Open Writing

Sitting on my boat in Milford harbor, Connecticut, I’m surrounded by evidence that, like most thriving communities in the US, the only constant is change. This contrasts sharply with the England I left 34 years ago, where change was slow to happen and limited in scope, though I know that’s not quite true today. Perhaps my impression of those times is a little skewed by the fact that I lived close by the Peak District National Park, where building permits were almost impossible to obtain, and very closely controlled.

As an example, a farmer I knew wanted to build a house on his own land for his daughter, but was refused planning permission to build anything other than farm buildings. So guess what. His daughter later moved into a beautiful house on her father’s farm that looked just like a cow barn from the outside! I traveled extensively throughout the British Isles for business, and it was a great comfort then to return to places after an absence and find them unchanged. By contrast, I’m now unable to find my way around the city I lived in for 40 years.

Milford is a microcosm of what has happened to most cities up and down the USA’s east coast. For generations, the urban and suburban stretches that fronted water; the Atlantic, the Sound, or the rivers, were prized only for industrial use, or for railroad rights of way. The heart of Milford, “The Green,” is twenty minutes walk from the beach, and if you didn’t know, you’d never guess that the town surrounds a busy harbor.

In the past, other than a sewage treatment plant, the land around the harbor was almost entirely given over to companies that processed and distributed the clams, lobsters and oysters brought in by fishing boats. The boats still ply their trade here, but the processing plants now are elsewhere, nudged out by expensive houses and condos. The sewage plant has been converted to a small park and municipal marina.

The buildings and facilities of the yacht club, where I keep my boat, sit on what was once just a beach adjacent to Fort Trumbull at the mouth of the harbor. Built in 1776, during the War of Independence to guard against the incursion of English war-ships, which in fact never came here, no remnants of the Fort remain.

Just outside the harbor mouth is heavily wooded, uninhabited Charles Island. Looking at it today, one could easily believe it had always been that way, but it has a colorful history all its own. In 1835, the first permanent residence was constructed on the island by John Harris. Since his death the island has had several owners. In 1852 it was purchased by Elizur Pritchard of Waterbury, Connecticut, who turned Harris’s large house into a summer resort known originally as Charles Island House. The name was changed later to Ansantawae House after the American Indian tribe that summered on the Island until their extinction.

After the American Civil War ended, the resort closed and the island was leased to the George Miles Company as a base for their fish fertilizer operations. After the Miles Company left it was relatively unused until the 1930s, when the Dominican Order opened a religious retreat there. The Aquinas Retreat consisted of a chapel, small cabins for guests, a central dining hall and religious shrines located along paths throughout the island. The retreat closed in the late 1930s, but some relics remain on the island, which since those days has been uninhabited.

I came to Milford first in 1993. Back then there were at the most two places where one could eat breakfast on a weekend. Now there are probably a dozen. On holiday weekends, the few other restaurants that existed were closed. These days we have a choice of Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican and Spanish cuisine, represented in twenty or thirty establishments, open most days. A gargantuan shopping Mall has been built along with two large supermarkets.

At least some of these changes have come about as a result of people moving to the area who have jobs in New York City. Housing costs in that City are astronomically high, so workers are now more willing to endure the two hour commute by train to obtain an affordable place to live. As I look around the harbor from the vantage point of my boat, the realization dawns that, almost imperceptibly, even this panorama has changed extensively since I first came here.

Almost every piece of undeveloped land that remained now has a house on it. Some of the houses are tucked into locations so tight that two houses very often have to share a driveway. Already large houses that existed when I first came have been extended and remodeled into very grand residences. The waterfront bristles with gantries and other contrivances constructed over the band of tidewater marsh that separates the homes from the water, to give the residents access to a boat dock.

Do I mind the changes? No, not really. It all looks quite splendid, and the view didn’t cost me a penny. Now, thanks to the incomers I can get breakfast out, even on Easter Sunday if I want, and that’s a bonus.

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