Recently aquired, the green cloth cover Modern Library Edition of Moby-Dick is the more deluxe version of the book already blogged in the two prize post.
Chapter VI The Street
"Still New Bedford is a queer place."
Alas, in 1851 New Bedford seems such a fun town. Cannibals on the street corners and Green Mountain boys looking for adventure at sea. Already alive and perhaps looking out the window of her father's stately mansion, Hetty Green, maybe even seeing Melville himself.
Hetty Green: we would first be aware of when passing the Hetty Green Motel in far away Bellows Falls VT on the way in 1964 to some ski adventure in the back seat of Dad's Buick Electra. Only years later after much research did we understand the Victorian life of Hetty Green, to the point of making a pilgrimage to her grave in 2008.
Our mother summered at Salters Point, and her father would take her on Sunday visits to the Charles W. Morgan, at that time the play thing of Col. Ned Green, Hetty's son.
During our salad days when we would want to experience some form of prep school hi jinx, we would steal out of the dorm and drive to New Bedford. Really steal, we would obscond with one of the school cars, usually a black Ford Beach Wagon. We had keys made.
Melville: Whaling: Hetty Green: Ned Green: Charles W. Morgan: Family: New Bedford: YOUTH: SKIIING: HI JINX all intertwined and circling around the same being, those are touchstones that define lives.
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