Arts & Entertainment

The Blue Room

The first installment in Egg Rock Lit, a column that presents history and humor pieces, fiction and nonfiction, and poetry and memories by writers who live in Swampscott or write about the town.

 

By Amy Lockerbie Smith

The Blue Room

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Long, narrow stairs wound up through a high-ceilinged hall lit by a single glass-shaded bulb. The dim, old stairs creaked underfoot.  A faint odor from the rough, aged plaster could be detected on damp days.

At the top of the stairs was the Blue Room.  It was the children’s bedroom. A large bed occupied most of one side of the room with its huge headboard rising loftily to the ceiling. 

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It was painted soft blue with black and gold fruit stenciled around the edges.  A dresser with a mirror stood against the opposite wall.  It also had fruit decorating its edges and the knobs were shaped like small black pears that hung from the drawers on little brass plates. 

There were two cane chairs; one was a rocker, the other a straight ladder back.  A matching commode beside the bed was used as a night stand.  The one thing that was not blue, was a single brass bed which was on the other side of the room.

The dark blue pine floorboards were scattered with hand-hooked rugs.  Spaces between the boards became unwitting hiding places for small treasures such as marbles and pennies.

Both beds were piled high with feather mattresses and old patchwork quilts made from discarded woolen clothing.  Sweet scents of newly washed sheets and baby powder faintly perfumed the air. A jar of Vicks sat on the dresser ready to have its pungent grease rubbed on a child with a chest cold.

One of the windows was deeply recessed into the wall making a window seat to overlook the boat-filled harbor.   Overhead, seagulls drifted lazily on the salt-air currents, squawking to fishermen and looking for handouts.  The other was a skylight cut into the ceiling where stars could entertain a sleepy observer. 

The distant moaning of a foghorn added a feeling of security.  In warm weather, soft ocean breezes mingled with the scent of freshly mown grass and drifted through the opened windows.

A closet ran along the side of the house under the eaves.  It was long, narrow and deep without lights or windows.  The back of the closet seemed mysterious and scary, a place where children seldom ventured.  Young imaginations conjured up monsters and other frightening things in the deep recesses of that closet.

There wasn’t any heat in the Blue Room, so on cold winter mornings, chilly children made a hasty trip down stairs to dress next to a radiator.

Raging northeast storms were plentiful.  Sleeping on the top floor of a two-hundred-year old, wooden house could be terrifying to little children.  When the storms came, the howling winds and driving rain pounded on the roof and hammered against the windows. 

The big, old house creaked and groaned in protest.  It sounded as though the ancient boards would collapse and come tumbling down.

Through countless storms and season changes, the old homestead stands today, strong and sturdy.  The Blue Room belongs to a by-gone era.


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