Connecticut

Sep 2, 2006
Current mood:amused

Guilford, Connecticut



Downtown Guilford



If you ever wanted the feeling of white picket fences, apple pie, summer parades, family reunions in city park and the local bar that everyone knows your name(and everyone elses), this is the place!

Guillford was founded by Henry Whitfield who was the leader of a band of English Puritans escaping from the religious persecutions in Boston. He led them here in 1639 to 1000 of acres of creeks, rocky mountain shoreline, fertile soils and rich thick green forests. The houses around town sit on a miniumum 4 acres, the houses in town all surround the  rectangular green city park strip. The monument that is erected in the center of gigantic maple trees represents the fallen soldiers of the civil war, and Yankee magazine lies on the coffee tables and barbershops of the local buisnesses.


We are staying with yet more of Brett's friends that he knew in Hawaii, JP and Cindy. They have a 1928 brick red house on the beach of West Lake which is completely stocked with bass, lilypads, cattails, canoes and a floating dock for the kids. The house, like most in the area, has a carriage house that was built about 10 years after the home and is now used to park the cars and the fishing poles.


JP's roots start on the Magna Carta of Guillford with his ancestors, the Dudley's. His paternal ancestors are the Sullivans and the Sullivan and Dudley's arch rivals that extend as deep as the Hatfield's and McCoy's, are the Bishop's. Now to give you a little background on this one. The Dudley's established a very fine processing Dairy on the north end of the town called Hillcrest Dairy. It sits on acres and acres of rolling hills with a 70 ft. red  maple outside the main house that Grammy Dudley patched together with bubble gum when it broke in half as a sapling in the early 20's. They operated out of one room stone building with the main house built back in the 1800's.

One of the buildings at Dudley's Dairy on the north side of town.

The Bishop's were on the south side of town and just a stone's throw the from where JP now lives.  The Bishop's  livlihood relied on the fruitfulness of their orchards, mainly apple. Now you would think that these two families would have a great thing going. A little Bishop's Apple Pie along with the Dudley's fresh homemade vanilla ice cream and cheddar cheese. However, as we passed The Bishop's grocery store on the way to town, Cindy claimed that the Bishops had the best apple pie on the East Coast but they were banned from going in there because of a tale old argument that no one seems to remember how it started or what it was about. JP has never been into Bishop's, Cindy has snuck in there one time because she is originally from a town 20 miles north of here, so no one knew that she was dating a Sullivan. So, instead of stopping at the grocery store 2 miles from the house, we drove 10 miles to the Food Market in the middle of town surrounding City Park and back 12 miles to the house that we were having dinner at. :)

Bishop's Orchard and Winery on the south side of town. 

This is how the spirit of small towns work. We arrived back from NYC , me, traumatized and ready for another Valium and a swing on the porch so I could be completely catotonic from the big city overload until Cindy announced that they had dinner plans over at Matty's house. Matty's claim to smal town fame was being a bachelor and the next Naked Chef to all the single girls in town. The dinner menu consisted of grilled Filet Mignon wrapped in bacon, home grown garden green beans with almonds, shrimp, tomato, feta and basil crudites. Since Cindy had already extended the invitation to Brett and I when we had returned on the train from NYC, we decided to go. As soon as we walked through the sliding glass doors, Matt referred to the experience of New York not going well and offered a glass of wine. I wanted the entire bottle, but as they were new friends, I decided to pace myself . Dinner was incredible and we finished it off with Apple Pie straight from Bishop's apple orchard. Yes, that's right, BISHOP's apple pie! JP had broke the 350 years of fueding to walk into his rivals' store to finally taste the east coast infamous homegrown, tart and juicy apple pie. The stories started and versions of the old riff began within hours of elaboration with no clarification at the end of the night.


The next morning as JP is giving us the grand historical tour of the town in the midst of Hurricane Ernesto's belting rains and winds, we stop by the Dudley Dairy to see Grammy. As soon as we sit down in her living room, she says she heard that the trip to NYC was brief and overwhelming and offered her condolescences as she does not like the city either. Of course, there was no mention of JP buying the pie at Bishop's, because, of course, he would have disowned.  Yet, all of were aware that on some deep, neandrathal level that word has already traveled to her 90 year ears. After touring the dairy, still intact from it's last milking in 1946 and stocked full of antiques that Grammy doesn't realize are antiques, we headed to the downtown Irish Bar, Kayley's, for some real Shepard's Pie.


Of course, it's only 1:00 in the afternoon, so we are the first ones to pull up a chair at the bar to watch the Red Sox game, when 3 guys that looked like they just got off a month long stint on a fishing boat, came in to grab the chairs next to us. One of them being Sean Dessesaire, yet another tie back to the establishment of Guillford. Rumor had already reached the locals about JP buying Bishop's pie and Sean was the first to dig in to JP. Together they rehatched and swore about the story of "Grampy" and Keith Bishop going at it way back when. The more beer Sean and JP drank, the more Sean swore on the "true story" of the most rumored and talked about family riff of Guillford. And at the end of the day, still no one could recall what the original tiff was all about almost 400 years before, yet still going strong because of family loyalty and passions.


It was absolutely intriguing and mind blowing to witness first hand a situation so engrained into the generations of a community that warrants hours of passionate debate. Coming from the west coast, where families are barely 150 years old and maybe 4 generations, this historical tie to apples and milk has me in love with the east coast mentality. I loved every minute of it!