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Madison in the Twentieth Century
Charlotte L. Evarts
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The Charlotte L. Evarts Memorial Archives
Hammonasset State ParkHot Time At Hammonasset
By Al Miller
Before 1920 the State of Connecticut bought a lot of territory in the Hammonasset District and they started the Hammonasset State Park. They also bought a lot homes in the Hammonasset District.
Now, if a person worked for the State and needed a home for their family they could rent one the home for 12 dollars a month. Since my father started working for the State Park in 1924, we couldn't move to Hammonasset because there wasn't a home available at that time.
In 1927 there was a home available and we moved from Guilford to Hammonasset. The rent my father paid for this home was 13 dollars a month. The house was for two families to live in. My father had the first floor.
Now, the fellow who was in charge of all the state parks had an aunt who lived upstairs. She had a couple of coal stoves in her apartment and every day she would empty out the ashes and carry then down the back stairs. Where did she put them but under the beautiful corncrib!
Sometime later I was in school and the fire whistle blew. When I got out of school I heard that the fire was at our house. I ran practically all the way home. It wasn't our house. It was the corncrib and the old outhouse and part of our garage. It was due to the lady who lived upstairs.
In the morning she had come down the stairs with a big pan of hot ashes and emptied them on top of all the other ashes. Now the red hot ashes lit the beam of the corncrib and started the fire.
My mother and the lady upstairs had our car and her car was in the garage. When the fire started to burn the garage, my mother had gotten our car out, but she couldn't get the other lady's car out because she couldn't get her key to my mother. Finally she did get her key to my mother, but by the time she got the car started a spark hit the canvas top and put a hole in it.
Boy, she let my mother have it for not getting her car out first. She forgot she hadn't given my mother her key soon enough.
Mr. Parker got his aunt out of the house and we never saw her again.
One Sunday morning around 11:30 or so there was a double line of customers trying to get waited on. This one lady asked for a hot dog which I gave her and she left and went out and paid for it. She also put mustard and relish on it, but she came back through the line again and asked me to toast the bun. I said, I am sorry but we can not toast buns because the grill is all full of hot dogs and there is no place for the buns.
Well, she looked at me and said, "You know what you can do with this hot dog and she took it and threw it at me. It just missed me and hit the wall.
After a while the boss came out to see ma. He heard something happened to me and wanted to know about it. So I told him what happened. He asked me if I got her name and address. I told him no. Why? Because you could have sued her for everything, because nobody has the right to throw anything at anybody, especially food
I looked at him and said, "I didn't know that. Now you tell me!, Thanks!"
One more time the boss came out to the table to talk to me. I was just a bus boy and he said to me, "Do you see that lady down at the end of the building all by herself. Nobody around her?"
I said, "Yes. Why?"
She was breast feeding her baby.
Well, I want you to tell her to go down and tell her to go down to the Red Cross Station which was in the main office building to feed her baby there.
I looked at him and said, "I was only hired a bus boy just to clean the tables off and not to tell people where to go or what to do."
The lady stayed there and nobody bothered her.
Every day was different working there.
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