Event: Telling Tales Out of School #1
Oral History Project Interviews
Location: Old Lyme Town Senior Center
Date: November 15, 2009
Interviewees: Bob & Bea McLean
Interviewer: Alison Mitchell
When did you first come to OL.
Bob – I was born in Ireland and my father was in the first world war and he went back to Ireland when he was discharged and married my mother in 1922. I was born in 1923 and my father came back to this country and after I was born my mother and I came back, I was about a year old. We came to New York then to Bridgeport where I had an aunt until we got things settled in Old Lyme. My father worked for Mrs. Talcott. He was one of the artists in Old Lyme, Allen Talcott. He was one of the American Impressionists from Old Lyme. They had a place on the Neck Road so I grew up there and was there until I went in the service in WWII.
So you lived on the Talcott property? Were you an only child?
Well, my sister is 10 years younger than I am. Lush Bigelow was the only neighbor we had.
He was your age?
He might be a year younger than I.
You went to school in Old Lyme?
Yes, I went to Old Lyme public school and graduated from Old Lyme High School. Then I went in the service in 1943. I was in the Military Police in the Hawaiian Islands during the war. I was discharged and came back to Old Lyme.
That must have been quite an experience being Military Police.
Well, it was much like being State Police here. I rode a motorcycle and directed traffic and did regular police work, more or less. Came back and ran into Bea and we got married.
McLean - 1 of 1
So you were discharged after the war.
I came home in 1946.
And you came back to Old Lyme, what did you work in then?
I got a job working for the Post office hanging mail at the Old Lyme station. It was where the Masons are now. Mr. Clark was postmaster and when you hung the mail, there was a sack and there was an arm and the train would come along and catch the sack and pull it in and it never stopped to pick the mail up.
Where did you hang the mail?
At the OL Station, just by the golf course. This was up just near the country club up by their tennis courts. You drove up and there was an arm with a spring on it and you had to tie the bag to the spring and the train would come along and take the bag. I did it 3 times a day and I had a contract to do it.
Were you part of the federal post office?
I really don’t know. I just know I put a bid in for it and got it so I was able to do that.
Where did you meet Bea?
I met here in a little sandwich shop down in the center of Old Lyme. I worked part time. The shop was on the main street where the ice cream store is now, one of those buildings. The A&P was there. Where the ice cream shop is was a repair garage, Haines Garage. Next to it was near where the A&P was, it was in that area. Right next door to the garage. I worked in there and Bea had a friend who knew the fella who owned the place.
Bea – I worked with her and we used to come over after work. We worked in the Essex Bank and we’d come over after work and have a sandwich or ice cream.
Bea, Where were you living at that time?
Ivoryton
Did you have a car?
Yes
So the two of you met there, then what happened?
Bob- Eventually we got married. After about a year or so. We bought a house on the Boston Post Raod that belonged to John Koznewski. We lived there and had 2 daughters.
John Koznewski – why do I know that name?
Bea – The sisters had a beauty shop – Jean and Gertrude.
Were you good friends?
No. The cashier at the bank I worked in knew we were looking for a house , a place to live, and he somehow or other heard that John wanted to sell his house and we went over. We paid $8,500. The house is down the post road, painted red now. Going from this direction, on the left hand side, right after Blackwell Road. Further down than the Texaco barn.
Do you still live in there?
No, its changed hands a good many times.
So you moved in there and you were working with the Post Office.
Bob – Well, no my contract ran out and I went to work at the power company as a meter reader in Essex. Then eventually, I became a Store Keeper, or supervisor of Stores as they say and I worked there for 33 years, I guess.
Bea – I would go back to work off and on but I didn’t work steady after my children were born. They called me when they needed somebody and Bob’s mother was always good about babysitting.
Tell me about your children.
Bea – We have two daughters. Buffy, her name is Elizabeth but everybody calls her Buffy. Her birthday is in July, she doesn’t like to be reminded how old she is, I think she’s 51 or 52 and Marsha is 4 years younger. They live in New York. The both have summer houses – Marsha’s is on Lieutenant River Lane and Buffy has a house over at Groton Long Point.
Tell me about when you were first married here in Old Lyme.
Bea – We didn’t have an awful lot of money. We weren’t poor, but just plain common people.
OK – but what did you do for fun?
Bob – She was the town Treasurer for 50 years.
Bea – I’m not responsible for the church – from what people say, it’s not a very good design.
But they didn’t have big projects like that when you were in office?
Bea – No the biggest ones were schools. I think I financed the Middle School, High School. It’s fun dealing with the bankers. I was responsible for signing the bonds and the checks – the bonds that financed the school. My children did benefit from going to the new schools. Course, now living in the city they don’t think much of the Old Lyme schools.
Really, I hear good things about the schools here.
Bea – I think they are, but Buffy’s children go in Chappaqua which is supposed to be one of the best schools in the country and Marsha’s children have to go to private school because in New York city its not the place to go public.
In Old Lyme though, you must have incredible stories about battles of whether to build the schools or not.
Bea – Oh yea, I just can’t remember. They got built, I’m sure there was controversy about how much to spend.
What about you, were you involved in civic things, Bob?
I ran in the Army reserve for 12 years after I was discharged – I was a staff sergeant when I got out and then the Korean War started and I figured I didn’t want to go back as a private if I ever got called in so I spent 14 years in the Army Reserve. I was never called up - they took the National Guard but not the reserve. I had to go to two week training Fort Grum, down to Fort Uesis in Virginia, Fort Dix – several for two seek training. Then it got to the point where I had to go to Danielson or Bridgeport for reserve meetings and I said I’d get out.
Were you involved in party and politics?
Bob - No I wasn’t, just my wife.
Bea - I never really was a politician, I just got elected!
But what line were you ?
I was republican. I think I got elected so many times because I was a good vote getter. I’m not sure why. I guess I did my job well. I knew more people.
Do you remember special events in Old Lyme? For instance, celebrating the bi-centennial?
Bea – the most thing I remember is Charlotte Griswold’s play, Down in the Valley.
Did either of you perform in that?
No.
Where did that happen?
Bea – I was just trying to remember – it was a school auditorium maybe, someone else will remember maybe.
What were some of the big events that went on in the town?
Bob – The memorial day parade was always a strong thing. I didn’t march in the parade as a reservest.
When they opened the new bridge, Baldwin in 1948, they had sort of a parade as I recall.
Do you remember the drawbridge?
Bob – on a hot summer day it would stick open, they’d get the fire department to come up and spray water on it to cool the seal down so they could close the bridge.
Cars would be lined up on either side.
All the way back out to Rogers Lake.
Do you remember when they opened the interstates?
Bea – I remember one section of it opened like from Clinton over this way when Marsha was a baby cause I wanted to see the new highway and took her in one of these car things, the baby bed. Now they have to be all strapped in. My older daughter stood in the seat beside me. Everytime I put on my break, I put my arm out like that. Can you imagine being allowed now. Of course there wasn’t that much traffic in those days.
What’s changed the most for you?
Bob – I can remember the main street being lined with Elm trees. Really a quiet town. The hurricane, I remember that day. I was in school and my father used to pick me up once in a while and take me home for lunch and I guess it was a rainy day and he came down and picked me up so I was at home from noon on til the worst part of the storm came in the afternoon. I can remember how it rained. Working at Talcotts Farm they had just put a new roof on the barn and its about the only thing that held the barn up.
Do you remember trees coming down?
Several trees around the main house came down and a lot of stuff went up the river. I remember Captain Danenhower’s boat went up the river and ended up in Tanamehaeg. I understand after he got it back he took it into New London and it sank on the way into New London Harbor. He got another, a light ship from long island sound, it was a metal boat.
Bea – I didn’t know him but my father was a master mechanic and so when he needed some work done on one of his boats he’d come over and get my father to bring him back to work on the boat. Its when the little cars were first out – do you remember the Austins or something like that – small cars. Sloan Danenhower was a big man and my father was a little man and to see him at the wheel and my father sitting beside him. He’d come over and work on one of the boats.
That’s when you were living in Essex?
Bea – Yea I was
Do you have other memories of what happened in Lyme.
Bob - Before they built the new school, the old school was there and there was a railing across the back on the second floor we used to make paper airplanes and go over there and fly them off the back of the school.
Did the principal know you were doing that?
Oh yeah.
So did you know Howard Tooker’s family and didn’t they own the land that the school was on.
Bob – Yea I did. His family owned a good part of it – his father owned an ice house out in the back and we used to skate on the pond down there – in back of the new high school. There’s quite a good size pond down there and they had an ice house and they used to cut ice and store it in the ice house. We used to skate down there after school and at night when it was a nice moonlit night we’d go down and skate on the pond.
Bea, did you do any ice skating?
Not in Old Lyme, we had a big pond, Falls River in Ivoryton, which became a pond and friends of my mother’s lived on it and he built a house on the edge of the pond. They didn’t have any children of their own, but they built this house and had a fire in it so we could skate and go in and have cocoa.
When your girls were little, did you go skating?
No we didn’t.
Do you remember the winters, what they were like then?
Bob – I can remember back when I was kid, it seemed it snowed in November and there was snow on the ground until Spring. Lush Bigelow and I would have a catch with a baseball in a field up near his house and there would still be big mounds of snow in the fields. That was probably February. It seemed the winters were a lot snowier than it is now.
Did you take your girls sledding on the Country Club hill?
Yes I did. I remember Jimmy Noyes had got a new sled for Christmas and I was down to his house and we went over to the golf course and Jack Bailey was there also. Jack’s father owned the garage. Three of us got on the sled and went down the hill. Hit one of those bumps and the sled disintegrated right there. First slide down the hill.
What do you think when you look back, was the high point of your life here?
Bea - I guess being married in the Congo church. Mr. Noank.
He was an institution here.
Bob – He was quite a character. Just the way he was. You could always get a laugh out of his sermon. I always got more out of his sermons than anybodys.
I know his son Steve and his brother Dave.
Bea – I think Dave has died. I’m not sure.
Bob – His sister Deborah. She was about my sister’s age.
Now what was your sister’s name.
Bob - Jean McLean. She went to UCONN and got a teaching degree and taught in Niantic for 34 or 35 years. She’s retired now. She lives in my family’s house across from the Bee and Thistle.
Do you recall having Church suppers, was this an important part of life here?
Bob – We used to go to fort nightly once in awhile. Suppers put on by the ladies.
Bea – Mr. Noank started in I think, that was one of my first recollections of him after we were married. He came down to the place we were living and invited us to come down to fort nightly, which I had no idea what it was. I guess because it met every other week. They had different speakers. It was a pot luck, I think.