We drove into Sudbury in the late morning, and Tom immediately started recognizing things: Cricket Pond, his elementary school, the names of roads, the Friendly's restaurant where his family used to eat. We drove through town to his old street: Blueberry Hill Lane. The house his family lived in looks nearly the same - only the trees and vegetation have grown larger. Here are a few shots (& Tom's reaction to being back here for the first time in nearly 20 years):
Then, we walked up his street (which he remembered as being a giant hill; it's a hill, but far slighter than in his memory) toward the woods & trails behind their neighborhood. He and his brothers had spent countless hours exploring, fishing, and who knows what else back here, and the area was largely unchanged. It was a cool experience for him to see all of this as an adult so many years later, and I enjoyed watching his excitement. This town and neighborhood were a little boy's dream - great place to have a childhood!!
After we wandered through the woods for a while, fending off hoards of mosquitoes, we headed back into town for some lunch at Sudbury Pizza and looked around a bit more at the town. It's absolutely a quintessential New England town, and in fact, it was in Tom's college history textbook as an example of an authentic colonial town! Sudbury was founded in 1639 - only about 30 years after Jamestown, the first successful colonial settlement, and well over a century before the U.S. became a country in its own right. Photos below: Tom's elementary school, Cricket Pond, a historic house, and the town center.
After spending the morning and afternoon in Sudbury, we headed south toward Westport, CT, our next destination. Since we skipped Boston, things were a bit up in the air for a couple of days, and we weren't always sure where we were going to go and when. We'd booked a hotel for the night in Waterbury, which turned out to be right on the way. We had a lazy few hours watching the hotel TV and then went out for dinner at Bertucci's - a great Italian restaurant that Tom remembered hating as a child. We liked it so much that even though we ate at another location the night before, we didn't hesitate to eat there again!
The next morning, we headed down to Westport for a 4th of July cookout at Tom's grandparents' house. Many of his aunts, uncles, and cousins came as well. It was nice to see his extended family, and we stayed the night with his grandparents. They are unfortunately not doing as well as they've been in the past, so we tried to help out by taking his grandmother to the grocery store and running a few other errands. We enjoyed the time talking with them after the rest of the family had left, too. I wish we'd taken some pictures at the cookout, but we forgot... in lieu of current photos, here's a shot of his wonderful grandparents at our wedding (and I can't add this without mentioning that they won the anniversary dance by being married for the longest of any couple there!):
We'd gotten used to visiting the Griffiths regularly while we were living in New York, but now that we're relocating to NC, we're sad that we might not be able to see them as much. Still, we had to keep to our schedule, so we said our goodbyes and headed to NYC on the afternoon of the 4th.
Up next: spending a few days in our old stomping grounds!
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