The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: connecticut

  • Hippie Wannabe

    When I was 8 years old in 1973, I knew a teen-aged girl who desperately wanted to be considered a Hippie. She was a little young for it, and she really didn’t have any of the political or moral underpinnings to give her the credibility. Basically she was just a lazy, rebellious girl who wanted…

  • Drawbridge Style

    It has been my privilege to be one of the few bridgetenders on the planet to have had the opportunity to operate all three of the most common styles of drawbridges. So here is an extremely basic primer.   This is a bascule bridge. These come in the form of a double span, like the…

  • Looking Forward

    In a couple months I will be going up to visit my favorite aunt in Connecticut. I’m really excited. I haven’t seen her in ages. I’ll also be spending some time with a young lady who has been like a daughter to me. That is going to be great fun. I’m really looking forward to…

  • Tony the Ice Cream Man

    When I was little, there was an ice cream truck that routinely visited the Connecticut projects where we lived. For people who couldn’t afford vacations, it was one of the few ways you could really tell that summer had arrived. That, and at the tail end of the baby boom the neighborhood was lousy with…

  • I Heart October

    Ah, the first brisk chill in the air that heralds the end of the oppressive heat of September! Oktoberfest. The riot of color that makes one fall in love with the trees all over again. Apple cider. The chance to break out a completely different part of my wardrobe. Corn mazes. The renewed energy of…

  • Marvin Gardens and Timothy Turkey

    Sometime between 1972 and 1975 I went to Towpath Elementary School in Avon, Connecticut. That would have been third to fifth grade for me. I wish I could be more specific but that was so long ago. I do have two memories, though, that are as clear as day. The first is of Marvin Gordon.…

  • Perfect Moments

    Andy Warhol said that we’d all get 15 minutes of fame. To that I say, “Pffft, what’s the point?” If you’re the type that wants fame, having only 15 minutes of it would be cruel at best. Fortunately, fame is not nearly as important to me as experiencing perfect moments in time. Have you ever…

  • Signs and Portents

    One day a friend of mine was doing some gardening and a foot long mullet fell out of the sky with a thud, missing him by mere feet. Apparently the neighborhood osprey had butter fingers. You don’t expect fish to fall out of the sky. It sort of challenges your sense of reality. Coyotes have…

  • Views from my Windows—Part One

    One of my first memories of any type of view was the sagging wooden third floor balcony of our shabby tenement apartment. I lived in fear of this view, because every time I stepped out of the house it was a certainty that our neighbor would be lying in wait. She was this loud old…

  • The Cigarette Girl and the Waving Man

    I spent the first 10 years of my life in Connecticut, so when we moved to a small Southern town in the 1970’s, it was quite a culture shock. The segregation was more subtle than it had been in the 50’s, of course. We all went to school together. But we certainly didn’t live in…