Salem: Great Knockers

Forget the witches or the House of the Seven Gables when visiting Salem, Massachusetts. Instead, see a great set of knockers, and a whole lot of whimsical metalwork, at Herb Mackey's Metal Sculpture Yard, the last house on Blaney Street aside the parking lot for the Salem-Boston Ferry. It's free, and I'm told the whimsical welder who created the metal creatures will come out to chat when he's home.

On Saturday, after spending a delightful time over a lingering lunch with my cousins Susan and Rita, who took the train to Salem from their Cambridge homes, I took a slow stroll through downtown Salem, maneuvering among the witches, warlocks and hanger-ons who descend upon this historic maritime hub to commemorate a nasty period in American colonial history, the Salem witch trials. The hordes made the Halloween crowds who descend on my neighborhood for Eastern State Penitentiary's annual scare show seem puny.

Salem's most notable cultural attraction is the Peabody Essex Museum, in the center of town. Jean Sue and I stopped there en route to Maine about 10 years ago just to see its collection of netsuke, miniature Japanese sculptures. The museum got its start in 1799 when local sea captains returning from distant eastern lands between the Capes of Horn and Good Hope provided interesting objects to fill a "cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities".

The MV Fram was supposed to dock in Boston for the day, but the anchorage required by port authorities and a long-tendering caused the captain and expedition team leaders to select Salem instead, arranging for a charter bus to Boston for those who had to see Beantown. Most of us stayed in Salem. I suspect more would have gone if they had known Boston was only 30 minutes away by commuter train, with hourly service each way.

We were greeted by the wharf (an old coal dock to feed a power plant recently converted to natural gas) by two ambulances, two firetrucks and associated command cars. I thought it was a drill, but it wasn't: one of our passengers died of a heart attack just as we pulled into the harbor. The captain led a brief remembrance before our program briefing that evening.

More photos of the whimsical metal sculptures I found at Mackey's:

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