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mountains never waned. Her record run was
leaving Boston at an early hour, driving to Pinkham Notch, climbing
Mount Wash-ington and arriving at the summit by mid-afternoon,
descending and driving back to Boston that night — a far cry from the orig- inal five day trip. This was indeed a remarkable feat, for in those
days there were no super highways.
Spurred on by this achievement, she made several early morn- ing
starts from Boston to see the sunrise from the summit of Monadnock. Her
greatest triumph, however, was climbing the "Chimney" of Katandin. To be
sure she was roped to exper- ienced mountain climbers, but at least she
got there.
Before leaving the Robbinses I might mention something that
happened when I was visiting them in Ipswich. Late one after- noon their
daughter Anne arrived quite jittery. She had recently got her driver's
license and like any new driver was over-conscien-tious about certain
formalities such as hand signals. While driving through Everett on the
way home, she put her hand out as far as she could to show the traffic
officer that she intended to turn left. When the officer beckoned her to
proceed she still kept her hand out and as she passed him he took hold
of it and gave it an affectionate little squeeze.
AUNT ESTHER
Aunt Esther, my mother's youngest sister, married Uncle Augustus
Fiske — so here again I had a set of cousins who, like the Robbinses,
were both first and second. I often visited the Fiskes at their summer
house in Cataumet. I learned to row a boat there but being unable to
swim my cruising range was limited by a twenty foot painter tied to the
railing of the boat |
