The back of the coin seems to be telling me a lot.

warning : Big photos !

Here is a close up of the back of the coin :





The first thing that caught my attention, was the bit of a wreath ( sortof like a wheat penny) on the lower right of the coin :

And then, clearly visible, a bold letter D :

Followed by an equally bold letter I :

For some reason, if you turn the coin upside down, you can see the bold letter A above the I more clearly :

And above the A is a bold letter O:

I have been rambling through enough sites to know that what we have was minted in the province of Holland, so some time before 1807, when the National Mint went into operation.

But how long before 1807 ?

Take a look at the drawings on this page, and see if you agree that I have found the back of the coin. *

* I tend to think that HOL.5: duit. might be it.

After sitting in a glass of coke for one day, the coin is beginning to reveal a few details. I’m beginning to think that the coin might be older than I originally thought, although I am convinced that it is dutch.

No matter how old it is, the neatest thing about this coin- to me- is that I found it in my garden. Which means that it may have been lost by someone who once lived in our house.

This is the front of the coin. It is easier to make out details if the coin is wet:

This is the back of the coin. While it looks more encrusted than the front, the back of the coin is providing small bits of information the longer that it sits in the coke :

During the time that I consider the best of times, as far as being part of our family went, from about 1973 until my mother died about ten years later, going to the Burlington Mall was part and parcel of the package.

Oddly enough, I can’t remember exactly which day of the week we would go. I suspect Saturday, but it might have been Friday, for you see, Bucky worked there, high honcho in the FAA building just outside of the Mall.

We would head off in the late afternoon. Ms. Adele and Mr. Roland- my parent’s and Bucky’s best friends- either came to our house from Newton ( later, Chelmsford, where Ms. Adele had their townhouse decorated to match her collection of celadon. Adele was like that, we loved that about Adele) or we all met at the mall.

They had a nice book store then and a shop that had pretty sea shells, mineral specimens and fossils. I liked that store best. My mother once gave me a card from Lord and Taylor’s. That drove my college roommate nuts. Apparently, this card meant that I could shop until I dropped and Mummy would cover all bills.

I never used the card.

I suspect that Mummy knew very well that I never would and that was precisely why she gave it to me. She was like that. In a nice way.

At a pre-arranged time, we would all meet at Jimmy’s, for dinner. Oh, what to have ? The baked scallops, the baked shrimp or the baked scrod ? I would twist left and right and eventually chose the baked scallops.

And then we would all head back to our house, where ever it was at the time- Concord, Hanscom, Acton- and watch Love Boat. I kid you not, couldn’t miss Love Boat. And then every one would talk all the way through the show, which was probably the best way to watch Love Boat.

We would all laugh and laugh and laugh and gossip non- stop.

Adele and Roland came to our house for all of the Big Holidays. They had two daughters, but short and sweet is that they were not very good daughters, perhaps because they hadn’t had very good parents. What do I know, I’m no shrink. Fact is, Adele and Roland were always at our house. And their youngest daughter ( in her twenties) was always calling my parents to help her to deal with Adele and Roland. Totally beyond any point, she had a boyfriend who drank milk and beer, mixed together. I still find that to be the most revolting combination I have ever heard of. ( Here I shall say what I really thought at the time, and deny ever having said it : what do you expect from someone from Pittsfield ? Wasn’t I just the perfect little snob ? )

Even for Christmas they were there, and they were jewish. In turn, they invited us to holidays, where I learned the meaning behind and how is this day different from any other day ?.

When Bucky and Adele and I went to Budapest, I dragged both of them to an old synagogue, related to some writer I was reading about at the time. Some people there were a bit suspicious of me, it was not common for a young, blond American to be there. Not then. Adele all but hit them over their heads with her Gucci handbag. She studies this, she told them. ( This was 1976-77, Karen). They took me to see the small candles, alight to remember those lost.

I recall that in ’75, there was this big hoopla, the pope was going to open some door in the Vatican, after it had been sealed for years. Roland and I were really getting caught up in the excitement, the possibility of seeing wonderful things behind Door Number Three !. We kept nudge- nudging each other.

Here it comes !

When the last brick tumbled onto the ground, we looked at each other and said, there isn’t shit behind Door Number Three. It seemed to simply be an archway that had been bricked up. We laughed.

We had nice times, going to the Burlington Mall and eating dinner at Jimmy’s, coming to our house and watching Love Boat. I can picture the parking lot, the black buildings surrounding the mall, the right turn we made off of the…highway to get there. Longest light on earth.

They are all dead now, except Dad and me. First Mom, then Roland, who had a fatal heart attack on an airplane, coming back from…Hawaii ? Then Adele, who died when her food and water were cut off, appalling both Daddy and I, an end for a jewish girl from a wealthy family from Philadelphia ( how many times did we hear that ? I smile…) that I wouldn’t curse upon my worst enemy.

And finally Bucky.

But the Burlington Mall was a part of the good times, the best of times, that I remember with my family.

I found what appears to be an old, copper coin in the garden today. I was planting some seedlings and plop, there it was.

It is terribly encrusted, but we have it in a soak, to see if we can bring out enough features to see what it is. So far, we can make out an i and an n, together.

It’s shape is irregular enough to hint that it might be very old. Or something else, like a tram token.

The children and I are charmed by the find.

I have spent the day wandering around Concord in my mind, sitting by Egg Rock with Dave McGloin , going to Wilson’s to pick up a bushel of corn or mackintosh apples with my mother.

I remembered how you could just see our house- nestled between the triangle where 2 and 2a met- as you drove on Route 2 in the fall, when the trees were bare. Eating hamburgers made like grilled cheese sandwiches at Friendly’s, across from the train station.

I graduated from the high school there in ’75, the same year that the bicentennial started, well, at least in Concord. Some times, I would grow so weary of japanese tour buses stopping and asking me for directions as I sat on the lawn of the library, reading, that I would send them off to Lexington or West Concord ( which did not officially exist back then, except when it came to social status, across the tracks, you know, in West Concord ).

I had just turned 15 when we moved there. Most of my life ( 12 years), I had lived abroad, the last 7 of those in big cities, Frankfurt and Bangkok. When people asked me where I was from, I said Michigan, although I had only lived there for one year of my life, when Daddy was in Viet Nam and Mom wanted to be closer to her family, in Detroit.

We moved to Massachusetts because of me. I think my family would have stayed in Thailand for many more years, if I had been younger. But I wasn’t. Shortly after I turned 14, I started writing to colleges for information- remember, no computers, snail mail was s- l- o- w. A girl I knew had her heart set upon going to U. Mass, Amherst. What did I know about colleges in America ?

That became clear when I received a very polite letter from Amherst College, telling me that at this point, they were not co-ed.

We moved to Massachusetts so that I could go to a good school.

We moved to Concord and I was able to chose the most beautiful town I had ever seen, dripping with history and culture, to be where I was from, when people asked me. On my bike I covered town for hours at a time, going to the Old North Bridge or Emerson field, to just read a book or look at something that I had just read about. Or the place where it had been written.

A town plastered with rules and regulations about changes in the center. Oh, some how I know that the Friendly’s across from the train station is gone, but I know Concord will be much as I remember it. I’m guessing that there still are wisteria vines on that house where Grant stayed. Or near where Grant stayed.

I’m one lucky stinker.

The woman who taught the Concord Authors class was Mary Linn Roby .

Crane’s Beach or Why Do People Go To The Cape ? Why would anyone go to the Cape if one could go to Crane’s Beach ? Ah, maybe these are my very old memories, of hopping into someone’s car ( obviously, not mine) and driving across MA to hit Crane’s Beach just before sunset. There were little stands selling Lobsters Rolls and- I suppose- something called Clam Rolls, because I always took the clam, not the lobster. I knew the laws in MA, about lobsters, back then. I could have eaten a thawed out, frozen lobster tail, but I could not willingly send a lobster into the pot.

We would stay at Crane’s Beach until it was very dark and then roll into my parent’s house in Acton ( we had moved). We would watch Colombo re-reruns with my mother and then stumble into bed.

One of the members of that group who sped with me to Crane’s Beach now lives in Carlisle. If you are from MA, ’nuff said. We used to say that kids from Carlisle came to school on their tractors ( I kid you not. Where on earth did we ever get that idea ?) She and I called each other by our last names. It seemed clever at the time.

But she wasn’t from New England ( in the end, am I ?). She was from some very pricey area in Long Island. Like, she went camping with her sister one summer in Ireland and came back back with enough Waterford to stock the Titanic.

All right, I played that one a bit for effect. I liked her fine. But will I stop by Carlisle this summer and knock on her door ? No. I can’t think of one thing to say to her except, still snore like a foghorn ?

Crane’s Beach- we took The Father once to the Cape, so he could see Hyannis port.

In the end, I thought the Cape was one weeny stand after another.

And P’Town ?

Do you like salt water taffy ?

After reading the comments recently posted, I began to wonder what- exactly- was left in my visual memory banks of home.

First and foremost will always be Walden Pond. Oh, I don’t think I will go back there ( catch the Byronic drift of that comment ? eh, I probably will…), I went back there in the mid-eighties and what I remembered was already gone : my Walden was a pond, not a National Park, with life guards, formal beaches, that building there, little signs all over the place. The parking lot ( oh, Joni…)

My Walden was a pond behind behind my High School. You could walk there, but I used to bike there. I had taken a course called Concord Authors, which seemed like the thing to do if one found oneself living in Concord, but the idea of an Over-soul has always eluded me. And the wishy- washy metaphors of the transcendentalists always just morphed right over my head. I preferred the imagery of the Greeks, solid, predictable, one, two, three, like a giant crossword puzzle.

But my teacher, who wore a large opal ring and was a rather successful author of Historical Romances, walked us over to Walden one day, part of our education, I suppose. As we left the school, she pointed down the street and showed us where H.D.’s Mummy lived.

We crossed that big road there and she took us into the woods. Following a small trail, she told us about glaciers that had passed by, she named the plants that we were seeing. She took us to the spot where the hut had been, the bean field. The walk had not taken very long at all, school to bean field. At a certain point, she leaned over and told us, you know, his mother brought him his dinner every day.

But then, I don’t think anyone has yet to decide that Walden is actually an old blog, crammed full of true, day to day sort of sh*t.

The school- for whatever reason- gave me enormous freedoms. For instance, there were classes that I did not have to attend, I only had to take the exams. And then I would jump on my bike and go to Walden Pond. I would read books, or just stare into to space, or think of the railroad tracks that had been laid by the Irish. I would bike there during the lunch break as well, going down to my favorite cove, happy that I did not have to hide in toilets, so that no one would see that I was alone. I could simply be alone and at peace there by the pond. Watch the birds.

On summer nights, young men who thought that they were very suave would take me to the pond. Some parts of the path are very narrow, and without a full moon, hard to navigate. I would have to lean upon their arms.

Of course, the whole point of that story was to talk me into skinny dipping, but I never met a boy -there- who could talk me into it.

On a window ledge in my kitchen is a small, cork stoppered glass bottle . It was a gift sent to me by my oldest friend a few years after I had moved here. It is filled with water from Walden.

I’ve always thought that it was one of the nicest gifts anyone has ever given me . Water from Walden Pond.

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What does this mean ?

I have these days when I can look at the simplest thing in the world and not know how to do it or what on earth is meant.

And now I shall tell you how one knows when one has found true love, has ended up with the Prince : when you tell him what has happened, when you ask him not to be angry, not to call you stupid, he doesn’t.

If you tell him that you don’t think you have it in you to fix it, could he help you, he says, of course. Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.

And then, without asking, he says, why, I’ll simply say that it was my oversight, that it is my fault.

That is a prince : he comes to you when you call out for help and does more than that.*

* Right now, I’m still huddled in humiliation, but don’t worry : I’ll let one and all know how very stupid I can be. Soon.

There are three computers in Alabama ( I really am a good daughter, and so Daddy likes to keep me in my usual, over- indulged state) and I’m leaning towards taking The Father’s laptop. Do you know, I can’t remember when I was home last ? ( But, uh, that shouldn’t surprise anyone, should it ?) Before The Girl was born, at least 13 years ago.