34° and Sunny
Image
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.
