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.
I know!!! I know!!! Don’t shoot the messenger!!!
Such gratitude to a bygone town father. He must be smiling down warmly on the “Gold’s Gym on the Saugatuck” that used his financial legacy to spawn additional highway chaos at the intersection of Wilton Rd. and the Merritt. Old Westporters knew him as “Kenny.” “Nouveaux” Westporters (and their offspring) remember him (with evident contempt) as “Grub.” Westporters have evolved upward and onward in a never ascending rite of remembrance toward those who tried to pass on what they were able to save and give to late arriving strangers.
The Connecticut Thruway ,started in 1955, was a godsend, because the Post Road traffic had become nearly unbearable, with trucks rumbling through day and night as the only direct route between New York and Boston. The town had a dramatic transformation! I remember Westport fondly before Connecticut Thruway opened. It was that small town atmosphere that will never come back! It’s gone forever except in the memory of those who lived in town before 1956-57.
I remember walking by Kenny’s on my way to Saugatuck Elementary. I would go out the back end of Narrow Rocks Road. The scary part was walking under the railroad tracks. It was so noisy if you were under it when a train went overhead.
After Kenny’s moved to the Old Mill we would get a ride on Halloween and get a free Tabletalk Apple Pie.
Kenny’s was dark and scary and we were never quite sure about him. 12 year old girls. But we loved the I-95 before it opened. I can’t remember how, but we got on it and drove very fast…like 60 mph with our old cars. In those days you could get to the music clubs in mid town Manhattan in 45 minutes on the Merritt.
I was pretty young when the thruway was being built,but I remember a road,off Greens Farms rd,to the left,that came back to intersect with greens farms. It was just before where the thruway bridge was built,opposite Hillspoint road. I remember my mother often took that tiny loop of a road on our way to Compo beach.
Jalna, Maybe there was a section of the turnpike that wasn’t finished yet and you were diverted? I don’t remember that.
I remember in 1958, after the Connecticut Thruway opened, there was a fatal crash at a Southport exit and supposedly it was the first fatality on the highway, although it was on the exit so it might not have technically counted as “ on the highway.” Does anyone remember that? I remember mentioning once I met the guy, so he was a local.