Chapter 3 - Bridgeport, CT

In the fall of 1960, we moved to Bridgeport, CT. Dad had lost his business, gone to work for a friend, Al Booth, at a factory in Willington, CT (156 River Road, Willington). Al sold the business to Stewart Die Casting, and they shut down the business. Dad had a job with them in Bridgeport. We eventually moved to a house on Harvey Street, almost across the street from my new school, Edison Elementary School (115 Boston Terrace, Bridgeport). It was a traumatic time. I had started 6^th grade in Coventry with my friends, and now I was in an inner-city school.

Bridgeport was a city of 156,748 in 1960. Coventry was less than 5% of that number. Big city, no friends, unknown territory - what could go wrong?

We lived in a house like this on Harvey Street.

During the winter of '60-'61 the snow was almost up to the roof of the one story part of the school.

Edison Elementary School. To me it seemed like a prison.

School was terrible. I was the new kid. At least a quarter of the kids in the class were black. I didn’t consider myself a racist but I didn’t know any blacks in Coventry. One kid was 15, almost 16 (I was 11). He was waiting to turn 16 so he could quit school. I remember he had a hole in his forehead (covered with flesh, just a hole in the skull) that pulsed when he got angry. Scared the hell out of me. The rumor was he'd knifed another kid for making fun of him. I swear, half the kids in my class were older than I was. 

This was the first school I'd attended that had a strict dress code. I had to wear a dress shirt and tie. The girls had to wear either a dress, or a skirt and a blouse. No jeans. It also had separate entrances for boys and girls.

One of the strangest experiences I had at Edison was the day they brought a "cowboy" in for entertainment. He showed us how to rope a cow. Who was going to rope a cow in industrial Bridgeport?

It was a terrible winter, cold and a lot of snow. The Edison Elementary School is a two-story building. On the Birdsley Street side, there is a one-story addition; the snow was almost up to the roof of that addition. There was no school the day after the big snow. My brother Doug and I went over to the school yard to play in the snow. Doug climbed up on the roof of the one-story part and jumped feet-first into the snow. He got stuck. I frantically dug him out with my hands; his legs were blue from the cold and he could barely walk.

I was a street crossing monitor while at school. I got to wear a vest and a sash. I made friends with one of the other crossing guards. He was into football, I wasn't. He convinced me to "play" football in the snow. 

My sister, Sandy, went to Harding High School. It must have been weird for her there as well. It was overcrowded, so overcrowded that they had to have a split schedule, morning and afternoon schedules. My only memory of the school was of going to a football game; it must have been Homecoming or Thanksgiving because it was a big deal.

The house we lived in was okay. It was probably built in the 1940s. Bridgeport was an industrial town, so it, like all the others in the area, was probably built to house defense industry workers. We never knew for sure, but based on the small vineyard in the backyard and the wine press in the basement, our house most likely was originally owned by Italians.

The worst part of Bridgeport was that my parents’ marriage disintegrated there. I’m sure their marriage was not in great shape before, but it ended in Bridgeport. Before we moved to Bridgeport, my dad lived there during the week, and I guess he met someone. Dad moved out in November, but he moved back in for Christmas. I remember hearing my mom and dad, not fighting but talking in their bedroom (my room, that I shared with my brother Doug was next to theirs). Mom cried a lot. Dad moved out for good after Christmas.

It wasn't that long after Dad moved out that we moved back to Coventry. We packed what we could into our rusty '56 Ford Ranch Wagon, and the rest, including Mom's upright Baldwin piano, was taken by movers.

We moved into a second-floor apartment on South Street, in Coventry. The three of us kids finished up the school year in Coventry. We were home, but not really home.

Moving to Bridgeport was the beginning of the downfall of our family. None of us was ever the same.