A lot of people spent a lot of time stuck in yesterday’s fireworks traffic, heading to and from Compo Beach.
Even at non-holiday times, the light at the Compo Road South/Greens Farms Road/Bridge Street intersection can be long. There’s plenty of opportunity to look around.
What we see is the I-95 overpass. It seems like it — and Greens Farms Road — have always been there.
But for decades before the “turnpike” construction in the 1950s, the road came in at a different angle.
There, on the southwest corner, sat Ken Montgomery’s grocery store.
When the state of Connecticut planned the new route, his building was in the way.
He tried to relocate to a lot he owned on Bridge Street, across from what was then Saugatuck Elementary School (now The Saugatuck co-op housing), yet was rebuffed.
So one day in the mid-1950s, Ken’s store was demolished.
(Westport Town Crier photo courtesy of Mary Palmieri Gai)
Ken hoped to return with a new store in the same vicinity, once the highway was completed. In the meantime, he went to work at his mother’s (similar) grocery store, not far away by Old Mill Beach.
He never returned.
Instead, he took over from his mother. For many years, he operated “Ken’s” — aka “Grub’s” (IYKYK).
Today, it’s Old Mill Grocery & Deli by Romanacci.
And there is not a trace of Ken’s original store — or the original Greens Farms Road — underneath the I-95 overpass.
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Ahhhhh, Grubs. 👍
When he passed on he donated his properties,store and house in Old Mill to the YMCA enabling the organization to plan its expansion. An avid fisherman,,
he left funds for an annual fishing contest (The Kenneth J Montgomery Memorial Annual Prize) to be administered by the Y.