This selection of Mom’s prose from 40 years ago captures memories of the Quinnipiac River, located just down the hill from her childhood home in New Haven, Connecticut.

Here’s a photo of her dad, Frank Cassidy from around that time, heading home on Chatham Street after one of his brisk walks. That’s the Quinnipiac in the background.

The river has had good years and bad. My memories of it are from the 1960s, when it was befouled by industrial waste. Thankfully, legislation in Connecticut brought about vast improvement to the water quality. Even the oyster beds are back!

Many thanks to Bobby James, whom I met on the “Fair Haven History” Facebook group, for his permission to use these two gorgeous photos he took recently of the Quinnipiac River.

Here are Mom’s thoughts from four decades ago:

By the River

Days of my Fair Haven childhood were rich with walks along the river. I was afraid to swim there but it drew me into admiration most on mornings when the sun woke it to glory at the bottom of our hill. Once it held Yale rowing shells and oyster boats; could it have been there on the Quinnipiac that my father, the policeman who didn’t swim, once patrolled the waters with his partner.

I believe I had nearly drowned in it, a good reason for respecting its power. I seemed to remember timidly descending the deep stone steps that dropped into the water, and how the tide only rose after that, looking for me.

The quaint old houses I would pass on my way to Warner’s Hardware Store below the bridge would be restored years later, the whole area growing into a good time again. Coming to visit I would go with my mother and sister over the bridge to a little restaurant that had once been a meat market.

Irene would wait on us and cook and return to the table to talk if she had time. Pictures of old Fair Haven lined the walls; I wanted my father to come and see them. He was a storyteller at heart and could surely embellish the photos. Perhaps he might have even been in one of them, his bright smile only a touch beyond the camera’s eye.

~ Joan Vayo January 31, 1982

Sadly, Grandpa passed away about ten weeks later. Here’s a picture of him with Grandma a few years earlier:

Four years later, Mom mentioned the river again, this time in a poem.

grace before meals

nothing moves this morning
below the hill, street of my mother’s house
but seagulls
and the solitary milkman

the river shines

and babies sleep deeper than bulbs
beneath the snow

somehow
to a white tree by the river
an old robin returns

the milkman lifts his head to listen

~ joan vayo March 5, 1986

“By the River” © 1982 Joan Vayo. All rights reserved.
“grace before meals” © 1986 Joan Vayo. All rights reserved.

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