Open Writing

If you have not visited the USA’s north eastern coastal states, but perhaps have read about New England, as those states are collectively known, you might have been left with a sense that they are all about tourism, fishing, lobster dinners, boating and skiing. Movies such as “White Christmas,” “The Perfect Storm,” and “The Whales of August” played a large part in reinforcing this idea. But whilst it is true that these elements play a large role in defining the New England states, some of them have personalities that are quite different, and Connecticut is one.

Traveling east from New York City, Connecticut is the first New England state you encounter, and it is this proximity that explains some of the State’s atypical characteristics. Towns like Old Greenwich, Darien and Norwalk are looked upon as part of New York City’s greater metropolitan area, and serve as bedroom communities for people who work in the City. As a result, those towns lack the salty, homespun atmosphere that the unknowing expect from the region, and instead manifest a high degree of sophistication and prosperity.

The existence of a good rail service from Grand Central Station in New York to all the coastal Connecticut towns has had the effect of further distorting the New England paradigm. As New York City real estate values have escalated beyond all reason, people who work in the City have become inured to the idea of longer and longer rail commutes in order to find affordable housing. This trend has been going on for a number of years, so now, if you close your eyes in a restaurant, the accents would persuade you that it is in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, rather than Old Greenwich CT.

The town of Milford, where I spend summers on my boat, is perhaps the limit of endurance for most commuters, at least for now, being about a 2 hour train ride from New York. However, Milford, in common with its immediate neighbors, Stratford and New Haven, has not resembled a stereotypical New England city for decades. It’s a manufacturing community, and has been home for years to such international companies as Sikorsky Aerospace, who design and build many types of helicopter, most famously the Blackhawk that was featured in the movie “Blackhawk Down.”

Avco Lycoming is another well known company in aeronautical circles that made aircraft engines, and latterly, small jet engines for use in army tanks. Both Sikorsky and Avco, which are both located on the boundary between Milford and Stratford, are now part of the conglomerate, United Technologies. Raybestos, a major manufacturer of asbestos products was also here until the plant was closed due to the suspected connection between asbestos and some forms of cancer.

As a whole, Connecticut’s economy has been shaped more by manufacturing and agriculture than by tourism and commercial fishing. This is in part due to the topography. The areas inland from Connecticut’s Long Island shore are generally at much higher elevations, and over millennia, water has flowed from these hilly catchments to the coast, carving fast flowing and powerful rivers into the rock.

This “gift of nature” was a boon to the settlers, first for powering flour and corn mills, then later, the textile factories. Textile manufacturing, in turn, spawned textile machinery companies. The town of Derby on the Housatonic River is a perfect, capsule example of this era – old abandoned textile mills alongside the decaying plants and foundries of the machinery makers. Powerful unions, high taxes and a failure to move with the times drove these companies out of Connecticut, first to the Carolinas then later offshore, and allowed more innovative companies from Germany and Asia to dominate their markets.

The Housatonic is one of Connecticut’s three major rivers, and flows from western Massachusetts to Stratford on Long Island Sound. Along its 149 mile course it falls 1430 feet to sea level. Though the industry it supported is mostly gone, it continues to provide a significant amount of hydro-electric power. The Yale University boat house is located on one of few calm stretches, and the skulling crews can often be seen practicing there.

The Connecticut River, with a length of 470 miles, is the longest of the three, and rises in the faraway mountains of New Hampshire. It is also the most industrialised due to its superior navigability. Now, industry and the State are partnering to rehabilitate long stretches of the River’s banks to attract boaters and other tourists.

The third river, the Thames, which here is pronounced just as it is spelled, is the shortest, but is wide and deep at its mouth, and is the only one to provide direct access to the Atlantic. This probably contributes to the presence of the United States Coast Guard Academy, a U.S. Navy submarine base, and the Electric Boat submarine shipyard, all of which are located on the river.

The Electric Boat Company has been the primary builder of submarines for the United States Navy for well over 100 years, and in its recent history has built the USA’s nuclear submarine fleet. Sadly, one of its creations, the Thresher, was lost with all 129 hands during deep-dive trials southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 8,400 feet of water. A simple white stone column at the mouth of the River commemorates the loss.

If I have given the impression that Connecticut is all business, rest assured there are plenty of picturesque places to see, and some of the most dramatically beautiful and varied countryside in the US. Along the shoreline are the picture postcard towns everyone expects. Old Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River was where Katherine Hepburn, a doughty New Englander, called home for many years until she died there at 96.

Further east, Stonington looks like any New England harbor should – a massive granite breakwater surrounding a harbor full of lobster boats and pleasure craft, backed by grey and white clap board houses, and banks of blue, violet and white hydrangeas. Just around the corner, Mystic Seaport dates back to the whaling times of the 1800’s and has been preserved as a living maritime museum. If you’d like to know what it was like to crew aboard a three-masted whaler, just step aboard a beautifully restored version of the real thing.

Connecticut is ranked the 48th state in terms of area, being only 110 miles long by 70 miles wide, but is crammed with diversity in that relatively small area. Timeless seafaring towns rub elbows with bustling business and manufacturing centers, and wealthy residential communities tucked in amongst well kept farms. And if you’re people-watcher, you may just catch a glimpse of Merrill Streep, or Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, or Gene Wilder; some of the many personalities who maintain homes here.

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