I would most deeply appreciate this, as Spring Glen was on Whitney. For
those unfamiliar with Elm City, there are four principal roads running out
of New Haven, Whitney, Whaley, Goff, and Dixon. Whitney is named for Eli
Whitney, the inventor of mass produciton and of the Cotton Gin. Whaley,
Goff, and Dixon were three of the members of the House of Commons in Great
Britain who had voted to kill King Charles, Saint and Martyr. When his
son, with a popular gasp of relief, returned to rule the land, he granted
clemency to all who had fought in the Civil War against his father save for
those who had voted for his death. These three guys fled to New Haven and
were shielded by the locals, even at one point being hidden in a cave on a
local mountain in East Haven. Given the demographic changes in the area
over the past century, I doubt that this is much recalled there now, but in
my time in New Haven fifty years back these guys were remembered as "the
three judges".
When I was at the Yale Graduate School in '72 to '74, I lived in Meriden
and Wallingford. During my last year there, I lived on the edge of the
Polish and Hungarian sections of Wallingford, and the Postman would always
come by with a new "Hunky Joke" every day, a process I thought a bit
dangerous as I lived a long block from the Hungarian Community Social
Center, known to all and sundry as "Hunky Hall" -- two doors down, and the
Postman was in Hungarian turf and his jokes might not have been
appreciated. Those of long life on this List will appreciate that I then
lived at 118 Bull Avenue, arguably the most appropriate street address I
have ever had, a far bit more indicative of my oratical skills than was,
say, 55 Bedford Avenue in Hamden or 1720 Hanover Avenue in Meriden or my
present 375 Allison Avenue or, even worse, my office building at 713 First
Street. (I did reside for a decade with my late ex-wife at 3745
Hummingbird Lane, which a friend still calls, '1313 Mockingbird Lane', an
address which should earn chuckles from fans of elderly TV shows.)
Therre was a Greek restaurant in New Haven which was a great visit on a
Friday evening. Mind you, in Greece and Scotland, lads and men do the
dancing but in American Scottish and Greek cultural societies, lasses and
women do the dancing, an abomination -- a skill in the dance is a vital
element in promotion as a junior officer in a Highland regiment or in the
Greek army. This restaurant, the name long forgotten, sponsored dancing by
Greek immigrants on Friday evenings and it was a grand venue to spend a
night of spanokopita and dolmadas (the real ones, stuffed with lamb) and
retsina while watching elderly and inebriated Greeks doing a Zorba the
Greek which beat the hell out of Anthony Quinn in the closing scenes of
that Bates vehicle. I later found a similar restaurant in Baltimore while
stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Wonderful times, and I was advised
by a local friend, a Greek, needless to say, that there is a similar venue
run by a cousin of his in Richmond so that I can visit this to enjoy a
return to this rather special delight once my move to the City of Monuments
is complete, a process which seems to be infinitely protracted.
New Haven during both of my times there was heavily Roman Catholic, so fish
was the order of the day on Fridays. On Friday evenings, after the women
had shopped, you could visit the fish shops and get great buys on what they
had left. By 5:30 on Friday evenings, shrimp were almost given away and
small lobsters were 99¢ the pound and those who love lobster know that the
smaller ones are the sweeter and the better. Even on a student's budget,
this was a doable matter and so I ate a lot of great seafood cheaply.
New Haven was "Elm City" because it had once been marked by its vast elm
foliage, long gone by the time I lived there. The main street running from
the main Yale campus to its extended environs was named Elm but it was bare
of any trees when I was there. (I live four blocks from our local Elm
Avenue and drive it for six blocks every day on my way to my office and it
also is barren of trees, though our City Library, a block from my office,
still has some magnificent and huge elms in its front, a memory of things
past. My father recalled large groves of elms, hickories, and chestnuts.
When I walk these gentle and kind Appalachian hills, as I often do, I see
an occasional hickory and a rare chestnut but never an elm, and sad it is.
And, for the Monty Python members in our midst, "now, for something
completely different -- the larch!"
