Brown and White Children

Tucked in the Southeastern corner of Massachusetts, sits the tiny hamlet of Buffumville. The village sprang up around a small textile mill next to a beautiful lake. The water from a fast moving stream that ran off from the lake had once powered a paddle wheel. But the mill and the wheel, that at one time had been the heart of Tucked in the Southeastern corner of Massachusetts, sits the tiny hamlet of Buffumville. The village sprang up around a small textile mill next to a beautiful lake. The mill, built from large fieldstones, was thick with ivy that had inched its way to the roof. the village, now sat idle, useful only to the ivy and a few birds that nested on the paddles. A chain had long ago been looped through the handles of the large oak doors and fastened with a now rusted padlock.

Scattered randomly around the lake and the mill, like dandelions dotting a lush green lawn, where the 10 or 15 houses and one rusty quancit. The houses were mostly white, mostly old, and kept in good repair. The kitchen of one of the larger houses served as the village's general store. Boxes of canned soups, bags of flour, sugar, salt and cans of shorting where stacked in boxes along one wall. The counters on both sides of the sink were crowded with boxes of penny candy, cigarettes, gum, peanut butter, jelly and aspirin. Face soap, toilet tissue, shampoo and tooth past were kept in a box slid under the table. Cash was kept in a cigar box on the table at the elbow of the woman that seemed always to be cleaning vegetables.

The lake was large and clear with a falls that fed the stream and the paddle wheel at the mill. Its banks were full of people all year long, summing, skating, ice fishing. Everyone went to the lake. Except me, mom was afraid I would drown. So the lake was off limits.