Seafood and Textile Mills

Seafood isn’t cheap in New England, but it’s good and fresh.  We stopped at Bob’s Clam Hut in Kittery Maine after a recommendation from a friend.  It was also featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives with Guy Fieri.  The clams were fresh and wonderful!  Instead of sitting inside, you sit outside on picnic tables.  We shared the table with two retired gentlemen who had served in the Navy.  John and the guys shared Navy stories.  It was an enjoyable lunch.

We then visited with my oldest brother who lives in New Hampshire. Our family is so large that stories of the older kids become a legend to us younger kids.  I got to hear the story first hand where Dave was on the Howdy Doody show as a kid.  He sat in the peanut gallery right beside Buffalo Bob.  Before the show started, he was wandering around through the set when Clarabell the Clown caught him.  Clarabell yelled at him (Clarabell was mute during the show and only communicated by honking a horn) and dragged him off the stage.  Later, the child-hating actor Bob Keeshan became Captain Kangaroo.

 

 

We did a little touring in the area and then ate supper at a great restaurant.  The restaurant was located in an old textile mill.  The mill was so interesting we stopped in Lowell the next day to see a national park.  At one time Lowell was the first and largest industrial center in the country making millions of yards of cloth.  Part of the canals that powered the mills still exists. 

 

The city is full of large old brick buildings that housed the mills or for boarding houses for the girls who worked in the mills.  The park has a large room filled with looms (though not as many as would be there originally since they provided a walk-way).  Some of the machines are running to give you a feel for the sound.  We used the ear plugs provided.  It’s been measured at 100 decibels.  Very loud!

 

The gentleman who brought the idea of starting the textile business to Lowell was Francis Cabot Lowell.  He went to England to learn how the machinery works and then found the financial backing to open up mills back in the United States.  I was amused he was a Cabot Lowell.  Am I the only one who knows the phrase...

   And this is good old Boston,
   The home of the bean and the cod,
   Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
   And the Cabots talk only to God.  
 

 

By the way, we’re at 36 states and 94 national parks visited.