December 30, 2022
A massive hurricane in September 1938 blasted its way through our farm, and left scars still visible today. Most of the trees on our ridge were snapped off at ground level. The oak trees, though, quickly resprouted, as oaks are prone to do. Now, 84 years later, some have regrown into enormous trees once again, but this time with multiple trunks. When we built our house, we wound our driveway between several such trees, as we didn’t have the heart to take them down.
The hurricane came without any warning. The ability to predict hurricanes didn’t start until the 1950’s and even then, there was little more than 24-hour’s notice. On that autumn day in 1938, schools and businesses were open as usual. It wasn’t until the wind picked up, and the classroom windows started shattering, that teachers instructed the kids to run home “as quickly as possible”.
The storm was one of the most severe on record. Massachusetts recorded sustained winds of 121 mph and gusts of 186 mph. (For comparison, Hurricane Sandy had wind speeds of 90 mph and gusts of 115 mph).
682 people were killed in New England and the damage to infrastructure was colossal. Barns filled with the year’s harvest were totally destroyed. That catastrophic agricultural loss, coming on the heels of the Great Depression, forced many farmers into bankruptcy and many more to just simply give up and sell their land.
An abutting neighbor approached my grandmother because “she just didn’t have the heart to rebuild”. My grandmother purchased the land and tasked my uncles with clearing it and planting spruce trees.
As kids, a generation later, we were lucky enough to harvest a legacy of joy from that horrific storm. Those spruce trees had grown into a magical forest, where we cut our Christmas tree every year. The trees by then were 10- 20 feet tall and densely packed. There was no undergrowth on the forest floor which made wandering beneath them effortless. We’d pelt each other with snowballs (remember when there was always snow in December?) and we’d search until we found just the right tree. It was never the nicest tree that we brought home because my father wouldn’t let us cut any tree unless we could argue that by its removal, the forest would be better off. So, what we often brought home was arguably the least attractive tree around.
Once we picked the tree, we’d cut it down by hand. We took turns swinging the axe and since I was the youngest, I went last. I was always thrilled to strike the final blow, the one that finally brought the tree down. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized my siblings had already cut it through, and my parents were simply holding the tree upright until I had my turn.
We’d cut it to length, and drag it home, which through the snow and fading daylight always seemed a daunting task. Everyone else we knew had perfect “store bought” trees, but my mother would remind us - we had a whole forest. Our ugly trees were truly legendary – for which I took great pride.