps died when I was seven. The cancer ate him very quickly. In my memory he was simply sick one day, and dead the next. I was allowed to attend the wake, though my sister was not. I had never been to such a thing before. I decided that was not him in the casket.

I hate wakes.

This is the Salem Willows. The tiny rickety roller coaster that once stood there is long gone (if it ever was there – my memory could be inventing it’s one-time presence there) but the carousel and various kiddie rides remain. Best of all, the arcade still stands as well, with mostly the same complement of games it had when I was in junior high. Skee Ball anyone? Air hockey? Sea Wolf? And I’m willing to bet you can still get a bar of blue-colored popcorn from one of the stands there, to gnaw on as you walk along the beach.

Going to the Willows was a huge deal when I was a kid.

Actually, it still is.