This site is about the McGrail farm at 19 Lyman Road Berlin Massachusetts.

Things Remembered

Things I Will Remember Forever
Here's a list of things I remember about the farm:

The piano in the living room, and singing "Wild Colonial Boy" there with Gramp.

The pond, and my double runner skates, a Christmas gift when I was 6.

The circular driveway.

The red tricycles.
The pump lamp.
The Mona Lisa painting in the hall. (I have it now.)
The old victrola in the cellar.
The huge old radio in the living room.
The shellaighleahs (sp.?) next to the door in the hall.
The blessing from Pope Pius XI in the hall.
The holy water fonts as you entered the bedrooms.
The sacred heart pictures.
The picture in the bedroom on the left, with Jesus' face on Veronica's veil. If you looked at the picture for a moment, the eyes would move!
The creak as you walked over a certain spot in the hall floor.
The designs of the wallpaper.
The flower bed at the side of the house.
The bird feeders in the winter.
The flagpole in the center of the driveway with the 45-star flag.
The post lamp.
The old stone walls.
The latches on all the doors.
The vise on the table in the cellar.
The clothes press in the cellar.
The two old refrigerators in the cellar, from the 1920's with the compressors on top, never turned around.
The geranium plants in the cellar.
The honeyhouse.
The clothesline with the bag of clothespins.
The room next to where the trash was kept in the old shed with the sliding door, with the unsafe floor and the tires in it.
The second floor in the garage.
All the wierd, interesting stuff under the garage and in the barn.
The horse stalls in the garage.
Long Sunday walks along the aquaduct.
Mowing the huge lawns on a warm Saturday afternoon.
The plastic driveway newspaper holder.
The huge weird old motor in the garage.
Picnics in the grove.
The sound of the latches on the doors.
The light fixtures in the kitchen and the hall.
Gramma calling "Here kitty, kitty, kitty..." and about 12 or maybe even 20 cats running to the back door to be fed.
The record player and the records in the library.
The old law books in the libary.
The "Kennedy" letters on the walls.
The pictures of us on the walls.
Marguerite McGrail added the following items:

I remember Gramma's Coty loose face powder in the bathroom/laundry room.
I use the same kind now.
The birdhouses in the backyard.
The rhododendrons in full bloom, buzzing with bumblebees, in the front of the house.
Gramma's writing desk, and all its little compartments for stamps and pens.
The smell of mothballs in the upstairs bedroom closet.
The cork board hanging in the mudroom; the dinner bell.
Fels-Naptha soap in the cellar sink.

John Patrick McGrail III added the following comments:

Yes, Gramp spoke fondly and wistfully about lye, which he always reminded me was mildly poisonous. I have a dim memory that he TRIED to make soap one time, and this very dim memory has something to do with that area of the cellar nearest the tunnel.
Gramp, it must be remembered, viewed himself as a latter-day Jefferson - the great man retiring to Monticello (the Farm), writing his memoirs and puttering about with different projects, including homemade soap and root beer (which he unquestionably made, because Mike and I got Eric drunk on it) and whose flavor I can recall even today.

Here's a blast from the past for the site - who remembers the TRAIN WHISTLE?? Gramp had somehow acquired an old railroad train whistle, and if you blew on it till you were blue in the face, it would just barely make a ghostly whistling sound (because it was use to steam pressure, or whatever). I used to try in vain to trick people into thinking that the actual train that passed the house occasionally was coming, but by the time Gramp acquired the train whistle, it seemed that the train came less frequently, though I have no data to back that assertion up.

I've got lots more to come. Anyone have some? let me know.
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