Hanscom AFB, MA

 We were right on course for leaving Maine and heading for Massachusetts... rain and fog. We managed to escape in between rain storms.

Getting out of Maine we passed through a town that had a fetish for skeletons.

This was one of about four or five as we passed through the town.

Further down the road was a last ditch effort of a food truck to sell lobster rolls.

This was the way for us to get to Hanscom AFB:

Apparently there is about 40 miles of New Hampshire between Maine and Massachusetts.

As we got closer to our destination, we began to feel like we were back in San Diego, and not in a good way...

We did finally arrive at Hanscom AFB, or at least the outskirts of it, the FamCamp is located on one side or the airfield, the base is located on the other side. The drive between the base and the campground is a whopping three miles, tops.

We're home...

Have no fear, those pines are farther apart than it looks. We do not foresee a lot of sitting outside while here, it will either be in the 90s and muggy, or in the 90s and raining. We will make the best of it.

My first journey out was to go on base and pay for our stay. That didn't work so well, I ended up back at the campground to find the office was open. They got our money, that's the important thing.

As you might be able to see, it was raining... all the way down, and it just happened to be Carol's turn to drive.

Our first venture was to the Elks lodge in Rhode Island, then dinner. 

You might be asking yourself why we chose to visit this particular Elks lodge, and the answer would be I forgot to plan a stay in Rhode Island during this trip. Come to find out, it would have been sorta hard finding a place to stay, there are few campgrounds.

We enjoyed the folks at the Elks, unlike some of the lodges, these folks did talk to us. After a couple of drinks we headed over to one of the recommended restaurants for dinner. After dinner we headed back to Hanscom for the night, this time it was my turn to drive, and not a drop of rain the entire return trip.

Out here on the road we sometimes get funny looks from people when they see us pulling this little trailer with such a big truck, so I made an attempt to explain why to the motorists passing by us...

HOMEMADE BUMPER STICKER (duct tape)

One day we did get out to do some touristy stuff, visiting a medieval castle.

Visit: https://www.hammondcastle.org for additional info.

The gentleman that built this castle was from a rich family, his father, John Hays Hammond Sr., was a mining engineer, and diplomat.

John Hammond Jr. was a smart boy who was inquisitive, and like to tinker with ideas for new creations. After completing college at Yale, he spent a lot of time in his laboratory inventing. During his lifetime he held over 400 patents, both here and internationally. John's patents were not all in one field of expertise, but there were many in the electronic arena.

After college John Jr.'s lab was in his parents home, commonly called "The Bungalow" in Gloucester MA. All was good until he wanted to marry a certain woman named Irene. His parents did not like that idea, and told John Jr. to move out of the bungalow. 

John Jr. was a fan of castles, and told his parents that one day he would build himself a castle. After he married Irene, a Gloucester native, they began building his dream castle, in 1926, and completed it in 1929.

This castle was paid for by stocks he had in RCA. Remember I told you electronics was one of the fields he dabbled in. That dabbling led to the creation of RCA, which he had quite a bit to do with. This castle was built at a cost of roughly $500,000.00 in the 1920s. Today's cost would be almost $7.5M.

During the building of the castle many of his innovations were incorporated as he worked alongside the contractor during construction. The stock market crash put a crip in his funds, fortunately the US government bought some of his patents.

It was always the desires of John and Irene that their home be open to the public as a museum after their passing, and the wish has been honored. Today visitors can view many of the items they collected.

The first rooms, which would have been one big room, was his laboratory (research corporation), now the gift shop and video presentation room.

VIEW OUT GIFT SHOP WINDOW

John was an eclectic type collector, with heavy influence from religion, though they didn't attend church much. We opted for a short guided tour before we went looking around for ourselves.

Most of the home was open to any visitors that came to visit, with the exception of spaces below his laboratory, which were his machine shop and lab where he worked on top secret projects for the US government during the WWII period. You see, some of his projects had to do with remote controlled torpedoes and communication systems.

The first stop was waiting outside for our tour guide.

We headed to the draw bridge via that door, and standing in front of the draw bridge.

While waiting for our tour guide, lets look at the outside of this beautiful castle. 

This castle was actually built in three period styles. The first section of the castle was built in the design of a medieval castle, section two, Gothic cathedral, and the last section in Renaissance-era French village, amongst Roman ruins.

Front door to their home, and the starting point of our tour.

From these doors we entered a vestibule, and around the corner we headed up a spiral staircase to the Great Hall.

AT ONE END OF THE GREAT HALL

The Great Hall was their formal livingroom that was seldom used as such. The Great Hall measures 68ft long x 22ft wide x 56ft high. It had many religious artifacts around it, including a Buddhism scroll cabinet:

This would not have been an item found in a Gothic cathedral. An item that one might find in a cathedral in the day was this:

CHOIR STALL (ca. 15th century)

This choir stall is from a cathedral in Spain. Normally there would have been a row of these stalls for clergy preaching. The seat was for them to be able sit when necessary, but was lifted during singing of hymns.

On another wall there is a fireplace from a cottage in Europe. Many of the cottages were destroyed during WWI, and the owners of the cottages needed to rebuild, they did this by selling off items that were not destroyed. This particular fireplace had faces of the owners carved in it.

Unfortunately we did not get to see the pipe organ control board, it was out for refurbishing. If you return to the stain glass window picture, you see pipes for the pipe organ... those are fake pipes, totally ornamental. The real pipes are located in the two turrets framing the main entrance. John was into acoustics, and the Great Hall proved it. Here is the kicker, there are over 8,000 pipes to the pipe organ. How did the sound get to the Great Hall? through an opening in the ceiling of the room.

It is believed that the couple spent most of their time in the Sun Room which is right off the Great Room.

SUN ROOM

Visitors will see a lot of stained glass throughout the castle, most of it was installed after the the passing of the Hammonds. The stained glass was ordered by the Hammonds, but never installed, just hidden away.

Leaving the Great Hall (Gothic theme), we entered the French Village, amid Roman ruins.

You may notice a glass ceiling over this courtyard, it was John's intention that the affect be like a greenhouse. Originally the floor in the courtyard was grass, and there were sprinklers that rained from the ceiling.

What appears to be two-story structure was actually two separate French village shops, he just stacked one on top of the other. It was interesting to see how they identified their shops back in the 1700s. Like today, they used pictures, for the same reason we use pictures today... illiteracy. These were the carvings from the shop on the first floor:

Can you identify what this shop was. Enlarging the photo may help, if not, here are your clues: cow, chicken, fish, rabbit, pig, and a money changer... that's right, the butcher shop.

If you have not noticed yet, John was intrigued with arches, they were everywhere. Back to the courtyard.

Their pool is 8 1/2 feet deep, and self draining. Stories are told that people would occasionally jump into the pool from the balcony I was standing on. Today there are chains to prevent such antics.

While we are on the second floor, we will visit the two guest rooms.

The first was done in a Gothic theme.

Down the hall we arrived at the second bedroom that was done in a more contemporary style.

This room may look ordinary, but John played tricks on some of the guests that stayed in this room. Notice the wallpaper in the bedroom and bathroom. Apparently, back in the the day, wallpapered doors were the rage, no different for this room. What John would do is enter the room after the guest was asleep, and close the door to the bathroom and the hallway, giving the effect that there was no way out of the room. His devilish side also hid the accesses for opening the doors. A guest might need to go to the bathroom, but could not find a way to get to it, and would have to cry out from an open window for help, there was no call button in this room.

Back down stairs we go.

Off that courtyard was the kitchen and dining room.

KITCHEN #1

(My lovely assistant modeling the kitchen)

FORMAL DINING ROOM

Out that back opening visitors turned left and into the library.

This library contained an interesting musical instrument, a harp with a keyboard.

STANDUP HARPSICHORD

That door in the top library photo was not the door we entered, it went down to another level...

... that would be his study.

The mural was painted by a famous artist friend of theirs; it depicts a fictional WWI battle.

SECRET WINE CELLER IN THE STUDY

Why was it secret? remember this castle was built near the time of prohibition.

Next to his study was...

KITCHEN #2

This kitchen contained some more of his patent ideas, some good, more not so good.

This first item came about when John watched his cook cleaning so many pots and pans after a dinner function at the castle. 

THE "PANLESS STOVE" (Hotpoint version)

John invented and patented this "panless stove" in the late 1950s. Hotpoint eventually bought the patent and produced their own version (shown), which didn't really "pan" out for them. The design was that aluminum foil was pulled across the cooking surface, then thrown away after use. The reason it did not work in the commercial market was the cost of heavy duty aluminum foil.

John was an avid boater, owning his own yacht, and found it annoying when utensils would fall off the table. John thought that this was a good idea for those bumpy airplane flights as well as rough seas. His solution...

MAGNETIC SILVERWARE AND DINNERWARE

 

ACTUAL DEMONSTRATION

There was only one problem he could not solve with this idea... how does one keep the food from falling off the plate.

Another of his patent ideas that didn't go over so well was the magnetic mixer. The problem with this invention, the bowl apparently would not stay attached. Prime example of this occurred during a dinner party. The butler was using the mixer and ended up with food all over him.

The Hammonds employed on the average seven servants at a time, some staying for short periods, others stayed with the Hammonds until their passings. 

SERVANT'S DINING AREA OFF THE KITCHEN

CALL SYSTEM USED THROUGHOUT THE HOUSE

The one room in the house that did not have a call button... the bedroom that John use to prank guests.

This room room was central to the kitchen, access to the Great Hall, and the outside.

Speaking of outside, this was their backyard:

ONE OF THE WAYS TO THE BACKYARD

This was their home until John Hammond passed in 1965.

TAKE A BREAK, ITS GOIN' GET LONGER. BREAK ON THIS:

A wife came home from Walmart complaining about the checkout cashier, the husband asked her if she used the self checkout... that's when the fight began.

One more stop before we left Massachusetts.

We headed to Lowell to visit the Cotton Mill Information Center and Cotton Mill Museum. Let me say one thought about streets in some of these older towns... THEY ARE NOT MEANT FOR LARGE TRUCKS TO DRIVE THROUGH. We didn't like the parking meters  in Lowell either, you got a maximum of 2 hours, and couldn't add time until the first 2 hours expired. Because of that we did a rush tour of the museum and information center.

The town of Lowell did not start out as a mill town, but did become the model for today's factories.

Visit: https://www.nps.gov/lowe/planyourvisit/index.htm

The textile industry started in Waltham, but as the linen manufacturers businesses grew, they needed to expand. The issue with Waltham was an insufficient supply of water. The manufacturers came together and looked for another place to expand their businesses, and Lowell was just the place. Several rivers converged at Lowell providing an abundant water source.

Lowell was to become a social experiment. The investors built 55 textile mills, dug a network of canals to feed the mills, provided housing for the workers, and established behavioral rules for the workers. What they did was pull the women that were on the farms into the mills. Later they began bringing in immigrants to work the mills.

Here is what it looked like in the early days:

We started at the information center first. We started with a short introductory movie, which you can view on their website. The theatre and info center are in one of the original complex of buildings.

Besides linen textiles, Lowell also produced other fabrics, and woolen carpets. The building the theatre and info center are in was one of those mills that produced woolen carpets.

In the center they had the patent model for the 1855 looms.

This loom was an "Improved Loom for Weaving Fancy Fabrics". When we got over to the cotton mill, we saw another version in action.

We scurried at a leisurely pace (Carol's foot) to the cotton mill about 1/2 mile away. On the way we passed a church celebrating 200 years.

Apparently it stills has an active congregation.

This was one part of the Boott Mill complex:

Here is what the complex looked like in 1840:

There is a bit of history to the mill factories in general. When mill factories were first constructed, the milling machines were usually on the fourth floor, this created a structural issue. All the machines running at once caused the building to shake, all the way down to the foundation. What we saw on our quick tour was all the looms were on the first floor.

This was a much improved version of the 1855 loom. This loom was belt driven, and had a bobbin stack on it; the bobbin stack was a later add on.

On the tour visitors can walk through the loom floor during operations. I did forget to tell you that these looms are still producing linen fabric, some of which is offered in the gift shop.

They were just starting the looms up when we got there. As you can see, all these looms have the bobbin stack on them. Today they do not use the bobbin stacks.

The bobbin stack replaced one of the duties of the "Mill Girls". The way the device worked may sound complicated, but I'll give it a shot.

Notice that the end of the thread is secured to the handwheel. When a shuttle is out of thread it moves from one side of the loom to the other for reloading.

The shuttle here is "out" of thread, so it will move over to the right side under the bobbin stack, and the stack would put a new spool on:

In this photo the shuttle isn't actually here, they don't use the stacks anymore.

Here are a couple of looms in action.

I often wondered how linen fabric was patterned, now I know, the looms are programmed like a player piano.

If the linen was to have various colors, the bobbin stack would contain those colors.

Here is what a pattern looks like, and can vary from loom to loom depending upon the need.

Remember I told you that this simplified the "mill girls" duties... let me show you how they did it before the bobbin stack.

When the bobbin was out of thread the mill girl had to re-thread the shuttle... in quick-time. The mill girl would get the thread close to the hole on the side of the shuttle, then suck in quickly, which pulled the thread through the hole. Because of this procedure, the shuttles were known as "The Shuttles of Death", for a very good reason... the diseases that were around during their time.

How many of you out there remember the days when wool or cotton required carding before turning it into thread, that changed during the textile revolution.

TA DAH, a carding machine.

As I said earlier, there was a lot to see, and we ran out of time on the meter, so this is a reschedule for a future visit to the area.

On the drive to dinner one night/evening/afternoon:

This yard was full of wild turkeys every time we passed by.

And the last place we ventured to was a town called "Wakefield", and stopped in at the Elks lodge. The reason we wanted to stop was Carol's maiden name, and it is believed that this is where her family name came from after her grandfather got to America.

Time to prepare for our trip into Connecticut.