William Marvel: A Clash of Ages

My grandfather’s birth coincided with the Panic of 1873, when a few people were still alive who had seen, and perhaps known, George Washington. One week before Abraham Lincoln’s 100th birthday, my father was born in a little Cape Cod town where the inhabitants did not then realize how fortunate they were to be watching a long, slow decline in their population: Orleans had dwindled to barely to 1,000 souls — only a few more than had lived there when the town seceded from Eastham, in 1797.

My grandfather’s 1907 Maxwell must have been one of the first automobiles in Orleans, and my father grew up knowing a lot of horses. As a boy he enjoyed sleigh rides while bundled beneath buffalo robes. One summer in his late teens, he worked for a Conway farmer, riding a team of horses from the barn near the Four Corners to the Stark Road, where he worked the fields with them all day.