A Next Door Neighbor Remembers the Franklins #1

by J. Thomas Allison

I grew up next door to the Franklin family from 1952 until 1978.  Hugh and Madeleine bought their house, Crosswicks, the year my parents bought acreage north of them. My parents had also looked at the 1750-ish house he Franklins ended up purchasing. They decided against it in favor of a large new Cape Cod designed by my architect uncle.

Hugh and Madeleine also bought the old General Store from a true Connecticut Yankee, Sam Porter (though granddaughter Charlotte notes that Hugh bought it while Madeleine was away: surprise!). If you’re thinking Green Acres’ Sam Drucker you have the idea. They were updating it with new clean metal shelving, a meat department behind the Post Office, and a line of Herbs and Spices beside the familiar display of  “Contented Cow Bag Balm.”  Today, you have to get it at Tractor Supply. Hugh was up six days a week at 6 to drive his old red Ford Woody Wagon 15 miles to his supplier Allied Grocers for newspapers, merchandise, fresh fruits and vegetables. A 50 pound wheel of aged cheddar “rat cheese” was frequently on the list to be sold by his butcher, Clarence Hagert.

The wheel of cheese had its place of honor on the top of the meat cabinet. However the old fashioned cracker barrel no longer held several hundred “Uneeda Biscuit.” Then you  helped yourself into one of a stack of small bags under the cover to be weighed at the counter..It was now filled with assorted colorful tempting boxes of “fancy” crackers.

Hugh grew up in 1920’s Oklahoma with hitching posts and horses pulled up beside dusty open top Model Ts along the wooden sidewalks. From there he went to New York to be an actor. Madeleine lived a privileged life in a steam heated apartment. Her parents dressed for dinner in formal Evening Wear every night in case they got a last minute invitation from a society friend. Hugh and Madeleine would be the last couple you’d expect to be singing

“Green acres is the place to be
Farm livin’ is the life for me
Land spreadin’ out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside”

He opened at 7:30, and Madeleine worked a shift in the store while he went to Torrington midday to do a talk program on the local radio station WTOR. He returned in time for the brisk evening trade from 3:30 to closing at 6:00.  Country wives with no cars called in last minute orders to be put up, added to their charge account and handed off to their husbands coming home from factories in Torrington. Every night, they stopped for the mail, a paper and any last minute order. Each farm family had a pad resembling the order pads in restaurants. Once a month it was tallied and paid “when the milk check came.” Customers were handed a bill on the 28th of every month with their groceries. Money was tight all around at that time, and the Franklins extended credit to the farmers, who often worked day jobs in town, when they could. To encourage the settling of accounts by the end of the year, they gave every customer with an up-to-date monthly tab a small ham on December 29th for the New Year.

Tom Allison is a retired Congregational Minister living in Albany NY.  Rehabbing a house once owned by a Hudson River Steamboat Captain inspired his looking into that history culminating in “Hudson River Steamboat Catastrophes Contests and Collisions” (History Press 2013) available Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  Since 5th grade he has enjoyed offering to the public illustrated history lectures. Among the 40 plus have been American Cookbooks,  plumbing,, transatlantic steamboat travel in the golden age, Litchfield Connecticut: America’s most historic mile and  A neighbor remembers Madeleine L’Engle, (for the 100th anniversary of  her birth)  to name a few. He is pictured here at Crosswicks, with the typewriter Madeleine gave him on the occasion of his high school graduation.