Cardboard & Chrome

Last week was a little challenging here in Salem, with news of two local businesses closing: one decades old, the other an extremely popular retail shop which caters to residents rather than tourists. Such businesses seem fewer and fewer present along the streets of Salem, and it’s a bit disheartening. The slide towards all-year-long Halloween seems relentless, at least to me, and you can see little black witch hats everywhere you walk even on the hottest days of summer. So it was nice to have two more traditional events this past weekend: the Maritime Festival at the newly-designated Salem Maritime National Historic Park (as opposed to Site, its prior designation) and the Phillips House Car Meet. These events have been going on for decades—the Maritime Festival took a break but was revived several years ago with a new marquis event, a cardboard regatta which is really fun to watch and the Car Meet just gets bigger and better every year. I saw lots of old friends on both days and met quite a few new among the old cars as I was greeting guests at the Phillips House. And I saw only ONE stupid little witch hat on both days! I took lots of pictures, so here they are:

Maritime Festival & Cardboard Regatta at Salem Maritime National Historic PARK on Saturday: the boats were largely family or organization constructions with lots of young sailors aboard and some were very seaworthy while other sank pretty quickly. But everyone paddled as best they could! Lots of entries this year, and the awards were very creative.

They’re still working on her as you can see, but it’s been nice to have the Friendship back at Derby Wharf this summer too. And it was lovely to be able to go into both the Custom House and the adjoining Derby House—I hadn’t been in the latter for at least a decade; I can’t really remember when I was last in there, actually. It looks great.

Love the scale of these rooms!!!

The 23rd Annual Phillips House Car Meet on Sunday: as you can see from my photos, what I like is the juxtaposition of old houses and old cars. This event started out with maybe 15 cars, and now there are cars lining both sides of Chestnut Street so almost every house has its own car! The lower end of the street, where I live, is excluded, as it is narrower and traffic has to flow somewhere so my house does not get its own car. In years past when I was not working this event, I would find out all about the cars but I didn’t have time to do that this year as I just took some snaps during a break. 

And then they were gone….leaving no tracks.