Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Moodus on my mind

No one that I know of has written about this amazing farmhouse resort.

In 1940, my parents spent one night of their honeymoon there.   In the 
evening my father suffered a severe asthma attack.  My mom called Mrs. 
Budka who immediately recognized my father's malaise.  She told my mother to keep my father sitting upright all night and to keep him awake as much as possible, and that they should go back to New York City the next morning.  The pollen had gotten the better of him. 

After I was born in 1944 my parents joined my uncle and aunt and their daughter to spend a week or two every summer in Moodus.  The going rate for room and board then was $15 per person.  My father would stay only the first day until 5 PM then he would drive back to Brooklyn to avoid an asthma attack.  I loved this farm and I can remember certain things as early as when I was three-years old.  Eventually my father's doctor injected him with antihistamines and we could spend our vacations there as a family.

I don't remember Julia Budka herself because by the time I was school age she was too old to run the family business.  I was told that not only working class people would go to her farm, but wealthy people would also spend time there mainly to taste her fabulous country cooking.  

She sold the business (I think) to a German-American family called Muller or Müller.  My mother described Mrs. Muller as more strict than Mrs. Budka, but I remember her as a very sweet woman who cooked the most amazing German-American dishes.  I would wake up early and with a Muller family member go to the chicken coop to pick fresh eggs from under the hens and then have the same for breakfast.   

My father, a carpenter by trade, built a serving trolley to help Mrs.  
Muller wheel the food from the kitchen to the dining room, a favor that put our family in good stead.  Mrs. Muller was a bit high strung, even I noticed at my young age.  She emitted a nervous and very audible click from back in her mouth as she swiftly served the diners.  She often had a worried look on her face as she placed huge serving places groaning with sausages and mashed potatoes on the long tables.   

The food was delicious but one day a friend of  my father complained that it was either not warm enough, or simply not enough (he was a very portly man).  Mrs. Muller exploded, stood there and ranted into the diner's face.  This was obviously boiling up but I was too young to recognize the signs.  I remember being frightened seeing this benign woman screaming on top of her lungs and turning red in the face.  It went on for some time and the guest and his wife left the farm afterwards.

We kept up our annual pilgrimage to Moodus until the early 50s.  By then I used to take a rowboat with young friends and row all over Lake Bashan, often fueling my parents' anxiety when we disappeared out of sight from the bank.  One summer I brought my terrapin from Brooklyn and freed my pet into Lake Bashan.  It seemed very happy as it swam into the depths.  

 One of those summers I brought flippers and swam out to a small island in the lake with some boys.  We stayed there for ages until our parents shouted for us to come back for dinner.  We were so far away from the bank we could just barely hear them, but we could see them waving their arms frantically.  We jumped into the cold evening water and started to suffer from fatigue about half way. Luckily the adults could read the signs and quickly rowed out to rescue us.  I hate to think what would've happened if they hadn't seen us or called us back for dinner.

Behind the porch was a large activities room where we could play darts or board games.  There was also a bar for the adults and a jukebox for dancing.  One hot and hazy afternoon I had befriended the only other kid there.  She was a womanly 13-year old and I was a very immature 9-year old.  It was just us in the activities room.   

Out of boredom she found some kind of romantic interest in me, but I was far too naive to recognize such a thing.  She put a nickel in the jukebox and a slow ballad came on.  She asked me to dance and suddenly I was in the arms of a young woman.  It was an extremely pleasant feeling but terribly confusing at the same time.  She whispered into my ear, "I smell something burning."  Instead of me coming back with something appropriate like, "Yeah, it's my heart," I pushed her away and shouted, "Where, what...?"  I took her literally and the moment was lost forever.

For me, my summers at the farmhouse happened during my early formative years.  It had all the mystery and magic of Narnia.  It was a complete contrast from the cement and sidewalks of Brooklyn.  I have never been in Moodus as an adult.  The reason I am writing this is because I just looked up Moodus on the Internet and slowly realized that it is all gone, the farm, the main street, gone.  I wanted to go back there and relive some of these memories with my wife.  I guess the best I can do now is to go through my parents' box of photographs and relive all I can in my mind.

--Anthony Visconti

  I am pleased to announce that the new local history website EastHaddamStories.org is now live. It is a project of the East Haddam Historic...