Friday, May 01, 2009

Fond memories of 1950s Moodus

I came across your site and saw a picture I recognized. On the Moodus-center-pix page, there is a picture labeled ‘First National, Bill's Soda Shop, Weinstein's and Lou's Package’, which also seems to have been used for the ‘Greetings from Moodus’ card. I’d love to get a good copy of it.

My grandmother, Evelyn Levine, lived in the house whose porch partially appears on the left of the picture. There she raised her sons (Nathan, George, Bill, Barney, Saul, Jack, and Dave). The picture was taken in 1960, I think, despite the heading and the name ‘moodus_center_east_1940s.’ In any case, I think the car parked in the 2-car lot to the side of the house is a 1959 Rambler that belonged to my uncle Nathan (whom we called ‘Manny’), and it looks like there is a 1956 Chevy parked in front.

I have fond memories of exploring that house, and I still remember the floor-plan, my dad’s childhood room up-stairs, and the incredible antiques (treadle sewing machines, hand-carved sandstone pottery, my grandfather’s old butchering tools) I found exploring in the attic and basement.

One of my early memories (I was all of 4 years old) is from Memorial Day, 1959. My family drove down to Moodus from Massachusetts for the Memorial Day Parade, which became an annual event for us in the early 1960’s. We saw the parade (replete with Fife and Crum Corps) and then went to Billy’s store where my dad let us buy penny candy. We usually stayed in one of the cabins at Banner Lodge (Pop Banner was my godfather) over the weekend. None of the pictures I saw show it, but there was a covered and raised outdoor stage at the end of the lodge pool on which instructors would lead dance and exercise classes. The memory is that my dad (George) would take me to that stage in the evening, and we would sit, the two of us, while he told me about being a kid growing up in Moodus, working for Banner Lodge during his teen summers, and other recollections.

By the mid 1960’s, the ravine (Moodus River) behind my grandmother’s house was so polluted that the house began to smell horrible. She moved to a house in Middletown, and we ceased to spend Memorial Days in Moodus. Toward the end of the 1960’s, the family would still get together in the area with the brothers and my many cousins, either visiting Bashun Lake, Gillette Castle, or the Goodspeed, but by the early 1970’s, Moodus was essentially gone.

--Hal Franklin

  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...