New book reviews from Linda:
When pumpkins and potatoes were the town dock's neighbors
In 1945, the town dock's neighbors were two farmers, a salt marsh and meadowlands, a far cry from today's landscape of neatly lined up houses with quarter acre backyards, marinas and several condos.
Louis Esposito owned and farmed both sides of Maplewood Drive. His daughter was the late Laura Schubert who lived out her lifetime in a house on her father's property overlooking Esposito Beach, named for her family.
Peter Malchiodi, with his two sons, Bernie and William, owned and worked the land on both sides of Cedar Island Avenue up to Neck Road. It was his daughters, Rose Gasparini and the late Elvira Repetti who have donated the use of land for St. Mary Parish's soup kitchen garden.
Malchiodi also maintained a small shop at the town dock at which he sold his produce, later adding a restaurant called Sea Scout, of which his wife, Louise disapproved. When Peter turned his back, she flipped the open sign to closed. When she wasn't looking, he flipped it back. Subsequently, Malchiodi opened a second shop on Main Street, between the Coffee Break and the attorney's office, which Bernie later converted into the Country Tavern.
In 1942, the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor and the Malchiodi sons went off to war.
Rose, the youngest child, was in high school then. Her best friend was Shirley Wright whose father owned the Clinton Hotel where the CVS parking lot now is located. Shirley had a horse and the two would go riding through the open meadowlands of Riverside Drive. Later when Rose went to Stone's Business School, Shirley would meet her at the bus stop with the horse; Rose would hop on the back for a ride home.
Rose recollects that her father planted celery where St. Mary's garden is located. She says her family called that area the "hollow" because it dipped below the adjacent land and flooded in the winter for beautiful ice skating. She remembers her father sitting there under a favorite tree on summer evenings, smoking his pipe, Also, she remembers at the end of Cedar Island Avenue a small shipyard which used the boat launching facility, currently operated by the town.
With little help available for farming, and beginning to feel their age, Malchoidi, followed by Esposito, began selling off lots in anticipation of a post World War 11 housing boom that would come with the return of veterans.
In the 1950's, construction began on the Connecticut Turnpike, which provided jobs for returning veterans to build homes, and enabled city folk to become suburban commuters. Many veterans, Rose remembers, bought her father's lots.
Near the end of the war, Rose's mother, Louise, was looking out the kitchen window when she saw the postman make a delivery to her husband in the field. She watched him throw his hat to the ground and begin walking toward the house. Rose said her mother knew immediately that one of their sons would not be coming home.
Rose meanwhile was at the Clinton House having lunch with Shirley when Shirley's father came over and said, "Rose, you need to go home immediately. Your mother and father need you." And she too knew that a brother had been killed.
The brother was Bernie who worked as an engineer on a B-17. What made his death even more tragic was it was his last combat flight before being eligible to return to the states.
A copper sculpture, in memory of Peter Bernard (Bernie) Malchoidi, has been placed by his family in the Commerce Street Park on Main Street.
When Clinton native and Doris Kelsey, who is in her 90th decade, began school in the one room Mill District schoolhouse on Glenwood Road, Warren Richards Sr. provided the bus service in his nursery business truck equipped with wooden benches, with the older students assigned to sit in the rear to make sure the younger ones didn't fall off the back.
Contrast Doris' 1920's school bus transportation with today's big yellow buses equipped with every imaginable safety device--- with it likely being a only matter of time before the state legislature mandates all Connecticut students be strapped in with safety belts.
Today's school bus drivers are no longer part timers looking to pick up some pin money. They are professionals who have received 40 hours of driving instruction and 40 hours of classroom instruction, plus testing by a state inspector to receive certification for driving one of Clinton's 22 full size buses and 10 smaller size buses for its enrollment of 2,039 students (last year's figures,)
Prior to being accepted for training by First Student, the company holding the bus contract in Clinton, bus drivers have been drug screened, undergone state and federal background checks and passed a motor vehicle test.
Tom DeSario is one of First Student's 12 summer trainees, half of which will be assigned to Clinton with the others going to area shoreline towns. (Training classes are also held year round.) DeSario holds a pilot's license and flies an airplane he built. He compares earning his pilot's license to earning a school bus driver's certification.
Other current trainees' backgrounds include a former business owner of a construction company, a machinist, heavy equipment operator, postal worker and a recently retired commercial pilot. Once certified, school bus drivers must undergo proficiency testing every two years with a state inspector.
Included in the classroom instruction is training in case of accident, and incidents of security (close the door which locks it from the outside, and call for help) and icy conditions (slow down and gear down; the weight of bus will retain the stability.)
Prior to starting the school year, all school bus drivers make the rounds of their routes with a trainer, while also ensuring the proper adjustment of all seven mirrors and similar equipment. Prior to the school day, every day, each driver runs through a 10 minute check list of his/her bus from front to back, inside and out; and a no questions asked, automatic dismissal is an activated cell phone on a bus driver's person.
One of the perennial problems for drivers are parents who want custom bus service for their child. First Group's manager Frank Kulick notes that such requests cannot be granted by the bus driver but must be submitted to the school authorities.
Finally Kulick sympathizes with taxpayers who are currently forced by the state legislature to pay for a school bus seat for every student in the district, whether the student uses it, or as many high school students with their own cars do not.
Kulick says yes, his company would lose income by downsizing but it would save on fuel, and could save the school districts millions of dollars.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Hal and I are into our annual summer battle over the yard. It's his grass versus my flowers.
Hal says, "not flowers, weeds." But I contend if you look closely enough you can find a petunia in almost any garden patch. Which goes to illustrate the basic differences in Hal's and my outlook.
I see something and usually can find good. Hal sees the same thing and invariably finds a flaw.
In springtime when I am enchanted by the profusion of forsythia in bloom, Hal declared it a pruning job. In summer when I spy a plump, red raspberry ready for popping in the mouth, Hal spots a Japanese beetle. After I've spend a morning under the hot sun mowing his lawn, Hal says when are you going to trim around the borders.
In summary, Hal is a picky, perfectionist, pessimist, while I am an easy going, appreciative, optimist. Hal describes it other terms. He is a worker and I am lazy.
I would never deny that Hal works hard. He prides himself on work. He makes work out of everything. He'll be lying on the couch, eyes half closed, watching his Yankees play a game on tv and claim he's "working" to rebuild his energy to go out and "work" in the yard again.
I, on the other hand, approach my gardening for leisure, as an opportunity to relax. Cleaning the house, kids, cooking, living with Hal are work. I refuse to turn a budding marigold into a toilsome task. I prefer to enjoy my gardening, weeding when the spirit moves, when the sun is not too hot, or company is coming.
Naturally, Hal knows this. So what happens when I am in my garden? Hal looks over, sees me lying contentedly on my stomach, poking around a posy and calls, "Jo, I am running out of gas for the mower, will you run downtown and get some more." Since he is "working" and I am relaxing, I, of course, am expected to run the errands.
Hal believes nothing comes easy. Thusly, he has to worry about his lawn, whether it needs mowing, or watering, or another spreading of lime. Was it cut too short or too long, why did that blade of grass turn brown?
Hal reads gardening books, sends away for pamphlets, takes soil samples, reads directions, and follows them. His hero is a neighbor who can make compost in 14 days and on the 15th use it for top dressing.
I freely admit this involvement is too much for me. I prefer the natural method of gardening, stick a plant into the ground and let nature take care of its own. Who should know better?
At any rate, the conflict over the yard gets down to pretty basic terms. Hal wants to mow down my gardens, and replant with grass seed, making our yard nice, tidy and very green.
And I respond with my usual protest, "touch a petal and I'll stamp on your grass."
In the decades of our fighting, I have been fairly successful in defending my flower gardening.
I lost a border garden to a hedge of hemlocks that Hal said we owed to the neighbors as a sound barrier for my hollaring. I also lost an azalea bush that the children gave me one Mother's Day and Hal refuses to admit mowing down, insisting it could have been pulled underground by a cinch bug. Remaining is the garden at the back of the house, off the dining room, out of sight to passerbys.
The petunias and marigolds are planted and I am prepared to protect them through another summer of Hal's conniving, runaway mowers, accidentally scattered grass seed and voracious cinch bugs.
And if Hal gave it some serious thought, I think, even he would have to admit, this will take work.
Goodbye, Chief--hello, U.S. Marshal
Over the August 22nd week-end, Joseph Faughnan switched hats from Clinton Chief of Police to United States Marshal. On Monday, he flew to Washington D.C., to be sworn in and attend a two day training session.
Upon returning to his new office in New Haven, Marshall Faughnan began supervising an 85 person staff, based between Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford.
The function of the U.S. Marshal's office, Faughnan explains, is to make arrests. The investigative responsibilities which lead to the issuance of arrest warrants is assigned to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Both work as adjuncts to the federal courts.
Faughnan says he was a kid who grew up watching cowboy films with marshals like John Wayne riding in to save the frontier towns from the bad guys. His aspirations to actually become a marshal began in 1967 when as a 21 year old rookie Connecticut State Trooper he was assigned to assist a deputy marshal and heard a historical accounting of U. S. Marshal's Service.
Created in 1789, the U.S. Marshal service was the nation's first law enforcement agency with George Washington appointing the initial 13 U.S. Marshals. Marshals in early times acted as the census takers and in the 1960's were involved as enforcers in the civil rights movement. For a detailed accounting of the U.S. Marshal Service visit:
www.justice.gov/marshals/history/index.html
Faughnan rose to the ranks of major with the State Police and in July 1991, accepted the position of Clinton Police Chief. After 19 years as Chief, he is still remembers the warm welcome he received from Virginia Zawoy who then served as First Selectman.
Faughnan says serving as Clinton's police chief has been an "incredible experience." He says he's only had two persons--one a police officer and the other a police commissioner--- who had agendas and couldn't be reasoned with.
He's calls today's police department a truly gifted group of officers whose professionalism makes him very proud.
Faughnan summarizes Clinton as living under a "bubble" of a safe community, one which has been spared the "heavy violence" of other towns. He notes there has been only one murder in his 19 year tenure. He acknowledges that while crime exists, it's of the nature of ordinary human failure.
"There is in Clinton an absence of evil", Faughnan asserts, warning, "Once a town loses that, it can never get it back."
Clinton's all time, worst traffic jam
Clinton motorists today complain about traffic along Main Street, particularly in the summer months or when there's been an accident on the Connecticut Turnpike.
If it's any consolation, our ancestors faced similar problems too. The following is an account published in a Clinton Recorder, July, 1928, and reprinted from the Clinton Historical Society's Old Brick Hearth and Heart Cookbook.
"All records for heavy traffic were shattered here Sunday when the state temporarily closed the Connecticut Valley Turnpike routing all incoming shore traffic through Clinton. "
A synopsis of the traffic:
"400 vehicles passing every 10 minutes through Main Street; 6 members of the State Police barracks and 2 local traffic officers were assigned to duty between Commerce and Hull Streets; a line of cars was stalled on the Boston Post Road from Beach Park Road to the Clinton Manor Inn, a distance of a mile and a half; the noise of the traffic was deafening and the smell reached to high heaven; the turn west from Hull into Main Street seemed to bother the women drivers in particular and many of them lacked the physical strength to turn the wheel on the run to starboard in order to not lap over both trolley rails."
Everyone feel better?
St. Mary's garden feeds the hungry
St. Mary Parish is one of three Clinton churches participating in the Shoreline Soup and Kitchen Pantry program.
The United Methodist Church provides the site to serve up hot meals on Wednesdays 6 to 8 p.m.
The Episcopal Church of the Holy Advent contributes a pantry site where fresh and canned food is distributed on Wednesdays, 5 to 6 p.m.
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The St. Mary parishioners are the dirt grubbers, the volunteers who get down on their hands and knees to plant, and weed, and harvest the fresh vegetables that provide the nourishment for their sister churches' customers.
St. Mary's garden has been feeding the hungry for 17 years. The garden is located one block north of the town dock on the corner of West Grove Street and Cedar Island Avenue and once was the farming land of the late Peter Malchoidi. (See companion story on the Malchoidi family.)
The garden plot is in fact on loan from the Malchoidi daughters, Rose Gasparini and the late Elvira Repetti.
Bill Kramer, former chairman of the garden committee, is quick to note that in addition to the church volunteers, there are also local community contributors in the church's vegetable growing endeavor. He names Shoreline Gardens, Gater Creek, Grove Gardens, Clinton Produce, Ace Hardware and Stop & Shop; and Larsen & Sons who mows the grass to keep the area neat.
And, in respect to the residential neighborhood, the church gardeners always plant a garden frontage with a border of flowers.
(For ways to become a participant in the feed the hungry program, visit Shoreline Soup Kitchens)
The Arbor Garden Club is also a contributor to the food pantry at the Episcopal Church. Headed up by Diane Gustafson, the club has maintained a vegetable garden in the backyard of the Stanton House for several years. Last summer they contributed 117 pounds of veggies.
Ready, set, go! Mark your August calendars!
Clinton Art Society 61st Anniversary Summer Show, opening August 2 through 22nd, in Green Room at the Andrews Memorial Town Hall, afternoons 2 to 5 p.m., evenings 7 to 9 p.m. (closed August 9 and 10 for State Primary Elections.)
NewAlliance Bank Concert Series, Thursday nights at Vece Gazebo in front of Pierson School, at 6:30 p.m., sponsored by Clinton Chamber of Commerce, bring chairs, blankets, bug spray, picnic supper if desired.
Performers: The Engine Room, Aug 19; Abbey Road, Aug 26. Concerts are cancelled if rain.
Bloodmobile, Henry Carter Hull Library, Monday, August 23, 1 to 6 p.m. Call now to make an appointment, 1-800-RED-CROSS.
Summer morning at the shore
Sal D's breakfast menu at the town dock
I'll have a bacon, egg, with cheese "simmich", please.
Lining up to place a breakfast order.
Coffee with a friend while waiting to go sailing with a son.
Loading up supplies to get an early start for a day on the water.
The best kind of breakfast comes with no dishes and a friendly conversation.
Gatekeeper: Waiting for beach goers to come and to check passes.
Money in the budget though to pick up trash to keep the beach clean
