by Francine Adie Hubbell

September 30, 2001

Except for the scouts and dancing school, life was unstructured.

We listened to the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet and Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy.

You could dig for clams with your toes at the beach, go after fiddler crabs near Sammis Street bridge. There was almost always a boat available for a trip to Sheffield or Fish Islands.

You could ride a boat or canoe on Crockett Street when a big tide came up. (I dare say one can still do that.) You could pick wild strawberries where Rowayton School field is now; sip the nectar from honeysuckle flowers; walk to the beach barefoot and step in the soft warm tar. After choosing up sides, you could play softball together in an empty lot (few of which exist in Rowayton today). All that was needed was the bat, ball, and gloves.

As teenagers, we took moonlight "cruises to the lighthouse" in a whaleboat owned by a friend of one of our parents; and attended the teenage dances sponsored by Norwalk Recreation Commission that were held Monday nights throughout the summer at Roton Point.

We would gather in basement playrooms and listen to records and drink a drink made with Zayrex Syrup, which was something like Kool-Aid. In the summers, we would hang out at the beach. You couldn't go to the float unless you had passed lifeguard Art Ladrigan's swim test.

In August, the jellyfish would come in, and we had fights using the small ones. (The larger jellyfish usually showed up near Bell Island Beach.) Art didn't like jellyfish fights because they made the float slippery.

You could get frozen Bonomo's Turkish Taffy at the concession stand.

The boys used to smoke cigarettes under the steps of the old Baptist church. (It is a wonder they never set the church on fire!

I baby sat for the Emigs when Don was a pastor of the Methodist Church. I was never to mention, should a parishioner phone, that he and Betty had gone to the movies in Darien on a Sunday.

We had square dances at the Rowayton School.

Under the watchful eyes of our leader G.G. Billard, we Girl Scouts camped out in the lean-tos at Pound Ridge Reservation.

Earlier on, I remember collecting newspapers for the war effort, sitting on the floor in the school hall during air-raid drills. Everyone had a victory garden. It was the thing to do. My mother did alot of canning. Her bread and butter pickles were the best, but I can't to this day look at canned plums.

We went to Norwalk only to do our big shopping and occasionally to Calf Pasture Beach. We were pretty isolated.

Before Frank Dunn engineered the purchase of Bayley Beach, most of our swimming was done at Crab Beach in the creek at the foot of the entrance to Bayley Beach, where the old shoemaker shop now stands.

The river was pretty well polluted with discharge from the carpet factory and sewerage.

We collected soda bottles and pulled them in a wagon to Banta's News Store at McKinley Street and Rowayton Avenue to redeem them at 2 cents each. There was an excellent selection of penny candy there and also comic books, the purchase of which was discouraged by parents.

In the early summer, there would be a tent in front of the news store where you could buy fireworks.

You could spend time pitching pennies up against the front of the new store.

You could roll down the hill then located behind the school. (The hill was taken down when the first addition was put on the school.) The boys used to spread their arms and pretend they were World War II airplanes swooping down into the school yard.

We had two big fires in the '40's, one at the Cook's house in Pine Point and the other at the MacKenzie home on Roton Avenue. Lives were lost. Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie had given us neighborhood kids a party on Halloween just two months before the fire. She was the proud owner of one of the first home freezers around, and she served orange sherbet. She died in the fire along with her dog.

I remember a firemen's carnival held in Farm Creek field where an acrobat performed spotlighted high up on a platform in the Topsail Road area.

The firemen also held picnics at the beach where the ball field is now. There were tubs of clams, corn on the cob, and games of chance along with the usual picnic activities.

I remember lying in bed listening to the sounds coming from people on the rides at Roton Point; the taste of the popcorn bricks and saltwater taffy we bought at the park; fishing from a boat in the creek just inside the Bell Island Bridge because during the war there was the possibility of submarines in Long Island Sound.

I remember sitting on lawns on McKinley Street and Rowayton Avenue, counting the out-of-state markers on cars going to Roton Point, and Dot Johnson, the Rowayton librarian, letting me take my babysitting charges on the porch on the River to read to them. {The Library was located at Rowayton Avenue until ____.}

Kids made spending money by baby-sitting, delivering newspapers and later working at the gas stations, yacht club, Higgins Clam Bar (now the River Cat) or mowing lawns or shoveling snow. I had a friend who an only child, and she owned both Raggedy Ann and Andy. I thought she was the luckiest girl in the world.

These are most likely not exceptional memories, but they are mine and I treasure them.

Francine Adie Hubbell is a Norwalk native who has spent her entire life in Rowayton