Career and Early Suburbia
When Mom was pregnant (with me) she quit the hospital and went to work in the private practice of Dr. Elisabeth Adams, a GP who had just moved her office from New York City to the quiet, classically New England village of Guilford, Connecticut. Mom took the bus from New Haven where she and Dad had an apartment. Both mothers-in-law lived in the same building.
(Dr. Adams' residence and office on the NW corner of the Guilford Green.)
Dr. Adams was a bit of a character in her own right and fit in quite well with the New England tolerance and encouragement of eccentricity. She was a Christian Scientist and did not believe in doctors--for herself--but became a doctor to serve others less enlightened. She also didn't believe in pain. Mom became the office head nurse and desired administrator of all shots.
My delivery was complicated but that didn't stop Mom from having two other children, both boys. The second child, Jon, was also born in the apartment in New Haven but, when they were expecting the third child, Robert, Mom and Dad decided to buy a house of their own in a newly opened suburban development in East Haven, adjacent to New Haven and one town closer to Guilford. The development, High Ridge, was huge by the standards of the day, paving over and landscaping acres upon acres of river bottom farm land and building hundreds of houses, all variations on the theme of single story ranch.
All the families on our little cul-de-sac moved in within months of each other. All the parents were roughly the same age (Mom and Dad were the outliers, having started later) as were all the (many) children. The one notable area of diversity was in religion. Our family was Congregational Protestant (the old Puritan church of New England). Our neighbors on one side were Catholic, on the other Jewish. The kids of all three families grew up calling all the other parents aunts and uncles. We envied Larry and Debbie because they received a present every day of Hanukkah. They envied our Christmas tree.
Parenting was different then. The dog was frequently our babysitter. Fortunately, he was a smart dog. One day he came running home to get Mom and bring her and Aunt Barbara through some back yards and into the woods down to the Farm River that formed the western boundary of the development where Barbara's daughter Debbie was crying because my brother Robert was trapped in the middle of the stream with his snowsuit snagged on a branch. They were around three years old at the time. I would often ride my bike twenty miles or so round trip two towns over, mostly on back roads but occasionally on the state highway, just exploring. I never told anyone. I was eight or nine.
As the '50s came to an end, the state completed a new highway (the Connecticut Turnpike, I-95) east along the shore, opening up formerly isolated beach towns for expansion. We moved further out, leapfrogging Guilford, to Madison.
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