Sailboat off Falmouth, Mass.

This view of a sailboat is off Falmouth, Mass., looking across the water towards Martha’s Vineyard. A reminder of our memories of summers past, and a reminder that this last winter is now past, too, even if it doesn’t feel like it, yet. Better days are coming.

Candlepin Bowling

The three objects above are identifiable probably only to New Englanders. They are, of course, candlepin bowling balls. The sport created in New England is played only here and in some of the Canadian Maritimes.

The sport actually is less popular in Rhode Island and Connecticut, but I’d love to hear from our friends in these states to know if they’ve been candlepin bowling in their communities, or if it’s duckpin they prefer. Or ten-pin, which some New Englanders call “big balls.”

We have Justin White to thank for this sport, who in 1879 bought a billiard and bowling business in Worcester, and developed the game. Bowling of one form or another had been around since people lived in caves, but Mr. White made some refinements, and this particular game’s popularity took off.


For our friends not familiar with candlepin bowling, the game is a bit harder than ten-pin bowling (big balls). The pins are more narrow and streamlined (like candles), the balls are smaller (like grapefruit). The balls can frequently pass right through the spaces between the pins and hit nothing, prompting much harassment from fellow bowlers.

Ten-pin? Heaving a giant ball at a bunch of fat pins, of course you’re going to knock something down. Big deal.

Each game in candlepin is called a string, and a bowler gets three tries each box to knock ‘em down. We leave pins up in configurations called “the four horsemen” or “spread eagle” or a “half Worcester”.

Many of us grew up watching Don Gillis on “Candlepin Bowling” on TV. For more on candlepin bowling, have a look at this website.

Hartford - Insurance Capitol

A children’s coloring book from years ago taught about the 50 US state capitols. Each page in the coloring book featured an iconic image to color about each state capitol. I think Boston’s picture was of a Pilgrim, or possibly a Minuteman. State capitols from the Midwest featured ears of corn or Abraham Lincoln, or the St. Louis Arch. There were images of Alaska and Kansas, Florida orange groves, of fishing boats, the Liberty Bell, oil rigs, cowboys, and lobstermen.

The page for Hartford, Connecticut had a picture of an insurance policy.

Once called the insurance capitol of the world, Hartford continues to host many insurance company headquarters, and it is still a major industry here.

Here we have Travelers, Aetna, CIGNA, Phoenix Mutual, and of course, The Hartford. Some companies, like MetLife and MassMutual have moved out to the suburbs. Those that remain occupy buildings that are bastions, famous for their architure.

Aetna’s headquarters is considered the world’s largest colonial revial-style building. Above we have a shot of the distinctive Traveler’s building. Contrasting these traditional architectural forms, is the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Building, a modern structure reputed to be the first two-sided building in the world, and as such, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Aetna issued its first life insurance policy in 1850. According to the website of The Hartford, among its most famous customers was Robert E. Lee, who in 1859 took insurance out on his home, which as General of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War, he lost when the Union Army began to bury its dead in his front yard. His home is now Arlington National Cemetery. One wonders if he was insured for Civil War.

President Abraham Lincoln also took insurance with The Hartford out on his home back in Springfield, Illinois in 1861, which he would never see again, after his Presidendency ended with his assanation.

In 1890 Buffalo Bill Cody collected on a claim after a fire on his property. In 1920, the same day Babe Ruth was traded by the Red Sox to the Yankees, Ruth bought a “sickness” policy to protect his income should illness threaten his career. The Red Sox should have bought a Curse of the Bambino Policy the same day.

In 1947, the Junior Fire Marshal Program began, and many of us were taught in school the basics of fire prevention, and took home one of these little toy badges. Check out eBay sometime and you’ll see many of them still exist.

Perhaps some of you fans of Old Time Radio will remember “Johnny Dollar” an insurance investigator working out of a fictional Hartford-based insurance company.

Next year The Hartford will celebrate its 200th anniversary. There is more to Hartford than the insurance industry, but page in a coloring book devoted to an insurance policy must tell us it’s at least as important as a cowboy or a Minuteman. Probably not as much fun to color, though.

Frog Bridge - Willimantic, Connecticut

If you’re ever driving alongside the Willimantic River and you happen to notice a large frog sitting on the top of what looks like a spool of thread, or a couple of them, you’re either very tired or you’ve arrived at Frog Bridge.

Willimantic, Connecticut used to be known as Thread City because the American Thread Company had a mill here and it was once one of the largest producers of thread in the world.

The frogs are for something else entirely. They don’t have anything to do with the thread.

An event during the French and Indian War, back in 1754, is the purpose for those big frog sculptures. Hearing a frightening cacophony of heaven knows what one night, the villagers grabbed their flintlocks expecting to fend off an Indian Attack.

There was nothing. Nothing but the wild noises from a wilderness.

The next morning they discovered the horrific noise was caused by hundreds upon hundreds of frogs who were battling over water in a nearby dried up pond. The survivors of this Battle of Frog Pond as it came to be known, hipity-hopped down to the Willimantic River, and one presumes, with much relief to all, frogs and people.

In the late 1990s when it was time for a new bridge, these sculptures of frog and thread were plunked as proud symbols of Willimantic’s history, and maybe Willimantic’s sense of humor. Their ancestors might have been frightened out of their beds by the froggy battle, but their descendents got a new four-lane bridge, and the last laugh.

Colonial St. Patrick's Day

Though St. Patrick’s Day has become identified with Irish nationalism and Roman Catholic observance of a saint’s day, this holiday’s origins in America were Protestant and British.

It began in Boston in 1737, and for the rest of the story, allow me to refer you to my article posted at Suite101.com on the colonial St. Patrick’s Day.

The Blizzard of 1888

The above photo (in public domain), is of Grand Street in New Britain, Connecticut in the aftermath of the Blizzard of 1888. During the blizzard, one of the worst nor’easters to ever affect New England, a person couldn’t see the hand in front of his face. Many died walking only feet away from shelter, becoming disoriented in the storm. It was called The Great White Hurricane.

The photo was a stereopticon picture published by F. W. Allderige of New Britain. It is not the only lasting souvenir. Shocked by how Boston was incapacitated by the storm, as were so many other cities, plans were set into motion to create that city’s, and this nation’s first, subway.

The storm barreled up through New Jersey and New York, its origins on March 11th, and the worst of it would last some three days. Many people were trapped in their homes, or at work, or on the train for a solid week. People burned whatever they could to keep warm, and ate whatever they could find. Four hundred people died, at least half that in New York. About four feet of snow fell in New England, and the drifts were measured up to 40 feet high. Winds of 54mph were reported at Block Island.

The rural parts of New England fared a bit better than the cities, where people on farms were more apt to make do on what they put by. City people reliant on infrastrure, as well as on jobs in stores and factories, went hungry quickly when their work places closed. Food supplies ran low in Springfield, Boston, Worcester. Most people heated their homes with coal, and that ran low, too. Trains were stuck, and couldn’t bring in more.

When it was time to dig out and clean up, the snow was dug out by hand and hauled away on horse-drawn sledges. Slow work.

It was a deceptive storm from the first, as the days preceding it were springlike and warm with spring officially a little over a week away. When the storm did arrive, it came first in the form of rain. Then the bottom fell out of the thermometer, and Mother Nature let us know again, and she does often, that spring happens when she says so and not when the calendar does.

G. Fox & Co. - Hartford, Connecticut

Above is something we don’t see too often anymore, a hatbox. It is from a store we no longer have here in New England, Hartford’s grand and famous G. Fox & Company.

G. Fox holds a special place in the memory of its employees and especially its thousands upon thousands of customers. It was unique among many grand department stores which stood as flagships for thriving cities in that it never did branch out into the suburbs, not when it was operated by the Fox family. There were never any outlet or branch stores of G. Fox, just the one. It was among the first in New England to adopt progressive policies for the treatment of its employees, and was among the first to hire African-Americans in administrative positions.

It was also run by a single family, and during its golden period from the late 1930s to the mid-1960s, by a single remarkable woman.

Beatrice Fox Auerbach was the third generation of the Fox family to run the store. It had been founded by her grandfather Gershon Fox as a dry goods store in 1847 as I & G Fox. Hartford was a burgeoning city in the late 1800s. It more than thrived; it catapulted itself into one of the most prosperous and commercially energetic cities in the country.

G. Fox went from father to son, and then for a time, granddaughter Beatrice along with her husband George Auerbach joined the business. When Mr. Auerbach died in 1927, Beatrice ran the store equally with her father, Moses Fox. The store was now an 11-story Main Street building put up after a fire destroyed the prior building in 1917.

When her father died in 1938, Beatrice took the helm alone, and was responsible for guiding the business to its golden age. There were many expansions, renovations to the building, the adding of air conditioning, the application of Mrs. Auerbach’s elegant taste to the décor, and the addition of host of services to the customer including phone orders and home delivery.

Many recall eating at the luncheonette in the store, or the more grand tea room called The Connecticut Room with its murals of 19th century Connecticut. Her own farm in Bloomfield supplied produce and dairy products.

What Mrs. Auerbach displayed in her approach to her running of G. Fox was more than a willingness to reinvest in her business, but also an eagerness to invest in her community. Her interest in Hartford and her staunch support of the community was famous.

G. Fox was sold to the May Company in the late 1960s, and then closed in 1992. Its like may not be seen again.

A recent comment on the post from last year about Springfield’s Forbes and Wallace (see here) added a wonderful personal insight to the description of that store. I hope anyone who remembers working, or shopping, at G. Fox (lots of folks took the train north from the Connecticut shore and south from the Springfield, Mass. area just to shop at the store) will stop by with your memories. Memories are all we have now of G. Fox. We might as well dig them out and dust them off.

For more on G. Fox, have a look at this Connecticut Historical Society website.