Shoreline Child: On My Way from Here to Everywhere Else

By Colin Michael

This is a book of Connecticut Shoreline stories. Fifty (or so) vignettes of life from a child's perspective between 1965 and 1982. They are about formative events, the little things that make us who we are. Each is its own anecdote or lesson of sorts, but taken together these stories formed who I am. Many people shared similar experiences and th

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Bussmann Press
• Release date: Nov 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781957045016

Book preview

Shoreline Child, On My Way from Here to Everywhere Else

by Colin Michael

© Twenty-Twenty-One

THE BUSSMANN PRESS

North Haven, Connecticut

[e-mail]

It is not regression or something maudlin to reminisce. I don’t dwell in the past, I honor it. All of your past is part of you. As Anne Lamott said, I am all the ages I’ve ever been.¹ I am constantly surprised that the child, the teen, the new father, and the man I am today coexist. Perhaps we don’t move from one age to the next, we just add new ages year by year. When I sat and looked, I saw all of these stories with me in my current experience.

Mine is a fractured story, but I remain whole. That is partly the work of a community that knew and guided me with many hands. I think my community was amazing. Let me share my experiences with you in this book, and I hope you will share your stories, too. (The discussion here continues on AuthorMichael.com)

I grew up on the Shoreline of Connecticut. My mother and father grew up here, too. Pop is from Branford, and from his parent’s home in Short Beach I spent many summer days on the water. My mother is from Old Saybrook, and from her parent’s home on Main Street I learned to love life in town.

The first twenty years of my life I spent traveling and living between those two towns. New Haven on the west and New London on the east bounded our daily life. Hartford, Cape Cod, and New York City were occasional destinations for vacation, visiting relatives, or shopping.

My parents were artists, but my father made his living in restaurants as assistant manager and cook. While my parents were together, we lived in small apartments like the old A-frames out by exit 64 and Foxwood on Route One.

My first school was Goodwin in Old Saybrook. I finished elementary school at Pearson in Clinton, moved to middle school at Jared Elliot, and switched to The Country School and Hammonasset School in Madison.

Mom’s parents owned a home and business on Main Street in Old Saybrook, while my father’s folks had a small home on Riverview Avenue in Short Beach. His father worked in and taught the machine trades in and around New Haven.

I give this litany of simple facts to set boundaries so that you will see the confines and expanse of my sphere. I understand the privilege that I grew up in, even though my parents were poor. But the biggest privilege was to be part of the Shoreline community in my formative years.

If you are familiar with the Shoreline, that’s perfect. If you are not, a map might help, but not much. Maps make it look open (see next page). But the Shoreline is about boundaries. The water’s edge is a hard boundary named Long Island Sound. Interstate 95 cuts many towns into north and south sections. Route 1 is both a boundary and the main artery, often called Boston Post Road in Connecticut. The Post Road is the Main Street of many towns, or their Main Street branches off of it. The railroad tracks are like a dotted line, usually running parallel with Route One.

The other boundaries are in-shore water. Rivers, both large and small, fresh water and tidal, plus bays and marshes, make travel a challenge over land near the Shoreline. And those are only the lines you can see. There are many other boundaries, most having to do with how much money you have or your religion. Seldom were we divided by race or where we came from before landing here.

This is a book of Shoreline stories. Fifty (or so) vignettes of life from a child’s perspective in the 1960s and 70s. They are about formative events, the little things that make us who we are. Each is its own anecdote or lesson of sorts, but taken together they formed who I am. Many people shared similar experiences and the acquaintance of the same people. Maybe you share some of these pieces with me.

Sometimes a place is enough to give us a similar experience as the next person. More often it is the people you encounter, either as individuals or types. Some people I knew on the Shoreline were pillars of their community. Others were just characters in the landscape. And then there was me, a child walking through on my way to everywhere else.

So come and walk through it with me, will you? If you are from here, you may see yourself in passing. If you came here later, these stories may seem like ghosts from a bygone place and time. If you are from elsewhere in New England, these stories may remind you of your own town. Embrace that. Relive it with me.

Map

Because I relate my childhood experiences to houses where I lived more than specific dates, I’ve grouped the stories by street address. Some stories cross time, in which case I simply put the story where it seemed to fit best from a child’s perspective.

Book Sections

351 Main Street, Old Saybrook (1966-71)

Bluff Avenue, Clinton (1971-77)

Beach Park Road, Clinton (1977-78)

355 Main Street, Old Saybrook (1979-80)

Ferry Hill, Old Saybrook (1980-82)

SECTION I

351 Main Street

Old Saybrook

(Ages 3 to 8)

Mentioned here are a couple of places we lived before my parents split. I don’t recall the date exactly, but by Christmas my mother and I had moved in with her parents at 351 Main. My memories of the house are mixed together such that I am unable to pinpoint dates, so I decided not to separate previous addresses into their own sections. From my earliest memories until my mother remarried, this was my home. To this day, it still feels like home in my heart.

Grammie

Because We Fall Down

_1BetterGrammie

Making Christmas Dinner 1968

Today I was recalling something that hadn’t come to mind since about 1970. There was a little pass-through shelf in my grandmother’s kitchen. It was at the end of a wall, as if part of the wall, open through from one part of the kitchen to another, but only about a foot or so wide. I remember aluminum coasters with impressions of ducks on the lower shelf. And I remember The Fannie Farmer Cookbook on an upper shelf, out of my reach. I was only three or four. My grandmother’s Fannie Farmer is in my kitchen today, about fifty-five years later.

This memory is special, but it is not my oldest. My earliest memory is of receiving stolen goods. Someone was handing me a cookie to hand to someone else. There was a girl on the counter getting cookies from the jar. There was another girl on the floor, and I was standing next to the chair that the thief had used to climb up on the counter.

Through the doorway to the living room, I could see our moms sitting and talking, paying no attention to us. But I was sure that the moms would catch us at any moment. I knew there was going to be trouble. The emotions that cemented that memory in my mind were fear mingled with excitement at getting a stolen cookie; the sweetest kind.

Years later, I learned we were not stealing the cookies. The older girl, Lori, had permission. But as I shared the memory with my mother, it amazed her I had such a vivid memory of something that must have happened when I was only 18 months old.

It was 1964, and we were preparing to move back to Connecticut from Englewood, New Jersey, where my father had his first job after college. We only saw that family one other time, years later, when they visited us in Old Saybrook. That was another memorable day. Lori was climbing again, and she fell out of the cherry tree.

I remember nothing else about Englewood. But I have many memories of events and people when I was two and three. I remember both the inside and the outside of the A-Frame apartments on Chapman Mill Pond Road in Westbrook. There was a visit from Santa, at which time I was still two. And Alan from next door pushed me off the dock into the Menunketesuk River when I was three and he was four.

While I was still three, we moved to the Foxwood Apartments on Route One in Westbrook. I have many snippets of memory there. But I tie most of my earliest memories to the house at 351 Main Street in Old Saybrook. Grammie’s house, with the big backyard.

My parents were both from the Shoreline. My father was born in New Haven and grew up in the Short Beach section of Branford. He spent all of his school years in Branford and went to college in Hamden at what is now Paier College of Art.

My mother was born in Providence and raised in Killingly, CT, until she was nine. Then her father took on a new territory on the coast of Maine for an insurance company. But the company gave up on Maine after just three years. He moved back to Connecticut and set up an independent agency in Old Saybrook in about 1955.

Soon they settled on Main street. My grandfather had a positive attitude that he brought into every endeavor. He was successful in Old Saybrook, and his Quaker demeanor fit well in the community. With a wife who backed him in all that he did, and with an old Yankee work ethic, he was soon successful.

My grandmother was nine years his junior and the youngest child of an artist-become-mill-worker from Danielson. Mary Frances Geer was quietly daring, but never bold or certain of herself. Her marriage to Kenneth Earle Buffington changed more than her name. Beside him, she was a confident and capable business woman.

They had worked together at the power company in the days of the Rural Electrification Project. Grandpa sold appliances to farmers. Grammie sealed the deal by teaching the wives how to use electricity to lighten their daily load of chores with stoves and refrigerators and electric mixers.

My earliest memory of Grammie is probably at the back step, greeting us when we came to visit. Or maybe her picking me up when I fell. At her house, I fell often. Some cock-eyed carpenter had put an addition onto the house at 351 Main, with the floors an inch and a half lower than the main house. There was a little hallway between the kitchen and the living room that had this two-inch lip. I was a toddler, a little unsteady on my feet, but apt to run everywhere, and that drop would pitch me forward on my way to the livingroom, and down I would go. I can vividly remember my knees landing and skidding, hands coming down with a heavy slap. It hurt!

Grammie would pick me up and dust me off and kiss the boo-boos. Then she’d put me down to run off looking for trouble or to play with the woodbox. Soon I’d run toward the kitchen and hit that lip that stuck up on the way back. I’d fall flat, often bumping my forehead on the black-and-white linoleum tiles of the kitchen. My mother would sigh, my father would tsk-tsk, and Grammie would patiently pick me up again. Sometimes she would put an ice cube into a paper towel to put on the forehead bump.

Later, when we lived with her, Grammie was nearby and watchful. I was a very active child. I skinned knees and elbows, burnt fingers, busted lips, and got stung by yellow jackets. Other times I was quiet, contented to play on the floor or look at a book, and I was always up too early in the morning for my mother.

It was never too early for Grammie. She was up before six, reading her Bible, doing her crossword puzzle from the evening paper, drinking scalding coffee. I can’t number the hours I spent playing quietly, asking the occasional question, or helping her to make bacon and eggs and toast.

Grammie always let me help. Early on, I helped by licking a beater or pouring in a half cup of sugar that she had measured. But later I could wash the non-fragile dishes, get ingredients from the fridge, or shimmy the pot back and forth while the popcorn was popping. When my mother was working full time, Grammie was the one there when I walked home from Goodwin school, or she would call me in for lunch as I played the summers away.

When I was a teen, she moved in with us and watched my young siblings, too. But she needed a little help when I was home on a weekend or after school, while my mother worked evenings. Grammie cooked for us in those days, too, and I could really help by then, and still loved to work with her in the kitchen. Perhaps that’s why I still have her Fannie Farmer.

Buffington

There are so many memories that flood my mind on days like today. Today is her 116th birthday. In 1999, aged 93, she passed away. But the memories are no less vivid and she is no less important in my life now than she was then. She took care of me for many years and spent some of her best days on me. And sat for hours at the beach or at Roger’s Lake while I swam. She waited in her car for untold hours while I shopped at Malloy’s or Ed’s Enterprises on allowance day. I used her old Pinto wagon to learn to drive and to take my driving test. And I never took her for granted, I don’t think.

I learned to play the gentleman at her encouragement, opened doors and pulled out chairs. I fixed hinges and oiled latches at her request. For many years, we helped each other, too. I’d help her with her groceries and she’d let me borrow her car. And in the cycle of life, the tide turned, and I helped her more than she did me.

Early in my marriage, she lived with me for two years, before my first child was born. Later she went into extended care, and I took her out to church and to lunch on Sundays. I helped her move, helped her shop, helped her lift things, and even lifted her into bed from her wheelchair after she broke her hip.

With my Maternal Grandmother Mary Geer Buffington

I think I got a full understanding of our decades long relationship the day she came back from getting the mail with a bloody knee and scraped chin. She had stumbled over that little lip between the street and the driveway. They just can’t make those transitions smooth or even. There has to be that little difference, maybe just an inch or two. It’ll catch your toe and make you stumble when you are a little unsteady on your feet. I washed her knee and her chin that day, and I dried her tears, then administered Band-Aids and condolences. I was just repaying a part of a debt.

When she was in her last nursing home, I took her out for ice cream and for real coffee. I sneaked her the occasional packet of salt or bag of Canada mints. And when she finally left for Home on Groundhog Day, I was at her side one more time to wish her well. And I know she will be there on the back step to greet me when I follow her in a short time. To my imagination, Heaven is a lot like Grammie’s house; that welcoming place where people who love you are waiting to hug you and kiss away the pain.

351 Main Street

A Memoir of Home

351main2018

My mother was in middle school when her parents moved from Maine to Old Saybrook. They first stayed with the Lord family at 108 Old Boston Post Road. I don’t know when my grandparents met Mr. & Mrs. Lord, but my grandmother still often visited Muriel until her death in about 1976. I remember going to the back of the yard and looking over the fence at Goodwin School.

KEBuffington

My grandfather was an independent insurance agent and soon found a suitable place for both home and insurance office at 369 Main Street. He rented the house, but it was also for sale.

My grandparents made an offer on that house but could not get it on terms suitable for their situation. Instead, they purchased the house at 351 Main. This all happened in the mid-1950s. My mother was well-established on Main Street by the time she attended junior high and high school.

The house at 351 was a square, Shingle Style structure with cedar shakes and two ells. A large ell to the south (to the left when facing the house from the street) of the main house was the living room on the main floor and the large bedroom on the second floor. The small ell to the west was a summer kitchen, mudroom, and laundry room.

My grandfather turned the front two rooms of the main house into his insurance office. There was a door in the corner nearest the driveway (which ran down the north side of the house) for the business. There was a porch on the front of the living room ell, with a welcoming door into the residence, to the bright room that got sun morning and evening.

Before my recollection, there had been an enclosed porch at the rear of the living room, but my grandparents removed it. I’ve seen it in pictures in my mother’s ancient slides. It was still there, minus windows, in one picture from when I was a year old. I heard it was in poor shape and that my grandmother preferred a bright living room over a back porch, so they tore it down rather than rebuild it.

Back of 351

In my perception of the house, the front was all business, and the back was all fun. We always entered from the driveway in the rear, even before I lived there. My mother and I moved in when my parents split, two months before my fourth birthday. After that, it was my home. And it has been ever since, even though I only lived there for four years.

Those were formative years. I can only remember living in two places briefly, before living in the house at 351. When we moved out, I had lived there half my life. It was a wonderful place for a young boy. I still have dreams of living there. Sometimes I am young, other times not.

My grandparents had divided the second floor of the main house like the first. The front two rooms were an apartment with its own stairway down to a side door off the mudroom. The back half was a bedroom and a main bathroom. My mother moved into the apartment area and I had the bedroom behind it. My room seemed enormous to me. And it had two lovely windows looking out on my world, the backyard.

Oh my, that backyard. The back steps were stone. Next to the steps, there was a cellar door that provided hours of fun for little boys (who should never play on it). Nearby was a clothesline. A cement well enclosure was to the right near the mudroom ell, on the wall of which hung a bird feeder. There was a little step down to the back lawn from the slightly terraced area