On March 2, 1946 my parents purchased a large house that sat on a 40 acre tract of land in Clinton, Connecticut.  I am not sure how old this home was, but it had very wide wood floor boards, fastened with square nails.  There were no modern conveniences, but we were very happy to have our first family home.  With no indoor plumbing, we used the privy that was about thirty feet in back of the house.  There was a coal fired furnace that kept the house warm.  Refrigerators could not be purchased yet so we used an ice box that was kept supplied with ice by the local ice man.  There was a corn crib and a large barn filled with old farm implements.  My favorite was a huge one cylinder gas engine that I loved to hand crank to get it started and run it for hours.  It was an extremely slow running monster engine that made a terrific noise as it did not have a muffler.

   This 1946 photo shows my mother and me in our back yard of our Clinton farm.

   My parents set to the task of remodeling the house.  Walls came down in one place and were built in another.  We did most of the work ourselves including refinishing the floors and wallpapering.  They hired contractors to rewire the home, install a modern bathroom and kitchen with new appliances.  A new oil fired, steam heat system was installed throughout the house. 

   One of the interesting surprises I remember was in back of a wall I was told to tear out.  I was busy removing the old plaster and lath from the wall and found a large stone fireplace behind the wall.  In the fireplace was a crane with a cast iron pot hanging from it.  The andirons were still in the fireplace.  There also was a baking oven built into the wall beside the fireplace.  This room had been scheduled to be the kitchen, but after this discovery my parents made it into the dinning room. 

   This Christmas dinner picture shows the dinning room with the discovered fireplace. 

   In the spring of 1946 I was enrolled in 6th grade at the Clinton Grammar School.  A busy summer of mowing laws and picking strawberries to make money was supplemented by doing chores around the farm.  I took care of the chickens and helped in our very large garden.  I did not like farming, but looking back on that summer I now realize that I learned a lot.

   In the fall of 1946 I returned to Clinton Grammar School and the newspaper, The New Haven Evening Register, printed the above picture in the October 4, 1946 edition.  I am in the last row, second from the right.  The 4-H Club Fair was a really big deal and I entered two midget watermelons that I had grown.  They won a blue ribbon and I was very proud of my accomplishment.  One of the persons attending the Fair offered me fifty cents for the two watermelons.  We dickered over the price I wound up getting one dollar for the two watermelons.  I still had my blue ribbon and had made a dollar.  Life was good … until my parents heard of my deal.  They had wanted to eat the watermelons and make watermelon pickles from the rind.  To this day I can remember how disappointed they were.

   These 1947 pictures show me marching (far side middle row) with the Boy Scouts in a parade.  I enjoyed Scouting and eventually made star scout.

   One of the Scout projects I did was construct and fly a kite.  My mother went to the library and found plans for a tailless kite and helped me build it.  The painting of the Boy Scout emblem was the finishing touch.  I entered the kite in a contest and won the prize for the highest flying kite.  My friend in the picture on the right kept finding me more string.

   The prize was a wrist compass that you can see conspicuously displayed. 

   In 1947 I was determined to make enough money to buy a new bike.  I established a paper route delivering The New Haven Register after school.  I would work in Cooper’s Drug Store until the truck dropped off the papers for me.

These 1948 pictures were taken in our back yard.  I was very proud to finally make enough money to buy a new Columbia bike with a front and rear lights and a horn built into the crossbar tank.  The extra sturdy basket was already bent in this picture from carrying to many newspapers in it.  The white wall tires were the finishing touch.

    I am now 14 in this 1949 picture of me and my dad taken in front of our house.

   In 1949 I was experiencing a dramatic growth spurt as seen in these two pictures.  On the left you can see my suit is too tight.  It was time to get a new suit and of course take a picture of me in my new suit.

   Pictures seem to be staged at the front door of our home as shown on the left or in the back yard.  The picture on the right was taken in our backyard and shows a huge crab apple tree in the background.  The area under the tree had a hedge around it with a formal entrance.  There was a bench swing attached to the tree.  This was the place that my parents used for entertaining with picnics.

    I was now in Morgan School and set my goal of being 6 feet tall and sixteen years old.  I was the youngest in my class during all of high school so this meant I was dependent on my friends to take me places until I was old enough to drive.  I gave up my paper route and worked every day after school and full days on weekends.  I became a “soda jerk” and general sales person in Cooper’s Drug Store that became Clinton Pharmacy.  I enjoyed selling the merchandise and was putting money away for the day I could buy my own car.

   In this picture  my friend Tim Donahue and I ham it up with the boxing gloves.  In the upper right hand corner of this picture is the privy that we no longer used. 

   I finally made it.  I was sixteen and six feet tall.  I bought this 1935 Ford and finally had my own wheels.  Our barn had become an overhaul center for all my friend’s cars.  My mother would bring us snacks and drinks while we rebuilt engines and installed accessories.  The most important accessory was a radio so you could listen to music while you were parked with your date.  My friends and I overhauled my car motor and installed oversized piston rings so it would not burn so much oil.  I guess we used rings that were too oversized because the engine would not turn over just using the starter. We had to tow it around the block several times to get it started.  The engine finally turned over and started but we had burned out the clutch plate.  Back into the barn and we installed a new clutch plate and removed the muffler and install a straight pipe.  My mother reupholstered the seats and doors with denim and red and black leatherette.  My dad told me the only thing that would make me completely happy was to get a job driving a twenty four hour taxi.  I loved to drive my car and tinker with the engine as shown in this snapshot. 

    On August 21, 1951 an F2 - F3 tornado struck our home.  The huge crab apple tree is down in this picture.  About one third of our barn was torn off and we never found it.  The roof of our house sustained damage.  Window damage to the house resulted in water damage.

   The Wooster family visited us during the 1949 Christmas holidays.  Our Christmas trees were always cut from our own property.  I am in the back with my mother.  In the foreground left to right are Charlie, Antima & Uncapa with Elta in front of her mother. 

Photo of  our living room with the decorated tree.

In 1950 my dad was teaching me how to drive.  This picture was taken at the Essex Boat Dock in Essex, Connecticut.  Our Sunday drives to boatyards and waterfronts were always a fun time and I looked forward to getting my driving time in.  This was the year that my dad bought a new Oldsmobile “Rocket 88”.  What a great car that was.  I was dating now and never missed a Sock Hop or square dance.  High school activities included class vice president, student council, Sean Shifters, coral club etc.  All this plus working kept me very busy and out of trouble.

This 1951 snapshot shows the demise of my 1935 Ford.  Like many sixteen year olds I did not make the best decisions and wrecked my car while racing against another car down US 1.  I wanted to repair it but my parents would not let me so I sold it to the junk yard.  I kept my radio and the super long “buggy whip” antenna which I installed on my next car, a 1936 Ford.  My mother reupholstered this car too.  This picture was also taken in 1951.

   After the tornado the barn was repaired and now was considerably smaller.  1951 was to be my last year in Clinton, Connecticut.  My parents put our home up for sale and went house hunting in a warmer part of the country.  They wanted a smaller house with less upkeep because they knew I would be going off to college the next year.  Many years later I asked my mother why they had chosen Florida and she told me that my dad thought it would be a good idea to move somewhere closer to my blood relatives.  They looked at several places and decided on Ocala, Florida.  Ocala was the home of my father’s sister Victoria Bell Robbins. 

   The house sold quickly and we moved to a small rental house and waited for my school Christmas vacation to start.

   My parents gave me the option to move with them in December of 1951 or I could stay in Clinton with a family they had made arrangements with.  If I chose to stay in Clinton I would join them in June after graduating with my thirty six Morgan School classmates.  I chose to move in December and sold my car.  In January 1952 I enrolled in Ocala High School and graduated with that class in June 1952.