Witches and Writers

Friendship Sailing Ship in Port at Salem, MA

My favorite witch, Samantha, has a place of honor in Salem.
The oldest candy store in America.

The House of the Seven Gables that served as the setting for Hawthorne's novel of the same name.

Tonight's blog will be short because it is so late. Today was our last day in Salem. We lunched on the Salem Wharf and had a table overlooking the Friendship sailing ship.

Then, we moved onto the Witches Dungeon, where actresses put on a short skit using dialogue for the transcripts of the Salem witch trials. Afterwards, they led us through a replica of the dungeons that held those accused of being witches, which turned out to be a dark, dank basement with cells and statues and occasionally, one would move (being one of the actresses) and our fellow tourists would scream in terror. Okay, it was hokey but the skit was good.

From there, we went to the Salem Witch Museum, which was even hokier than the dungeons. The only saving grace was that they did tell the story of the how all of the hysteria came about. It seems some teenage girls, being bored, started telling tales as pranks, but the results were the deaths of 20 people. After we heard the genesis of the tale, we pondered what the adults could have been thinking. The girls should have been spanked for their pranks. About 10 years after the hangings, one of the girls confessed that it was all a hoax. None of the girls were punished and the townspeople got mad at the recantor for bringing the whole mess up again. Yikes!

Then, we set out for the oldest candy store in America. I thought it would be fun to see what it looked like after our witch hunt. It was a very tiny store, but they still make candy on the premises, actually using some of the old candy molds. The molds seem to be made of cast iron, which never wears out, I guess.

Close by, was the House of Seven Gables that Hawthorne used as the setting from one of his most popular books.

After we finished touring, we returned to the RV to pick up our laundry. It has been so hot here, except for today, that I wanted to get everything clean before the next leg of our adventure. Last week, we had seen a very nice laundromat near the grocery store, so we went there tonight. Once the laundry was done, we did our food shopping and stop at a nearby Walgreens for supplies.

When we returned to the RV, our neighbors, Mike and Joanne, were sitting out as the evening on the water was absolutely gorgeous. We decided to join them to watch the sunset. One thing led to another and before we knew it it was 1o:00 p.m. We still had to make our bed and store our clothes away.

I wanted to mention that there was no blog last night much to my dismay. We had had such a lovely day that I wrote for two hours. As I was ready to publish, the computer hiccuped and I lost all the work for the evening. I will try to restore it in a few days but it will be hard to recreate my enthusiasm for a second try. Plus, we will me on our way to new adventures.