NEW HOPE, THEN & NOW

Subj: WOMEN: Mindwalkers ~ New Hope, now & then
Date: 2/24/00 11:37:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Just back - at 10:10 p.m. ~ from a toot with Elsa up to New Hope. She took a bottle of sparkling nectar up as a surprise for friends who will be staying at a stunning inn for the weekend. A favorite R&R spot for John & Elsa, it is built within the ruins of a old mill. I went inside last spring with Elsa & Gail Cooper and it is a knock out. Dramatic ruins and dramatic interiors, yet somehow it was cozy. There was a warmth there.

Heading up, we talked about this time - was it really 63 years ago? - when Pete & I were planning our wedding. We thought New Hope would be a just-right place to spend our honeymoon. Apparently we were way ahead of our time, because when I went to the travel agency at the department store I worked at (yes, department stores really did have travel agencies in those days), the person looked at me like I had suggested Mars would be nice. "No one goes to New Hope. There's not even any place to stay."

Well, Pete & I knew that could not be so. New Hope was too charming not to have overnight lodgings. Back then, it really and truly was a bohemian artist's colony, with a special feeling about it that disappeared long before many of you were a gleam in your parents' eyes. We knew it was the place for us. So, one Sunday we packed up a picnic lunch and headed to Wayne Junction and the one train that went to New Hope. One train up in the morning, one train back at night.

We had a wonderful time traipsing all over New Hope that day. We settled down along side the canal and ate our lunch and talked about our wedding and our future. It was an idyllic day. Unfortunately, the travel agent knew of what he spoke - we could not find so much as ONE place for overnight visitors to stay. It was a great day and a great disappointment, at the same time. And it seems like yesterday.

Best wishes on you all. I am headed up the wooden hill ~ M/G/N/K/AK

(reposted with sweet memories of its author, KATHARINE REYNOLDS LOCKHART, by her scribe/daughter, Elsa Lockhart Murphy, aka DEEV)