By Steve Landwehr
Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.
TOPSFIELD — There's an odd extension on the front porch of Al and Marie Masse's summer cottage on Baker's Island, a play area just big enough for a child to pedal a toy tractor around in circles. Beyond that, it doesn't much matter what it looks like.
Because it's not really an addition, it's a solution. Al was big on solutions — his kind of solutions.
The couple's frisky little grandson, Isaac, was hell on wheels on that tractor as a young boy, and the adults sitting on the porch taking in the sunset had to lift their legs every time Isaac came whipping by.
Even the most doting grandpa might have tired of this eventually and ordered Isaac off the porch and into the yard, but that wasn't Masse's way. The circular extension he built was his idea of peaceful coexistence.
Isaac's 24 now, and if he has a son someday, the tractor is waiting and so is its track, the gift of Alfred F. Masse, who died Monday, June 16, at his home on Ipswich Road in Topsfield. He was 83.
He was a tinkerer by trade, an auto mechanic who worked at the Exxon terminal in Everett his whole career.
"He could fix anything," his daughter, MariePatrice Masse, said, "but not always in a conventional way." In other words, the result might not be a thing of beauty, but it ticked, and kept on ticking.
For a guy raised in Cambridge, he developed a deep love of the sea. Even before he and Marie married in 1950, he had a boat he kept at Rye Harbor in New Hampshire, and for all but the last couple of years, he always had something to mess about in.
Located about three miles off the coast, within the boundaries of Salem, Baker's Island is mostly private property with about 60 summer homes. The Masses bought their refuge in 1959, and every summer after, it was where they and their four kids could be found from the day school let out until Labor Day.
"The week before (school started), I'd bring them in to get some clothes and soak the dirt off them," Marie said with a chuckle.
Home on Baker's Island
Masse worked the 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift in Everett, four days a week, and the kids would hear his boat pulling into the pier from its mooring in Manchester Harbor at 3:30 in the morning.
"He loved the coming and going as much as the being there," Marie said.
"Dad's boat had one speed," MariePatrice said. "Slow."
Although his chosen craft were often old lobster boats, Masse rarely used them for that purpose.
He loaned an islander his dinghy years ago and the fellow lost it. When Masse arrived at Baker's the following summer, his friend presented him with a beautiful dinghy he'd made over the winter. Masse used it to tend his string of four or five lobster pots for the next 40 years.
The kids often rowed Masse out to the string, and son Michael remembers one occasion when dad got grabbed by a lobster instead of the other way around. He ripped his hand out of the pot and flung the lobster into the air, Michael said, exclaiming, "There goes a keeper!"
There was a big lobster feed every Friday night at the Masses, in the days when getting 10 lobsters from his little string wasn't a big deal.
"That's the worst lobster I've had this week," MariePatrice remembers her father saying after each and every feast.
A gentle man
Life on Baker's Island was different 50 years ago, Marie said. With fewer mothers working, there were more families who spent their entire summers there. The Masses' cottage had no running water or electricity, but Marie insisted on one concession — a flush toilet.
Today, a solar panel provides some electricity, but water still comes from a well and all the groceries, clothing and sundries for a stay on the island have to be lugged from the pier.
"It's hard work," Marie said.
It was, but Masse relished it, clad in his summer uniform of cut-off blue work pants held up by a rope belt, with a pair of sandals made from an old tire he bought for two bucks on a family vacation in South America.
Marie can't remember her husband uttering so much as a single "damn" in his life, and said he never yelled at any of his kids. MariePatrice remembers one occasion when she thought she'd hear both swearing and yelling, but didn't.
It was senior skip day at Topsfield High, and MariePatrice thought what better place to skip to than the island. She got in her car, drove to Manchester, and "borrowed" Dad's boat, which he had taught her to skipper.
"When I got back, there was a note on my windshield: 'Hope you had a great day. Just came down to check on the boat.'"
The Masses have left their cottage in a trust to their children — that's the way it is on the island these days — and they'll no doubt do the same with their children.
No one will ever have to go far, however, to have a talk with the patriarch of the clan.
His ashes were scattered over the waters around Baker's Island that were as much home to Al Masse as anyplace on earth.
Staff writer Steve Landwehr can be reached at 978-338-2660 or by e-mail at slandwehr@salemnews.com.
