Driving Miss Paisley...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau

When I was a teenager living in West Newbury, I was the proud owner of the world’s most beautiful, most unreliable car. She was a 1975 Mercedes 300D sedan, tan, leather, matching tan hubcaps – the works.

The OM617 inline-5 diesel sputtered to life about thirty percent of the time. The rust holes on the wheel wells, in the floor, under the gas tank, were a swirl of Bondo, primer, and mis-matched yellow paint. My friend Shelley, always one to see beauty in decay, turned these textured blobs into paisley swirls. We named the beastly beauty Miss Paisley.

But oh, those three times when, after accelerating for two or three hours, she reached her top speed of sixty miles per hour, Miss Paisley was heavenly – soft but solid, with just the right amount of shot-struts squishiness.

Most days, I marched resolutely out to the car, turned the key to allow the coil to warm up, then attempted a start for ten minutes or so before leaving her to spend another day as a lawn ornament, and I walked wherever it was I needed to go.

My job at Friendly’s on Storey Avenue was three miles away and took about 45 minutes if I hustled. I was generally running late, my automotive optimism unfounded once again, and so I ran down Poore’s Lane, down Garden Street and took a side-skipping right turn onto Middle Street. By the time I turned that corner and waved to my great aunt and uncle, Mary and Howard Poore (Aunt Emily’s eldest brother, for those of you playing at home), I had come to my senses and slowed to a fast walk.

Even late as I was, I always stopped at the little shed by the side of the road where Uncle Howard’s ancient tractor lived, caught my breath, gave it a pat, and picked up the pace again. I jumped over the bump in the middle of the (now derelict) bridge over the Artichoke and said “good luck” under my breath.

I remember when I was learning to drive, I went over the bump a little bit too fast in my great-aunt Emily’s navy-blue K-car, and she said “that’s lucky.” I took it to mean that the bump was lucky, and it became a tradition to pop over that bump and say “good luck” amongst my friends. Later I asked her if she had always thought the bridge was lucky. She snorted. “I think I just felt lucky that I didn’t end up in the river, the way you drive.” Oh, well. The tradition stuck. The race to work ended with a sharp turn at Turkey Hill, and then a sprint down Storey Avenue.

The tractor retired to its shed, becomes a year-round landmark on Middle Street, West Newbury, Mass. (Courtesy images; black and white image from the Newburyport Daily News.)

I walked some of this loop a few days ago. Uncle Howard’s tractor is gone, though the roadside shed is still there. Friendly’s is long gone, of course, my polyester houndstooth dress and red apron consigned to the dustbin of history. Shelley, who lovingly painted the swirls on Miss Paisley, lived in the house across from Dunkin Donuts. CVS is there now. I added and subtracted as I walked. This house is new, this stone wall was always here. My other great-aunt Jeanette lived over here, my mother’s cousin Sue Follansbee lived in the woods back there. I remember the smell of her living room – wool rugs and wood smoke, and her smile.

I walked along the Artichoke on my way back home, past the Quaker cemetery, the site of the 1695 raid that saw nine members of the Brown family taken captive, past the site of the Quaker meeting house. Two swans formed a perfect tableau in a swirl of blooming waterlilies as I crossed the Artichoke bridge on Roger’s Street. A woman approached from the other direction, talking loudly to no one, her Bluetooth earpiece visible only when she was close enough that I was growing concerned. Two others went by at a breakneck pace, eyes on the ground, discussing real estate prices. For a moment I considered being the creepy lady who calls out to the distracted speed walkers, “Look up, you fools! There is so much to see!”

It seems silly to point out that walking is foundational to understanding Newbury’s history, but as I paused at the bridge to watch the swans, I thought about how different the mundane calculations of life would be when you considered that wherever you wanted to go, you had only your feet to carry you.

In 17th and 18th century Newbury, horses were rare. It was the humble ox that pulled the plow and, occasionally, the family wagon. Horses were ridden by those who could afford them or had somewhere to go on a regular basis – judges, ministers, legislators. Most men, women, and children walked everywhere they went.

No surprise, then, that some of the fiercest brawls in the history of this town came about because families simply wanted a shorter walk to the meetinghouse. Prime real estate clustered around the taverns in town for the same reason. Men appeared regularly in the quarterly court record for sleeping off a night at the tavern in a barn, in the road. Thomas Stickney passed out “in the chimney corner” in 1679, unable to walk home. Dr. Anthony Crosby spent a night getting tanked “at Newberry at Dole or March (taverns),” and spent the night next to the Parker River Bridge. His plan, to walk back to his house in Ipswich, seems like a stretch even for a sober man.

In keeping with another old Newbury tradition – when the old Mercedes ceased to function entirely, it was left in the back field until it slowly disappeared, leaving only tires and bits of plastic and metal frame. Its running board sank into the ground. Grass grew over it. A wandering baby goat uncovered it last week, pawed at it and then ate a flower growing through the shredded floor mat. History, in all its incarnations, is everywhere. Just take a walk.