Caitlin made me a breakfast fit for a guy turning (hmmmm) 67!! Today was going to be a challenge both in driving and navigating – Newark, New York City, New Haven. During the day we both felt the pressure. The travel day started out with a tour of the Clinton, New Jersey. Caitlin wanted us to drive across the old bridge near the mill dam but as we approached a sign announced that there was a weight limit of 6,000. With our 20,000 pounds we would have made a big splash so we pass the bridge and ended up in the Red Mill parking lot – dead end, it was. And not a prayer of turning around so for the first time (I knew it would come sometime) we had to quickly unhitch the VW, turn each vehicle around and reconnect. Now wasn’t that fun??
Unlike the Los Angeles Basin, New York City has been around a long time enabling it to make a jumbled mess out of the highway layouts which in turn kept Caitlin calling out, “Stay to port; go to starboard; take the next exit.” (Caitlin had difficulty using left/right; we spoke the same language.) We soon hit the George Washington Bridge with the masses and I stopped traffic at the toll booth because I needed CPR when I found out that the cost was $32 to drive across the damn bridge over the Hudson River. Hell, the Chesapeake Bay/Tunnel at seventeen miles long was $28. And another thing – gas in New York was $4.35 a gallon when in next-door New Jersey it was $3.96.
Moving right along – when we reached the great state of Connecticut, home of my early youth, names started to sound familiar. Caitlin suggested that we get off the freeway and travel the Merritt Parkway. “I remember we use to drive that as a kid.” What a relief from the trucks and the parkway was beautifully lined with trees. We went shooting under an old stone bridge and we both explained at the same time, “Man, THAT was low!” We both needed to stop and eat so I pulled into a visitor center but saw no space for us so started to pull out when a man on the side yelled at us to get off the parkway. What? “You can’t be here!” You’re too heavy and too tall” Yea, right!! “Take the next exit.” Got it!! And we put our tail between our legs and scooted off the parkway into a residential area and finally made it back to the freeway thankful that we didn’t lose the top of the RV.
We exited at New Haven and I was on a journey to find where our family, not my Dad’s, lived from when I was for my first ten years. I was seeking Woodbridge and had not been there in 58 years.
We dropped the RV in a mall parking lot and went exploring in the VW. My memories of Woodbridge were wonderful; horses; sledding, hiking and camping but my education was a challenge. I hated to read at the very beginning. I didn’t find out until graduate school that I was dyslexic as was my Father, brother and sister. To compensate for this I have an amazing photographic memory. I was telling Caitlin, “Around this bend should be the town hall and a New England church on the green.” Down the hill was the ballpark. (Still there) And there was the house sitting on the Wepawaug River. We pulled in but no one was home so I left a note and took pictures of the spread. I showed Caitlin where my bedroom window was. I have never experienced this before but have always heard about it. Everything looked so small from what I remembered as a lad. The pond below the house was suppose to be Olympic size was now just square yards. The sledding hill was just a bump. After the required photos, we headed back when suddenly I cried, “There’s Ed Fellow’s farm!!” The house and barn still stood. This is where we spent a lot of our childhood. One memory was in winter hitching up one of our horses to the sleigh and going out on the war-deserted highway. We would tie sleds off the back of the sleigh and we would ride there while my brother would stand on the back sleigh runners and hold onto the seat back of the sleigh. I was envious that he was big enough so he could stretch one foot from one runner to the other.
It all happened too fast; we arrived; looked around; took pictures then left. I would think of it as a dream that I had.
It was late and all I could wrap my mind around was stopping for the night at Harold’s. We drove through Lyme, Connecticut famous for the site where the disease was first described. Caitlin had just been told that Harold had contracted the disease, the same disease my sister Rebecca has been fighting for years.
Harold lived inland of Interstate 95, which is like Interstate 5 on the west coast, with a group of people near Voluntown, called Voluntown Peace Trust. The trust owns a farm with 57 acres and a wonderful house built in 1850. “For nearly fifty years this land has been the site of nonviolence training and action, cooperative living and equity based economics.” (from their pamphlet) I was thoroughly impressed with the scope of the place and the massive organic gardens. I wish them well.
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