Marblehead author Catherine Marenghi spoke about her new memoir, “Glad Farm,” at the Abbot Library on Wednesday, Aug. 17. The seasoned journalist, award-winning poet and author of other nonfiction works, shared stories about growing up in a small, one-room house in Milford during the ‘60s.
“The house kept every possible friend at arm's length,” Marenghi said. “I never talked about my roots with anyone.”
Marenghi’s father built the house on a farm, where it was hidden behind trees at the end of a long dirt driveway, far from the road. The chimney, which connected to the wood stove, was made from a stack of cinderblocks next to the door.
“It was very hard to bake in that oven,” Marenghi said. “You couldn’t regulate it very easily.”
There was no indoor heating, toilets or telephones. Marenghi remembers sitting in the outhouse with her mother as a child, and how happy she was, as one of five children, to have her all to herself.
“That was a very intimate moment,” she said.
Marenghi, who works in public relations at a software company in Cambridge, got the idea to write a memoir during a poetry retreat in Vermont. One of the other poets told her, “You should write a memoir.”
“It didn’t occur to me that my life should be recorded,” she said at the Library.
As she wrote “Glad Farm,” she thought of President Jimmy Carter and his work with Habitat for Humanity. She wrote him a letter about her book and received an encouraging answer in a handwritten note. He agreed to write a few words for her book jacket, after reviewing a draft, and related to her personal experiences.
“I, too, was raised in a house with no indoor plumbing,” he wrote.
Growing up, Marenghi was eager to leave Milford. She was a dedicated student who became her high school’s valedictorian and went on to study at Tufts University.
“I was plain lucky. I was a good student,” she said.
In “Glad Farm,” which refers to her parents’ gladiolus business, Marenghi recalls the day she helped her mother purchase a new house, which was brought to her childhood property by truck.
“The pieces were interlocking, like a giant dollhouse,” she read.
Marenghi shared a passage about her mother, who was “giddy as a child,” as she snapped photos of the new house, capturing the brass doorknobs, beige carpet and blue porcelain toilet.
“She had gone without these basic niceties most of her life,” Marenghi read.
In “Glad Farm,” Marenghi shares childhood memories of her parents and their entrepreneurial work in the flower business, which she learned about after their passing. She is happy to preserve their legacy and spark readers’ interest in their own childhood stories.
“It ends happy. It’s not a sad tale,” she said of the book. “I’m really pleased that it helps people remember their own stories.”
Marenghi moved to Marblehead after her son, Steven Pfau, who works at a publishing company in New York City and edited “Glad Farm,” graduated from high school in Needham. Today Marenghi lives on Waldron Street.
“I wanted to be near the ocean,” she said. “I love old Marblehead.”