Lake Garda 1952-55

The house we bought was on Circle Drive at Lake Garda, Unionville, CT. It was just over the township line in Burlington, Ct, but that didn't reflect in the post office address. The house that we bought, I found out later, had been sitting half built for a number of years, but Battistoni apparently bought it and finished it, putting it on the market, and we bought. It had a full basement with a well and electric pump there. The main floor had a kitchen where we also ate, a living room, full bath, and two bedrooms. Upstairs were two bedrooms. The house was surrounded by sand, and in the back, birch trees. There were no neighbors on either side of us, just birch woods. There was no garage, and the driveway was mostly sand. But the kids had a lot of fun in the sand. And there were no more ticks and chiggers.



We were "welcomed" by a strange neighbor across the street. When I drove the truck into our new driveway, he came out and said "You turn around, bear right, and drive on up the hill." He thought I had come there by mistake. We heard that he occasionally beat his wife, and even for a time had her chained to the bed. But he never gave us any trouble. Another neighbor had a wife who was Hawaiian; they had several kids. Another neighbor right down the street on Circle Drive was Nelson, who had been on the USS Topeka with me, but we never found out until after moving away. Still another neighbor on Circle Drive, was a fellow who had been in the German army, and had fought the Russians on the eastern front.



There is a brief movie of our little family there in front of our house at Lake Garda. It was taken by my uncle Arnold Blankenburg, and is in the middle of a large reel of unknown Oakley Kansas people on 16 mm film presently stored at Tom Neill's place in Goshen, IN.



The job with the Allen D. Cardwell Co. turned out to be a little different than expected, in that just as I was beginning there, a bunch of top engineers there quit en masse to start another company in competition, a few towns to the south. The company had originally been a manufacturer of variable capacitors ("condensers" in th0se days), and located in Brooklyn, NY. But at the time I went to work there it was owned by Mr. Soby, and was primarily a miliitary contractor. Shortly after arriving, I was made project engineer of the development and manufacturing of a shipboard radiosonde receptor, to track and record weather balloons launched typically from aircraft carriers. The Navy provided us with an earlier model that had been developed by General Electric, and Cardwell had earlier been manufacturing radiosonde receptors for the Army. I have a picture somewhere of myself standing in front of a developmental large dish antenna on a little tower at Cardwell during that period.



Lake Garda was laid out in typical developmental fashion, somewhat like a maize. One day at work I got an urgent call from Marjorie that Patricia was missing! I lost not time in getting on up the road to Lake Garda. Surprise! At the very entrance to Lake Garda (distance of some blocks from home), there was Patricia. The story may have been that Patricia had wanted to stop there at that tree and gather some nuts, or something, but the answer had been "no".



The Lake Garda developoment was a little confusing to drive around. Once my sister Barbara visited us there, and I remember waiving to her again after she left, the second time she traversed Circle Drive, ha ha. My parents lived about 30 miles away, back at the old homestead in Vernon, and we would visit them every so often, and once in a while they would visit us. My dad had had a prostate operation at age 69, while we were in Maryland, but recovered completely in about a month.



Once in a great while we would make the 500 mile trip and visit Marjorie's folks in Pittsburgh. Once or twice they came up and visited us.



Gifford Jr. became friends with little Wendy Suizdak, who also lived on Circle Drive. One day they were in the woods playing with fire, but it got away, and the Fire Department had to come and put the fire out.



Sometimes there was quite a bit of "pressure" on me at work, and my nerves were not quite up to it, whether due to latent effect of the Chorea illness I had suffered years earlier, or due to lack of sufficient B vitamins, I don't know. Occasionally I had to take a day off from work just to settle down my nerves. Eventually it went away. Some time after this period, I applied a (probably wrong) philosophy of my own: I decided I could be either "fat and happy" or "thin and nervous". So later I opted for the former, and actually did put on a little too much weight. But I was no longer nervous at that point.



As time went on I started to join a number of organizations, including the Unionville Congregational Church, the Burlington Historical Society, the Burlington Republican Town Committee, etc. Before I realized it, I was committed to every evening. So I simply quit it all.



Marjorie had a "blast" in decorating our house, and I wish I had taken color photos of her work. She did a mural on Gifford Jr.'s bedroom wall, with a full wall of a "cowboy" scene, rather spectacular. And in the kitchen, the entire, at least one, wall was of hand painted autumn leaves. I thought it was great. It was our first real house, and it was our own.



On March 17, 1954, Tom was born. At work, they put on the blackboard, "Patrick Neill born", thinking it would be appropriate, but I said, "We already have a Pat." So that name didn't fly. He was a big baby. Eleven pounds something. Marjorie hadn't been too careful with her eating.

Some of us accompanied the final product for shock testing at the Naval Research Laboratories in Washington D.C. Other activities I was involved in: I took and passed a series of tests to be regestered as a Professional Engineer in Connecticut. Also, I started taking evening classes in advanced electronics towards the goal of a Masters Degree.

Towards the end of our time at Lake Garda, I began to acquire more land next to us, and behind us. (Remember the Monopoly syndrome).

Our main project was nearing completion, and the smart thing to do would be to look for a better job. This I found at the Kaman Aircraft Corporation, in Bloomfield, Ct. The commute was a bit far, but I was ready for a change, and I got nearly the pay I asked for. Near my first day on the job was August 19, 1955. This was the day of a hugh flood in Connecticut. That night we went to Unionville to get groceries. On the way back I noticed that the river was only one foot below the bridge. The next day the bridge was half submereged, and helicopters were hovering over the river looking for people who might have been floating away in portions of their houses.

The flood was spectacular in Unionville, which was a disaster area where no one was allowed. Later, we found that on the north side of the river, an entire line of houses were washed away. The most memorable view I have is one place where not only the house was washed away, but the building lot also: There was the front walk, there was the driveway, and instead of a house, there was the new river bank!

I rather enjoyed the change and the new work at Kaman Aircraft, though the commute was longer.

On Jan 14, 1956 Shirley was born also in Bristol Hospital. When I came in to see them after the fact, Marjorie was on oxygen. The doctor made light of it. Ha. But I took it pretty serious. But there were no problems fortunately.

I became somewhat dissatisfied with the environment at Lake Garda. Certainly it was better than southern Maryland where we had been, but I felt it could be greatly improved by a move.

I had remembered East Hartland, where my sister Barbara had been a Girl Scout Councellor while I was growing up. One time we went up there and visited her, and that evening we could see northern lights. But one of the main attractions there was that there was a church where the gospel was preached, and attended by many of the inhabitants. I didn't have the intention of attending there myself, but felt it would be a most positive influcence on the neiighborhood.

Well, it's getting late and I must quit for now.