Sunday, June 8, 2008

Waterbury A Lifetime Ago

We may get a sense of Waterbury's past by looking at pictures or personal accounts or reading old newspapers but surprisingly enough there is a book on the subject by Jeremy J Joyell (A Lifetime Ago: Before The Death Of Childhood, iUniverse $17.95).

Born in Waterbury in 1942, Joyell recounts his early years living on Wood Street attending Walsh and then Bunker Hill grammar schools. Through Joyell we learn the life of a simple family in the 1950's growing up in a small apartment where the father worked in a brass factory and the mother stayed home. Relatives lived in the same neighborhood in some instances for many years. Eventually his family moved to a more suburban setting on Wayland Street in the Bunker Hill section.

Joyell's first day of school was in 1947 when he was dressed in a sailors suit hand made by a relative "authentic in every detail down to my cheif petty officer's insignia" walking with his mother and brother in a baby carriage down Dikeman Street then to Walsh. Joyell's first experience with moving pictures was watching Pinocchio at the Carroll Theater on North Square. His hair was cut by Pat Travisano on East Farms Street at Pat's Barbershop "a spittoon sat in one corner, presumably for the tough old Italians who smoked Perotti cigars..." on Cherry Street was a twenty foot high milk bottle in front of Warden's Diary. And as Joyell tells it:

On summer days, horses drank deeply from the, Carrie Weltons fountain which was designed specifically for the horse traffic of an earlier day. Handsomely dressed men and women walked quickly from store to store on Bank Street in search of fine clothing and jewelry. Downtown employees grabbed last minute grocery's at Mohegan Market, which opened onto the street much like an open-air bazaar in foreign countries.


One day Joyell and his friends decided to walk downtown to sneak into a theater and watch a movie. As he tells the story there were four theater's to choose from and they picked the Palace.
Distracting the the lady at the ticket counter they were able to sneak in where they watched a movie about Billy The Kid. Joyell managed to get caught by the usher and was thrown out finding himself alone. Walking home through East Main past Crosby High School (now the police station) up Cherry then Camp then Orange, he became lost only to eventually find his bearings and arrive home late. The streets are familiar yet with different people and society. To pull off such a stunt Joyell couldn't have been more then 10 years old. (note: the author of this review had pulled a similar stunt at about the same age only to get really really lost in Time Square).

In Bunker Hill his new street on Wayland Avenue was occupied by doctors and executives and beyond that were mostly untouched woods for miles. This was his new world of Valentine, Woodruff, Circuit and Adalaide. Joyell played Little League at a place called Mert Conner Stadium which had a press box, club house and and outfield fence with local advertisements. Joyell doesn't mention the location of the stadium only that it was lost forever during the flood of 1955 along with his birth certificate located in a file somewhere in the complex. Little League doesn't exist in Waterbury anymore but at that time it shouldn't have either because as Joyell explains for a town of 100,000 plus there were only 8 teams which was a violation of Little League rules. As for the flood he recalls going down Bunker Hill Avenue and right at the bottom is where the Naugatuck river started. If that's the case the river indeed over ran it's banks onto a large area. There isn't much said on matter in Joyell's book but if the river came up to Bunker Hill Avenue then there is no wonder there was such devastation.

To read about the life and times of a place so familiar is a fascinating treat. There's nothing like a book to bring us to a place, in this case Waterbury, to allow us to peak into the past in ways that pictures cannot. What Joyell refers to in the sub-title "Before The Death Of Childhood" are changes in the school ciriculum which are substantial and not for the better (Joyell went on to become a teacher in Bristol) and other familiar differences that aren't news such as video games, obesity, over sexed culture, MTV etc. There isn't too much analysis on this just a juxtaposition from time to time. Just why we are the way we are now comes from something, whatever it was, back then whether it was the expansion of media, affluence, the near isolation of children from society as a whole with homes sprouting up in increasing isolated areas. His life on Wood Street was much different then Wayland Street neither for the worse nor better. If Joyell's intent was a sociological focus on why childhood doesn't past the muster of yesteryear he is quick to explain what is different but hardly why it became that way.

A Lifetime Ago will be enjoyed by many in this area for what it is. A postcard from Waterbury's past with people living in a different way. That it was the intent of the author is of no matter.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Correction regarding the demise of Mert Conner stadium - it was torn down in the ealry-mid 60's for the extension of RT 8. I played here for the "Yankees" infrom 1960-52.

JoeScout said...

loved the book.
well written, good perspective on life.
we had several of the same teachers.
one story, about Ms.Connor crying, reminded me of the day she burst into my 4th grade class to tell her sister and her class that President Kennedy had been shot.
A must read for any Waterbury native, and a good read for anyone else.

JoeScout said...

loved the book.
well written, good perspective on life.
we had several of the same teachers.
one story, about Ms.Connor crying, reminded me of the day she burst into my 4th grade class to tell her sister and her class that President Kennedy had been shot.
A must read for any Waterbury native, and a good read for anyone else.