Across the Bridge

Gloucester is, technically speaking, only an island in the most minimal sense. The Annisquam River flows from Ipswich Bay out into out own harbor cutting this part of Cape Ann off completely from the rest. We have two bridges connecting us. The A. Piatt Andrew Bridge arches up over the Annisquam on Route 128 and is notable for some nasty car crashes and periodic suicide jumpers. The Blynman Bridge is raised and lowered throughout the day to let boaters through. Their schedule coincides exactly with when you are in a really big rush to get somewhere.

Fortunately I am rarely in a rush to get anywhere these days.

When I first moved here people talked about going “across the bridge”. I thought it hilarious when an old-time Goucesterite would say “I haven’t been across the bridge in six months”. At that time I commuted 80 miles round trip every day to a corporate job. One of the things locals often say, when they want to let you know someone is very limited in their thinking, is “what do you expect, he’s never been across the bridge”.

There is a theory I have heard that far points of land tend to become gathering places for eccentric individuals. Places such as Provincetown on Cape Cod and Key West have developed reputations as the kinds of places one can go to and not be faulted for personal eccentricities of behavior, lifestyle, and/or dress. There is a sense that people who are motivated by strange internal music are often driven by unknowable forces to the furthest points of land they can get to without beginning to swim. If that is true it would go a long way toward explaining a lot of Gloucester’s unique character.

When I moved to Massachusetts in 1987 I had no idea where I wanted to live. I lived in Salem, The Witch City, for awhile and loved the quirky, metaphysical community that has overtaken that city in recent years. I visited the hill where the actual hangings took place on several occasions and, whether it was a product of my vivid imagination or vibrations left from a nefarious past, I have to say it always felt creepy and sad up there.

Later I had the opportunity to move to Marblehead and that was really a wonderful time. It is easy to ignore which century you happen to be in there because parts of the town are so ancient and quaint, with sweet little houses crowded along narrow, winding lanes, that it is possible to imagine you have slipped through time. There was many an occasion in Marblehead when I wandered through the oldest parts of the town during an autumns twilight that I found myself completely oblivious to the ordering abilities of time.

But the first time I drove the 20 miles up the coast to Gloucester, I knew it was where I wanted to live. There is something here that you can’t quite explain. Maybe it is the earthy roughness of the commercial fishing industry - not as prosperous as it was in times past but still a vital part of town life. The arts are very much alive in Gloucester - we have two live theaters, Gloucester Stage Company and West End Theater, the oldest art colony in America - Rocky Neck, and my much loved North Shore Arts Association. But even more than all of that is just the salty, fishy way the air smells, the sounds of fishing boats headed out for a week or two on George’s Banks, the piles of lobster traps everywhere you look, the fishermen piling crates of the days catch onto the back of their pickups while the guys at The Crow’s Nest stand on the sidewalk in front of it having a smoke. It’s gritty here. Gritty and wonderful. (above left, sunset behind Gloucester City Hall, where the famous "names wall" is, shot from the upstairs balcony of the North Shore Arts Association, June 22, 2005)

I left the corporate world three years ago. Now I work in a back room of my second floor apartment in a house that was built in 1726. There are still iron hooks in the fireplaces to hang a kettle of water to boil. From the window beside my desk I can see an ancient cemetery, the oldest Unitarian cemetery in America. Not fifty feet from where I sit is an old granite tombstone bearing the words “Erected to the memory of Moses Morse who was drowned at sea in his 25th year, 1826".

So far I keep drumming up enough business to earn a living from this desk. I can buy everything I need here on the island or over the internet. What I can’t get anywhere but here in my beloved Gloucester is the smell of the air, the play of the light, the familiarity of faces I have lived among for ten years now, the smiles and waves of people who live here for the same reason. I think about what’s over the bridge sometimes but rarely find a desire to go there.

I haven’t been across the bridge in six months.

Thanks for reading.