Turning Back the Pages
100 years ago — April 1922
LIME ROCK — Mr. Walter Boardman spent Sunday with his mother in Sheffield.
ORE HILL — T. Robertson Jones has commenced work on his house. John Garrity is doing the mason work.
LIME ROCK — Ezra Wolf has a new car.
Mr. Luther Stupplebean who has been head farmer for Mr. G.G. Thorne has resigned and returned to his former home in Chatham, N.Y.
Adv.: House for Sale. House and corner lot in Salisbury formerly occupied by the late Mrs. Frederick D. McNeil. Price $3800, $1800 cash, balance on mortgage if desired. 5 per cent to agents. H.H. Wells, Brewster, N.Y.
50 years ago — April 1972
Members of the Salisbury Planning and Zoning Commission toured the proposed site of a new Hartford Electric Light Co. permanent substation Wednesday afternoon with company officials in preparation for a decision on the HELCO application. This followed a heated public hearing Tuesday night in which property owners in the vicinity of the proposed site on the east side of Indian Mountain Road at the Sharon line condemned the plan and urged that HELCO be compelled to look elsewhere.
Local conservationalists were alarmed this week by the threat of a four-lane interstate highway stretching from central Vermont, across Massachusetts and into Connecticut along Route 7. The inclusion of Route 7 in the interstate plan now appears to be a mapmaker’s error, but four-lane expansion of both routes 7 and 8 south to the Connecticut border remains a real possibility.
Opening day of fishing season at the Town Grove was marred by a pre-dawn altercation which resulted in injuries to a visiting fisherman and the arrest of two local men. The men, from Canaan and Lakeville, were charged with third-degree assault, second-degree burglary, fourth-degree larceny and second-degree criminal mischief. The charges grew out of the alleged beating of a West Hartford man who was waiting in line for the gates to the Grove to open. According to spectators, the man was asleep in his camper about 2 a.m. when the two local men reportedly bumped into the vehicle with their car. When the owner emerged to see what was happening, he was allegedly beaten by the other two.
“Ice out” at last on Lake Wononscopomuc! That’s the word this week from George Milmine of Lakeville, lake-watcher-in-residence, who has been reporting on the state of the ice annually since 1949.
Litchfield County showed a total of 764 farms in the 1969 Census of Agriculture, according to figures released by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of the Census, a part of the department’s Social and Economic Statistics Administration. In the last previous Census of Agriculture (1964) the number of farms reported in the county was 925.
Music Mountain in Falls Village, the setting for the chamber music concerts by the Berkshire String Quartet for the last 42 seasons, is described in a new book being published by the National Geographic Society as one of the most pleasant diversions on the Appalachian Trail, according to Dr. Elbert Gross, president of the Music Mountain Board of Managers.
Charles Bragg, vice president of Northeast Utilities, told the Canaan Exchange Club Tuesday night that Connecticut can expect a power crisis within the next few years. “The energy crisis is very real,” he said. He told club members that the state can expect rationing of electricity by 1974 or 1975, with 1978 through 1980 being a very difficult period for the power companies.
The Falls Village Planning Commission agreed Monday night that selectmen should initiate “Phase Two” of the search for a new town landfill site. The current landfill probably “can’t last past fall,” according to First Selectman Miles Blodgett. “Phase One” of the dump site search ended abruptly in mid-winter when negotiations on a site owned by the Hollenbeck Club broke down. “Phase Two” is the phrase officials use in referring to their hunt for a second-choice site.
25 years ago — April 1997
CORNWALL — The Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved a controversial Cornwall Bridge gravel mine special permit Monday with several conditions after a nearly three-year process marked by heated debate. Jacqueline and Kenneth Strobel of FSB Associates won hard-fought permit approval to reopen a Route 7 gravel pit on their Cornwall Bridge property in the town’s dual-use industrial/residential zone. The Strobels plan to excavate 47,500 cubic yards of gravel from the four-acre site over a two-year period and restore the area with grass seedings and other landscaping improvements within one year after the operation ceases. FSB Associates is unsure how or if it will proceed with the reopening of the gravel mine once operated by Rocky River Associates, Mrs. Strobel said this week. “Nobody really won in this,” she added. “James Taylor got a lot of publicity though.”
SHARON — Paley’s Market, The Good Earth Farm on Route 343, will observe its 15th anniversary this weekend and next from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. A groundbreaking for the market’s garden center will be held this weekend.
A recent change of hands at Canaan Pizza was a subtle one. But the real surprise for many who walk through the door is that the new owner’s face is a familiar one. After the 13-year tenure of Peter and Cleo Roussis, the Railroad Street business’ founder, Michael Kasimis has bought back what he started in 1981. It has been a winding road back for Kasimis, who took over March 1, this time with his son Chris as a partner.
