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From the Editor
The Real Deal
In our last issue, celebrating the fifth anniversary of CTOldHouse.com, I mentioned how gratefulwe are to the people who send us in their memories of stories about local legends.Some of the storiesthey heard repeated in their childhood. Some forward copies of old newspaper clippings. A few months ago Jim Morneau from Canton sent us a carton filled with 50 copies of LEAGUE BULLETIN, official quarterly publication of The Connecticut League of Historical Societies. The issues range over the 1970s and 1980s.
As of today, I have read 34 of these issues, cover to cover. I am not an academic, just your usual restrained enthusiast about Connecticut old houses and periodcrafts. ” I kid you not,” as Greenwich’s Jack Paar used to say when he had “The Tonight Show, “ these old issues are more enjoyable to me than any movies, TV shows, or Internet offerings presently available. The issues I’ve read so far have given me a dozen stories to retell in future issues. I’ll share one now that illustrates for me the practical, innovative side of the Connecticut character though the centuries.
The story goes that builder Ithiel Town, born in Thompson in 1784, patented his design for the “lattice mode” covered bridge in the 1830s. He then traveled from waterway town to waterway town with a six-and-half foot model of his bridge under his arm. He would set up the model between two chairs or tables six feet apart and challenge the biggest man to test it by standing—even sitting—on it. Because his design called exclusively for materials close at hand in the plentiful woods, it only remained for the town to pay him $1 a foot for designing their bridge and he was off to the next demonstration.
Town and three associates were responsible for 95% of the covered bridges in New England. Of the few surviving Connecticut covered bridges, I have been across the West Cornwall-Sharon span. The countryside is gorgeous, even in the rain, and my feelings as I drove across the bridge were down-home mellow and old-time country. Learning the details of how the bridge actually happened adds another layer of appreciation, one that speaks of a long tradition of ingenuity and salesmanship in Connecticut, unsurpassed not just in the USA but anywhere, for that matter.
Max H. Peters
Publisher and Editor
Header photo by Skip Broom, HP Broom Housewright, Inc.