I spent my childhood years growing up in a small New England town named Newburyport. My house when I was a child was located
near center town. The street was small, and the houses were close together. The front yard was set close to the street like
all of the houses. The back yard was fairly large with three huge oak trees, one of which was home to our man-made wooden
swing. My house was a five-bedroom, colonial house, with just enough room to house me and my family. There were five of us
in total.
Newburyport was a town like no other--it is a four-century-old fishing town. Newburyport's boardwalk is wrapped around the
whole front of the town. Center town was set up in the shape of a natural amphitheater. The town is set on a slant downwards
toward the boardwalk. The original town's houses are located behind the center of town. Most of the small houses that had
belonged to the fishermen and their families were located closest to center town, and the large homes on top of the hill belonged
to the Captains' homes. Over the 400 years it's been there, the town naturally grown in size. We have beaches that are just
two miles to the east of town. Newburyport is a tourist town in the summers.
My house was a light blue color with white trim with a brick chimney in the center of the roof. I loved the house that I grew
up in because I have nothing but fond memories of the house. As a child I thought that our house was the biggest house ever,
but as I grew up, I realized that it's no bigger that everybody else's house. I would say that my favorite room was the kitchen.
I loved our kitchen because it was a large kitchen where my mother had '60s-looking appliances put in. It was a cherry red
and very bright. I would spend most of my time with my mother in the kitchen. She loved to cook. Every holiday we would have
my whole family over, and my mother would spend days cooking for the event. We would always help her.
In our living room was a walk-in fireplace. The living room would be the main room for all of our family events, and we weren't
really allowed to play in that room unless we were having an event. If I was in the house, I usually was upstairs in my
or my sister's room. My room was a typical child's room in the fact that a bed, dresser and mirror were in it. However, the
best feature of my room was that I had a connective crawl space that linked my room to my sister's room, so even when my mother
would ground us to our bedrooms, we would just crawl through the crawl space into each other's rooms.
I was such an outdoor child. I was happy spending time anywhere -- from Maudsley State Park to the beach or walking around
town. I was just happy being outdoors. My sister and I would send most of our days outside exploring the neighborhood. I would
walk up to the park with my sister and spend the whole day outside exploring -- the park's made up of 200 acres of forest.
Maudsley State Park and the town of Newburyport have the Merrimack River flowing alongside, so I would go fishing with my
brother often. My favorite time of year was the summer because no school and every day, all day, outside, but I would have
to say that fall in New England creates the most beautiful place in the world.
I lived in my house from birth through 19 years old. If I could afford to buy our old house, I would buy it and have my children
grow up in the same surroundings that I did. For over ten generations, my family have all been born and raised in Newburyport.
When I start to prepare for my own family, I will be moving back home to continue the traditions passed on to me by my ancestors.
