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James C. Johnston Jr.
We
all have favorite people in our lives. I know that I have. There are
all kinds of favorites chosen for individual distinctions. I chose my
Cousin Elaine Blake as my favorite Cousin, because she was very
smart, very feisty, quick on the draw with a clever remark or snappy
answer, and she had so many other qualities. At ninety-four she still
had her full mental acuity intact, and she was on top of her game
intellectually. She had grown-up in many places including Franklin,
Mass. with my aunts, Charlotte and Gertrude Foss, and great people
like her Cousin Claire Johnston and Kay Ranieri, who would later
marry her cousin Billy Johnston, for friends. Elaine was a great
mother to my cousins Patricia, Kathy, and Suzanne, and she was a
great wife to her husband and best friend Fred Blake who was one of
the youngest guys to enlist in the U.S. Army for World War II.
Like
George Bernard Shaw’s Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle,
Elaine and Fred went through life like “Consort Battle Ships”
covering each other in perfect compliment. They brought their three
pretty girls everywhere with them, saw that they got fine educations,
and supported them throughout their formative years unstintingly with
monumental strength and unreserved love, and they loved each other in
that same way.
Elaine
and Fred collected art and antiques, traveled a great deal, made
friends on both sides of the Atlantic, and ultimately made a good
home for themselves in Shelburne, Vermont, and they also spent a good
deal of time in their native Massachusetts. Fred was an engineer
working mostly for the General Electric Corporation and Elaine worked
in business after her daughters were settled on their paths to a good
education and life in general. Fred and Elaine really were the Great
American Family almost in the tradition of Norman Rockwell.
Their
life had a great spontaneity about it. If they got up on a particular
day and felt like taking off for somewhere, they just did. I remember
them coming here in the late 1950’s just dropping in for a visit on
the day before Christmas. They landed at our house out of the blue,
and we had a great day. When five o’clock rolled around, we just
decided not to break-up the party. So Fred, my dad, and I went back
to their house in Western Massachusetts, got all of the kid’s
Christmas gifts, and brought them back to Franklin for Christmas Day.
Now that was a little different.
I
remember back in 1962, my folks, Elaine, and Fred, and I just decided
“To-Do” the Brimfield Flea Market as Dealers. I came back from
College, and we loaded-up our trailer full of “Merchandise” of
all sorts and just took off for Brimfield. In those days, Brimfield
was just one big field run by Gordon Reed and you just
showed-up, paid him fifty or sixty bucks, and then you set-up your
stall, and sold stuff. What could be simpler or better than that?
Back
in those days there were all sorts of things, really great things to
buy at Brimfield, after bargaining with the dealer. Earlier when I
was about fourteen or so, Elaine, Fred, and my folks would hit
Brimfield and just attack the situation with gusto. My dad would give
me five bucks to see what I would do with it. I would buy a
Blue-and-White-Chinese –Hawthorn-Ginger-Jar at one end of the field
and then I would take it up to the other end of the field and sell it
for ten dollars. Then I would by a nice sausage-turned ladder back
chair for ten dollars and take up to the other end of the field and
sell it for twenty-five dollars. I would do this all day long until I
had accumulated a lot of cash and a nice pile of “stuff “ to take
home. Elaine helped me carry all my “Junk” back to the cars which
we used for a “Home Base”. She thought that this
buying-and-selling “Stuff” was a riot to see. After all, I was
this kid, who was very small for his age, pulling off all of these
deals and growing a pile of quality goods one deal at a time.
I
used to go out to Wilbraham and visit Elaine and Fred in the summer.
We would hit a lot of antique shops and junk stores, and charity
shops to ferret out all the good buys. We were always hitting the
reference books to find out what was good. Wallace Nutting’s
Furniture
Treasury was
one of the books we frequently turned to as were Ruth Webb Lee’s
books on Glass and other guides like the popular Warman’s
Price Guide to Antiques.
Fred and I both collected stamps and coins so we followed-up on those
hobbies as well. We also went to a lot of museums and studied the
artifacts in minute detail. Elaine, Fred, and I had a lot of fun.
Fred
and Elaine loved to travel anywhere at the drop of a hat. We would
take off for anywhere when time allowed and the mood took us. Off to
the Cape, off to New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine, or to any museum,
or off to Fort Ticonderoga in up-state New York if the mood took us.
It was great to be a kid and have cousins who were twelve to fifteen
years older who liked to do the things I liked to do.
Years
later when Fred transferred to the General Electric Plant in Vermont,
he got involved in projects like working on the restoration of the
Ticonderoga
at the
Shelburne Museum. Fred did a great deal of the gold leafing of the
fancy wood-work of that great lake steam vessel that my grandfather
William Johnston took his kids on for over-night trips more than a
hundred and fifteen years ago!
Elaine’s
house was always welcoming, and her table offered-up great treats,
because she was an excellent cook. She and Fred were the best of our
friends and relatives. I have almost eighty years of memories of
them, and of their warmth, and of their all-giving-hearts. Those
wonderful years we had together will be forever treasured by me.
I
used to kid Elaine that she looked to me like movie Queen Hedy
Lamarr. I would say that she was prettier. In my heart of hearts, TI
really thought that she was. That was one of our little things that
we shared. What I really felt was that she was far lovelier than
Hedy, and I still hold that opinion today. Elaine lived in Franklin
during much of her child and young woman hood. She was a member of
the Cusson Family who still live in the Franklin and Medway Area. It
is with a sweet sorrow that I say good-bye to this favorite cousin
with whom I was so very blessed to have spent so very much good
quality time.
