Bumpy Road to Hell

If I remember the facts correctly, each was born in the same hospital in Glen Ridge New Jersey. Two years apart, he in 46 and she in March 1948.

After Reading West Norwalk Rocks and Rills

Every spot on the walking tour was a place where I felt joy, or sadness, where either I draped my arms around my horse’s neck and wept into her mane and wished time would move faster and I could be gone from there forever, or I stretched backward so I lay my head on her rump and pretended and I was a circus acrobat could I please god stay a child forever. The places that are now “scenic” ponds and “sites of interest” were then streams that trickled next to a gravel drive leading to the most elegant, lovely farmhouse on earth, with a brick-floored kitchen and a deacon’s bench in the mud room, kennels full of English setters and kitchen garden growing vegetables and herbs. The pool on the hillcrest where the house sat overlooked acres of fenced pastures. Now “beautiful homes” reside in these pastures, all landscaped and “Protected by ATF Security” signs festooning the front walks. Princes Pine Road didn’t open to Old Rock Way in my time. It dead ended at the boundary of a huge estate that visitors entered on Old Rock Way through two stone pillars and woods so thick that we couldn’t see the house where, every summer, a huge party was held with an orchestra and guests half in the bag moved all night to dance tunes outdoors and it went on so late that I fell asleep in my bed on Fillow Street listening to the endless melodies of the forties. There was a long flat stretch along Old Rock between the road and the stone wall containing the estate where the rich danced at night. We’d pull up our leather reins and crouch over the horses’ manes and race down the stretch, so fast, throwing up clods of spring grass or mountains of leaves in the fall. Every thing smelled so good, I remember as well today as I did those days when I was only 12 and odors normally went unnoticed unless they were bad. On the backs of our horses we smelled rain, and we smelled oncoming rain, and pine trees, and flowering shrubbery, and everything good that was still there in 1962—unlandscaped, assembled by nature before so many people wanted to buy what we didn’t know we had until it didn’t exist anymore. My parents’ friends lived on Princes Pine. Some of them like Sam and Anne Parsons were Village Creek types who couldn’t quite afford the water views, but compensated by building (all houses were identical) rectangular glass walled boxes with three bedrooms kitchen and living room completely surrounded by woods…no trees, pea-gravel driveways…and heated floors. No furnace or ductwork or embellishments of any kind. Mom claimed the Parsons bought oil paintings of new Englanders at a sale in Darien and falsely claimed they were “ancestors”. Impossible because Mr. and Mrs. Parsons were from Brooklyn and ended up killed on the East River Drive coming home one night plastered from a party in Manhatten. Terri lived there and once she kept her pony tied in the woods for days and the neighbors didn’t know. The woods of those houses backed to the Five Mile River and we’d stand in the water in the winter, hoping to catch a cold and stay home sick from school. Once Terry’s boyfriend Kenny Campbell hid in the woods outside her bedroom window and smoked cigarettes while he waited for her to undress for bed. She never pulled her shade. She saw him that night, smoking, and let him watch her. I babysat for another family on that road, there house was larger and a redwood deck overlooked a little falls of the Alewives river. In the summer evenings that deck was shady and cool and the father and I used to sit out there on patio chairs to wait while the mother got dressed to go out. He always offered me a martini. I was 15. On Weed Street were three places that aren’t even mentioned in “West Norwalk Rocks and Rills”. The Ferndale Monastery and the convent and Faith Baldwin’s house. The cemetery for the old monks backed up to the stables at the Jennings’ house and 75 acres, now Little Fox Lane mini-estates apparently. Hundreds of acres and a lake and endless fields and young seminarians who loved my mom and dad and invited them to hear the Gregorian chants on Christmas eve. Two of them Ned and I forget the other one, used to ride sometimes. They were only 21. I didn’t understand why they were there. I heard it’s all condominiums now. There was a path through the woods the nuns used to carry the clean laundry back and forth to the priests. My sister hinted at odd things that went on. I had no idea what. Faith Baldwin’s place was named “Fable Farm”. She was a hugely popular writer for women’s magazines like McCalls magazine and Family Circle in the 1950s. I rode by her stone walls and her mailbox that said “Fable Farm” a thousand times and never saw her once. Every morning, however, I heard ring-neck pheasants who prowled through the remains of the orchard across from our place.

Phil Booth

After Mom died we went into her desk, and we found a program for Dad’s retirement dinner, which neither of us had ever laid eyes on before this day. It described a stranger, a larger than life man with no kids whom we did not know.
He was at his most charming and generous when around new acquaintances, those he wanted to impress, and people in crisis–whenever he could make a grand gesture or come to the rescue. He was at his worst when it came to day-to-day relationships, especially with those he saw as subordinates–not just secretaries, retail clerks, women drivers, and girls over the age of five,, but also his wife (my mother) and his children.
I do not know now if he loved us kids, in his way, but I grew up knowing we weren’t important enough to impress. He treated my mother, myself, and my siblings as he would his least-capable employees (I wish I were kidding). Our jobs were to be his silent, unseen Children. And just as he rated his employees’ performance at work, so he did at home.
I grew up under a steady stream of belittling comments about my hair, my skin, my posture, the things I liked, my shyness and lack of social skills. He was the sort of father who took silent pleasure in defeating his own children. He loved to set us up to fail at something we didn’t know how to do, and then complain of our ignorance–somehow, we were just supposed to know how, and if we didn’t we were stupid.
If his comments hurt? That was our fault. We needed to “stop being so sensitive.”
And the generosity he so freely extended to other people rarely was extended to us., He used to give advice and encouragement to the children of his friends, or young co-workers, or the neighbors’ son, playing a supportive mentor role to them that he never played with us (because somehow we were stupid if we needed advice, but these other people’s kids weren’t). It always felt like other people got all the best of him, while we watched and hoped for a few stray crumbs.
What’s important here is that only after Mom died did he change. I believe he was just starting to get to like me a little. Then he died. Without hearing the dismissive or abrupt tone in his voice, or the mean edge in his voice when he warned of us something stupid we were about to do or had already done. He never acknowledged he hurt us. We didn’t fit his self-image, so we didn’t exist; we were not a part of him. We were invisible when it came to being a family.
There was no acknowledgement of how deeply unhappy each one of us was–and we obviously were–or that he and she both played a crucial role in making us so unhappy.
My father would have been perfectly charming toward anyone who wanted to interview him. A psychiatrist, for example. He’d come across as intelligent, perceptive, and thoughtful. And he would be mystified, unable to fathom, why his daughters were damaged
My father didn’t hit or molest me; he worked hard to have a nice home and buy cigarettes and gin; he wasn’t a falling down drunk; my father didn’t beat me ; there was no severe, obvious abuse. But rather than beating me down with a belt, he chose to slice at me, a litle at a time. Those countless small, stinging cuts added up.
You don’t know what’s good, you don’t know what you like, that music
stinks, turn out your light, get your hair out of your eyes sit up straight, gimme that you don’t know how to do it, no one wants to work, little kids little problems, big kids big problems, “problem child” , dumb broads, get outa the Way Grand-Maw……. Wherz my hammer goddam it,

These are the words I remember. It shouldn’t be that way.

My mother's friends

My mother had a friend, Mrs. Garment, who tried to be kind to me. Mr. and Mrs. Garment moved to Village Creek in 1956 but took a look at their neighbors and moved with Johnny and Suzie to Westport in the early sixties. Mr. Garment commuted and sold high end bath fixtures to the trade. By eavesdropping I learned they were second generation Brooklyn jews who "climbed out of the ghetto." whatever that meant. Furthermore, they gave their children names that would, in my mother's opinion, Americanize them. Mrs. Garment was enrolled in a masters in education and later ended up working in the New Canaan public schools. One time when I was around 16 she saw me at the Westport Country Playhouse and a week or so later she dropped by our house with some taupe eyeliner and a brush. I had worn black liquid eyeliner just like my friend Teri wore to the play and probably looked like a 12 year old hooker. But I didn't know how to accept a gift in a sincere manner, without sarcastic thoughts going through my head, how to accept help or advice, how to admit that I could improve my appearance without condemning the way I looked a week ago, etc etc. I knew even then she had no idea why I was such a sullen and unpleasant girl, because she adored my mother as did most people. She used to call the house and she'd say, "Hello Dear this is Mrs. Garment is MOTHER there?" And I would answer back, " 'Mother' isn't here." That's all, no "take a message?" or "she'll be back in an hour." I relished each chance to be rude. Being rude on the phone was a power trip for me. Even when my mother told me to stop or I would be forbidden use of the phone, I still did it. I got few calls anyway.
Later the Garment family would suffer with the American dream. Mr. Garment's brother was an attorney at Mudge Rose and went to work for the Nixon Administration. At the height of Watergate his wife put on her mink, went to Boston, checked into the Statler Hilton and killed herself. The custom embroidered name label in her coat identified her a week later. Mrs. Garment died of cancer in 1992. Mr. Garment moved to Longboat Key and is now 91.

I sat on the school bus, midway to the back on the right hand side, and stared at the 3 students who were running a little late .

Rowayton Connecticut

If you imagined this place, it would not be more precisely replicated than the town that already exists. Garish flowers bloom everywhere; phlox, lilies, in brilliant shades of fushia, purple, snow white…colors that I don’t remember existing in my mother’s dusty begonia beds or in town shopkeepers planters. At each stop sign, at every traffic median or triangle over-the-top, “I Know-They just went Wild this year!” the fruits of garden club labor appear.
The Rowayton Market has set out cute bistro tables with umbrellas and a folding chalkboard with the day’s coffee and latte suggestions for customers lazing away their Connecticut weekend. Esso Gas station? Newsstand?? Bottle shop?? Forget it! Now, if you need a real estate agent, or an investment advisor, or a wine merchant, ok.…..Dogs are strictly leashed and tethered to the flimsy little tables, as if it were not possible that they, as dogs, could upend everything—table, lattes, the whole get-up-- Only the post office remains untouched. Untouched but tinier. Everything was as perfect as Speilburg himself could fashion it to be. No roaming dogs. No kids on black “English” bikes. Plenty, however, of adults in spandex, wired up to their vital signs and grooving to J-zee.
No longer is there a danger of your little kiddy being trapped while hiding out in the deteriorating and crumbling rubble of a three-story Victorian mansion, last lived in by an emaciated silent screen actress wearing 1940’s era bedroom slippers and two brilliant gashes of Max Factor Red lipstick. Twenty first century children won’t be mowed down by buzz-cut and pimpled teenage boys flying around the United Church curve and blasting through town going 80, or maybe holding out false hope to the town’s resident queer by groups of three or four stopping by his place in the early evening and joining him in a cocktail. No weird kids from the past will appear and terrorize the children of commuters, or wind up in the City Briefs in the “Hour” every Monday. All of these dangers are gone, the old houses, the jaded teenagers, the homo. Replaced by Martha’s Vineyard-issue homes, clear skinned, soccer playing 16 year olds ordering their own lattes, and family friendly gays. On Highland Avenue, a painted wooden sign preaches, “Neighborhood Kids Say “Slow Down!”
The streets of Rowayton and West Norwalk are so narrow that it isn’t possible to imagine the old days when we rode 2 or 3 abreast past stone walls in those summer pine needles or the times when I silently moved through the gray post-Thomas 5 pm air in thick falling snow. I’m certain there used to be grassy shoulders which we would gouge apart galloping our horses, or move onto if two cars going different directions happened to pass. As a matter of fact, when we became 16 and drove these suburban lanes, we poured it on, we flew. One time at the blind intersection of Fillow Street and Weed Avenue, Teri stalled her father’s new red Volkswagon in the snow and passed out, and though only 100 feet from my driveway, I threw up and fell asleep.
Two explanations, besides the obvious, explain the minute character of the streets. Maybe my town is dwarfed because I am in a vehicle at least 4 times bigger than the VWs and Saabs and Morris Minors of the 50s. Or it’s possible that, in a melodramatic cry to “Respect Our Privacy!” and boisterous anonymity, townsfolk have permitted shrubbery and trees to grow unchecked, and foliage that was newly-planted and strictly manicured in 1956 has gone feral, and engulfs the roads, driveways and property lines. Even the newest replacement houses on each block appear ancient, flaunting modest pea-gravel driveways, shutters and clapboard covered in humble blazingly colored annuals. “Us? Oh, We’ve lived here forever!!” Where there used to be 300 acres screening a stone house and barns, now there are 300 discretely positioned “homes”, which pretend to have been there for a century. Everything and nothing is new.
The Sherin’s place next door looked the same, smaller of course than the panoramic and holy stables, corral, and colonial house from my 12 year old memory, but stone walls, pasture, the brook-- they were all there. Missing only was Bonnie in the driveway where her date was already gunning his engine, shouting up to Susie or Debbie in a second floor window, “Twinnie, get me my blue cardigan, the one in the bottom drawer!” It was turning into the Jennings’ driveway that finally brought me tears, as you suddenly realize a fondly remembered old friend has been gone for decades.
The Jennings’ house, the first house I fell in love with- looked over the 100 Jennings acres from a flat knoll…the house and terrace and pool basked in light all day until the sun went down behind the stable and woods. I loved, I wanted to be the resident daughter of it! The brick-floored kitchen leading off the mud room, where we’d toss our riding boots and gloves and run up the front stairs to get in our suits and swim in the pool right outside the French doors. Mr. and Mrs. Jennings had 4 stair step sons Robbie Chris Jeff and Peter, so I recall her as often in a fog, and Mr. Jennings travelled as a VP for Bigelow Carpets, frequently to Paris for some reason. They always had a nameless cook or a maid, I don’t know which, and once Mr. Jennings brought 16 year old Teri a black bustier back from France. Even to me back then it seemed dirty, except I didn’t know the word.
I drive into the former driveway, now a paved street. My house looked over nothing now, the yards of the new-olds hidden by fast growing maples trees. In 1965 there were overgrown flowering trees and tall meadow grass on either side of the driveway near the mailbox. I hid there ,smoking, while I waited for my mother to leave the house for work on mornings I didn’t go to school. Susan Andrus and I waited there for Robbie’s mother’s station wagon to swing in and drop Robbie off before she drove on with the other three and the groceries to the house I loved. We would walk and laugh slowly up the quarter mile driveway.
Five houses now line each side, softened by the ubiquitous landscaping, where in 1960 there were acres of meadow grass, a clear brook running down the hill into a pond where I soaked Missy’s swollen ankle for hours one summer, and the remains of an ancient orchard. Mr. Jennings would sit on the slate patio near the pool with a martini in his huge fist and watch Robbie, the twins, Teri, and me playing spit-tag on horseback. White jump standards and rails had littered the treeless grass riding field, and the “homes” and lots made from this riding field were clearly grander. Designers had rearranged stone walls to respect the new settlers’ current boundary lines. In the parking area in front of the side entrance to my beloved house’s mud room, bordered by a fenced kitchen garden and a lane leading up to the barn and kennel, I see a huge contemporary style gray house, angled and vertical. The ancient rock wall marking the Ferndale cemetery behind this mess looked as though Mexicans had just come and pressure washed it. Robbie, Teri, Debby, Susie and me camped once in the woods behind Fox Run, tying the horses to trees holding hay bags for the night, like in the movies.
I drove down the driveway street and watched two 12 or 13 year olds jogging slowly uphill in the June heat. The remaining ferns and the moss and hemlock smelled like ancient forest. I wished for the girls to notice the scent of the old days. Piles of horse manure on the driveway. Ignored until they disappeared from rain or the dozens of cars cramming the parking area for a Bigelow Carpet cocktail party…The Learned girls painting the emptied pool with tropical flowers for their sister’s wedding. But the girls were on Ipods and it was hot.
Toward New Canaan on west Norwalk Road I approach the Merritt Parkway and slow down to locate the narrow entrance of the bridle path, but overgrown grass weeds hid any sign that a beckoning place of solitude once existed. I drive back but it’s not there.
Here are some other crazy things I saw on my trip:
The Ronald McDonald House ads featuring sick Mexican kids
The Men, Women, and Other restroom on the Connecticut Turnpike

Christ it's hot this afternoon. Only the 6th day of April but Jesus.

When I feel this way I'm reminded of elementary school, the high ceilings and air blowing in from outside which smelled so good. Like grass or rotting leaves or burning leaves or low tide. All good things.

I read through all the deliriously happy pages of the Rowayton website thinking, i was really a differnet kind of child. I saw things so much differently than the 1950s happy circles of friends.

One clear memory is the day Stacy Bissell returned from a trip to Europe or California or some place she went with her father and had to miss three months of school. Or maybe three weeks. Anyhow, we were in Mrs. Lies' 3rd grade housed in a temporary classroom in the gym.

All the girls were lined up on the left side of the temporary classroom door and all the boys on the right side , along the inside wall of the gym. Through the main gym doors come stacy and her father, Richard Bissell. EEEk shout all the girls eeeek! Its Stay-ceeeeee! All the girls ran over to her and threw their arms around her, eeek eeek Stacy!. But wait! There were Renee and I, staring and holding our hands behind our backs and gawking. I cannot speak for her, but I know sure as shit I was not going over there to act like a retard over someone who I didn't care was gone and didn't care had come back.