Event: Telling Tales Out of School #1
Oral History Project Interviews
Location: Old Lyme Town Senior Center
Date: November 15, 2009
Interviewee: Jeanne Thomson
Interviewer: Alison Mitchell
Let’s start off by you telling me what brought you to Old Lyme in the first place.
My mother and her family lived in Hartford and around the block from where they lived was the family of the Garvins and Charlie Garvin was the man that bought all of the property between Sound View and Hawk’s Nest. And he sold a lot to my grandfather and they built a huge cottage because all the cousins from New York would come up and spend the summer there. It had 3 floors and the top floor was just a big dormitory where they just put mattresses down and all the boys would be up there. When my mother was married in 1913 … let me get myself collected here.
Your mother was born in?
Well she was born in 1889. She was married in 1913. I was born in 1915. I was born in East Hartford. My father had a shoe store and we moved to West Hartford. And I lived in the same house on the corner of Fern and North Main Street for over 50 years and finally sold it and moved to the shore where my mother had lived. The Garvin family lived close by and it was through the Garvins that my family bought some property at Hawk’s Nest.
Ok, and Grubby Garvin?
He is the grandson of the family.
So you spent summers there?
Yes we did. My father had died when I was very young so weekends, mother would just pick my brother and me up from school and we’d go to the shore and spend the weekend. Mother had an old coal stove in the kitchen so that we could go down all after the winter. There was a man down there, Art Peterson, who took care of a lot of properties down there, did a lot of building and he loved my mother’s spaghetti and every Friday night, being Catholic, we’d have spaghetti without meat sauce so Art would have our cottage all nice and warm on Friday night and mother would bring down spaghetti sauce and make the spaghetti on the old coal stove. I’d have it going by then. Art taught me how to swim and how to shoot, we used to throw electric light bulbs out in the water and use them for targets in the winter. Frowned on much today.
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Event: Telling Tales Out of School #1
Oral History Project Interviews
Location: Old Lyme Town Senior Center
Date: November 15, 2009
Interviewee: Jeanne Thomson
Interviewer: Alison Mitchell
All through your teenage years, you were coming down here?
Every weekend unless something came up. Then I went to college at Skidmore in Saratoga Springs, New York. I majored in business because my father had a shoe store and not many people would remember it today, but Bessy, my mother’s family, had a catering business and there’s Bessy’s Ice Cream, compared to which nothing could stand up.
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Was it a secret recipe?
Oh yes, my grandfather was a caterer and during the trade in New York, he came over from Italy on steerage and stayed in New York until he learned the trade— the catering ice cream trade. Then he and his brother moved to Connecticut and then his brother moved on to Boston.
Where did he manufacture?
Right there on Main Street, right across the street from, in Hartford, the athenaeum. Ice cream had no preservatives in it and it had to be delivered in wooden tubs filled with ice and salt. I have somewhere we have some of the metal forms that were used for special occasions. I do have my aunt who learned the catering business— taught me how to do cake decorating, and I’ve made my son’s and my daughter’s wedding cakes and many wedding cakes – 3 and 4 tier wedding cakes, praying all the way, and my husband had to carry them out of the kitchen down 4 stairs from the porch into the car. And I’d sit in the back seat holding on. A friend of mine made a big wooden tray so that I could put the whole thing on a big tray.
Where were you making these?
When we lived in East Hartford. I made a lot of things down here for my friends.
When did you get married?
I was married in 1942 in West Hartford. I told my mother on Monday, I was being married on Saturday – my husband to be had just go his orders (WWII), we had been going together for 8 years, and we wanted to be married. Every time we wanted to get married something would upset it. My mother had a brain operation so I quit my job and stayed home and took care of her and other things came along to interrupt our plans so we got married before he left.
What did your mother do when you announced you were getting married?
She sat down at the telephone and called all our friends and said come Saturday for Jeanne’s wedding. The wedding was at my aunt’s house because our house was being painted at the time. So my aunt had the reception at her house. We got married at St. Thomas in West Hartford, it was in the basement, they hadn’t built the top part back then.
So then your husband was shipped out?
He was, he was shipped to Texas for basic training then he was made a control tower operator and it appeared that he was going to be there for awhile and as new brides will do, I decided to go down there and stay with him until I got pregnant and came home when it appeared that he might be shipped out again and I didn’t want to be down there with a small baby.
So you came home?
I had the baby down there then came and stayed with my mother in West Hartford where I had grown up.
How did you all get back to coming to Old Lyme?
Well, my mother’s family had always summered here in Old Lyme at Hawk’s Nest. So I just continued the practice with my children. I had two more children and my mother’s house burned down at Hawk’s Nest. They never really did know what happened. Mother had had a fire going in the fireplace, but the house had been built during the war and you never know what kind of electric wiring might have been in there. My mother died in 1980. She was still alive when the house burned down. Then we built a new one and she lived there for 13 years. So about 1967 when it burned.
It had been built during the first WW?
It was a carter cottage, one of the old cottages on the beach. Right smack dab on the beach. So the new house was also on the beach. My mother’s family house, when she got married she wanted to buy the one right next to it but it wasn’t available so she bought the one one-over which is the one that we lived in and that’s the one that burned. The one in the middle we rented out for $150 a season.
Do you still rent it out?
Oh no, it went down in the hurricane. The one that we lived in went completely down in the ‘38 hurricane and the one we rented went half down. So we rebuilt the half. I don’t think we’re the famous picture of half a house. There’s a picture of where my house was.
When we rebuilt we straddled the two lots. So we had a nice big lot. 30 or 40 foot front. The cottage was a lovely cottage. It was designed by former Hawk’s Nest resident and friend of mine who was an architect, Eli Constantine. It was a lovely house.
What was it like?
All the living areas were on the water and the sleeping areas were in the back. The living room, the dining room and the kitchen all faced the water.
You smile every time you think about Hawk’s Nest.
I do, I had asked Eli “please.” We had to have two bathrooms because its hard to get along with one bathroom when you have family and friends so we had, I said we wanted two-holer johns. So it was, you walked into a room where there’s a sink and then there’s a small room with a commode and another small room with a commode and a shower. It was very compact but two big bathrooms. I wanted windows that were high enough so you could put the bed underneath the headboard, open the window on top.
What did your husband do when he got out of the service?
I have to stop and think. He worked for CT Bank and Trust.
And were you working also at that time?
I was, I worked at Heublein. They made spirits. Their main, biggest product is Smirnoff Vodka. Mr. Hart came along so they started calling it Heubleine.
Did you get to take home samples?
Absolutely, all you had to do was ask your boss, say we’re having a party, and we had a wonderful group of secretaries. I was secretary to the Marketing Manager. There was about a dozen of us and we had a lot of parties, none of us were married, oh yes, we were married, I had to stop and think. But we had lots of good times and we’d come down here to the shore.
And you’d bring the spirits with you?
Yes, all we had to do was tell our bosses we were having a party and they could buy it themselves and they’d give it to us. One of the girls had a cottage in Clinton and we’d alternate. One time we’d go to her house, then Hawk’s Nest, then Clinton, then Hawk’s Nest.
Did all these friends have children and they all played together when the time came?
Oh yes, they had a wonderful time because many people at the shore come down for a month or two weeks. Well, of course we were there all summer. We didn’t rent it out.
Were you still the secretary when you started coming all summer?
Oh no, I didn’t work when my children were small. I didn’t work until my youngest was ingrammar school and then I went back to work.
With the same people?
No, I don’t remember who I was working with. I was a Kelly Girl for awhile. I wanted to be home with the children during vacation so I did a lot of temp work until they got in junior high school.
So what did you do as a Kelly Girl?
Well, I had majored in business in college because we had the shoe store so I was a secretary, majored in secretarial science. Sure, I learned to type on a non-electric typewriter with the carriage that you push back and forth.
Tell me about your impressions of Old Lyme as a beach person.
My brother and I couldn’t wait for summer to come. We loved the shore. We all stayed with my mother at the shore. It had four bedrooms and the old cottage, the partitions on the second floor only went up about 8 feet so everyone would throw wet bathing suits up over the petition. That was a naughty boy thing that they used to do.
Do you remember the ‘38 hurricane?
Yes I do, I was working for the Cylex Company and I was standing in their RD lab watching trees being blown over in the cemetery behind us. I didn’t have a car then, I used to get to work with a friend and then my mother would come and pick me up. And she was out in the front waiting for me, finally somebody says “Christmas sakes! Go home before a tree falls on your mother and cracks the car!” It took us almost two hours to get home because so many roads were blocked. It normally would have taken 20 minutes. And we got home and all the electricity was out and my brother was directing traffic on the corner of Fern and North Main Street. He was six years younger, having a marvelous time. He was still in high school.
When did you learn about your house in Point O Woods?
There was a picture in the paper the next morning and there was a picture of our part of the beach and our cottage was flat. The roads in CT were very bad and traffic was – I went to the police station and said this is my cottage and I need to get down there to make sure its boarded so they gave me a pass to get down. They weren’t allowing people to travel indiscriminately.
So when did you see it?
That afternoon, the morning paper we saw that.
Did you keep that paper?
I did for a long time and then things got lost along the way.
Grubby Garvin loaned us a whole slew of material, I’m hoping it’s in there. I’ll have to ask. So I was asking about over the years, when did you start living here full time?
Oh, let me interject here, Harry’s wife was Pete. Her name was Emilie Peterson, she was known to everybody as Pete, a wonderful, wonderful lady. My mother didn’t drive, she had been operated in 1950 for brain surgery and my brother never felt that she had good reaction so he would never let her drive again, so Pete would drive her everywhere and mother would babysit for Pete’s younger children frequently for payback and then Harry had a big sailboat and he and Pete would spend the winter in Florida with the boat down there. And one year, we used to have friend around that would help him bring it back and forth and one year he couldn’t get enough men and so he asked this old grandmother to help bring the boat back. It was just a gorgeous trip, two weeks, I went as far as someplace in Virginia and then somebody from the shore drove down and took my place on the boat and I drove the car back to Hawk’s Nest. It was a fun trip.
So, I was asking you when you started living here full time? Or did you always just summer here?
My husband became very ill, we sold the cottage. It was very difficult. I can’t really remember, quite a while ago.
It would probably be very shocking to you to know what people are buying that kind of property for now.
I sold it just at the right time, I got a very good price. It was a very special cottage and I got a very good price. We don’t need to talk about that.
It’s been a pleasure talking with you. We appreciate it. If you come across any pictures, we would love to see them. Thank you Jeanne.
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