There was a time, not so long ago, when I found Christmas displays of any kind put out before Thanksgiving obnoxious. Could I at least finish eating my leftover stuffing before being subjected to Mariah Carey at
every storefront?
However, I am now heading into my fourth New England winter, which I fondly refer to as the Long Gray. And so I find my attitude has changed. To wit, strolling down Atlantic Avenue in Marblehead the second week of November, I saw a bank had festooned a pine tree with Christmas lights. It was a drizzly evening, the kind of day where it had been dark since half past noon. On such a day, I unexpectedly found those bright lights to be a beacon of cheer in the cold, damp darkness.
Out in Wyoming, where the sun shines 300 days a year, I never found that I needed Christmas lights to ring in the season. After all, even in the depths of winter the sunsets go on forever in Wyoming. Under those big skies the darkness never feels like it’s closing in on you.
Besides, growing up on the farm, I didn’t have much choice about going out into the winter dark: farm chores don’t stop just because the weather gets cold. And likely as not, next morning the sky would be blue, anyhow. Not so here in Marblehead as we live through the Long Gray. But bright light in a big sky isn’t everything. Even under drab skies, life here is full of charm. For instance, just the other day my partner and I were out strolling in Old Town, and we found one of those mysterious Marblehead public walkways that seem to have materialized out of the buildings themselves just yesterday. In point of fact, those walkways have been public thoroughfares for actual centuries.
Or how, on that same walk, the two of us ventured to our favorite bench overlooking the harbor, a secret little place hidden behind a screen of bushes where you can sit and talk and when that same New England darkness closes in about you, it feels like you two are the only ones in the world. I have never lived in a place like this, that continuously rewards casual walks with newfound discoveries, even after three years.
But you can’t learn everything you need to know about our fine little town by ambling about. No, if you really want to be in the know, you need access to a true hometown newspaper. And that’s what we’ve got here in the Marblehead Current. Our paper is a real local and real nonprofit news source unfettered by the demands of advertisers and content providers who assault our eyeballs every day via our smartphone screens. The Current keeps everyone in town in the know, free of charge and delivered hot off the press to your mailbox each and every week. On a flight home recently from the million-acre ranch I’m working on selling out west, I snapped a few pics of Marblehead from the plane. (Yes, I was that guy, leaning my phone into the cabin window.) As it happened, the day was one of those long fall sunsets before the clocks fell back and the Long Gray sets in, and Marblehead shone like a beacon on the edge of the vast, dark ocean. The picture, naturally, does not do the scene justice.
Just as our town shines a light out on the ocean, the Current is a steady beacon of light in what might otherwise be a blackout of local news. So as we move deeper into the Long Gray, I hope you’ll consider doing your part to support the news source that supports you. These days, we need all the light we can get!
As always, if you’ve got an idea upon which I can embark for a Marblehead First Time, drop me a line at court.merrigan@gmail.com .
Court Merrigan
Wyoming transplant Court Merrigan is a new Marblehead resident. His column “My Marblehead First Time” appears regularly in the Current.
