Coastal New England Yard Cleanup, Storm Debris, 1950s

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Coastal New England Yard Cleanup, Storm Debris, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Coastal New England Yard Cleanup, Storm Debris, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-7E15F2

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Someone has decided that today is the day the yard gets sorted out, and they are going to look cheerful about it. The man pausing over his rake in front of a white clapboard Cape with a screened porch has accumulated a pile of storm-tossed marsh grass and splintered timber large enough to suggest a serious nor'easter came through sometime recently — the kind of coastal New England storm that rearranged everyone's property lines and left the shoreline dotted with cleanup parties just like this one.

The water visible behind the house places this squarely on the Maine or New Hampshire coast, the sort of tidal inlet community where summer cottages sat close enough together that a neighbor could watch your cleanup progress from across the road, which is exactly what the woman in the background appears to be doing. The 1950s were the decade when the postwar family acquired both a waterfront getaway and the unshakeable conviction that maintaining it was leisure.

The debris pile is bigger than one afternoon's work, the lumber mixed into the marsh grass suggesting something structural came apart nearby. He is smiling at the camera with the expression of a man who has just realized the raking will take until Sunday.

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