1988-2003 The Enfield Pets: Part 1

Rocky and friends Continue reading

In 1988 Rocky and Jake, the two cats that had adopted us as caretakers a couple of years earlier, made the move with Sue and me from Rockville to Enfield. After spending their first winter indoors in Rockville, they had been allowed to roam in the neighborhood of the Elks Club. They always came back to one of our doors when they wanted food, shelter, or a massage. They seemed to have learned what was dangerous, although for Rocky earning the knowledge probably knocked him down to eight lives, as explained here.

Neither seemed to have much difficult adjusting to the change of scenery. There was so much more for them to explore, both inside and out. Rocky particularly liked the fact that when he was outside he could leap up to the windowsill near the dining area and gaze through the window at the activity going on inside. After we started opening the window for him when he did so, this became his preferred form of ingress. Rocky was a real leaper. None of our other cats ever attempted this feat.

Rocky and I watched football games. Popcorn was one of the few human foods he did not like.

Rocky loved to be petted. His favorite technique was the full-body massage, but he would accept any kind of petting by just about anyone whom he knew well.

Jake was a much more private cat. He always seemed to pick a corner and sit there silently analyzing the situation. He tolerated a little petting as the price to be paid for a constantly full bowl of Purina Cat Chow.

The night of October 31, 1988, was a sad one. Sue and I went out for supper, as I remember, and when we came back we found Jake’s dead body on the street. I buried him in the yard, but I don’t remember where.

Sue and I did not feel devastated at Jake’s demise. We had lost quite a few pets by that time. We liked Jake, and we missed him, but neither of us had formed a strong attachment to him.


I don’t remember where our next pet, Buck Bunny, a very large grey and white rabbit with long floppy ears, came from. I am quite certain that I had nothing to do with the acquisition, but Sue had no recollection of us even having a rabbit during this era until I showed her his photo. Buck’s home was a large wire cage in the westernmost small bedroom. The barnboard bookshelves were also in that room. It was a sort of library, but it held as many games as books.

We kept Buck in his cage most of the time because, like most rabbits, he had an instinct to gnaw on things. Before we released him from the cage, we placed all electrical cables up out of his reach. That was possible because, unlike Slippers (described here), he was not much of a leaper.


Sue visited her friends Diane and Phil Graziose in St. Johnsbury, VT, pretty regularly. Sometimes I joined her, but just as often she went by herself. On one of those solo trips she brought home a tiny tan and white kitten. It was so small that it fit in the breast pocket of her flannel shirt. the mandatory state uniform of Vermont.

The kitten was one of many feline denizens of the trailer park in which the Grazioses lived. It probably should have been allowed to nurse for another week or so. However, this was probably the best chance that it would ever get to avoid spending a Vermont winter outdoors. The situation worked out well. We gave him milk for a few days, and then he found the bowl of Cat Chow and the water bowl on his own.

Rocky enjoyed exploring the big yard.

Rocky had little use for the pipsqueak, but the kitten immediately made friends with Buck Bunny. They really hit it off. The kitten liked to sit near Buck’s cage, and when Buck came out they played together or just snuggled.

When the kittne was more mature we got it fixed, of course. By then it had become rather obnoxious, and so we were not a bit surprised when we learned that it was a tom. I named him Woodrow1 after Woodrow F. Call, one of the protagonists of my favorite novel of all time, Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry.

After his medical procedure Woodrow decided that I was his buddy. He loved to take naps next to me. Almost any time that I went into the bedroom and got into bed, Woodrow climbed up to join me.

Meanwhile, Rocky had claimed Sue as his BFF. When Sue and I sat in the living room chairs (purchased used from Harland-Tine Advertising, which is described here, and draped with white cloth) Woodrow sat on my lap and Rocky found Sue’s. The two cats were totally different.

A very young Woodrow.
  • Woodrow liked all people. Whenever anyone visited us, Woodrow greeted them immediately. Rocky usually hid.
  • Rocky loved almost any kind of human food; Woodrow liked only Cat Chow and ice cream.
  • Woodrow was a hunter; Rocky preferred to snuggle. He exalted in his full-body massages.
  • Woodrow liked to be carried with his back down and all four legs up. Rocky did not mind being picked up, but he insisted on the chest-to-chest method.
  • Woodrow liked the top of his head to be rubbed hard, but any other style of petting annoyed him.
  • Woodrow climbed trees (although he usually waited to be helped down); Rocky never did.
  • Rocky was mostly silent. In his later years Woodrow gave off all manner of soft sounds as he walked around. I called them his “play-by-play”. Except for that one time in the flea bath he preferred not to speak English.

Woodrow and Rocky eventually became buddies. When I returned home after work, they were almost always together on the lawn next to the driveway waiting for me. The sight of them always cheered up, no matter how rough the day had been. I often sang to myself, “with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard.” Our house was indeed a very fine house.

However, Woodrow did not abandon his first friend, the lagomorph. He still like to lie or sit next to Buck’s cage, and when we let Buck out, the two still socialized.

Actually, they socialized too much. Buck tried to hump the fully grown Woodrow whenever they were together, and Woodrow put up with it. It wasn’t just a phase, either.

Sue and I decided that we needed to get Buck Bunny fixed. I loaded him inside his cage into Sue’s car, and she drove him to the vet. She explained the problem to the doctor. He examined Buck and reported to Sue that “Buck” was actually a female.

Sue asked him why the rabbit was engaging in these activities if he was not even a male. The vet replied that he was only a veterinarian, not a psychiatrist. So, we still let the two buddies hang out together. If the rabbit (who was by then officially renamed Clara, after my mother’s mother, Clara Cernech, who had died in 1980) got too amorous, we just put her back in her cage.

I don’t remember the circumstance of Clara’s death. She was a French Lop, a breed with a lifespan of only five years. She was fully grown when we adopted her.

My favorite moments with Woodrow and Rocky were when I came home for lunch in the summertime. Both cats napped under bushes. Rocky customarily slept in the cluster of forsythia bushes in the northeast corner of our lot. Woodrow favored the burning bush halfway between the house and the driveway to Hazard Memorial School.

The one-piece table in the background was repurposed as a place to pile dead branches when we got the red one.

I liked to eat my lunch while sitting at the picnic table in the yard and reading a book.When I brought my food (no matter what was on the menu) out to the picnic table, Rocky stumbled groggily out from his resting spot. He sat on the ground next to me for a while and looked up hopefully. Then he raised his front paws up to the bench and nudged my elbow with his snout. Eventually he often leapt up on the table. He knew it was not allowed, but he could not help himself.

I always broke down and gave him a tiny piece of meat. No matter how small the morsel was, he purred loudly while he ate it, got down, and retreated back to his bush to finish his nap.

A mole’s-eye view of Woodrow.

After lunch I usually took a short nap in the yard on a mat or blanket. As soon as I had made myself comfortable, Woodrow emerged from his bush to check out what I was doing. I always slept on my side. After I had assumed the sleeping position, Woodrow walked up so that he was about a foot from my chest. He then flopped over toward me, and we both stacked a few z’s.

In inclement weather they repeated their tag-team act. Rocky begged for food at the table in the dining area, and Woodrow climbed up on the bed to join me for a nap.

The boudoir with the modesty curtain held open by the hamper.

When he was not napping with me, Woodrow moved from place to place in search of the best locations for sleeping. One of his favorite places was on a towel in the small storage area in the bathroom. He arrived there by jumping up on the clothes hamper. He then moved aside the curtain with one of his front paws and sprang into the niche. I called this obscure hidey-hole “Woodrow’s boudoir”. Occasionally when someone used the toilet or the shower, he startled people when he stuck out his head from behind the curtain to look at them with sleepy eyes.

Woodrow preferred Cat Chow to all other forms of food except ice cream. The only time that he paid much attention to Sue was when she sat down with a bowl of ice cream. Then he became more of a beggar than Rocky.

Although Woodrow loved to hunt, he was not possessive about his catches and kills. He often was seen parading around the house with a mouse in his mouth. Sometimes he dropped one at my feet or Sue’s. I had to pick them up quickly. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the poor crittur was still alive. I released many outside; after that they were on their own.

Two were distinctive. One day I was taking my daily postprandial nap in the bed. Unbeknownst to me Woodrow brought into the bedroom his latest prey, a small bird. He silently entered, crawled under the bed with his catch in his mouth, positioned himself directly below my head, and commenced to crunch the bones between his jaws. It was a very disconcerting addition to my dreamscape. Needless to say he left the remains beneath the bed for me to clean up.

A dove only weighs about 4 oz. Woodrow could carry one easily.

On another day I came home for lunch to find that Woodrow had apparently brought home a guest, a full-grown mourning dove. Evidently Woodrow had lost his appetite, but the bird may have thought that he was on still on the menu. He flew about, crashing into one window after another in a panicked attempt to escape. I finally chased him into the library, where I opened the window and closed the door. When I came home after work there was no sign of him. We have never found a cadaver, and so I presume the dove found his way out.

Imagine him with 20 sharp claws.

Woodrow was the only pet that we ever had who clearly had multiple personality disorder. His was more like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than The Three Faces of Eve.

I called Woodrow’s alter-ego Nutso Kitty. Whenever he entered this state his eyes glazed over, and he stalked and attacked anything that moved. One day Woodrow was placidly napping with me when, unbeknownst to me, he underwent the demonic transformation. I must have moved my hand a little. He pounced on it with all twenty of his switchblades extended. After literally throwing him out of the room, I rushed to the bathroom for first aid. My hand throbbed in pain for a few days. Fortunately it was my left hand, which has never been much good for anything except typing.

This even looks like Woodrow.

In 1992 or 1993 Sue and I made a trip to Dallas to pitch TSI’s AdDept software system to Neiman Marcus (described here). We then drove our rental car to Austin so that Sue could visit her high school friend Marlene Soul. Marlene exhibited a toy she used to keep her cats active. It was a long very limp stick with a feather on the end. With every slightest move of the hand the cat was drawn inexorably to the dancing feather.

As soon as I got home I purchased one so that I could torture Woodrow. He absolutely could not resist it. After he chased it for at least an hour he hid under a chair so that he could not see it. I pulled it out every time that I thought about that bloody left hand.

We had to take Woodrow to the vet twice to patch him up after fights. Both times he had abscesses that the vet had to drain and then sew up. After the first one, I tried to teach Woody to keep his left up, but he got tagged again a few months later. I never got to see how the other cat did in these scrapes, but I doubt that he escaped without some damage.


I don’t really have many good stories about Rocky. He was consistently a very sweet cat for all of the eighteen years that I knew him. He never got into a fight, or at least he never got seriously hurt. When we brought him to the vet for shots he went completely limp when we put him on the examination table. The vet called him “catatonic cat.”

Once, however, Rocky was missing for three days. Sue and were quite concerned. I had walked up and down the nearby streets looking for him several times. I also took the car and expanded the search area. Sue and I searched everywhere in the house. No luck. However, when I checked the garage for the third time Rocky came slowly out from behind some junk. He followed me inside and nonchalantly drank some water. Within a day he showed no sign of any problem.

How, you may ask, could the cat have hidden in the garage? Why not just pull out the car and search thoroughly? Well, there was no car in the garage. It was full of Sue’s junk, packed from floor to ceiling, as is her new garage as I write this. A thorough search of the garage would have entailed taking all of the junk out piece by piece and piling it somewhere on the yard. Then, whether I found him or not, I would have had to reassemble the mess in precisely the way that I found it.

I did call for Rocky each time that I opened the garage door, but he must have been asleep or just obstinate.


Show no mercy!

Both Rocky and Woodrow stayed outside a great deal during the summer. They both were tormented by fleas every year. I felt great sympathy for them. They were obviously suffering terribly. I tried to help them.

  • I tried to pick the fleas off. During each session, I slew several dozen by squeezing them between my fingernails. I could hear their shells crack, but a few days later there would be just as many.
  • I tried flea collars. Rocky, who must certainly have had a set of bolt-cutters secreted away in the bushes, always showed up without it within a few hours. The collar helped a little with Woodrow, but there was no guarantee that the fleas would cross it. He also hated the collar, but Rocky would not lend out his tools.
  • I tried flea powder. It helped a little for a short time.
  • Flea baths actually worked, but both cats hated them. After a short struggle Rocky submitted meekly, but he also gave me a look that asked what he had done to make me despise him so much. Woodrow, of course, fought me tooth and nail. I had to don gloves and my army field jacket to pick him up. One time—I swear that this is true—he clearly screamed out the word “NO!!!!” as I dipped him in the medicated water in the tub.
Advantage was even better than Frontline.

Of course, if we did not attack them quickly, the fleas got in the carpet, and, after we got them off of the cats we had to “bomb” the house. That was not a bit pleasant.

Fortunately, the flea problem was solved when our vet supplied us with Frontline2, the monthly drops on the back of the neck, at some point in the nineties. I don’t know if there were side effects, but the product sure worked on the fleas. It was great having flea-free cats and a flea-free house.


Not long after Woodrow established residency with us, I bought a cat door and installed it in a window that led to the top of the basement. It was located just below the bathroom window. Just below the window on the basement side was the top of some shelves that were there when we moved in. From the shelves I placed a spare door at a 45° angle to serve as a ramp down to the ping pong table. A box served as a step up to the table or down to the floor.

Rocky seldom used the cat door. He preferred for a human to let him out through one of the doors or in through his favorite window. When he did enter through the cat door, he did not use the ramp. Instead he jumped from the bookshelves to the washing machine and from there to the floor. He exited the house by jumping up on the picnic table and climbing the shelves.

Other cats occasionally tried to use the cat door. Brian Corcoran gave me his Super Soaker, which proved to be very effective at chasing them away. However, the felines were most active at night, and I was not. Occasionally one would get in and help himself to some Purina Cat Chow.

I often heard the distinctive caterwauling of two or more cats that were about to engage in that furious and bloody activity known as a catfight. Once I saw Woodrow in the basement on the bookshelf near the cat door loudly warning a cat not to poke his head through. He definitely meant business. His body was crouched and taut, ready to for action. His right paw was raised with all five claws drawn. He reminded me of Horatius at the bridge.


Ours was indoors, and I only saw him from the rear before he scurried away.

There were a couple of other uninvited guests. One night I heard some very loud munching coming from the hallway. I jumped out of bed, turned on the hall light, and beheld an opossum helping himself to the Cat Chow in a bowl at the other end of the hall. I assume that the opossum was a male since it did not have a dozen babies on its back.He had evidently found his way through the cat door, down to the basement, and up the stairs. My footsteps frightened him enough that he rushed down the stairs, never to be seen again.

The story of the other remarkable intruder can be read here.


Sue and I took quite a few long trips after Rocky and Woodrow moved in, and the cat door was installed. We also invested a few dollars in a gravity-fed Cat Chow dispenser. Whenever we took a trip we left Rocky and Woodrow “home alone”. We provided them with plenty of food and water, and Sue arranged for someone to check on them every few days. This arrangement worked well for our trip to Texas (described here), our cruising tour of Greece and Turkey (described here), our trip to Hawaii in 1997 (described here), our misbegotten adventure in Maine and Canada (described here), and our first tour of Italy in 2003 (described here).

Rocky died later in 2003 at the age of eighteen. I am pretty sure that he used up all nine of his allotted lives. Even though I was much closer to Woodrow for the many years that we had both of them, I cried when Rocky died. He was so tough and such a nice cat. I really missed him.


The story of the Enfield pets continues here.


1. A better choice probably would have been “Augustus”. His personality was much more like the free-spirited Gus McCrae’s than the rigid Woodrow Call’s.

2. I later switched to Advantage II. It was cheaper and worked better.

1985-1999 TSI: Administrative Employees (Rockville & Enfield)

The record-keepers. Continue reading

This may be the most difficult entry for me. I worked with all of these people, but I only worked closely with the last few. I hired only the last few. Sue hired most of the rest.

TSI’s administrative area had much more turnover than any other area. Some of the people whom we hired did nothing but bookkeeping. Some were hired primarily to help with marketing. Some were hired to be Sue’s assistant, which meant they could be doing anything or nothing. I am not even sure what responsibilities some of these people had.

I do not remember interviewing any of these people or talking with Sue about their qualifications or salary. My impression is that they just sort of appeared in the office.

Our first administrative employee was Debbie Priola. Her story is told here. Kate Behart was hired either just before or just after Debbie left. Details of her employment at TSI are posted here. For several years Kate, Denise Bessette, Sue and I were the core group, first in Rockville and then in Enfield. However, we often had additional administrative people—one, two, or even three at a time. I am pretty sure that I have completely forgotten some of them


One of Sue’s primary sources of new employees was our client base. One of the earliest of those hires had been Caroline Harrington, who did the bookkeeping for Darby O’Brien Advertising (DOB) (described here). I never really understood this. I worked closely with Caroline during the installation of the GrandAd system at DOB, and I thought that she did a really good job. One day she must have either called Sue or been called by Sue, and somehow she ended up as our employee. I don’t know why she wanted to work for us. It always seemed to me like a step down from her responsibilities at DOB. Then again, I am not sure how Sue described what her responsibilities at TSI would be.

I did not work much with Caroline in TSI’s office. At the time I was spending at least half of the business hours out of the office at one client or another. When I was in the office I spent most of my time preparing work for Denise or going over work that she had already done. If I had any time left, I spent it writing programs, dealing with support issues, or writing proposals or contracts. Also, I took a nap every day after lunch.

Caroline’s employment did not last very long. I don’t know why she left or where she went; one day I learned that she was no longer working at TSI.


Another person whom Sue does not remember was a young woman who worked for us for one summer between her junior and senior years of college. I don’t remember what she did for us, but I do remember that I was impressed with her. However, the impression was not strong enough to prevent me from forgetting her name.

I had hoped to recruit her as a permanent employee until she told me that she planned to move to Japan after she graduated.


Crater.
Coyne.

I remember absolutely nothing about Linda White, whose name I found on TSI’s payroll for 1989. Sue remembered her. Apparently she worked for us for a week or two. Then one day she went out for lunch and never returned to the office or called. She might be holed up in parts unknown playing cutthroat pinochle with Judge Crater1 and Thomas Coyne2.


I remember Kim Ouellette. We hired her shortly after we moved to Enfield in 1988. I don’t remember what her precise role was at TSI, but I do recall that at Christmas that year she was my “Secret Santa”. She gave me three pairs of wool socks. I lost one of the socks, but I still wear the other pairs on cold winter days.


Chris Vegliante (she/her) worked at Group 4 Design, one of TSI’s clients (described here). I don’t recall what caused her to leave Group 4 and join our staff. Nor do I remember when or why she departed.

No badminton here today.

I remember two things about Chris. I am pretty sure that she came over to our house once, the summer that we decided to host the summer outing at our house in Enfield. I grilled some burgers and dogs, and we set up a badminton net in the yard between two of our maple trees. Those two trees in 2021 have grown to the point that they nearly touch in the middle. No one would consider playing badminton there today.

My other recollection of Chris is about the day in 1988 on which I received two telephone calls from the Hartford Courant. When the second call came, she announced “I think that you won that short story contest!” The whole event is described here.


For a short period in 1989 a woman named Judy Morrill3 worked for TSI, specifically for Sue. She even came over to our house for a visit once. She brought her young son, who was terrified by our cats, Rocky and Woodrow. He screamed for five full minutes.

Both cats were completely harmless.4


Galilee Pease5 (she/her) was a college student who worked for TSI over two summers. She was an excellent employee. Everyone liked working with her. We had much more success with college students than with permanent employees.

When we were looking for someone to help with the Y2K project, she mentioned that her brother Fred, who stayed up all night playing computer games, was available. She warned us that we might not like him.


Bernice Gannuscio6 worked at Keiler Advertising, but she lived in Enfield. She asked us if we might have an opening. I thought that she could be a valuable employee for TSI. The problem was that we wanted her to answer the telephone in the office, but she had hearing problems that prevented her from being able to do this very well. She investigated hearing aids, but none that she could tolerate seemed to work for her.


Titus?

Titus Britt7 had the distinction of being taller than I was and just as skinny. He was also the only Black person who ever applied for a job at TSI. He lived in the southern part of the state, and so the drive to Enfield was considerable. Because he loved his Camaro, he did not mind too much.

I was never quite sure what Titus’s role at TSI was, but when he heard that TSI’s sales rep, Tom Moran, and I were planning to fly to Seattle to demonstrate the AdDept system for The Bon Marché, a department store chain in the northwest, he asked if he could come. I don’t remember why we agreed to this—from a business perspective it made no sense—but we did. I think that he had family there.


Terri.

Terri Provost8 came to work for us in the late eighties. Her previous employer was Colonial Realty, the company that bamboozled thousands of people in Hartford in the late eighties. The scam and its results are described here. Terri was a secretary for William Candelori, one of the company’s principals. Even after the scheme unfolded, she still had great respect for him. He was charged only with tax evasion. The other partners went to prison or committed suicide.

Evidently, although CR treated its investors with disdain, it was very nice to some of its employees. Terri told us that the company took its employees to a casino in (I think) Atlantic City. Her boss even gave her some money with which to gamble. I never adopted such a policy.

Not Terri.

Terri and I went on a sales call in Manhattan once. I wrote about it here.

We had no dress code at TSI. As an army veteran who was forced to wear a uniform at work for eighteen months I felt that this was my right. It was never a problem. Most of us wore shorts in the summer and jeans or something similar in colder weather. On more than one occasion Terri came to work in a short dress and back-seamed stockings. I did not know what to think of this. It seemed totally inappropriate to me, but I have never in my life criticized anyone else’s sense of fashion. I said nothing.

Terri came back to visit the office with her young son.

Terri had a baby while she worked at TSI, but the child died after a few days. She kept a picture of him on her desk. I certainly would not wanted to be reminded of a sad event at work9. I said nothing.

My recollection is that Terri became pregnant again and decided to quit her job at TSI. By then she was working for Michael Symolon. I don’t think that they got along too well. I know that Michael was more than happy to replace her.


The woman that Michael hired to replace Terri was Linda Fieldhouse10. She was a joy to work with, and she seemed to like both Sue and me. I am not sure why she quit. I vaguely remember some health problems.


Two from this can, please.

I remember a woman who worked for us in a period in which both Sue and I seemed to be very tense. Both of us drank coffee, and one of the prime responsibilities of the administrative person was to make sure that the coffee pot was not empty. We always made the coffee with two scoops of regular coffee and two scoops of decaffeinated coffee. This employee did not get the message and made it with four scoops of regular coffee. So, for a week or two, Sue and I consumed twice as much caffeine as we thought.

I think that this may be the same lady whose favorite task was the printing of program listings, a task that required very little skill or knowledge. Mostly it was just making sure that the printer did not jam. Everyone else just let the printer do its thing, but she enjoyed monitoring it.

This lady left TSI soon after the coffee incident was discovered. I don’t remember her name, but I found evidence that someone name Bettijane Kaschuluk11 worked for TSI in 1987. Neither Sue nor I remember anyone with that name.


Ann Locke12, who was married to Sue’s cousin, Jimmy Locke, worked for TSI off and on for a while. I think that she mostly did cleaning. I once remarked that she “brought a little bit of Appalachia to TSI.” Denise later told me that she was shocked when I said this, but she later told me that she understood what I meant.


My sister Jamie was married to Joe Lisella Jr. for the decade or so that she lived in Simsbury, CT, and West Springfield, MA. She worked for TSI for part of that time. Her daughter, Cadie Mapes, also worked for TSI part time. That period is discussed in detail here.


1. Judge Crater disappeared without a trace in 1930. His story is here.

2. Thomas Coyne was scheduled to appear on the fourth episode of the podcast Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone in 2018 . He never showed up or called to cancel. The cast organized an international search that lasted for months but he was never spotted by any “nobodies”. However, I don’t think that any listeners looked form him at the survival school in California that he runs.

3. I think that Judy Morrill still lives in Enfield.

4. This was not strictly true. Rocky never hurt anyone, but Woodrow, although extremely friendly, had an alter-ego whom I called Nutso Kitty. His eyes glazed over, and all bets were off. Once while I was napping Nutso Kitty pounced on my left hand and ravaged it with all twenty claws. I had to throw him out of the bedroom, and I mean that literally.

5. Bernice now goes by Bernice Zampano. Her LinkedIn page is here. It does not include her experience at TSI. I think that she lives in Portland, CT.

6. Galilee is now known as Galilee Simmons. I think that she lives in Utica, NY. Her website is here, but I don’t think that it has been updated in years.

7. I think that this may be Titus Britt’s LinkedIn page. He has had a lot of jobs, but he did not list anything as far back as the nineties. This person does not look as skinny as I still am.

8. Terri Provost, who now goes by Terasia Provost-Darr, in 2021 is a realtor in Vernon, CT. Her LinkedIn page is here. Neither TSI nor Colonial Realty is listed as part of her experience.

The view from my desk.

9. My current office includes pictures of Mark Twain, W.C. Fields, Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, and my photograph of the statue of Constantine’s head in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Nearby are a plush slipper of my guinea pig Chardonnay, action figures of Wonder Woman and Pope Innocent III, and a plush toy wolverine wearing a tee shirt with a block M whom I named Mitch Egan.

10. Linda Fieldhouse lives in Vernon in 2021. Her LinkedIn page is here. Don’t bother to look for TSI on her experience list.

11. A woman named Bettijane Kaschuluk who is a little older than I am lives in Stafford Springs in 2021.

12. Ann Locke still lives in Enfield in 2021. Her Facebook page is here.

1988-1994 Living in Enfield

Our first few years as a suburban couple. Continue reading

Paul Robeson as Othello.

Enfield is the northernmost town in central Connecticut. Historically it was noted for its two industrial giants, the Hartford-Bigelow Carpet Mill and the Hazard Powder Company, which manufactured gunpowder.1 The town had two claims to fame. 1) Enfield Square was the only mall between Hartford and Springfield, MA. 2) Enfield was at one time home to the great Paul Robeson2, or at least to his family. For some reason almost no one in the area seemed to care about the second distinction.

The Neighborhood: Our ranch house on North St. was much more modest than the Robeson’s stately dwelling, and so were those of our neighbors. I did not really know how to be a good neighbor. In the years following our move to Enfield I only really met one of our neighbors. A man named Fred, who was perhaps twenty years older than I was, told me a little about the history of our property. I never really got acquainted with anyone else in the neighborhood.

Part of the reason for this might involve the house’s peculiar layout. The front door to our house faced North St., but the driveway was on Hamilton Court. Fred was our neighbor on that side. The west side of the yard was fenced to separate it from the driveway and sidewalk leading to Hazard Memorial School. Directly across Hamilton Court from us was a two-story house that was divided into four units. It had dozens residents over the years. We seldom interacted with any of them. On the other side of North St. was Allen St., which had only a dozen or so houses before it dead-ended. There was also a house directly across North St. from ours, but I don’t think that we ever met the occupants.

Every year Fred got out a stepladder and trimmed the bushes that separated his backyard from the western side of our yard, which we thought of as the back yard. He informed me that the line of bushes was actually in his property.

Yard Work: That was fine with me, but when Fred and his wife moved to Florida a few years later, the first thing that the family that moved in did was to install a wooden fence adjacent to the bushes. So, the responsibility for maintaining the bushes fell to me willy-nilly.

Those were by no means the only bushes on our property, There were good-sized forsythias in both the northeast and northwest corners of the property. Large burning bushes flanked the house on both sides. Knee-level evergreens decorated the north side of the garage and part of the front. We had at least one rhododendron and two mountain laurels. There were hollies in the front side of the house, but I think that Sue put those in later to replace something else. A hedge of some kind that was about eight feet long, two feet thick, and four or five feet high was positioned fifteen or so feet in front of the door leading to the entryway.

I suspect that the power hedge trimmer might be in this box.

I was well aware that grass and weeds grew, but it had never really occurred to me that these bushes would keep growing all spring and summer, as well as most of the winter. Keeping all of these bushes from overgrowing the house was a task that I had not reckoned on. I bought a power hedge trimmer, but it was heavy, and it could not handle some of the thick branches. I used it on the hedges sometimes, but for most of the other bushes it was easier to use old-fashioned hedge clippers and a lopper. Of course, since we had never faced the issue of bushes before, I had to buy those as well.

Then there were the trees. The property had a spindly pine tree on the east lawn and nine maple trees—seven big red maples that encircled the house, one even larger green maple, and one small Japanese maple that really seemed out of place. In the spring the maples shed thousands of those little helicopter seeds, many of which took root in our gutters. In the fall, of course, the trees discharged all of their leaves.

The very best thing about life in Enfield in those days was that the city had hired a company to come around once a year to vacuum up leaves from the curbside. In our neighborhood it occurred a little after Thanksgiving. I bought a backpack leaf blower, but it still took a lot of time and effort to blow all those leaves down to the street. Even though our corner lot provided us with more footage on the two streets on which we lived than any of the neighbors had, it still seemed as if our mountain range of leaves was as lofty as anyone’s.

The leaf blower has rested in the garage for years.

The town eventually discontinued the blatant socialism of this service. It was replaced with leaf pickup days. The leaves all had to be bundled in large paper bags, and there was a limit to how many could be left at one time. I seem to remember that they allowed twenty bags at a time. When the objective was changed to getting the leaves in bags rather than down to the street, the usefulness of the leaf blower decreased markedly. I eventually abandoned it in favor of old-fashioned rakes. Sue insisted that the best way was to rake the leaves onto a sheet and then carry the sheet to the destination. I tried this, but found the extra step saved no time or effort.

At some point Enfield stopped accepting the bags, too. Instead brown tipper-barrels were supplied. Every week a truck came to collect their contents, which could include any type of lawn waste. Well, my yard’s leaves could fill dozens or maybe even hundreds of those barrels. I decided to just chop up the leaves in October and early November using the lawnmower with its mulching setting. I have been satisfied with the results.

I also had to take care of the 10,000 square-foot lawn, of course. When I say “take care of” I actually mean “mow”. I never fertilized or watered it, and I only spent any time weeding it once—on August 17, 1988, as explained here. I probably should have bought a small tractor as soon as we moved in. It would have paid for itself several times over. However, I was a several decades younger when we moved to Enfield, and I actually liked the exercise of mowing the lawn—as long as the mower was self-propelled.

I went through three or four lawnmowers before I purchased in 2011 or thereabouts a really good one from the Honda dealer across the street from TSI’s office in East Windsor.

Gardening: Vegetable gardening was my primary hobby when we lived in Rockville. When we looked at houses, I always tried to imagine where a garden could be located. It was not easy to find a decent spot on a lawn that also featured so many maple trees that became very leafy just when the crops needed sunlight.

My main garden was a square patch—perhaps fifteen feet on each side—of land right in front of the bushes on the north side of the house. It was between two trees and far enough away from the house that it received six or seven hours of direct sunlight during the summer months. This was adequate for most popular plants, but it was a continual frustration for me, especially since I understood that over time the trees would only get bigger.

That small piece of land was thickly covered by a thick mat of zoysia grass. I needed to use a spade to remove the turf during the first spring. It was backbreaking work, but I persevered. Then I borrowed Betty Slanetz’s rototiller to cultivate the soil. That was much easier, but in the process I accidentally punctured one of the hoses for the sprinkling system that lay beneath our entire lawn.3

I planted the usual crops—tomatoes, peppers, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and peppers. I had very little luck with root crops—onions, garlic, and carrots. I never did figure out what was wrong with my technique. My carrots never got more than a few inches long. The onions that I produced were scarcely larger than the sets that I planted in the spring.

In later years I purchased the starters for my tomato plants from Jeanie Smith, who lived at the northwest corner of North Maple and Moody Road. I tried several different kinds of tomatoes, but my favorites were (if I remember correctly) Red Rockets. Unfortunately after a few years of spectacular harvests, they got the blight, and it apparently leached into the soil. Thereafter, my harvest were not very good, and there really was nowhere else on the property suitable for growing tomatoes.

In point of fact, I really was not that big a fan of tomatoes per se. However, the chili that I made with freshly picked tomatoes was just delicious.

My favorite crop was green beans. I tried both bush beans and pole beans. I had some really good harvests, but the Mexican bean beetles, which seemed to arrive en masse in early July were devastating. During the first year I went out every morning and pulled off beetles with my fingers. They always hid on the underside of the leaves. I really did not want to use an insecticide, but I could not come up with another way of keeping the beetles and their voracious larvae from destroying the entire crop. In most other cases I eschewed the use of pesticides in order to protect the cats.

One Christmas Tom and Patti Corcoran gave me a book by Mike Wavada entitled All I Know about Beans and Beetles. Every page was blank.

Since I lived in New England I felt compelled to grow squash and zucchini. Nice crops of broccoli and cauliflower resulted after I learned about bacillus thuringiensis (BT), the environmentally safe way to eliminate cabbage worms. I grew some Brussels sprouts that produced little cabbages well into December. One mild winter one of the plants even wintered over and produced more little heads in the spring!

On the west side of the lawn by the fence I grew some asparagus and strawberries. These plants required an awful lot of weeding and attention, but they both produced nice crops for several years.

I gave up on the main garden after a few years. The growth of the surrounding trees had made it increasingly difficult for the crops to receive sufficient sunlight. I kept up the asparagus and strawberries for a few years after that. At some point I probably just became too busy to pay them the attention that they needed.

The Basement: The house on North St. had a full basement. The staircase down was in the hallway that led to the bedrooms, and the door was directly across from the entrance to the kitchen.

The washer and the shelves. The dryer is long gone.

Two large shelving units were built into the walls of the basement. It would have been a huge undertaking to remove them. We did not even consider doing so. The one on the north side we used for storage of books and games that were seldom used and the indoor side of the landing spot for the cats coming through the cat door. Next to it on one side was the case that held the fuses; on the other were the washer and dryer.

A small piece of plywood served as a ramp from the cat door to the top shelf. From there the cats made a right turn and walked over to the edge, jumped down to the washing machine and from there to the floor.

The sprinkler unit is in here somewhere near the shelves.

Next to the shelves on the west wall was the control unit for the underground sprinkler system. I played around with this enough to figure out that I did not want to use it. I saw two disadvantages: 1) Our water bill would increase. 2) The grass would need to be mowed more often.

For my fortieth birthday Sue bought a ping pong table. Evidently I had once told her that I played some ping pong at Allen Rumsey House in the sixties. It was not one of my better sports, and it certainly was not hers. I set it up near the shelves that held games and books.

We played a few times, but it frankly was not much fun. The area where the table was installed was not really suitable. There was not enough light and room for a good game. Furthermore, Sue experienced a lot of trouble keeping the ball on the table.

I drew a red box around the Mateus bottle on the edge of the ping pong table. This is, I think, the bottle from this story.

At some point Sue became interested in N-gauge model trains. She converted the ping pong table into a small train layout. For all that I know, that may have been part of the reason that she bought the table; I certainly never suggested that I wanted one. She and Brian Corcoran also formed a company for purchasing gear called the B&S railroad. All of that stuff is still down on the table in the basement, but only a trained archeologist could unearth it today.

After we got our new kitten, Woodrow, I found an old door that somehow had appeared in our basement. I converted it into a ramp for him from the top shelf down to the ping pong table. A box was strategically positioned to make it easier for him to reach the table. Woodrow used the ramp to get down for the rest of his life, but he preferred to climb up the bookshelves when he wanted to go out. He also like to shinny up trees when he was chasing squirrels in the yard. However, he did not like to climb down, and I had to rescue him a few times.

The rest of the basement was soon filled with boxes of Sue’s junk. Many of them have never been opened since we moved into the house, a period of nearly thirty-four years!

Sports: My interests in most sports waned considerably after we moved to Enfield. I still watched Michigan football games on television, however. Someone even gave me a license plate holder that celebrated Michigan Football. In 2021 it is affixed to its third car.

I began to take jogging more seriously. Enfield is one of the flattest towns in Connecticut, a distinction that made it rather easy to design a course of almost any length that did not involve hills as steep as the one on which we lived in Rockville. I often took a long lunch break that consisted of a run of a few miles, a shower, lunch, and a short nap before I returned to the office.

I buried Woodrow beneath this burning bush

In good weather I ate lunch at our picnic table and napped on the small mattress that came with the camping cot that Sue had purchased when we lived in Rockville. Rocky, the cat that moved with us from Rockville, would emerge from his favorite sleeping sport in the forsythia bushes and beg for a morsel of human food. The tiniest bit satisfied him, and he returned to his bush. As soon as I lay down for my nap, Woodrow, the trailer-trash cat that Sue brought home from St. Johnsbury, VT, generally ambled over from his napping spot beneath the burning bush and plopped himself next to me on the mattress.

4.25 miles between the canal & the river.

I also found two other very enjoyable places to run. The trail at Windsor Locks Canal State Park, which started in Suffield, CT, and the trail that stretched from Northampton to Amherst in Massachusetts.

I became rather serious about the activity. I tried to run as much as possible, even in the winter, although I never ventured out in ice, snow, or, for that matter, rain. I ran eighteen miles one morning in the fall. I refused to carry water, but I did place water bottles at two places along the route. Those were my only stops. I am not sure of the date, but I do remember mentioning it to prospective clients on the trip that I took to Seattle, and that was in 1992 or thereabouts.

I also remember that I ran a few miles the next day. That allowed me to brag to a serious runner, who was a friend of Sue’s from high school, that my personal best for a marathon was twenty-five hours.

This is #12. Feel free to hum along.

Classical Music: While running I listened to music on a Sony Walkman with headphones. I bought a lot of cheap cassette tapes of orchestral works by an eclectic group of classical composers. I made an effort to become familiar with most of the popular composers. My collection included only a few operas. Cassette tape drives were installed on both my Saturn and the Honda that I bought in 2007.

I remember mentioning one afternoon to someone at TSI’s office that while jogging on South Road I had been listening to one of the Hungarian Rhapsodies. I was startled to find myself leaning so much to one side that I almost lost my balance. Then it dawned on me why it had happened. I had just been Liszting.

Entertainment: I have difficulty remembering what we did for amusement during these years. We certainly visited the Corcorans often, and I attended a number of softball and soccer games that involved my sister Jamie’s kids. We went to a Springfield Indians hockey game with Sue’s dad once.

On March 11, 1988, Sue and I saw Roy Orbison at Symphony Hall in Springfield. The warmup act was a comic whom I had never heard of. This was perhaps the most well-behaved crowd in the history of concerts. People who left the concerts patiently waited for “Walk” lights before crossing the deserted streets.

We also enjoyed seeing Sam Kinison at the Paramount Theater in Springfield. I don’t know the date, but the comic died in 1992.

For several summers after we moved to Enfield Sue’s youngest sister hosted a day-long “Betty Bash” at the house in which she lived with Don and their parents. I really enjoyed these events. I always participated in the volleyball games and the epic croquet games (played with Slanetz rules). The food was typical picnic fare combined with special dishes that Betty concocted. Tom Corcoran always came. I remember that Jamie brought her son Joey on his fourth birthday.

I got to meet quite a few of Betty’s friends. They were all considerably younger than I was, but it was easier to relate to them than to the Enfielders that I knew.

Trips and Visits: Sue and I took two big international vacations during our first years in Enfield. The fortnight in England is described here. The write-up of the Turkey-Greece cruise begins here.

Sue and I almost certainly took some shorter trips, but the only one that I remember was the visit that we made to one of Sue’s high-school friends in Austin, TX. That trip involved a drive in a rental car from Dallas, where I did a presentation of the AdDept system for Neiman Marcus. That successful experience is described here.

My parents made at least one trip to New England during our first years in Enfield. I don’t think that they ever stayed in our guest bedroom. Instead, they stayed at a hotel near my sister Jamie Lisella’s4 house in West Springfield, MA. My recollection is that the hotel was a Howard Johnson Motel on Route 5. I think that this hotel shut down, and in later years they roomed at the Hampton Inn that was built almost directly across the street.

My parents spent most of their time with Jamie and her kids. I remember, however, that Sue and I drove mom and dad to Old Sturbridge Village once. I remember only that it was quite cold, and we ate lunch or supper at the Publick House or the Bullard Tavern. They seemed to like the idea of having a genuine (well, sort of genuine) New England experience.

I am pretty sure that they came to Enfield for a picnic lunch or supper in our back yard at least once during these early years. I don’t remember the details.

A fairly recent view of the mall from the north. The big building in the center is a Target that was added in 2001

Retail: The mall in Enfield, which is now known as Enfield Square, was developed by the May Company, one of TSI’s primary customers. It opened in 1971, just before I met Sue in my first stint in Connecticut. The mall originally housed three anchor stores—G. Fox (one of May’s department store chains), national chain JC Penney, and Steiger’s, a small chain of department stores based in Springfield. Dozens of smaller shops and eventually a twelve-screen theater were housed in the mall.

You won’t make it in less than ten minutes. There are eleven stoplights on Hazard Ave.

Four large strip malls were built on three sides of the mall. A fifth was positioned a block to the east near several auto dealerships and the post office. At least two or three very large grocery stores have been located in them throughout the years that we have lived in the area. Nearly every type of retailer could be found in a fairly small area. All of these stores were easily accessible from I-91 and Route 5. It was (and still is in 2021) the only large shopping area between Hartford and Springfield, MA. For almost two decades Enfield Square was the only enclosed mall in the Hartford area that was east of the Connecticut River.

Great numbers of people came to Enfield to shop in the years after we moved to Enfield, and the people who lived in Enfield felt little reason to go elsewhere for retail therapy. It was very convenient for Sue and me; our house was less than three miles away.

Sometimes individual retailers seemed guilty of very poor planning. For several years there was a McDonald’s across the street from the mall on both the north and south sides as well as one inside the mall. That last one closed when the mall began to deteriorate.

There was also a RadioShack on the south side of the mall. In the late nineties I made numerous trips to the company’s headquarters in Fort Worth. One day someone in the advertising department heard that I lived in Enfield and told me that the Shack was opening a new store there. I told them that there was already a store in Enfield and asked for the address of the new one. It had a low number on Elm St., which is the street bordering the north side of the Enfield Square. Shortly thereafter a new Shack appeared in the strip mall north of the mall, but—no surprise to me—it lasted less than a year. Many more details concerning my experiences with RadioShack’s advertising department, the other divisions of Tandy, and Fort Worth(less) are recorded here.

Restaurants: By the time that Sue and I moved to Enfield a large number of restaurants had sprung up in and around the mall. The former group included Ruby Tuesday’s and a few transitory fast food places. Of the ones on the periphery The restaurant that has lasted the longest is Olive Garden, which was and still is on the edge of one of the strip malls south of Enfield Square. I went there for lunch with clients or employees a few times.

Originally the building adjoining the Olive Garden was occupied by another Darden Restaurant, Red Lobster. When Red Lobster closed a new restaurant called the Hazard Grille5 opened there. Of all of the local eateries it was our favorite. Sue especially liked it when local musicians performed there.

We went to Ruby Tuesday’s fairly often. We liked the salad bar. We picked up fried chicken from KFC on Route 5 with some frequency until its owner retired and closed the store. We tried most of the other restaurants at least once, but we never became regulars at any of them. My dad and I often ate lunch at the Friendly restaurant in the mall’s parking lot. Our orders were totally predictable. He always ordered a senior turkey melt and a coffee. I always got the Reuben SuperMelt and a Diet Coke. Details about my dad’s life in Enfield are posted here.

Among the restaurants that we definitely did not frequent were the other two restaurants with stand-alone buildings on the grounds of Enfield Square. We went to Chi Chi’s once; we did not enjoy it at all. We found the fancy Italian restaurant, Figaro, to be grossly overpriced. I don’t think that Chi Chi’s made it to the twenty-first century, but Figaro is still operational. Sue and I dined there once with my Advanced Italian class.

The Lockes: Sue’s mother’s maiden name was Effy Locke. She had four brothers, three of whom lived in Enfield, as did almost all of their offspring and their offspring’s offspring. So, during the first years of our residence in Enfield Sue and I became much more involved with both her many relatives and the few of mine with whom I had any dealings.

It frankly astounded me that so many people in one family lived so close together. My relatives for the most part spread to the four winds as soon as it was feasible.

I must admit that I had a hard time adjusting to the Lockes. They all had a lot in common and seemed to get along well with one another, but I could not seem to find a way to fit in. I could seldom find anything to talk about with any of the male members of the clan. Most of them drove trucks as part or all of their jobs. The family game was a very simple trick-taking card game called Setback.

The exception in Sue’s family was her uncle Bob Locke, who lived with his wife Carol6 in western Michigan. He worked as an engineer. Their family, which included three daughters named Deb, Wendy, and Sandy7, drove out to Connecticut in an RV at least a few times. Whenever they did, one of Bob’s siblings threw a party that inevitably included a softball game. All the cousins attended. I played too, at least once.

Of all of Sue’s uncles the one whom I knew the least well was Chet Locke, whose wife was named Elsie8. They had two sons. Tim and Natalya live in Stafford Springs in 2021. I never got to know them very well at all. Paul married one of Betty Slanetz’s best friends, Karen Shapiro. Sue and I went to their wedding, which occurred in the early nineties. In 2021 the couple have two grown children.

I knew Charlie Locke because he worked as an electrician for the Slanetz Corporation. I am pretty sure that he and his assistant did the wiring for our office in Enfield. His wife’s name was Gene.9 They had two daughters, Patti Caswell10 and Kathy Stratton. I hardly knew either one of them.

Ted and Judy’s house.

Ted Locke and his wife Judy lived in the house right across the street from the house in which Sue grew up. Since both Don and Betty lived there with their parents (until they moved to Florida), Sue and I saw Ted and Judy quite often. Until she died in 1990, Sue’s grandmother Molly Locke lived with Ted and Judy.

Ted and Judy’s family family included three children. Sue Tkacz is a very perky lady, with whom I have exchanged greetings on a few occasions. Sue and I went to a Christmas party at the home in Somers of Glen Locke and his wife at the time, Sue. The youngest son, Jim, lives in Enfield. His wife Ann worked for TSI for a while.

Almost all of these people—or maybe I should say almost all of the males listed above—were very much into cars and, especially, trucks. So was Don Slanetz. They also knew a lot about who was building or buying real estate or equipment in Enfield and the vicinity. I found it extremely difficult to avoid being a bump on the log at the frequent family gatherings of the Locke clan. My fields of interests are quite diverse, but none of them seemed to overlap the interests of any of these people.

The only exception to the above statements that I can think of was Sue’s Uncle Bob. He seemed different from his brothers. I also got along with Sue’s mother and her sisters and most if not all of the women in the extended Locke family, and I do mean extended. Almost all of Sue’s cousins have at least two children and some members of that generation also have children.

The Slanetz Reunion: Seldom had I ever even met any of the relatives of Sue’s father, Art Slanetz. I have a very vague recollection of meeting Sue’s cousin Diane Davis11 back in 1972 or 1973. We encountered her by chance on the street in Rockville. I don’t remember any more than that. I also have a very hazy recollection of going to the house in Enfield of Art’s sister, Margaret Davis12. I remember being told ahead of time that Art and Margaret did not get along very well. I retain a very strange recollection of having brought her a doormat as a present. I have no idea as to what the context could possibly have been. Other than those two events I had no dealings with or information about Art’s side of the family—with one exception.

Mark Davis and Sue.

I had heard stories about the wunderkind, Margaret’s son Mark. He was reported to be the smartest of all of Sue’s cousins, and in fact the smartest person in his age group in all of Enfield.

I am not sure who came up with the idea of a reunion of the Slanetz family in 1992. It might have been Mark. It was held during the summer at the house in which Sue grew up in 1992. I am not sure why it was held in Enfield. In some ways it was a central location. Carloads of people drove from Long Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. A few also came from much farther away.

I must admit that I was dreading this event. My only dealing with in-laws13 had been at the get-togethers of the Locke family in which I always felt ill at ease. In point of fact I would have skipped it if I could. However, I did attend, and I was very glad that I did.

The Slanetzes were nothing like the Lockes. Although quite a few had been born in the Enfield area, only Art and Margaret had stayed there. They seemed to have spread out all over the country, and their number included an impressive array of intellectuals, businessmen, and creative people. There was no family business, as far as I could tell. Most importantly, the conversations never approached the twin topics of trucks and Enfield gossip.

I don’t remember too many of the details. I do have a clear recollection of avoiding being included in the inevitable group photo.

Bill Slanetz.

The most famous attendee was Dr. Charles Slanetz Jr.14, a heart surgeon and researcher from Long Island. The most memorable connection that I made was with Bill15 and Norma Slanetz of Keene, NH, and their children Diane Patenaude, Jack, and David16.

Sue and I made several very enjoyable trips to visit with Bill and Norma. Bill was an avid gardener, and his garden was so large that, compared to mine, it seemed like a farm. I liked to wander around in it and examine the produce.

Their house was high up on a steep hill, and it was not easy to reach. Nevertheless, friends and family were always dropping by. The conversations were always interesting, at least to me, and some sort of activity, planned or spontaneous, always seemed to be happening.

Bill also liked to play bridge, and after I took the game up again in the twenty-first century, we sometime discussed the world’s greatest card game. Norma played too, but she was not as involved as Bill.


1. Both companies are defunct. the buildings of the carpet company have been transformed into apartments. Its Wikipedia page is here. Large portions of the powder factory were destroyed by a tremendous explosion on January 14, 1913. Its Wikipedia page is here.

2. Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is most famous for his portrayal of Joe in Show Boat, and especially for his unforgettable rendition of “Ole Man River”. However, acting was the least of his talents. He was a two-time all-American football player at Rutger, and he was such an outstanding student that he earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa and the Cap and Skull Society. He was also elected Valedictorian of his class. While he was earning a law degree at Columbia he played on two different NFL teams and appeared in several professional play productions. He spent much of his life giving concerts and lectures, often speaking about how much better he was treated by Europeans, especially Russians, than Americans. He was blackballed in the fifties and not prohibited from traveling abroad because of his political views. In 1940 he moved his family into a large house at 1221 Enfield St. (Route 5) in Enfield, which he owned for thirteen years during the highlight of his career as an entertainer. He was on the right side of history from start to finish but the wrong side of politics for most of the rest of his life.

3. This was not a great loss. If I had maintained the system over the decades that we have lived in Enfield, the sprinkler system may have significantly enhanced the value of the property. However, I had no intention of doing something so foolish as to pay higher water bills just to encourage the grass to grow more rapidly. So, the system probably would have ceased functioning properly at some point anyway.

4. A lot more about Jamie and her family has been posted here.

5. The Hazard Grille closed without warning in 2013. A couple of other restaurants succeeded it at that location with no success. In 2021 the building was torn down and replaced by a smaller building that is shared by Starbucks and Jersey Mike’s.

6. Carol died in 2018. Here obituary is here. Sue and I drove out to Michigan in the fall of 2008. We saw Bob, Carol, and their family on this trip, which is described here.

7. All three of the daughters are now married. Their names in 2021 are Deb Batts, Wendy Ahearne, and Sandy Mulder, and they all live in the Grand Rapids area.

8. Both Chet and Elsie are deceased in 2021. I could not find an obituary for Chet. Elsie’s is posted here.

9. Charlie and Gene are both deceased in 2021. Charlie’s obituary is posted here, and Gene’s is posted here.

10. Patti Caswell died in 2019. Her obituary is here.

11. Diane has apparently been married a couple of times. Her last name in 2021 is Clark, but her children are named Quinn.

12. Margaret Davis died in 2010. Her obituary is posted here.

13. Sue and I were not married then, but we were in the second or maybe even third decade of our whirlwind courtship. Everyone expected me to be at the family reunion.

Dr. Charles Slanetz Jr.

14. Dr. Slanetz died in 2006. The newsletter of the John Jones Surgical Society of Columbia University published a long obituary. It is posted here. Scroll down to page 11 or search for “Slanetz”.

15. Bill Died in 2017. His obituary is posted here. Sue and I drove up to Keene for the funeral.

16. David Slanetz died unexpectedly at his house on the island of Dominica in 2004. His obituary is posted here. Sue and I attended the memorial service.