10 Years Later
This past weekend, we had occasion to visit Willimantic, CT, where I lived for just over a year and a half while getting an MA at the University of Connecticut between 1993 and 1995. Suffice to say that Willi wasn’t the nicest place I’d ever lived. In the time there, my friend Brian and I found innumerable needles and used condoms littering the streets, heard the shots from a double murder occur, watched teenage punks get busted in and around our house, and watched a police chase unfold (very bizarrely) up and down our street, with various neighbors shouting the criminal away from their porches.
So when I moved into the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago a year or so later, I wasn’t fazed one bit.
Now, Willi had its good side as well — small but strong bohemian community, a good food co-op, a great bar (Main St. Cafe, now the Willimantic Brewing Company, a phenomenal brewpub), and a passel of grad students running around. Plus gorgeous Victorian and classic New England architecture. But it was an almost completely run-down old New England mill town. Rural New England mill town.
One of its best features back in 1994-95 was a stretch of thread mills, designed by Thomas Edison to be the best working environment of the time (1880s). They were shuttered, of course, but of great historic interest, and could easily be turned into great new uses.
Of course, I watched them burn down in early August of 1995 … although I never heard a resolution, general opinion was that they had been torched purposefully — there was nothing going on inside them.
So I hadn’t really been back since a brief visit in May of 1996; the town, while still essentially crummy and gritty, seemed in much better shape, with a slew of new businesses along Main St., and a larger proportion of houses in better and better shape. My old house has been repainted in traditional fashion, and seems to have made some sort of classic home registry.
The biggest surprise was seeing the one major mark I left on the town still up and in good shape: while working for the local hardware/building supply shop, I wound up getting drafted to paint the exterior of the building. Now, that building’s a block on each side, and I painted three of the four sides. One face of the building was to receive a series of historical murals; my coat of paint was the backing for those.
They’re still there.
Graffitti-free.
I was amazed.
Now I need to go back when the camera has a full charge, and take a ton more pictures.
June 4th, 2005 at 1:43 am
I got four today!!!