John Darnton won a Pulitzer Prize.
During a 40-year New York Times career he covered African liberation movements and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. He served as deputy foreign editor, metropolitan editor and cultural news editor.
He’s published 5 novels, taught at the SUNY-New Paltz, and now curates journalism’s George Polk Awards.
Yet after traveling the world, Darnton’s devotion to Westport is clear. He lived here during his formative years — ages 4 to 14 — and this town, he says, was “critical to my upbringing.”
It’s not just idle chatter. In his new memoir, Almost a Family, the veteran journalist devotes several chapters to Westport.
This Sunday (April 10, 2 p.m.) Darnton focuses on that long-ago yet still-vivid time, in a talk at the Westport Library.
John Darnton (Photo/Librado Romero)
He has not been a stranger. Darnton returns often, usually visiting his friends Mike and Roz Koskoff. He met them when he covered the Black Panther trials in New Haven. (Koskoff was a defense lawyer.)
Darnton knows Westport has changed. But — with a reporter’s keen eye, sharp memory and vivid words — he recalls his younger days with clarity and grace.
He was 11 months old when his father — Times correspondent Barney Darnton — was killed in World War II. His ship was bombed by friendly fire off the coast of New Guinea.
Darnton’s parents had met in Westport. Both were married to other people. The 2 couples rented a cottage near Compo Beach, and Darnton’s mother and father fell in love. Both couples divorced — a rarity in those days. The lovers then married.
They bought a house on Godfrey Road, off Bulkeley Avenue. After his father’s death Darnton’s mother moved to Washington, D.C., then Washington Square in New York. She too was a Times reporter — and the paper’s 1st “women’s editor.”
She and her late husband had wanted to raise Darnton and his older brother in “bucolic surroundings,” so when Darnton was 4 they moved back to Westport. She bought a 1785 house on Edge Hill Lane, off Wilton Road.
Five years later the Darnton’s moved to Roseville Road, at the Whitney Street intersection.
“I lost myself in the woods every day after school,” he recalls. “Kids had total freedom. We constructed lean-tos, and played with dogs. We wandered for hours on end.” More than anything, he says, “those woods made me love Westport.”
Next came a rented apartment on Saxon Lane, off Bridge Street. By then his mother had set up her own business: the Women’s National News Service. It started well, then hit a rough patch. “She poured money into it, so we moved to smaller and smaller houses,” Darnton says. “We were downwardly mobile.”
His mother then returned to Washington for work. Darnton and his brother stayed, to finish out the school year at Bedford Junior High. They moved in with a friend of their mother’s, on the top floor of a rundown house on Riverside Avenue.
Years later, Darnton had dinner at Viva Zapata’s. When he went upstairs to use the bathroom, he realized that was the last house he lived in here.
But wherever he lived, he felt a sense of security. “Westport was not a suburban town,” he explains. “It was much closer in spirit to New England than New York City.”
He calls the Westport of the late 1940s and early ’50s “a self-sustaining village.” There were onion farms, unheated bungalows and “polluting factories.” No one locked doors; some even kept the keys in their car ignitions.
His mother — often the only woman — waited for the train with “a few dozen” commuters. The station’s screen door slammed in the summer; in winter the radiator clanged.
There were no shopping centers. Small local groceries delivered food — and deliverymen prided themselves on their ability to get through, even in blizzards.
“Westport was a very open place,” Darnton says. “There was not the suburban anomie that Cheever wrote about. Lucy and Ricky (Ricardo) hadn’t moved here yet. It was long before the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and the Stepford Wives.”
The Fine Arts Theater was the center of Darnton and his friends’ lives. They enjoyed Saturday matinees — with cartoons and newsreels — for 25 cents. Next door, a novelty store sold whoopee cushions and fake wounded thumbs.
He remembers the drug store where Tiffany is now, with a real soda fountain; Bill’s Smoke Shop, a “shack” with penny candy; Klein’s for toys, and Western Auto (now 5 Guys), a “very exciting store” for boys.
The two “poles” of the town were the YMCA — with a pool table in the basement, where “slightly shady kids” smoked — and, across Main Street, the library. Darnton spent hours there, reading.
“All in all,” he says, “this was a great place to live.” There was one problem: as a single parent working in New York, his mother was an anomaly.
“She saw pairs of people filing into PTA meetings like Noah’s Ark,” he says. Some wives were suspicious of her. Some men made passes.
To top it off, he adds, “she took to the bottle.” When she moved to Washington she joined AA, and stopped drinking.
Though he calls Westport “Eden” for himself and his brother, Darnton notes that it was also “a difficult time.” He reiterates that Westport — with its woods, friends and freedom — “saved” him.
“I biked and hitchhiked all over town,” he says. “Every child needs freedom like that.
“This small town shaped my life. I felt rooted. I knew the store owners, and drew a sense of identity from my surroundings. It gave me a great identity.”
Whenever he returns to Westport, Darnton drives down his old streets — Edge Hill, Roseville, Bridge Street.
“Your past is who you were, and who you are,” he concludes. “My past in Westport really helped sculpt me.”
(Click here for the Times review of “Almost a Family.”)
Wow. What a great piece, Dan! When I was growing up in Eastern Europe during the Cold War , my family and I looked forward to his pieces, which we read in the International Herald Tribune. I had just read about his memoir and put a hold on it at the library, but I had no idea about his Westport connection. I look forward to hearing his talk there!
A return to ole Westport. Fascinating insight although I do remember at least four poor tables in the basement of the YMCA and no smoking in the 50’s. His comment that it was more like New England than NYC is spot on. Most commuters wanted to forget the Big Apple after working there all week and went to great strides to perpetuate the Connecticut rural atmosphere. Look forward to a good read.
I read Darnton’s stories in the NYT for years and knew about his dad’s death via friendly fire in WWII but was unaware of John’s deep Westport roots. His remembrance of Westport in the 50s matches mine perfectly. When we moved to town from Manhattan in the early 50s Westport was indeed still a small New England town that offered complete freedom to kids. The Dude and I and many others were very lucky to have grown up there then. The independence we enjoyed was a far cry from today’s helicoptered era.
Almost sounds like as if a polite version of Holden Caulfield’s boyhood in Westport
The independence that kids enjoyed I think was universal for many years during the postwar era. I lived in Queens and then moved to Westport in 1963 when I was almost 10, and I enjoyed the same types of freedom to move about and explore (although in Queens everything was pretty much in walking distance–I walked to school, the library, the movie theater, the bowling alley, the Oak Grove, etc). I wonder at roughly what point all of that changed.
I wonder too, Fred. By the time my kids arrived everything had changed. Nevertheless, we tried, and largely succeeded, in giving them a citified version of the freedom we enjoyed growing up, i.e. walking extensively, riding public trans here in NYC at an early age, etc. Unfortunately, they often didn’t have much company. So many parents were so frightened. In one instance, a young lady in the building next door was not allowed to take the elevator from her apartment to the lobby unescorted by a parent until she was in 6th grade — this is in a middle/upper middle class neighborhood with virtually no crime. . I’m not sure what transpired in the years between our generation’s childhoods and those of the ensuing generations, but one thing is certain: parents did their kids no favors by helicoptering them. This is a national issue, not a Westport issue — and I’d love to hear an explanation of why helicoptering exists, especially from parents who fit that profile. It’s a mystery to me. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to reading Darnton’s book. His mother and mine were among the very, very few women waiting for commuter trains on the Saugatuck platform in the 1950s.
Thanks for another interesting story Dan.
As I read it I was thinking what has changed and why kids don’t/can’t do the things we did when we were their age.
It wasn’t just Westport, but everywhere back in the ’50’s, 60’s and 70’s, kids were free to roam and explore with their friends until they finally came home for dinner and way past dark during the summer.
I think that all changed when the next wave of kids born in the ’80’s came through. Mainly due to upward mobility and sensational news stories/talk shows selling fear.
With the absence of small towns where everyone knew each other, extended families and a sense of community, people just didn’t know (or trust) their neighbors anymore.
And with that came the substitution for free play, i.e. Structured playdates, after school activities and helicopter parenting.
Also, we didn’t have organized sport activities at such an early age. If we wanted to play baseball, we would get the neighborhood kids together at someones backyard and start up a game. Now kids just don’t have the luxury of doing that since they have to get ready for their next activity.
We rode dirt bikes around the neighborhood and built go-karts to race and no one ever called the police that we were going down the street or weren’t wearing helmets, etc. We would shoot BB guns in the backyard at targets and in the summer, go to the beach or a lake by ourselves to swim all day without lifeguards.
Can you imagine how that would go over today?
Basically we made our own fun and survived!
Thanks, John — interesting insights, as always.
I was particularly intrigued by this line: “With the absence of small towns where everyone knew each other, extended families and a sense of community, people just didn’t know (or trust) their neighbors anymore.”
The question is: Is this true in Westport? Do we really not trust our neighbors — or do we just not want to know them? Growing up here, I had a great time. There were tons of kids; there was always something going on; we played at the end of the dead-end street, showed up at someone’s house for dinner, got fed, then went back out to play.
There are plenty of kids on that street. But, like most other places in Westport, no one plays outside. What’s keeping them from doing so? Do the neighbors not know each other — or trust each other? Is it related to the proliferation of individualized bus stops, where every kid waits, alone, in his parent’s car?
There used to be one giant bus stop on my street, where dozens of kids gathered. Now the bus goes down that road, picking up kids every dozen or so feet. They get off the bus the same way – alone.
One small, but sad, observation…
At one time, being part of a community meant sharing a common sense. It is easier to trust your neighbors and feel confident in your child’s safety under that circumstance than it is when you and your neighbors are bound together by nothing more than geography.
I was speaking in general about towns across America.
As far as Westport, people do trust one another and are very nice to each other. However, many today are recent to Westport with their young children ready to start preschool and the moms start up a friendship. Soon thereafter begins the ‘playdates’, perhaps more to do with the mother’s than the kids. Later in grade school the kids do choose their own friends, but there is still a tendency for parents to pick their child’s friends based on who they think is suitable.
Back in our day, we were friends with whomever we liked and had common interest with. All we had to do was ride our bike over to their house, no call necessary.
And I agree with you on the bus stop thing, even though my kids get curbside service two houses down from the previous stop, back then we all walked to the end of the street and waited for the bus together.
I receieved the following note from Michigan from a classmate of Dan’s (anonymous for now): “we may have come later (50s)but there are still some foundations of how i grew up in WP–we took to the woods-we knew every tree and every big rock and stream–we were gone for hours-came home for dinner-begrudgingly–never ready to surrender–the slamming of that screen door and clanging of the heater at the Saugatuck station-omg i know that well–yes to the Y, lib. ,the drug store, and Bills Smoke shop–ii was there–on my own, downtown–interesting no beach memories recounted-
that was my youth-but prob not X’s [a younger sibling; name deled]. i think much of that was gone by the 70s–this is a great article–“
Thanks, John and Dan, for your obervations. Makes sense, unfortunately. My first brush with this new way of life came in the 1980s when my wife and I, after living in the city for many years, gave CT a try. We quickly observed that there were no kids on the street and all the ballfields were empty unless a supervised game or practice was underway. We moved back two years later, before our kids arrived. Here, fortunately, most kids walk everywhere and/or take public trans with the necessary wariness but no fear. Improvization remains popular, although helicoptering and over-organization are present for the same reasons John mentioned. Dan, excuse my naivete, but why does the school bus drop off every dozen or so feet? Is the fear that great, or is the desire for parental control that pervasive and, after all these years, ingrained?
Tom, I think the bus stop curb service is more about convenience than anything else. Not so much for the car behind the bus though!
Since my kids are young I would have to wait with them if they weren’t picked up at the end of the driveway. Not a big deal if I had to, but since they are I’ll take it.
Great question, Tom (and unfortunately, I am not exaggerating — anyone who drives our roads has horror tales of being stuck behind a bus that actually does stop at one adjacent driveway after another).
I think it’s a combination of fear (probably safety — because kids haven’t walked or biked on their own, the fear is that something might happen if they did), and parental control (“it’s the only time we get to talk”; “I have to get her home quickly because she has ballet in 20 minutes”; “he might not come directly home, and then what?”).
I felt bad this afternoon, driving down Cross Highway. A bus stopped; a girl got out, and hopped in her mother’s car. It was parked at the foot of a not-very-long driveway (the car was pointing toward the house, so they weren’t heading out anywhere). The girl could not even walk to her own house!
And these are the kids who will be supporting us in our old age.
Jeez, Dan, you gotta be kidding! Re Compo: I think most of us lived at the beach during the summer. Beginning in 3rd or 4th grade I rode my bike to Compo from Saugatuck or walked. I was there all day. Never did Walt Melillo’s beach school but it got good reviews. My parents’ thought was that I walked/rode to Saugatuck School every day so what’s another mile to Compo? When I wasn’t paying attention while riding my bike and swerved toward oncoming traffic my parents would later get a phone call from one of their friends who had witnessed my swerving. I never heard of any walking/biking accidents involving kids on S. Compo. No kidnappings either. My lone accident occured when I was a sophomore at Staples and on the track team. I decided to run to Compo and back one night in March. Lost in my thoughts in the dark, I ran face first into a telephone pole just past Vani Court. Knocked myself cold. My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Cook, who lived near Vani Court, saw the collision. She revived me and sent me on my way. It was a small town back then.
I grew up in Pound Ridge NY & New Canaan, CT with the only rule “be home for dinner” when my mother used the triangle.
All of that stopped in 1969 when a young girl was abducted from a playground near her New Canaan home… from http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkillers/C/CONNECTICUT_GIRLS_slayer.php
On July 1, 1969, Connecticut police announced that they were seeking links between the recent deaths of two young girls. Mary Mount had been abducted from New Canaan on May 27, while Dawn Cave, 14, was reported missing three days later and 35 miles distant. Mount’s body was found on June 17, Cave’s remains discovered two weeks later, in a meadow northwest of New Haven. Autopsies revealed that both girls had been killed shortly after they were kidnapped , each dispatched by heavy blows from a blunt instrument. New York City police entered the case on July 9, when nine-year-old Wanda Waldonada was raped and strangled in Brooklyn. Witnesses recalled a white car near the scene of the crime, sparking memories in Connecticut, where another white vehicle — with New York license plates — had been reported from Bethany and New Canaan, its driver attempting to lure children away from their homes. The tantalizing “lead” took homicide investigators nowhere in their search for suspects. After twenty years, the murders in Connecticut and the “connected” crime in Brooklyn still remain unsolved, the killer(s) unidentified.
I grew up in Pound Ridge NY & New Canaan, CT with the only rule “be home for dinner” when my mother used the triangle.
All of that stopped in 1969 when a young girl was abducted from a playground 100 yards from her New Canaan home… http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkillers/C/CONNECTICUT_GIRLS_slayer.php
On July 1, 1969, Connecticut police announced that they were seeking links between the recent deaths of two young girls. Mary Mount had been abducted from New Canaan on May 27, while Dawn Cave, 14, was reported missing three days later and 35 miles distant. Mount’s body was found on June 17, Cave’s remains discovered two weeks later, in a meadow northwest of New Haven. Autopsies revealed that both girls had been killed shortly after they were kidnapped , each dispatched by heavy blows from a blunt instrument. New York City police entered the case on July 9, when nine-year-old Wanda Waldonada was raped and strangled in Brooklyn. Witnesses recalled a white car near the scene of the crime, sparking memories in Connecticut, where another white vehicle — with New York license plates — had been reported from Bethany and New Canaan, its driver attempting to lure children away from their homes. The tantalizing “lead” took homicide investigators nowhere in their search for suspects. After twenty years, the murders in Connecticut and the “connected” crime in Brooklyn still remain unsolved, the killer(s) unidentified.
I just looked up an article about Etan Patz because I really couldn’t remember precisely when that happened. In any event, it was 1979, and that generated an incredible amount of coverage. I think that tragedy combined with what John talked about in terms of “sensational news stories/talk shows” in the years after that tragic story probably helped bring about a change in parenting. Within years of the disappearance of Patz, there were pictures of missing children on the sides of milk cartons. Did the rate of kidnappings and disappearances suddenly rise during that time period? I have not seen any hard data but I think, at the very least, the perception among parents was that the world was a lot more dangerous than when they were growing up.
I agree with John Raho. It began in the 80’s. The wackos seemed to come out of the woodwork. A father poisoned his children on Halloween in Houston, three streets over from where my own son was trick-a-treating. A year later, a fellow law school classmate gave two young men hitchhiking a ride and not only did they steal his car but beat him up so bad, he lost an eye. The fear was instilled in a generation that now has children. In the 50’s & 60’s, there was no place in Westport you could not ride your bike, walk or hitchhike to or from. Now fathers tell me that they don’t feel safe having their sons play football at Doubleday Field alone. A changing culture based much on fear. Tragic in a way and also with deep ramifications for the future generations.
I was a child in Westport in the late ’50s and early ’60s. We had our cul-de-sac and we were the house with the basketball backboard and rim…two doors down was the house with a field big enough for softball. On a typical afternoon after school, we’d all just be outside and gravitate to one place or another. It hardly ever required any “planning” nor any adult supervision. We were probably ages 9 to 13. We liked being outside.
The term “play date” is new but the thing itself really isn’t. If kids who didn’t live within walking distance wanted to get together, parents had to confabulate and do the driving. It doesn’t sound all that different.
The oddity, to me at least, is that, despite the media play of the crime ridden America, violent crime has actually gone down in the past decades. I fear that fear is the only causation of the timid parents these days. I would bet that kids could bike free, hitchhike and wander aimlessly through Westport as before. The only thing that is stopping them is their parents. I think they would be far better off for it as well and would add to the fun enviroment of the town once again.
Amen
The violent crime rate has gone down since 1980, but it is still up from the 1960 level. Maybe mom and dad aren’t so off base on this one.
Not in Westport. Crime has not risen. Let the kids fly.
First let me say that John’s book is fantastic. If you grew up in Westport you will love it for sure. I couldn’t put it down and, even though John was on of my beast friends growing up and had remained friends all these years, he revealed so much in the book that I hadn’t known about him and his family that it gave me a whole new perspective of him.
As I have said, John was one of my best friends from kindergarten at Bedford El through the 7th grade at Bedford Jr High. My brother Craig and I and my father drove John down to Washington to rejoin his mother at the end of that that school year.
I remember an incident in about the fifth grade when there was a kid that used to pick on Craig and me and John had an idea on how to cure the bully. He invited the kid over to his house to play.As they were playing in the backyard, he told the bully that he had a neat setup in the little shack behind his house on Roseville Road he wanted to show him. There was a bed frame with springs and some rope. He coxed the bully to lie on the bed and let John tie him up. Then the rest of us jumped out into the room and without touching the bully convinced him that his bullying days were over. After that he was actually friendly to us.
Many times John came over to our house after school on Friday to spend the night. He used to wear his PJs under his clothes to school instead of carrying a suitcase. I also remember that John had a skunk in his bedroom at his home on Saxon Lane and we all thought that was really cool.
As for Westport in the 40s and 50s, it was a great place to grow up. In first grade we would hitch a ride on the Ferris Dairy milk truck from our house on Bayberry Lane between Cross Highway and the Easton Road to Paul Grohe’s down on Cross Highway. Boy that wouldn’t happen today.When we were just 11 years old, Craig and I would hitch hike to Compo Beach. Many people in town knew us and we always got rides right away. Starting in kindergarten, Craig and I would have to walk from or house (across from what is now Lockwood Circle) to the bus stop. Craig walked to Cross Highway to catch his bus; because, for the first three grades he went to Greens Farms, while I walked down the hill to the Easton Road to catch my bus, as I went to Bedford El.
In the early 50s a housing boom started in Westport for all the WWII vets and Lockwood Circle was built. Then there were a lot of kids in the neighborhood and in the summers we all played outside either” kick the can”, ” hide and go seek” or “ring a levio” (SP?) and built forts in the woods.
When my wife and I got ready to move to the suburbs in 1977 we went to Rowayton; because, Rowayton reminded me what Westport was like in the 50s.
Interesting about Viva Zapata being a private residence in old days. Did that place used to be a speakeasy during the 20s?
Viva Zapata was a private residence until 1969 when it was rented to Duke the owner of Viva back then.
My father owned it then. I don’t know what year he bought it.
After renting it for many years, it was sold to the owner.
Nope, no speakeasy. It was a private residence until the late 60s/early 70s. Nick, several families lived there during the 50s and 60s when I was growing up nearby. Best way to have your question answered is to ask it on the Exit 17 Facebook page. Many of the families who lived in Saugatuck during the 40s-60s were related and someone on Exit 17 will know who lived in that house and its history. My guess is that Linda Valiante Palmieri or Terry Santella Anzalone will respond to your question and have the answer. They know everything there is to know about the place Linda calls “Our Old Saugatuck”.
Wonderful book, John… I am, perhaps obviously, your childhood friend Hank’s older brother. Our family rented three different houses there from 1952-1955; one on Saxon Lane was the second (1954). I remember it chiefly as the place I parked my wonderful black 1947 Mercury, which I’d bought for $400 with my very own money, saved from after school and weekend jobs at the Clam Box and Food Fair. On Halloween I and my buddies drove it up to Vista, got drunk as usual, and totalled it on the way home. Dad was not amused. No one was hurt! There but for the grace of God, to pick a phrase…
Surprised no one’s written about Vista. Or teenage drinking in general during those years. The two subjects were often one and the same. Vista was vaguely north and east of New Canaan, and is so insignificant I can’t even find it named on a Google map. Point was, it was over the state line–just–in New York. And that meant the drinking age was 18 and the bars were open till 4 in the morning. And specifically THAT meant that in Vista no one checked your ID. Need I say more.. in later years I guess kids went to Port Chester, or smoked dope. But Vista offered a different challenge–winding two lane blacktop and a lot of late night traffic. More than one carload didn’t make it home. But fortunately our team did, minus the car. Fifty-seven years ago.
Aaaahhh Vista – thanks for the memories. I recall drinking something we referred to as “Liquid Shit”. and coming back via Bayberry Lane in Vince DePierros old blue Plymouth at 90MPH. We lived.
Then there were the trips to MAXLS in Portchester, the devastation of a used car parking lot and subsequent release by a WESTPORT judge with the caveat that “boys will be boys” …thought the poor NY used car lot owner was gonna go beserk!
Great site John – thanks for turning me on to it. But don’t get me started on Westport War Stories……I have more than a few! :):)