Peirson’s Place. Richmond, Massachusetts. © Award winning photograph. By Paul Goldfinger. Click left for full view. Re-posted from March, 2014. Blogfinger.net
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger (We like to re-post this piece about every 1-2 years)
Photographer’s note: If you go to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, near Tanglewood, there are lots of old B and B’s. Our friends Dick and his wife Luisa used to stay at Peirson’s Place, an old house, sort of ramshackle, with a large barn in the back where the kids could play and even sleep.
Mrs. Peirson would make breakfast each morning — nothing fancy like some places where they serve Eggs Benedict. Dick is an internist, now retired, who also is a pianist. His wife Luisa is an artist, so they’re the sort of people you run into at Pierson’s Place.
Eileen and I went there a few times. During the day you could visit farmers’ markets or historic attractions or towns in the area such as Lenox and Stockbridge. You could also wander the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival where the peaks of the Berkshires give off vapors in the morning. You can listen to a rehearsal in the afternoon and then picnic on the great lawn, under the stars, while enjoying the magnificence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
One morning I got up and meandered around the property at Peirson’s Place. There’s something about those cool mornings in the mountains as the new sun ripples across everything that’s still wet with dew and crisscrossed with leftover shadows.
I looked at the old house and the barn. There were flowers all around, and you could touch them, but not pick them. That’s what Mrs. Peirson did before everyone came down for breakfast.
As I walked about, I came upon an old garage where I was startled by the eye of a creature peering out at me. It seemed alive even after I moved closer and identified it. The big red eye belonged to an old English sports car that was just itching to roar out of there onto the country roads.
SOUNDTRACK. “Someday Soon” by Judy Collins.
2018 Addendum: Eileen came upon a 1992 interview about Peirson’s Place. Margaret Mace Kingman (1912-1998) was being interviewed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology archives. She was a descendant of the Peirson family which owned the property .
The interview was about her life and education, but this is what she said about the family’s Richmond, Mass. home:
“My childhood was right here on the property because I was born in the same room, in the same bed my mother was born in, in the same room my grandfather was born in. The property had been in the hands of my family since the land was bought from the Indians in 1761.”
Margaret became a college professor, and she added, “Sometimes I take students up around on the trails; we have quite a number of trails because we have, along with the property I gave to my son, more than 400 acres here. And you can see the trees still, some of the crab apple trees to which he had grafted other types of apples. They’re still growing although everything’s grown up now into forest. It used to be much more open than it is today.”
