In 1938, our house was destroyed by one of the worst hurricanes Connecticut had ever seen. Rain pelting, wind gusting with hurricane force, my mother and I were still in the house while the men were working outside herding the cows into the barn and getting things tied down. Above the noise of the wind, I heard my father yelling to us, “Get out! The house is coming down!”. My mother and I rushed out and turned around to see the brick wall tumble where we stood just seconds before. It was a narrow escape.

At the same time, my brother Abe was fighting his way down the washed-out driveway to find 8-year-old Jake, who was walking home from school. Abe carried little Jake up to the safety of the barn where our family spent the night, sleeping in the hay. The next day, we moved into the summer cabin where we remained in uncomfortable cramped conditions for the next year while a new house was built.

From Wikipedia:

At 4:00 p.m. on September 21, the great Hurricane of 1938 made landfall just east of New Haven. There was little warning. Winds and storm surge flattened cottages and other buildings all along the shore. It was the deadliest and costliest storm in Connecticut’s 350-year history.

In the days after the hurricane, we tried to rescue as many personal possessions from the house as we could. I carefully picked my way up the rickety and now damaged stairs to get my stuff out of a large chest where I kept my clothes and treasured belongings. I managed to get some of my clothes but that was about it. Two weeks after the hurricane, what remained of the house burned down in an electrical fire.

The New House

A year after the hurricane, our new home was finally ready. Quite modern for those days, a happy upgrade from our old drafty house. We had a real heating system with radiators – although there were no radiators in the bedrooms or the dining room. Still, it was heaven to have a radiator in the upstairs bathroom. We had an indoor toilet, a gas stove in the kitchen, and hot and cold running water. The kitchen was large just like in the old house and was always the place where we all gathered. Off the kitchen, there was a tiny bathroom with a toilet and a sink. You could enter the house from the side and go directly to the bathroom to wash up before entering the main house. The men could clean up after the day’s work and not track mud and dirt all throughout the house. This was a joy for my mother.

My parents had a bedroom downstairs and the rest of us slept upstairs. The stairs leading up to the bedrooms had a shiny baluster that the boys often slid down. I had to share a room and a bed with Ceil. I wasn’t too happy about that situation! But around that same time, I started college and stayed in the dorms for part of the year.