Martin Estate

This picture is ancient as most of the houses on south side of Lawton Ave from the entrance to the Martin Estate to Essex Street have not been built yet. The Martin Estate was where I spent much of my youth. It was good for such diverse activities as hide and seek, rock fights, baseball, football, drinking, explosives experimentation, making out with girl friends, guns, sledding, throwing rocks at winos, forts, destruction of government property, so on and so on. Anything requiring the absence of adult eyes.

The Martin Estate was our back yard preserve. There were wooded trails, rock formations, a cave and a meadow. You could walk in the woods all the way to High Rock Tower. This was our playground. It was and still is, the home to VFW Post 507. The area was used by kids from different neighborhoods but we lived there. It was ours. We shared of course, but we claimed ownership. This spot was probably 60/80 acres right in the middle of a city.

One of the most dramatic changes at the Martin Estate was Hurricane Carol. August 31, 1954 Carol hit New England, I was 6. Carol put more trees down than any hurricane I've seen. Rogers Ave was barricaded by some of the biggest trees on the street, totally impassable for a day or two. It was paradise for us kids. Huge branch formations, like caves now were accessible, everywhere. The streets were transformed into jungles. The Martin Estate was now a green playground of stacked, crisscrossed giants which remained for months. Trees were bulldozed into giant stacks perforated randomly with space enough to fit 4/5 kids comfortably in a secret cavern.

It really was Eden as I remember it. I have this fascination with built up defensive positions. Cavalry forts, Castles, the caves dug in the defense of Iwo Jima all hold my interest. I think that springs from those years.

Development came to the MarinEstate in the form of a Marine Corps reserve bulldozer. The Little league wanted our meadow for their Central Division field. The hoped to include a left field wall like the Green Monster at Fenway. There was no fucking way. They had Frazier Field and any number of ball parks around town.

Well the Marines, naively, left their D-9 bulldozer unprotected in the middle of a half finished field. It died there and stayed until they found something big enough to haul it out. Seems local vandals filled the gas tank with all sorts of debris, ruining it's engine. The field was not a ballpark for an extra year. The rear guard action only delayed the inevitable. It was a sad day indeed. Later the Central Division folded and the field lay barren for more than a decade. But the damage had been done. There is a ball park there today.

It was possible, one year of incredible snow, to sled from high above that ballpark on a very rocky hill all the way to the corner of Rogers and Essex Street with good timing and a clear field. The two biggest problems were, first, getting to the post building and the road from out of the woods, a trail that needed some hand paddling. And second, dodging cars on Lawton Ave. There were two broken arms in one season from car collisions that I remember. On good day, there were a gazillion kids sledding so there were plenty of lookouts.

The apartment Mac lived at the base of Essex and Lawton fronted a huge cliff face, that was later entirely fenced in, as it presented in lawyer terms, an attractive nuisance. You could easily fall forty feet of the cliff face. We kids were all over it. There were passages through rocks where you could crawl through on your belly. A small cave lie in the face of the cliff. There was a spot where you could jump between rocks over that 40 foot fall. I never heard of anyone falling.

I remember the days they fenced it in. One of the crew asked us kids who wanted to earn a quarter, I jumped at the chance, only to see him go to unzip his fly. That hurt me, I still remember it. I felt cheap behind that gesture, ashamed. I was embarrassed. I associate the loss of the cliff with the sexual humiliation.

The view from the top of that sledding hill was astounding. You could see easily to Boston. The weather light from the Hancock Building was indecipherable but you could make out the skyline easily. Nahant stood in bold relief of the blue Atlantic. All of Lynn was visible to the south and east. Before Nixon shut the Boston Navy Yard, there was occasionally the stray aircraft carrier or cruiser visible off the coast.