Evening Sounds About the Village

In some places one hears the gentle evening bells of the Angelus. But in our village, at least on our Harvard hilltop above the Common, that is not quite the case. What we used to hear, our own angelus, was a song calling the end of a day’s work to the Army at Fort Devens, an Army band serenading the men and women there at six o’clock’s quiet hour. That was three miles downhill from us.

Here, high on Old Littleton Road, where the house’s north wall meets the west wall of the barn, is a doorway and massive stone step, a cool summer breezeway, where one can sit and gaze at the hills, deer and rabbits, vegetable gardens, lilies, a rope swing, and a tree house. A timeless place. House and barn catch the Devens music in a reverse megaphone, an evening listening post. One sits in the breeze, bare feet cool on the step stone, listening.

­­—Jean McCrosky, Old Littleton Road