A Day Just Like at Walkers

Today could be described as a day just like I would have had when we were back at boarding school. We started slowly, had a little education where we discovered that we loved learning so much it did not feel like school, had some treats, and ended the day laughing so hard with new and old friends that we almost wet our pants.
The cold and rain continued this morning. My friends Warren, Julie and Shannon and I huddled at the kitchen table over our regular Maine breakfast planning our day. Because of the weather we decided to go to the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland that has a wonderful collection that features works of the Wyeths. We toured the collections and then went on a guided tour through the house of the Farnsworth family that was still in it’s original condition of it’s 1850 building. It was a good tour and we really liked our docent.

Little did we know that it was just warming us up for the best tour we were going to take today. The Farnsworth had acquired the Olson House which had been the 30 year location where Andrew Wyeth had come to paint every summer. If you are at all art aware you would recognize the Olson house as the subject of Wyeth’s most famous paining, “Christina’s World.”  
We drove the twenty minutes down to Cushing, Maine and found the farm on a winding thin road, surrounded by water on three sides. The stark, raw clapboard building sits alone on the hill. We went into the building that was mostly empty. I wondered what kind of tour this was going to be with just plaster white walls to look at.
At just after two the four of us met our docent, Pam, a spitfire of a woman, originally from New York, herself an artist. She took us in the largest room on the first floor and started to tell us the story of the Olson family, a rich sea captain and his wife who built the largest framed house in the county in the 1800’s. She told us of their three boys and one girl, Christina. The painting was beginning to come to life. We eventually learned that Christina was handicapped and by the age of twenty had no use of her legs and lived her 73 years in this house with her next youngest brother, pulling herself around by her hands.
Pam, who new Andy Wyeth, as she called him, told us he met Christina and her brother when he first met his soon to be wife Betsy who lived nearby. Wyeth would come every summer to the Olson House and paint many works. As Pam would walk us through the house suddenly the empty rooms were recognizable as the scenes in Wyeth’s paintings, the blue door in the kitchen, the window looking out to the bay. It was thrilling to be seeing the world of Wyeth first hand. I was actually sad when the tour ended, still hungry to hear more stories of poor Christina, living a hard scrabble life in isolated Maine. Just to show how important a place the Olson farm was to Wyeth we discovered that he was buried in the Olson family plot, near Christina.  

It was a great day of hands on learning, just like we might have had in boarding school. Just like school, we needed a snack after so much stimulation so we stopped at the tiny general store near the Olson farm. Spending time with good friends is always made better with snacks.
We rushed home to Warren’s because we needed to cook dinner for Joan Marshall Losee and her husband David who were coming to dinner. Joan had worked at Walker’s with Warren when we were all students.  
As is my role, I was chief cook, making squash casserole and “Somebody died? Fried chicken” and rice. Shannon set a beautiful table and Julie made the salad under strict instructions from me. According to my friends I am just as bossy as I was in boarding school. They are still my younger friends who I must guide.

Joan and David arrived and he probably wondered how long he was going to have to stay at a dinner of old Walker’s girls. Then the story telling started. One story after another about antics of the old guard teachers and the way they treated the girls and we all were rolling on the floor barley able to hold our bladders. By the end, I’m sure David was wishing he had gone to Walkers.
Another fabulous day with old friends just can’t be beat. I’m not sure how much more laughing I can take, but I am thankful for the stomach exercise to counteract the treat eating. It’s just like boarding school.