Gardener has a northeast adventure
The gardener left his garden to take care of itself because it was time to visit friends in Connecticut. First stop was O’Hare airport in Chicago. O’Hare is a monster. Planes from all over the world plus fuel trucks and baggage carriers crawling over the concreted space as big as an Arkansas county, and my question was, “Why aren’t we going anywhere? We’re sitting in a plane on a cloudy day, and incoming planes are shuffling by. May we please have our turn.” A challenging job would be working in the control tower here… harder than high-speed Tetris.
Eventually we were aloft headed east. We flew over Lake Michigan which is huge enough to make ships look tiny. Clouds took over as Lake Erie appeared below, so I napped and dreamed of Connecticut Field pumpkins.
Connecticut Field pumpkins are historical. They were around before George Washington (remember him) was born, and pumpkins nowadays want to claim a lineal heritage from them (and probably do). When I finally arrived in southern Connecticut, since it was October, they were everywhere. Larger than a typical duffle bag and twice as orange, they were prominently displayed by the front door of every respectable domicile.
Regarding front doors, another curiosity to an outsider was the fashion of most every house, especially expansive ones unaffordable to gardener article writers, was, regardless of the attractive color schemes for the house and shutters, the front doors were conspicuously aberrant — a beige house with light blue trim house would have a bright red front door… or black or yellow. It was an anomaly to see a front door color that matched.
Being a gardener and a birder, it was cool to see vees of Canada geese flying less than 100 feet above ground.
In my Arkansas experience, I would see them flying far above Carroll County Airport aircraft, hard to see at first. Around here, I could almost hit a wiffle ball at these flocks.
Regarding wiffle balls, the Wiffle Ball Company is in a nondescript brick building near a U-Haul lot in Shelton, Conn. Every wiffle ball I hit during my adolescence, and there were many, came from Shelton. In the early 1950s, David Mullany, a former semi-pro baseball pitcher, created the plastic ball with slots in it for which my childhood was richer, and his modest family-run business, which still employs only 15 employees, continues today. The wiffle ball is an example of a simple but profound benefit coming from a humble source.
And then there’s BiC. In 1884, Connecticut insurance salesman Lewis Waterman invented the first practical fountain pen, and Waterman Pen was the predominant pen company in the world until ballpoint pens became popular in the 1950s. Sales of Waterman pens waned and BiC, a French maker of inexpensive ballpoint pens, swooped in and bought the company and moved it to Milford.
Marcel Bich, inventor of the pen and company owner, insisted on focusing on his inexpensive, easily available ballpoint pens which he marketed in grocery stores and corner markets instead of department stores among expensive pens. I remember seeing television ads featuring BiC pens strapped to a skate as the skater pirouetted across ice, after which the pen would write as the voice told us, “First time, every time.” I have two of them in my desk drawer at work and more in the storage closet. BiC also sells Wite-Out products and cigarette lighters and employs almost 6000 workers.
Before BiC and wiffle ball, there was Yale established in nearby New Haven in 1701, same year Anders Celsius was born, which means Yale is older than the Celsius temperature scale.
And not far away in Long Island Sound are the Thimble Islands, an archipelago of dozens of islands, 23 of which are inhabited. Money Island contains 23 impressive homes and once was a self-contained community. Horse Island is owned by Yale which maintains an ecological laboratory there.
The point for the adventurous gardener is you won’t find things if you don’t keep looking. Now, back to gardening.