Longfellow Park

Here’s another shot of the Chapel, looking northward and a bit eastward up Longfellow Park from in front of the Friends’ meetinghouse. The Vassall House, known and shown today as the Longfellow House, is behind the bus at left.

Toured the place once, while Henry Longfellow’s descendants still lived there, before the Park Service took it over. They charged fifty cents and wondered aloud how the crazy “Mormons” had managed to get that prime spot across the street. When I told them I was one of the crazies, they urged me to use my influence to get some good New England ivy growing on the Chapel bricks. To soften the lines, they said…

In those days, active membership in the Branch meant coming twice every Sunday: Priesthood meeting and Sunday School in the morning, and then returning in the latish afternoon for Sacrament Meeting. Afternoon choir practice was optional, but I enjoyed it and usually came an hour early. There were youth meetings in the middle of the week, but I’d never participated in those back in San Bernardino and saw no reason to start in Cambridge. Always seemed to be just basketball and dancing, neither of which was at all my cup of herbal tea. I was far more in tune with the youth of East Compost than with those of the Restored Kingdom.

To get from Ames Street to Longfellow Park meant hiking over to Kendall Square, taking the MTA Red Line through Central to its terminus at Harvard Square, and then hiking up Brattle Street to what used to be 100 Brattle, until the Church cut the old house in half and moved it around the corner on Hawthorne Street, to serve as the Mission Home.

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Updated Aug 2014

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