Life With Father
Mom had apparently been in love with Dad for a while, since before his truncated failed first marriage even, although she would never discuss the gap in time between Dad hitchhiking to visit while she was a nursing student before 1947 and their marriage in 1949. The thing she did know about Dad was that he was artistic, a good dancer and something of a dreamer.
Dad always thought of himself as something of an entrepreneur, an independent small businessman. When the family started to grow and they bought their first house in East Haven, Dad set up a one-man advertising agency in New Haven, using his artistic talents. It struggled at first, and money was tight, but that did not stop the romantic in Dad from buying an upright piano for Mom for an anniversary present one year. She was furious. (I only found out many, many years and many, many piano lessons later.) Mom was always the practical, accountable partner.
Mom and Dad both loved to socialize and throw parties especially if Mom could come up with a theme. They held costume parties, luaus, scavenger hunts and hallowe'en get togethers. One party in the 50s was a hobo gathering where each guest (in appropriate raggedy costume) was given a large can full of stew and a smaller can for drinks. One scavenger hunt, apparently in drag, covered five towns and may have involved the police. (Rumors vary.) There is a photo, which I have seen but can not put my hands on just now, of Dad wearing a German pickelhaube helmet from WWI, three sizes too small, and blowing a bugle of the type used by postal riders back when there were postal riders.
Dad's agency grew and was successful for a while. His largest client was the A.C. Gilbert Co. makers of American Flyer trains and Erector Sets.
With the opening of the Connecticut Turnpike (I95), the shoreline east of New Haven became available for development and the family moved to a small (12-25 houses) development deep in the woods of North Madison at the end of 1961. The house was an ugly modern split level with too small windows. Mom proceeded to paint the main wall in the living room purple and used an enormous sponge to daub large (also purple) splotches on the wall of the master bedroom. She also created a large (3 foot tall) jack of diamonds playing card to hang on the family room wall. The card was lost when we moved to our second house in town, a large post-colonial sea captains house built 1798, but it was found and appeared in the local newspaper chained to the ankle of the reporter's wife.
(The garage on the left is at street level and had a flat roof. The room at right was originally a screened in porch. The house is visible only because the huge and ancient horse chestnut tree is gone.)
Unfortunately, in 1967, A.C. Gilbert went bankrupt and it turned out they were Dad's only sizable client. Both Mom and Dad tried various desperation measures to bring in income. Mom had a successful but short-lived business making pre-baked pie shells out of the house and had them in various stores along the shore line but, even with us kids assembling and labeling the boxes daily, exhaustion set in before enough capital was available for serious expansion and the project collapsed. At one point Dad sold bait to fishing supply shops along the shore. Eventually, they had to declare bankruptcy and we moved to our third house in town.
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