Mary

Revisiting River City

It’s been a long time since I watched The Music Man, the 1962 musical starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones (as well as a very young Ron Howard). Preston plays a con man who arrives in a small town in 1910s Iowa and poses as a boy’s band leader, with the aim of fleecing the citizens out of their money and skipping town.

Within minutes, I was enthralled once again by Preston’s energy, voice, and comedic talent. And when Shirley Jones sang, I was blown away by what a magnificent voice she had. I’m not sure she got the recognition she deserved. At any rate, I easily slipped back into this simpler-time story and was happy to spend a couple of hours with some amazing singers, dancers, and actors.

I first saw The Music Man in the sixties, when I was a kid. My best friend Rebecca and I loved the movie. Her parents had the album, and we used to listen to it all the time. This was back when a record was the only way you could buy music. The days before DVDs. Before eight-tracks and cassette tapes.

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Spicing up the Dinner Conversation

The other night my husband and I were at a dinner party. It was a small gathering – just the host, whose wife was out of town, a couple who we know, and another couple we’d never met before. We all chatted over drinks and then sat down to eat. At some point during dinner, the woman to my right, who I know well, suggested we go around the table and talk about what we’re doing this summer. A couple of people talked about their travel plans, which sounded lovely, and then it was my turn. Something came over me at the last second and this is what I came out with: “I’m going to be spending the summer in jail because I robbed an A&P supermarket and was arrested. I had to wear an ankle bracelet, but I got it off. But they found out and they’re putting me in jail.”

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Saying Good-Bye to Summer

Chairs by the Water
Near Sheffield Island Harbor, Connecticut – 2024

To me, this is the definition of summer in Connecticut. Adirondack chairs by a Long Island Sound inlet. I wonder if anyone ever sits here. I hope they do. I would, if I lived on this quiet lane. It looks like the perfect place to read a book. Or write one. I can almost smell the salt water and hear the chatter of birds and the hum of crickets. I took this photo in July. I’m sad to think summer is gone now. Ever since I was a kid, it was always my favorite time of year here in New England. One reason was the freedom that came from being out of school. But that wasn’t the only thing. I loved the long days, the fresh-cut-grass smell in the air, the sight of lightning bugs in the evening. I’m sad to think summer is gone.

Morning View

All summer we’ve been in Connecticut and have enjoyed the view from our kitchen windows. The lawn in our back yard rolls down to the Saugatuck River and we often get a lovely, long-legged heron strutting about down there, likely hunting for food. We’re also home to two barred owls who sometimes have late-night conversations, filling the air with their eerily beautiful sounds. This morning I heard a red-shouldered hawk in one of our trees – identified by the Merlin bird ID app. I wish I could take credit for knowing what it was. Maybe next time.

 

Autumn Settles In

It’s gotten chilly here in Connecticut. The mornings are crisp and the nights are downright cold, at least from the standpoint of someone who moved to Florida a couple of decades ago. It’s time for pumpkin everything now – coffee, bread, muffins, pie, the whole works. And that’s great. But I always get a little sad when summer ends, even when it was a rainy one like this last one. I guess it’s time to move on, though. I’ll have to get out the muffin tins. Maybe light a fire in the fireplace. And hope for an Indian Summer.

A Walk among the Headstones

When I was growing up, my best friend and I used to walk to a cemetery down the street from where we lived in Connecticut and search for gravestones that had “lockets” on them. “Locket” was our name for a photo of the deceased, set into a headstone and protected with glass and a brass cover you would lift up. The ones I remember were oval, the clothing and hairstyles Victorian looking, and the expressions serious.

I still like walking through cemeteries with old headstones. Some of the carvings are lovely, as are the inscriptions. It makes me wonder who the people were, what they were like, what kind of family they had, what kind of life they led.

These photos are from a cemetery in Easton, Connecticut. The graves there are very old and the

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The Stone Walls of Connecticut

Even though I grew up in Connecticut, whenever I’m back here I’m always amazed and delighted by the stone walls that seem to be everywhere. They decorate the front yards of houses, they mark the boundaries between yards, they’re in parks and around ponds. And in some cases they show up in the middle of woods, running  helter-skelter among the trees, with boulders missing or entire sections gone.

New England is a rocky place. If you dig down six or eight inches you’ll hit stones and rocks and maybe the top of a boulder. Anyone who has ever cleared a New England field knows that. Decades ago, farmers put those boulders to use, building walls that marked the boundaries

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Thoughts of Summers Past

I’ve been seeing fireflies in our yard here in Connecticut. They rise, blinking, from the grass, flashing their golden lights. Seeing fireflies always sends me back to the summers of my childhood, which took place here in Connecticut. Chasing fireflies at night with my best childhood friend, Rebecca. Picking honeysuckle blossoms for their drops of nectar. And looking for mysteries in our neighborhood. We were fans of Nancy Drew. And we thought if Nancy could have dozens of mysteries fall right into her lap, why couldn’t we have one?

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Location, Location, Location

I’ve always lived in a place that’s close to the water – no more than a drive of a few minutes or so – and I don’t think I could ever live somewhere that wasn’t. The ocean in Palm Beach is within walking distance from our home and it’s beautiful, but there’s something about the Connecticut shoreline and Long Island Sound that I love even more. I grew up here and spent most of my life here and you just can’t discount history and nostalgia. But beyond that, the harbors in the towns that dot the coast are so picturesque. I took this photo on a recent drive to the shore in Westport. The day was steaming hot, but I sat on a bench under a tree, inhaled the salt air as if it were an elixir, and enjoyed a lovely breeze. There’s a famous poem by John Masefield that starts, “I must go down to the seas again ….” I get it, John. I know just what you meant.

You Can’t Go Home Again

The author Thomas Wolfe said it many years ago and it’s still true. On this street in Greenwich, Connecticut, between the gray house on the left (peeking out from behind the trees) and the white house on the right is an empty piece of land. There used to be a little house there and when I was very young – from birth to age six – I lived in that house.

I don’t remember a lot about it, except for a general sense of where the rooms were and a few details about the kitchen, which was large compared to the rest of the house, had flowered wallpaper, and had windows that faced the back yard. I also remember a glassed-in porch and the color of the outside, which was red. There was a stone wall in the back yard that I think my father might have built. He was very handy. A weeping willow hung over the wall and I used to grab the branches and swing on them. My dad rigged up a tire swing by throwing one end of a rope over a branch of the willow and I used to swing on that too. As a kid, it seemed as though our back yard went on forever.

Over the past few decades I’d driven by the house from time to time when I was in Connecticut and it became abundantly clear that the yard wasn’t big at all. Not from an adult’s perspective anyway. Now it’s all yard. The property went into foreclosure several years ago and watching the house’s slow deterioration was sad. On my most recent drive-by I saw that the house had been razed, causing me to have one of those “Oh, wow” moments, accompanied by a skirmish in my stomach. I’m happy someone finally bought the property and will be building a new house there. I won’t be going back to look at it though.