Summer of 2001, I travelled with the SOBs to Connecticut to conclude a bit of business, travelling in a camper van borrowed from this guys which I think had the license plate “DOT COM” or some such thing. I was reminded of that trip after 9/11 when I wrote at Steve’s site on the 17th:
…I thought about the road in Connecticut I drove down with Dan and Nathan after getting a bit lost one evening trying to find the sea from a place near Hartford. The road was parallel to the one we wanted as it turned out. It was fifty miles of large homes on forested lots – multi-car garages, guest houses. As we drove south cars passed us going north, going home for the night. When we hit the coast road, the commuter train station was full of people heading for what looked to us Maritimers as luxery cars, coming home from a workday in the City, in Manhattan. The next day, I bought a big Connecticut flag – like I like to wherever I travel. I flew it at half mast Sunday.
I remember thinking about one particular guy, just getting out of his car in front of one of those huge houses, bending over laughing as he saw the van and then the license plate, perhaps evidently lost.
As part of that trip, we went to Bill’s Seafood in Westbrook on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. Had a soft shelled crab on a bun and marvelled at what must be the most excellent selection of hard liquors I have ever witnessed. The bartender, Jake, was a grey-haired pony-tailed master who, among other things took the time to take an interest in us, where we were from and why we were visiting. Bills is advertised as being by “the singing bridge”. Coming into work this morning in a downpour, I heard and was reminded that the causeway in Kingston is also a singing bridge and remembered one from twenty years ago when I used to visit Bridgewater, N.S, to hang out with the archibald boys. A singing bridge is just one of those open steel weave bed bridges – metal WigWag. I think that is one of the nicest nicknames for a purely utilitarian bit of civil engineering I have come across.