Road Trip: Rochester, MA

Raoul lives in Rochester, Massachusetts. He is a travel friend that I met in the Philippines, at Alona Beach. There was a dire shortage of reading material, and at dinner it looked as if he were just finishing a book. Furthermore, he was wearing a T-shirt from my alma mater. So, of course, we talked, exchanged addresses and phone numbers and all that stuff. And we both got new books to read.

When I got back to the States, I actually looked him up, which most backpackers really don't do all that often. CR lived in Massachusetts at the time, and we went down for a visit. He has a junkyard, and we got to hit cars with a sledge hammer, which is very good for whatever is frustrating you at the time. We went to a local fair, where we looked for traditional New Bedford big hair, then watched rat roulette and various other odd things. I've been visiting almost every year since.

Raoul's house is set on the banks of a 'pond' ('lake' in the rest of the US). My favorite things to do there are: sit on the deck, lie in a hammock, and sunbathe on the dock, then repeat. Once again, I did no sightseeing. We went out for fried clams at the beach and marveled at the price. When I lived in Boston back in the late sixties, a dollar bought you a fairly good-sized paper cone filled with fried clams. Now they are 'market price' along with the more expensive of the fresh fish offerings.