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Friday, October 9, 2020

Something Else About Spy Pond

Another ponderous thing!

I mentioned Spy Pond yesterday as being a pond in Duston Heights. This does not necessarily mean the pond exists in Haverhill because...well...it doesn’t. The only notable Spy Pond in Massachusetts is in Arlington. A few years when we figured this out we dug a little deeper and re-read the text in The Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost:
The reddish sunlight stained the ripply water of Spy Pond below them. On the far bank stood the old brick pumping station, with its green copper turrets. Its windows had turned to blobs of golden fire (40).
Haverhill has a number of bodies of water on the east side of town including Kenoza Lake, originally known as Great Pond. And if you look at the old waterworks building with its coppery-green turrets then you sense Bellairs likely had this location and pond in mind. I still think Spy sounds better as a name than Great. Great is great, yeah, but something called Spy in New England awakens Revolutionary War-era stories of espionage. You know, at the pond.

Anyone have a better picture of this building?

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