Date: Fri 05-Apr-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDREA

Quick Words:

Hazel-Spiotti-Sandy-Hook

Full Text:

WITH PHOTOS: Sandy Hook Was A Place Of Families, Friends, And Helping Hands

B Y A NDREA Z IMMERMANN

The view from the one-room Grays Plain Schoolhouse on Berkshire Road was often

more interesting to young Hazel Beardsley than her lessons. It was about 1915,

and the dirt "turnpike" in front of the school was the route for a Bridgeport

car manufacturer to road test vehicles before attaching the outer body to the

frames.

Hazel Spiotti, now 90, vividly remembers Sandy Hook when few people had

telephones and horses were a common mode of transportation. But life was not

humdrum - as a youth she rode Harley Davidson motorcycles with her brother,

raced cars, and snuck out of the house using a ladder to go to the theater in

Bridgeport.

Her parents, Charles and Clara, both a part of the Beardsley family tree that

branched 11 generations ago, married and settled in Southbury where their

families had established roots in the mid 1600s, she said. Charles Beardsley

was a lumberman.

"Mother followed him wherever he cut wood - New York, Redding, and other

places. They rented a house and he made sure we always had running water in

it," said Mrs Spiotti. "And we would go along. When we were old enough to go

to school he bought the farm on Bennett's Bridge so we could go to school out

here. He hired men to run the farm... and only went into the woods [to cut

hardwood] in the winter" when the flies weren't around to plague him.

The high snow banks of this past winter reminded her of the fun she would have

as a child. Anna Murphy, the school teacher, was always able to get to school

no matter how bad the weather was, but "my father and Mr Bresson would take

the horses and make a path so we could get to school in the snow," she said.

The Bresson children were the only ones in the neighborhood, so they played

together. "We loved the snow."

Neither Hazel, nor her brother cared much for farm life, but they dutifully

completed the chores of feeding the cows and milking them by hand. "We'd also

follow the plow around and pick up stones - you'd have to do everything," said

Mrs Spiotti.

The farm house had an outdoor john, running water from the spring, kerosene

lamps, and a wood stove for heat. Telephone lines ran through town to New

Haven along what is now Route 34, but it was unusual for any side roads to

have lines. "My father set the first telephone poles on Bennett's Bridge for

the telephone company because he wanted a telephone," she said. Their home

became a message center for some of the neighbors.

"One night I was delivering a telephone message to John Fryer from his brother

in Bridgeport. I was riding bare-back and my horse she shied. I looked up and

saw a bobcat on the limb of the tree [stretching across the road]," she said.

"I delivered the message and when I came back the cat was gone."

Mrs Spiotti and her brother would race cars on a dirt track, and take turns

driving the motorcycle with sidecar when they visited friends in Greenwich and

Botsford. "We'd stop along the way to Botsford, take the sidecar off, and ride

together - until our mother found out about it," she said. "I road a Harley -

no girls did those things back then. I was a tomboy - the only girl in my

mother's family until I was 17 and off on my own."

Very strong-minded, the young Hazel was caught climbing a ladder to get back

into her house after sneaking out to see the show "Sally, Irene, and Mary" in

Bridgeport. "I never did anything I didn't get caught at," she laughed. "We

didn't get licked but we'd get talked to. For instance, our parents would talk

for half an hour on why we shouldn't fight."

In those days, you knew almost everyone who lived in Newtown. "It was a small

town and you knew all their business and never discussed it. If you were in

trouble, you never thought nothing about sharing with your neighbor. That's

about the only thing I miss," said Mrs Spiotti. She remembered dropping by

friends' homes at meal time and being invited to join them. "We were never a

clique, never think `they're my friend' and delete anyone else. Everyone

respected his neighbor no matter if they had a nickel or a million."

There was no discrimination; "we were all friends and we still are," she said.

When the area youth wanted to go to the movies at the theater across from the

old St Rose on Church Hill Road, her family put hay in the wagon and she'd

drive to pick up the other kids.

That was around the time the Sandy Hook Fire Company had just a "little old

wagon." Sometime before the 1920s the Kane's barn burned down and they lived

so far out in Sandy Hook that it was the neighbors who helped get the cows

out, according to Mrs Spiotti.

When she was a child, there was the "Shoddy" Mill in Sandy Hook across the

river from the old post office, she said. "And before the Stevenson Dam was

built there were houses on the flats where my relatives lived. We'd walk with

our mother over Bennett's Bridge before the area was flooded."

Mrs Spiotti also remembers a coal pit in the area of Great Quarter. "They'd

take hardwood and put it in a pile like a great big Indian teepee and make

charcoal. Kale Davis, a black man, made everything and kept the fire," she

said. "They used the coal down at the brass shop in Bridgeport."

"We went to high school in the Episcopal Church - that's where we went until

they built Hawley High School," said Mrs Spiotti. At that time the Episcopal

Church was located across the street from where it is now, and later was moved

to the larger lot.

Grown Up

At 17, Mrs Spiotti left home and boarded in Woodbury where she worked as an

operator for Woodbury Telephone Company. "I'd plug things in and crank

telephones," she said. Unless a resident was calling one of the four or five

people tied to the same line, he'd have to go through the operator to place

his calls. Although party lines existed, "you didn't have time to listen in."

While in Woodbury she went to a dance at Woodbury Town Hall. "All the kids

went together, but the Methodist minister said I was out after midnight and

bawled me out," she said. "You couldn't sew on buttons on the Sabbath! You

could only go to the Epworth League."

She dated a few fellows, but "after two or three months, they'd want to get

married and I wasn't in the marrying mood," she said. But when she was 19 and

waiting tables in Danbury, she met Stewart Meres and they were married.

The couple lived in Westchester, and then built a house on Beardsley property

in Southbury which was destroyed by a fire. In 1942 they bought the property

adjacent to the parcel where the Gray's Plain School House was located. "I

always wanted to build a house here but couldn't get the property until 1942

because it belonged to an estate," she said. But during the war years there

was a moratorium on creating new buildings, although building on an old

foundation was permitted, she said. A friend in Southbury who was a cattle

dealer offered one of his houses to them until they were able to rebuild their

former home.

When the war was over, her uncle built them a home on Berkshire Road out of

green and native lumber because "they wouldn't let us have what we wanted,"

she said. The only exception is the oak used for flooring in two of the rooms.

Mrs Spiotti remembers Arthur Nettleton, President of Newtown Savings Bank,

stopping by and asking if she wanted a mortgage. "To offer me money was

absolutely unheard of," she said. "As children we called him `Mr A.T.' because

everybody called him `A.T.' but we wouldn't dare call him by his first name."

She continued to wait on tables and eventually went to work at the Jenkins

Valve factory in Bridgeport. It was while she was waiting tables that she

began what became a lifelong habit of reading local newspapers "cover to cover

- including the ads."

In the early 1950s, she and her mother operated a hot dog shop on their

property near the road. "My mother took care of it during the day, and when I

came home from work I'd go down," said Mrs Spiotti. There was no regular time

when the business closed, she just stayed "until the drunks who came in

sobered up and left."

Mrs Spiotti always drove a sports coupe. And, eight years after her first

husband died she married Clarence Spiotti, the service manager where she

bought a car. They established an antique shop at the former site of the hot

dog business. Both businesses were simply called "Beardsley's."

Since a young age, Mrs Spiotti had collected antiques. "You could feel of them

and know [their value] - if you get ahold of anything that's old, it depicts

its age," she said. "At one time I had 1,400 to 1,500 pitchers."

She was a very active member of the Eastern Star and the Grange.

A Changing Newtown

Newtown "is nothing like it used to be - I wouldn't want it to be," said Mrs

Spiotti. "I don't want to go back to horse and buggy or ride a horse to take a

message to someone," she said. "Everything is new - that's evolution. Things

are supposed to be better." Like the medical technology that allowed the

cataracts to be removed from her eyes.

Nowadays, Mrs Spiotti enjoys taking care of her dog, cat and five Aracuna

chickens which lay blue eggs. "It doesn't matter if it's a person or an animal

- as long as it's in your charge, you are responsible for it," she said.

"I'm just happy to be as well as I am," said Mrs Spiotti. "There's nothing I

feel I want to do again but go up to Nova Scotia. I've done whatever I wanted

to when I wanted to."