HANSON — The well-worn path from our cottage on Leon Court that led to the small West Monponsett Pond beach on Ocean Avenue has been permanently sealed off, probably because it trespassed through private property for a piece, and folks tend to take private property rights a bit more seriously today.
But just the sight of it brings memories flooding back of seemingly endless summers in the 1950s and 1960s, when this quiet neighborhood was invaded by families from Dorchester, South Boston, and south suburbs such as my hometown of Randolph.
Monponsett, as the village that straddles Halifax and Hanson is known, was in the decades after World War II a working-class summer refuge, where the summer folk and their cottages melded seamlessly with the neighborhood’s year-round residents. Some of the friends I made almost 60 years ago are friends to this day.
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“It was a great place to grow up,” says George “Gig” Runey, a friend since childhood who grew up on Ocean Avenue on the Hanson side of Monponsett. The “summer folk” and the “townies” have even gotten together for a few reunions through the years.
Our cottage was rustic but cool and comfortable, with gas for cooking, heating, and, yes, indoor plumbing, which was not always available in those days. I remember the wind chimes that sang in the breezes, and the hammock on a screened-in front porch that was ideal for a nap or sleeping on a hot night.
That porch would be festooned with Japanese lanterns for the oft-raucous neighborhood parties, while a confusing pattern of dirt roads meant that police searching for the source of the noise often hunted in vain.
My grandparents, who built the cottage, posted plaques that featured such pithy phrases as “Our cow is dead, so we don’t need your bull” and “If we start drinking on Sunday afternoon and start insisting that you stay over until Tuesday, please remember . . . WE DON’T MEAN IT!”
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It was probably never as grand and glorious as we remember, but we didn’t care. We were too busy swimming, skiing, rowing boats, and playing baseball.
“The water was so crystal-clear back then, you could see all the way down to the bottom,” says my younger brother, Pete.
We wore shoes only to church and to the store — and usually not to Mrs. Blackford’s, the small convenience store on Milford Street operated by a widow in her 80s where you could run a tab, and where the huge collection of penny candy meant that you were in the game for a nickel, and living large if you had a dime.
For night life and entertainment, there were the take-no-prisoners whist nights at Our Lady of the Lake Parish Hall, where old ladies would stare scornfully over their glasses down at me while I took our team down to defeat yet again, costing them valuable points on the end of the night prize auction.
During the week, John Uston, who with his wife, Greta, owned the Lake Theatre on West Monponsett Pond, would be out on the small beach adjoining the theater, recruiting for the upcoming weekend in his heavily German-accented voice.
On Friday night, you were tested when you had to convince Greta that you were indeed only 12 and entitled to the children’s price for admission. She once opined as I sought the children’s price that I was “older than Scollay Square” — the old commercial district in Boston near today’s Government Center — as I looked at her quizzically.
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There are actually two Monponsett ponds – the East and West, with Route 58 bisecting them. On a recent hot day, there was no sign of activity on the West pond, partly, perhaps, because of an unappetizing foam that lapped on the shore.
The Monponsett Watershed Association is working with state and local officials to battle the scourge of cyanobacteria, a blue-green algae that periodically forces closure of the ponds to recreational use.
The problem involves runoff from lawn fertilizers and fertilizers used by cranberry growers, as well as the dam that Brockton uses to divert water to Silver Lake, making the waters in the Monponsett stagnant during warm periods.
Association president Paul Collis of Halifax said his group will do whatever it takes to bring the ponds back.
“I don’t know if it will ever get back to the way it was when you were a kid, but in three or four years, there’ll be many boaters and skiers out there again.”
I’m rooting for the ponds to be a bit of summer heaven again. In my unspoiled memories, they still are.
Rich Fahey can be reached at fahey.rich2@gmail.com.