As a boy and a young man I spent a lot of time at Damon's Point.

Google it, it's a real place. It's on the North River and divides Marshfield and Scituate, Massachusetts.

It was a wonderful place for a boy and a young man to spend a part of their youth.

Of course mothers dispised the place because there were 1287 different ways there to get hurt, maimed, crippled or killed.

One could simply drown it the river. Or get chopped up by a boat propeller or get fall off the railroad bridge. The dock and old railroad bridge were full of splinters. One could get pulled into the current by a fish that he had caught. The mud flats had sharp clamshells in them that could give a bare foot a nasty gash. 

Fathers generally looked at things a little different than the mothers. "Yeah, a kid could drown or get chopped up by a propeller or fall off the bridge  but when you think about it, a youngster really can't get into any real trouble there," said one of the neighborhood fathers to my dad. Dad agreed.

The Point was seventh heaven to a youngster. There were boats and once you learned the ropes there were some you could board and check out. We learned early on to be helpful to the owners. We'd often, for example, wipe the salt off of windshields and maybe get rid of any trash or anything that had blown on board. We knew we were welcome if we left the boat better than we found it.

There were dinghys we could row around in if the owners permitted it. They did because we'd bail any raainwater that we found in them and we kept a set of oars under the pier.

We could swim off of the dock, dive ir fish off of the railroad bridge. The flats at low tide were chockablock full of clams just waiting to be dug. Sometimes the lobstermen would trade us lobsters for the clams we dug.

We kept an old pot hidden so we could build a fire and make ourselves meals of fresh steamed clams and there was a skillet so we could cook the fish we caught. It was every boys dream.

Later on in life we learned that after dark we could sneak down and simply stand on the bridge and overlook the spit and the river mouth and just conemplate life. A friend of mine once observed, "You'll never find an a$$hole at 3 am at Damon's  Point. He was right.

Of all of the places I remember from my younger years the only one I really miss is Damon's Point. It was and still remains special. 

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY