Editor’s note: The Daily News is publishing an eight-part story written by former Pink House owner Bruce Stott. The Stott family owned the iconic Newbury home from 1960 to 2010 before selling it to the federal government.
Shortly thereafter the boat ride, the six of us moved in, while the three DeHarts moved to the Washington state. Our family included mom and dad, older brother Mark, myself, younger sister Julie, and 2-year-old Craig. We were delighted to find a few foreign mementos like a Mexican straw mask, a Danish ceramic, Californian abalone shells, a narrow handwoven sash from South America on the wall, a ball of string twice the size of a basketball. The dining room light had a Japanese paper globe around it in the seemingly southwestern motif feel to the house with its stuccoed interior. An engraved silver cup left in the dining room closet by the former owners. We would learn why the house was a then odd and unique avant garde pink.
Why Pink is a frequent question. Before going further, here is the answer. It’s the result of traveling full stop. The DeHart’s traveled a great deal. The color was changed to a Caribbean coral pink color to remind them of their travels. Anyone has seen the pastels of coral and conk shells in the islands will know what I mean. We saw no reason to change the color which has now become more ubiquitous than unique. Repainting required many gallons of white paint for the all the trim and even more of strawberry pink paint sold to us by long-time friend and Newbury resident Reagh Atkinson of the former W.E. Atkinson Company hardware store, now the Poynt Restaurant, just off Market Square, Newburyport.
The boat, she would be kept at 51st Street, and at our houses on Old Point Road facing the basin up near where the work boat we fantasized as a PT boat rested as a derelict hull. The PT boat’s engines had long gone with the tide washing in and out of her hold. But it was great to play in especially after the PT 109 movie came out involving the revered late President Jack Kennedy. Every islander knows or used to about living with or without or something in between, the fresh water floating on salt water in the sand. Fresh water depends on how deep your point is or where it’s situated in that shallow fragile lens of water tapped into by other residents. Everyone had septic tanks of a sort filtering into the sand. We make the best of everything, its part of life here. When asked how the water at the house was, Dad’s terse dry wit came out with a reply. “Wet.” The Pinkie had hot and cold running water, but brackish.
That boat provided us a way to learn about the water, tides, fishing, and Sandy Point Sundays in the 1950s and 1960s. Towing a waterskiing brother the length of the river, beach time daily in summer with neighbors, fishing in the river, and swimming in the warm creek. The life of an island kid/Joppyite was a lot about water awareness. Checking the flags whipping in the wind at the Coast Guard station at the Point warning of gale force winds.
Buoys tossed up on the beach in a storm like toys left by a giant child. Sunny all day family boat picnics on the purple sand beach all to yourself with the boat moored off the beach a mile or two up from Emersons Rocks her bow to the waves. There were trips up the river and all-day adventures down the Annisquam River to Gloucester returning by rounding Halibut Point on Cape Ann and moving close to shore to parallel the reservation oceanside as the only boat in sight.
Bruce Stott lives on Plum Island and in Sebastian, Florida.