The first thing to say is that the River has been cleaned up for a long, long time. Starting in 1959, and completed 10 years later, Westport built a city sewage system. The river is now safe for all recreational boating and swimming. The Saugatuck Racing Club has a large clubhouse on the river, and we saw several of their crews training on the river.
The land fill next to Jessup Green was completed and closed in 1957. The band shell was built on the newly created land, and a park around it.
Another landfill project created Parker Harding square, behind the shops on the river side of Main St. It provides much needed parking. I see houses and yards along Imperial Ave. where there had only been salt marshes; there must have been landfill at work there, too.
Gone is the garbage, gone is the smell.

That is the good news.

The bad news is that Saugatuck, as the close-knit neighborhood it once was, is gone. In 1957, construction of the Connecticut Turnpike cut a wide swath through Saugatuck, which lost its center with St. Anthony's Hall and park. The festival was moved to a nearby ball field.
St. Anthony's festival has now been replaced by a more secular Italian Festival.

Saugatuck has become part of Westport's new smokeless commerce. Corporate headquarters, offices, and agencies have moved out from New York into new, massive office building climbing the hills above the Post Road.

The RR station is undergoing renovation, complete with a new tunnel under the tracks. It will be completed later this year. Parking is $12 a day.
The line of shops that faced the station look pretty much the same today. Only the names (and the tenants) have been changed.

We walked down Franklin St. The 4 family apartment building that my sister lived in as a bride is still there. #1 Franklin St., where our small cottage was located is now the parking lot to an office building that sits where Capriola's main house had been.

Saugatuck School was closed at the end of the school year in 1983 and the building was turned into affordable housing for seniors, known as "The Saugatuck" (any relation to "The Donald"?) The school lines were redrawn after that closing and the children of Saugatuck and west of the river now go to a "new" Saugatuck School in the former Staples "new" building.

We returned to my old home in Imperial Park (now renamed Riverview Rd). The present owner is not a stranger as we have talked over the years, and I have visited her on previous trips. She welcomed us in to see her newest project, a modern Great Room cut into the hill off the old kitchen. It is beautiful, and architected to match the rest of the house perfectly. My father would have been proud to see what she has done to his beloved house. She is a woman who can afford to do it right.

And then, sitting on the terrace of this beautiful house, we talked with a neighbor who works in a drug counseling program for Westport youth. She told us that the drug problem is huge. "Such beautiful, beautiful young girls, wasting themselves on this poison". It could be said that the beautiful homes with their well trimmed lawns hide the problem - "it couldn't happen here". It could be said that tenticles of drug trade reach into every neighborhood, not just affluent Westport, and it could be said that I am closing my eyes to the possibility of it being an equally bad problem in Pittsburgh.