Greenwich history – Brian's Spain Domain

Excerpt from a New Book 4 (draft)

The Greenwich Historical Society, the only true official authority on the 370 years that comprise this town’s past, is a serious, disciplined and scholarly organization. Of that I have no doubt. And yet, it stretches the very limits of conceivability when I notice that it devotes a scant five paragraphs on its website to the history of this town. That’s right, just five paragraphs (approximately 450 words) on a community whose origins go back nearly to the dawn of northern European colonization in North America. Five paragraphs, of which one is devoted to giving a general overview of Greenwich as it is now. So, that makes it four.

There is something to be said for brevity, I will admit, the old adage “less is more” certainly holds true in many circles, but this was inexcusable; especially when I found out in the Greenwich Time that $150,000 of the town’s annual budget went to this association. Yes, indeed, I do believe they could make the effort to come up with something slightly more substantial on their website. I have a volume on Spanish History called “An Introduction to the History of Spain” and this abridged version is 1060 pages long. I fret to think where I would have to go if I wanted to research the subject more thoroughly. The same is not required of the Greenwich Historical Society, but I feel something more in depth than 450 words is in order.

People who go to these pages don’t normally do so in search of a video game; I can assure you we can handle more.

I had been nosing around there because I hoped to do a little research homework before stopping over to see the place myself. It had been so long since the last time I was there that I could hardly recall where it was, which, now that you ask, is in the Bush-Holley House, probably the town’s most historic building. Fitting. I was also trying to find out if the name of the place had anything to do with the Bush family, since they have been associated with this town for several generations. George senior went to school here, and his father, Senator Prescott Bush, not only lived inGreenwich, he was buried here. But I could find no connection between the two, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Anyway, after further investigating from different sources, this is what I did find:

The first sections of the Bush-Holley House were built around 1730 making it one of the oldest standing structures in town. In the 1870s it opened as a boarding house and by the 1890s, the scenic land around Cos Cob harbor served as a perfect backdrop for a handful of impressionist artists and painters who would form one of Connecticut’s first art colonies, known rather uninspiringly as the Cos Cob Art Colony. Founded in 1889 by the artist John Henry Twachtman, this school of creative individuals was formed by some ofAmerica’s finest impressionist painters who would spend extended stays at the Holley Boarding House and let their artistic juices flow freely. They even started the local Greenwich Art Society for which my mother would volunteer for several years.

I had hoped to get to the Bush-Holley House earlier during my trip, but the holidays are a time when making progress of any kind is a near impossibility, so I kept putting off the visit until the final few days finally came upon us, which is an extremely questionable strategy, because I tend to do that with a lot of plans and before I know it, I have dozens of to-do lists which slowly turn into undoable lists.

But that was only part of the problem. The museum’s thrifty timetable didn’t help either. Apparently in the wintertime, according to the website, the place was only open to the public from Wednesday to Sunday, because, I’m surmising here, no one wants to go early in the week. I knew stopping by at this point in the game, just 48 hours before take-off, would further strain the tension of the closing days of vacation crunch, but there was little I could do to avoid this. We were, as they say, running out of time. To keep time issues to a minimum, I chose early Wednesday as the moment to go for it and see what was there.

As it turned out, the information on the website was erroneous. Had this come from a different source, I might have been a touch perplexed, but somehow that was not my impression. I should have guessed as much as we went up the wooden steps of the porch to knock on the door and sensed the place was deserted. A young woman, who reminded me of someone I knew when I was growing up but couldn’t exactly remember who, politely informed us that the Bush-Holley House only served the public on the weekends during the winter. If that didn’t give you an idea of the numbers of tourists we were talking about, I can’t say what would.

“But the webpage says you would be open…” I stammered. I really don’t know why I brought up this inane point; after all, if she said it was closed, well then it must have been closed; it wasn’t like she was going to turn around and announce, “Well, if that what the website says, then by all means, we’re just gonna have to let you in.” Maybe it was my sense of indignation that what was stated on the internet did not correspond to reality and that the truth was somehow in need of being brought to their attention…or some kind of bullshit like that. Objectively, I could completely understand, but it all came as a great disappointment all the same. Maybe I could sneak in a visit early Friday.

I turned around and looked out from the porch and I thought for a second about the art colony. Here on this very spot, painters moved by the impressionist movement that was upending artistic convention in Europe passed their time immortalizing this gentleConnecticutharbor. Those idyllic views that once inspired so many imaginative minds over a century before had been substantially altered since then. Interstate 95 and the infamousMianusRiverBridgewhich spans the marina forever obliterated the beauty that once graced this area.

This is part of progress, I know, and I accept it…but it hurts.

So with great forlornness, I led my family back to the car where we warmed our bodies in the interior and pulled out of the parking lot substantially defeated by disillusionment. But the effects were only short term. There was plenty to do that day so not all was lost, and I for one was not going to let the extremely limited opening hours of the Bush-Holley House douse my drive to take in a little culture for that day.

We got back on the Post Road, passed the Greenwich High Schooland drove up Putnam Hill. At this point, I spotted the gray rock on the right hand side where the Put supposedly launched his heroic retreat. Screw it, I said to myself. This time I was not going to hold back. I was not going to give in to family pressure. I was not going to go by that goddamn stone monument again without taking a closer look, because, this being the epicenter of the town’s most heart-pounding seconds in history, the least I could do is find out how the event was honored and maybe in passing relive those exhilarating seconds of the past.

I pulled in Old Church Road and decided to park the car, a magnificent plan until I realized that there was no where to leave the car. That’s just what happens here in town. I really can’t say it’s something peculiar to Greenwich; much ofConnecticutsuffers from this disease. As a good American-law-fearing citizen, I was wary of leaving it just anywhere so as not to stir any suspicion in the local authorities. People who park their cars where they shouldn’t, are often suspect to just about anything.

You have to work hard to get into a law-enforcer’s mind to understand their train of thought. As a result, there was always the latent possibility that the minute you get out Johnny Law was going to roar up and ask you what the nature of your business was, like “What in Sam’s Hill you doing here, boy?”

“Just going to read what it says on the monument over there.”

“Why? What’s it to you?”

“Just out of curiosity.”

“Got a permit?”

“Uh, didn’t know I needed one. I was born and raised here.”

“Don’t matter. Even Greenwich residents have to have one. Like the beaches. That’s historical praperdy thar and we don’t want no vaindals marring the good name of Genral Israyel Putn’m, here? Maybe you’re a terrorist.” To be honest, I don’t really envision theGreenwichpolice talking like, especially with that spanking new Beverly Hills Cop like station they have just off the Avenue, but it is fun to pretend.

I got out, pulled up my belt and asked who wanted to come. My daughters were entrenched in some kind of bickering that prevented them from wanting to join; no one found any amusement in going to a small stone monument on the side of the road, so I let them have it their way and made the brief journey on my own to the corner of the street and over the grassy terrain to where the granite block, at least it looked like granite, stood. There I started to read the inscription:

This marks the spot where on February 26, 1779, General Israel Putnam, cut off from his soldiers and pursued by the British cavalry, galloped down this rocky steep and escaped, daring to lead where not one of many hundred foes dared to follow.

Daughters of the American Revolution, 1900

Now, presented that way, we are certainly treated to a version that warrants a scene in a movie script. But after transcribing onto my notepad what was engraved on the slab in front of me, one thought came to mind: the local delegation of the daughters of the American Revolution clearly had a thing for this man. You almost sensed he was their spiritual leader.

Excerpt from new book 3 (Draft)

Leaving the Bubble

Oh, well. Fun and games with numbers. Finally it was time to get them to the train station and Bridget had us leave approximately ten minutes before the train arrived, and announced as she started the car, “Just have to stop by Dunkin’ Donuts for a coffee beforehand.”

“The train is about to arrive and we’re still two miles away. I think I can hear that whistle blowing.”

But she wasn’t listening to me. I was being a Eurofag, as some say, and had no understanding of how a New York commuter runs under this pressure. She was right, but that didn’t make us any closer to the station. She crabbed as she told me to relax. My sister possessed her own reality distortion field. We could be at the counter paying while the train was pulling out and actually pull into the station minutes later before it even arrived. I don’t know how she did it, but we did it…coffee and all.

The rest of the day I spent hauling my butt up to Durham, Connecticut to pick up the car we would be using for the next couple of weeks. I went up with my nephew Kevin, who had to kindness and patience to plow through I-95 rough Sunday traffic, which was exacerbated by the fact it was the end of the Christmas holiday weekend. The minute we hit the highway, it stopped. Then it was stop and go for the next60 milespractically. I had taken along the entire case of the Beatles digitally remastered albums, 13 albums in all, so I think we were covered in that department. I guess I was supposed to act as an older and sager uncle cunningly trying to get his thoughts out about his life and filling his head with all the wisdom, but instead it came out more like this:

“So, do you have any fucking idea what you want to do with your life?”

“Uh… no, not really.”

“I know how it is. Well, you’ve still got time. Now, listen to John’s lyrics on this song, they’re awesome.”

Once you coast inland from the coast, you realize you are in a decidedly different part of the state all together. If not in a different state all together. Durham is hardly 21 miles from then center of urban New Haven, but you might as well be in upstateVermont. It was rural. Rural big time. Rolling roads, acres of farmland and woods, barns with roofs falling in. The downtown itself boasted a splendid green with all the major houses and local important buildings literally separated from each other in classic New England fashion. It was delightful and spooky at the same time, a sentiment which may have been compounded by the fact I had just passed an awesomely and deliciously frightening cemetery on the way in. It was set on a hill so steep I couldn’t imagine how in God’s name they could stick bodies in there.

We weren’t in Durham for long, just enough to meet Janet and Bill, the parents of a good friend of ours who had the generosity to lend us their wheels. We had been in touch for quite some time but never had formally met. They are sweet and wonderful people, the kind that make you feel at home from minute one. They were thinking about making a little dinner and they were being joined by a friend of hers. Just as I walked in the kitchen, Janet said, “Martha (to be honest I can’t recall her name), do you know who this is? It’s Brian Murdock!” I wish someone at the time had a camera to fully capture the stupefied look on my face, because I had been in that town for little more than ten minutes and I was being introduced to perfect strangers as if they were supposed to know me, and, as I feared even more, I was supposed to know them. That wouldn’t have been the first time, but in Durham?

“You were in his house!”

This was beginning to freak me out because now I really didn’t know what was going on. I knew there was something spooky about that town. “Oh, yes! How do you do?”

She extended her hand and expected a nice warm shake, which I guess I fulfilled though don’t know exactly why or how.

Janet hadn’t finished. “And you slept in his bed!”

Well, of all things. “That’s enough! What is going on here?”

It naturally turned out that they had been in my house. I knew Janet had, I just couldn’t remember the part about the friend. It kind of happens that way when your home is a kind of inn. I like it that way. I grew up with my house being that way, why would I want it any other way. Just the thing that so many people had passed through these doors that long ago I lost count, and when you do that, heck, you’re bound to bump into someone in a place like Durham who says “Hey, thanks for the digs.”

We took their advice and followed their directions back on to the Merritt. We ended up on I-91, the turnoff must have been at some unforeseen road a few miles back. Before we knew it we were just north ofNew Havenin a neighborhood Greenwich kids dread to find themselves in. Empty parking lots, half-abandoned warehouses, gas stations encased in robbery-proof bunkers, parts of old American cars strewn along the sides of the street. Dad and good old Brunswick School for boys never prepped me for this. I have lived in some pretty skanky places, and slept in some nameless holes, acted like a bum and mingled in hostile atmospheres; but there are still times when my goddamn upbringing told me once again… “boy…you just don’t belong here, so get out!”

And out we went. Calmly but without a pause. And we pulled on to the highway to the junction with I-95. It was backed up like hell the way it always is, but this time, worse still because of the day and time at hand. People were leaving every place and going back to every place and there was no way out of it. I had lost touch with Kevin. He had lost touch with me. We would meet back home at some time. I put the Beatles’ White Album on and took the trip in stride.

I’ll Be Home For Xmas 8

Here’s the history section I put in the previous post. I’ll pasted here again so you don’t have to scroll down:

The town of Greenwich was settled in 1640. One of the founders was Elizabeth Fones Winthrop, daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, founder and Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. What is now called Greenwich Point was known for much of the area’s early history as “Elizabeth’s Neck” in recognition of Elizabeth Fones and their 1640 purchase of the Point and much of the area now known as Old Greenwich. Greenwich was declared a township by the General Assembly in Hartford on May 11, 1665.

During the American Revolution, General Israel Putnam made a daring escape from the British on February 26, 1779. Although British forces pillaged the town, Putnam was able to warn Stamford.

In 1983, the Mianus River Bridge, which carries traffic on Interstate 95 over an estuary, collapsed, resulting in the death of three people

For many years, Greenwich Point (locally termed “Tod’s Point”), was open only to town residents and their guests. However, a lawyer sued, saying his rights to freedom of assembly were threatened because he was not allowed to go there. The lower courts disagreed, but the Supreme Court of Connecticut agreed, and Greenwich was forced to amend its beach access policy to all four beaches.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Greenwich’s location as the first Connecticut town off Interstate 95 and the Merritt Parkway meant that when New York City-area residents wanted to buy Powerball lottery tickets as the jackpot rose above $100 million, they crowded into Greenwich stores to purchase them, creating traffic jams in the business areas. The Connecticut Lottery introduced special rules for such situations. This no longer was a problem after Pennsylvania joined Powerball in 2002; those living west of the Hudson River no longer cross it to buy Powerball tickets.

There you go. According to this writer, pretty much nothing happened between the years 1779 and 1983. That’s a leap of 204 years. And what did occur since then, with the exception of the bridge collapse, is of very little transcedence. A man had to go to court to be able to sit on the beach and the Powerball lottery disrupted life in the town during the 1990s. Come on! That’s all?

I remember when a strech of the I-95 Mianus (pronounced /my-ANN-us/ just in case any wise guys were wondering there) River Bridge collapsed in June (I believe) of 1983, killing three people. This was no doubt an important moment, albeit sad one, in the history of this town. The beach affair got national attention because it was snooty Greenwich telling non-residents they couldn’t use their beach. Greenwich beaches are pretty lame anyway, so why anyone would want to take legal action to swim in water whose waves are generally no higher than a blade of grass is beyond me. But the man who sued won out in the end and it turned into a big victory for Greenwich haters who never would want to set foot on the beach to begin with. Congratulations.

I wasn’t around for the Powerball brawl, but I can just imagine all the residents getting uptight about foreigners (by that I mean New Yorkers and New Jerseyans) invading the area in the hopes of striking it rich. That must have been entertaining. Was it deserving of taking up more text space than any other moment in the town’s 37o years of existence?…I don’t think so…but entertaining all the same.

But I am equally sure that there was something else worth noting must have happened during that two-century span. Of course there was.

What about hometown girl Dorothy Hamill taking the olympic gold in ice-skating in the 1976 Games. How often does that happen? And they could have also mentioned the very serious plan to create an entire United Nations Headquarters, with city and airport too, in Greenwich, in the land above the Merritt Parkway. That would have involved confiscating nearly half of the town. Now that’s something to take up arms about, not whimpering about not having a place to park your car. They even held a referendum but the proposal was shot down. Now that would have changed the face of the town.

What was Greenwich like 150 years ago? 100 years ago? At the turn of the 20th Century, it was a popular resort town and several very large hotels were built and have since been torn down. An important art colony inhabited by numerous impressionists painters spouted in Cos Cob in the 19th Century. There were mills, quarries and factories. Famous figures like Boss Tweed lived here. There are all sorts of curiosities. Binney Park in Old Greenwich, for instance, where the 4th of July fireworks take place, was named for resident Edwin Binney, who designed and supervised its construction, and happened to be the man who invented the Crayola crayon, the most famous brand in America. The first short-wave radio transmission to Europe was sent from a point just 100 yards from where I grew up, off North Street. And that’s just scratching the surface. Yes, I would say that a heck of a lot of things has happened here, but so little has been done to recount it to the people of this town. Just a simple bit of research here and there reveals so much about a town which gives it more depth and character to its rich history and than just a rich community near New York.

Something has got to be done about this.

I’ll Be Home For Xmas 7

Here’s what you can find in Wikipedia about the history of Greenwich:

During the American Revolution, General Israel Putnam made a daring escape from the British on February 26, 1779. Although British forces pillaged the town, Putnam was able to warn Stamford.

In 1983, the Mianus River Bridge, which carries traffic on Interstate 95 over an estuary, collapsed, resulting in the death of three people

I don’t know what you think, but I see this as amounting to pretty much nothing. After all, the town is approaching its 400th anniversary, and you would think that there was something more to this place.

Don’t bother going to the offshoot article featuring the subject, because you won’t find much else there, except for an unbalanced emphasis on the poor conditions of the roads during the 18th Century. I’d also stay away from the town’s Historical Society website because its page on Greenwich History is under construction and whatever it had before that was even scanter than what you see above.

A quick study of the information provided should be enough to help you understand why I feel the way I do. The beginning is all right I guess, though they could have added that the first land was purchased for 25 English coats. And the part about Putnam escaping is mandatory knowledge for any local. Yes, I too find it hard to accept that my town’s greatest contribution to this country’s independence was an elderly general running away from the enemy. Grant you, the hill he bolted down was mindbogglingly steep, and he did manage to get word to the nearby Stamford garrison that the “British were coming!”; but does it merit such attention? Was this a kind of make-it-or-break-it moment in the revolution? It seems so. And if you don’t believe me, take a look at the town seal:

Yeap. There you have it folks. My town’s finest hour in its struggle to free itself from English rule immortalized on the official seal. A crowning moment in its nearly 375 years of existence. There’s our man galloping away from the redcoats; running, fleeing and waving his sword with defiance as he says, “I’m outta here!” He wasn’t even from Greenwich by the way, nor did he die there.

Doesn’t it make you wish that a town smack in the middle of a war would have been responsible for something more historically significant than the tale of a man tearing off with his tail between his legs in the face of danger? But that’s the way history works and you can’t change it.

And you know what? Deep down I like the symbol. It takes guts to make it the image of your town. Just the way it took guts for that old officer to barrel down a drop so inclined it could almost be considered a cliff. And he certainly did the right thing, because trying to stand up to them would not have gotten the town anywhere. And he probably would have died in the attempt.

Turning Putnamp’s escape into a source of local pride says something about this town. I just wonder how many locals realize that.