They look the same, the bank, the Y, they look the same but it is only a facade.
The Bank is no longer the Westport Bank and Trust, it is now the Hudson United Bank. Hudson! What does Hudson have to do with Westport? I bristle at the intrusion.
The Y is still the Y although my Westport spies say there are rumbles that the organization may move to Camp Mahackino, which the Y owns. Presently, the old firehouse is used for all the exercise equipment.
The firemen moved up the Post Road years ago, to a splendid, modern, large facility, easy in and easy out.
And what will become of the Y building? I think it should become the town hall (which moved from the old stone building next to the movie theater, to take over all of Bedford Elementary). It would make a very quaint town hall. And centrally located.
The Fine Arts Theater is a Restoration Hardware. I am shocked into speechlessness.
The Famous Artists has come and gone, and in its place, Save the Children.
We went back to the cemetery, to leave pebbles on my family's stone, knock on the metal tombstones, say hello to Julia. I checked our plot, it is still there. But we may not keep it. It makes more and more sense to lay our bones in Pittsburgh's Homewood cemetery, where we can get twice the space for half the value of our Westport plot. It would have been a very expensive practical joke anyway.
I took the Y picture with my back pressed against the plywood erected around the old Colgan's Drug Store. I remember Colgan's Drug Store, I remember Joe Colgan, who was a croney of George's. Now it is being remodeled into a Tiffany's store.
And the old Library is a Starbucks, and Shilepsky's a sandwich shop. Kleins is now a Banana Republic. And so it goes, store after store. Out with the family proprietorship, in with the chain.
We walked around town, shaking our heads in disbelief. There is very little left of Jessup Green, where, in 1944, I danced in the mist of the DDT sprayers. It has been gobbled up by the new library, the police station and parking, more parking.
We returned to Larry's old street, to see his old home, which is still standing! The MO in Westport, it seems, is to buy an old house, knock it down and build a McMansion on the land. But Larry points out his yard was so small, zoning would not allow a larger house to be built on it.
We talked to a neighbor, who was curious about our curiosity.
We told him how George and Charlotte had been offered the house for $4000 in 1940, but decided to continue to rent because Charlotte did not want to own a house that backed up to a cemetery! The neighbor told us that the house was sold last year for $395,000. An almost 100 fold increase in - well, it has been 60 years.