Peter Colman Dr. "Father of the Man" Author

As our plane approached the surrounding hills and dropped silently over the Derry line toward the cold white asphalt runway, I peered instinctively away from the busy terminal toward the northeastern airport boundary to the familiar profile of trees skirting the old tower and red intermittent signal light – the same light that has been burning, uninterrupted, since before World War II. There, snuggled at the warm base of a solitary stand of majestic pines, still sat the same miniature white cottage with blue shutters where Uncle Jim and Auntie Joyce (their sixtieth year in the same house) huddled in the same blue-board breakfast nook sharing cheese and crackers and steaming chowder in a buttery white seasoned sauce packed with fresh sweet clams.

I closed my eyes briefly for the final descent. Strangely, I could sense the fast-reverse of decades – old Pine Island Park and its penny arcade, the old gray, rickety roller-coaster towering over fat metallic airplanes suspended from thick steel cables, and the red and silver-stained bus that carried us from Elm Street in the center of town, south past the Pine Grove Cemetery, to Brown Avenue and up the steep hill to the parking lot. The trip cost twenty-five cents per person, including the transfer for the return home. At the base of old Harvey Road, near the west entrance of the airport and hidden from view on the road above, was a sandy incline descending to the clean, shallow brackish waters of the Cohas Brook. It was there that Jim and ‘Shirl,’ the Dickey and Colman clans would retreat on a hot day with our swimsuits and smiles, bologna and mustard sandwiches, and a cooler of crushed ice packed with dozens of fresh seven-ounce, sea-green bottles of Coke!




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