To Slip the Surly Bonds

January, 1883,

Worchester, Massachusetts

The boarding call for the Knickerbocker came an hour later. Robert, who had been asleep in Fannie’s arms, awoke at the sound of the conductor’s voice through a large bullhorn.

“ATTENTION! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! TRAIN NUMBER THREE-EIGHT-FOUR, THE KNICKERBOCKER, IS NOW BOARDING ON PLATFORM NUMBER ONE!”

Robert began to cry loudly at the sound of the conductor’s magnified voice. Fannie made cooing noises and gently rocked her son back and forth. “It’s all right,” she said quietly. Nahum touched her gently on the arm and stood up. They followed the stream of people across the ticket hall and through the doors under the sign reading “To Trains.”

Nahum and Fannie had made the decision to move from Worchester to Boston before Fannie became pregnant. Nahum had always had a technological inclination. His business partner, another former employee of Hoyt, Simeon Stubbs, had also moved to Boston. Both men were intent on starting a new business and felt that being closer to Boston’s investors, labourers and factory owners would give them the edge they would need to succeed.. Among other things, Goddard had invented a new kind of knife for cutting rabbit skins, and a new kind of welding flux. Nahum was to be, among other things, the company’s travelling salesman.

The station platform was thick with people as the passengers mingled consulting their tickets before hurrying off to find their assigned cars. Porters threaded their way through the throng carting luggage, while the conductor seemed to be everywhere at once. Nahum consulted the tickets again. The crowd on the platform was beginning to thin out. He glanced at his pocket watch and then at the station clock. The train would be departing soon. They walked down the platform until they reached the middle of the train.

Nahum and Fannie stopped in front of car number six-four-two. A heavy-set man with a red face and wire spectacles stood at the bottom of the steps leading up to the car. “Good morning, May I see your tickets, please?”

Nahum handed their tickets to the conductor. He took them and examined them, peering at them through his black wire spectacles. He punched through each ticket with a metallic hole punch and handed them back to Nahum.

“Welcome aboard,” he said, then gestured to the train behind him. The sound of doors opening and closing with a series of loud bangs echoed up and down the platform. “Up the stairs and to the left please.” Nahum and Fannie mounted the steps as the train shuddered at the release of the engine brakes. The sound of hissing stream filled the air. Balancing Robert in his arm, Nahum opened the carriage door and held it for Fannie. Nahum followed his wife inside and shut the door behind him.

The train ride from Worchester to Boston took an hour. It was snowing gently when the Knickerbocker pulled into Boston’s North Street Station. With Robert in her arms, Nahum and Fannie, wove their way through the throng of people, flowing from the station platform into the ticket hall. The main concourse bustled with activity. After speaking briefly to one of the ticket agents, they turned down a side passage which eventually led them back to the platform, where they were met by a tall man with thick mutton chops.

“May I help you?” he asked.

Nahum nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I am Mr. Goddard, and this is my wife.” He gestured to Fannie. “We are waiting for the movers to unload the express mail car.”

The attendant riffled through the collection of papers on the clipboard in his hand. “Oh, yes,” he said, “Mr. N. Goddard; shipping contents of a house from Worchester to Boston.” He glanced up from his paperwork at Nahum. “Is that correct, Mr. Goddard?” Nahum nodded. “Very well. Please go back to the station. When your movers have arrived to unload your things someone will come and get you.”

Nahum and Fannie waited in the station for half an hour before the movers came to unload the contents of their house from the boxcar. Fannie bounced Robert on her knee and fed him. They followed one of the station attendants back down the same side passage to the platform they had disembarked earlier. The boxcar’s double doors were folded back and latched in position again. Several people were going in and out, unloading the various parcels and packages that occupied the shelving opposite car’s interior. Nahum and Fannie’s things had already been unloaded. They were set apart and clustered together. Nahum lifted the heavy blankets covering the larger pieces of furniture and inspected the dark oak and mahogany finishes underneath. He found a few nicks and scratches here and there. Otherwise, they appeared to have weathered being packed, shipped and unpacked with minor damage.

The tall, mutton-chopped platform attendant looked at Nahum and Fannie as they inspected their belongings. “I trust everything is to your satisfaction?” he asked.

Nahum and Fannie both nodded. “Yes,” replied Fannie, “this looks most satisfactory.”

The movers arrived thirty minutes later. The low winter sun cast long shadows, as they used hand trucks and dollies to cart the Goddards’ possessions away to the heavy wagon waiting at the station’s loading dock. Nahum and Fannie followed them and arrived at the station’s loading dock a few minutes later. It wads snowing more heavily in Boston, and the men’s faces soon became red with exertion in the chilly January weather. The two horses stood stamping their hooves in the January chill. Steam snorted from their nostrils and snow collected on their backs. The freight wagon was backed up to the loading dock, with its gate lowered. It had a shabby coat of grey paint, chipped and peeling in places. It was half full of the jumbled assortment of the Goddards’ possessions. They watched as the movers steadily maneuvered the last of the steamer trunks into the back of the freight wagon. The gate was shut with a snap, which echoed loudly in the still winter air. Nahum gave the stations attendants a dollar each and rattled off the address for the two movers, who climbed onto the driver’s bench. The reigns snapped and the freight wagon rumbled into the tangled snarl of Boston’s mid-afternoon traffic.

“Where to?” The cabbie had a thick Boston accent.

Nahum gave him the address. The cabbie snapped the reigns, the horse leaned into its traces with a snort, and the cab lurched into motion. When they arrived at their destination twenty minutes later, the cab stopped in front of a three-storey red brick townhouse. The freight wagon was parked in the snow next to a sidewalk at the end of a flagstone walk that led to the front door. The hobnail boots of the movers had broken a furrow through the snow from the freight wagon to the front door, where a formidable looking older woman stood just inside the doorway.

The cabbie climbed down from his perch and held the door open for Nahum and Fannie, who climbed down out of the cab, with Robert in her arms. The woman in the doorway waved. Nahum, paused momentarily while he extracted his billfold from the recesses of his coat and paid the cabbie, who nodded his thanks and rumbled off.

Mary Pease Upham Goddard watched as her son and his wife trudged through the ankle deep snow.

“Mother,” said Nahum, “what an unexpected surprise. We didn’t expect any visitors in this weather.”

Madame Goddard waved away her son’s exclamation. “Of course I’d come dear, don’t be silly.” She turned to her daughter-in-law, “And what about you, Fannie? How was your journey from Worchester? Why don’t you and the baby come inside where it’s warm.” She took her daughter-in-law by the arm. “I wouldn’t want my grandson to catch a cold,” she said with a wink.

It took several days to unload the furniture and then to unpack all the steamer trunks and boxes of belongings, during which it continued to snow steadily. A storm broke two days after Nahum and Fannie finished moving into their new home. When Nahum woke early that morning, a thick white mantle of snow lay over everything. He estimated that a foot of snow had fallen in the previous two days. After bathing, a shave and having a quick breakfast, Nahum pulled on his winter coat, boots, hat and gloves. He pulled open the front door and a blast of freezing air entered the foyer. He paused momentarily, pulling his thick woollen scarf around his face and neck.

Nahum stepped out side, shutting the oak front door, with its elaborate etched glass window, with a snap that seemed to echo loudly in the early morning air. He picked his way carefully through the snow, skidding on patches of ice, before eventually arriving at the streetcar stop at the end of Forest Street. The horse-drawn streetcar arrived fifteen minutes later. It rumbled to a halt in front of Nahum and the dozen or so other people huddled together and wrapped up against the cold. The horse snorted, twitched its ears and left a steaming puddle in the snow between its hooves. The conductor handed him a ticket and he sat down. The streetcar jerked into motion and rumbled off.