I was hatched in Glastonbury, Connecticut, some forty-odd years ago. Everyone says it’s a lovely town to raise kids in. I wouldn’t know, but I will say it wasn’t much fun being a kid there.
Glastonbury (population 34,584 as of 2016 data) is a nice place. Not as wealthy as, say, Cos Cob or Westport, but it’s no East Hartford, either. It has pretty buildings and a town green which hosts a popular art festival every summer. It’s home to a lot of doctors, lawyers, and when I was growing up, exactly one dairy farm. That’s where I lived.
Growing up amongst the cows was pretty fun. We had ponds with frogs, snakes, and snapping turtles, and a hay barn to play in. There were downsides, too: the manure lagoon would get pretty ripe after a heavy rain, and the kids on the bus would make fun of us because of the smell. (This was the least mortifying of my school bus ride experiences. One time, the cows got out and held up the bus at our stop; another, one of the barn cats dashed into the road right as the bus came, ricocheting off a wheel so that its furry little body shot-putted past the bus windows into the woods by our mailbox, leaving my sister and I to climb onto a bus full of our horrified, teary peers.) We got picked on a little bit, sure. But nobody turned down a playdate to our house.
When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to move out of town. As soon as I turned eighteen, I was off to school in Pennsylvania, though I did return every summer to work at the local pharmacy. After that, I started my adult life on Block Island, with a bunch of other transplants who’d moved from the mainland. “Where are you from?” I asked my first island friend, Ayesha.
“New Britain,” she said. “You?”
“I’m from Glastonbury.”
I was horrified by what I heard in my voice as I said it. Was that—yes, I think it was—pride? And maybe a little snobbery? “Glah-stin-berry,” I said again, slowly, and the condescension was almost embarrassing. (Almost.)
I told my mother about this strange turn of events that night on the phone. “I sounded like such a snot! I sounded like . . . well, like I was from Glastonbury!”
“Not so bad being from here, is it?” she said. Mom had a point.
I’ve learned to embrace my roots now that I’m older—the farm is long gone, but the town preserved it as open space, and you can still catch snapping turtles in the ponds there. I don’t get to Glastonbury as often these days, and sometimes I worry that my perception of growing up there was skewed. Maybe it was a nice town to be a kid in. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager to move away.
I’ll have to ask some of my high school friends what they think. They’re easy enough to find—half my class moved one town over from Glastonbury, just like me.
Glastonbury (population 34,584 as of 2016 data) is a nice place. Not as wealthy as, say, Cos Cob or Westport, but it’s no East Hartford, either. It has pretty buildings and a town green which hosts a popular art festival every summer. It’s home to a lot of doctors, lawyers, and when I was growing up, exactly one dairy farm. That’s where I lived.
Growing up amongst the cows was pretty fun. We had ponds with frogs, snakes, and snapping turtles, and a hay barn to play in. There were downsides, too: the manure lagoon would get pretty ripe after a heavy rain, and the kids on the bus would make fun of us because of the smell. (This was the least mortifying of my school bus ride experiences. One time, the cows got out and held up the bus at our stop; another, one of the barn cats dashed into the road right as the bus came, ricocheting off a wheel so that its furry little body shot-putted past the bus windows into the woods by our mailbox, leaving my sister and I to climb onto a bus full of our horrified, teary peers.) We got picked on a little bit, sure. But nobody turned down a playdate to our house.
When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to move out of town. As soon as I turned eighteen, I was off to school in Pennsylvania, though I did return every summer to work at the local pharmacy. After that, I started my adult life on Block Island, with a bunch of other transplants who’d moved from the mainland. “Where are you from?” I asked my first island friend, Ayesha.
“New Britain,” she said. “You?”
“I’m from Glastonbury.”
I was horrified by what I heard in my voice as I said it. Was that—yes, I think it was—pride? And maybe a little snobbery? “Glah-stin-berry,” I said again, slowly, and the condescension was almost embarrassing. (Almost.)
I told my mother about this strange turn of events that night on the phone. “I sounded like such a snot! I sounded like . . . well, like I was from Glastonbury!”
“Not so bad being from here, is it?” she said. Mom had a point.
I’ve learned to embrace my roots now that I’m older—the farm is long gone, but the town preserved it as open space, and you can still catch snapping turtles in the ponds there. I don’t get to Glastonbury as often these days, and sometimes I worry that my perception of growing up there was skewed. Maybe it was a nice town to be a kid in. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager to move away.
I’ll have to ask some of my high school friends what they think. They’re easy enough to find—half my class moved one town over from Glastonbury, just like me.
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