The Flickr 1960Snewengland Image Generatr

Film was expensive, so as a kid I always tried to get the most out of each roll even if that meant attempting just one more shot after the numbers stopped showing in the little red window in back of the camera. Sometimes it worked and other times, not so well.

As it turns out, the abandoned building which I clearly remembered from the 1970s, but have no photos of, was once Rocco's Apizza and Italian restaurant serving the Woodmont beachside community for decades.

If your browser supports Flickr Notes, I've added a number of them to this photo of downtown Woodmont from the late 1960s.

The camera was loaded up with a 126 film cartridge of Kodak's Verichrome Pan. Back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, there was a large Russian community in Woodmont. Most lived on Beach Avenue, Mont Street, Hawley Avenue and Village Road. My parents were friends with all of them.

Once a beach resort for tourists from the 1870 through the 1950s, the shoreline was still lined with dozens of 19th century beach cottages. Some were full-time residences and others were summer houses for people from New Haven and even as far away as New York City.

Very few of these cottages still exist as most of them have been replaced with modern houses and McMansions.

If your browser supports Flickr Notes, I've added a number of them explaining what used to be there during my childhood in the 1960s and later teen years in the 1970s.

My Dad took this Kodachrome slide using his 1950s Kodak Retina 35mm camera. It's just amazing how much gentrification took place in this neighborhood starting the late 1980s and going forward.

My Dad probably handed his Kodak Retina camera to a friend, who took this photo. It couldn't have been me, since I was only two years old! As usual, Mom's wearing a little headband and sporting her ubiquitous hair bun.

In all honestly, this was the LAST thing I expected to find on eBay! We received one of these in the mail when I was 9 years old, but my parents threw it out since they had no desire to join. Membership was expensive at about $1,000 dollars per season in 1968 money.

In 1967, the Surf Club West was built across Merwin Avenue from our house on Rock Street. The modernist architecture was designed by the firm of Harold Roth and Edward Saad.

Previously, a number of somewhat decrepit old 19th century beach cottages occupied the site.

The photo above from the brochure shows the beachside view of the Surf Club's cabanas and dressing rooms on the 1st floor with a staircase leading up to the 2nd floor.

They had really nice pools inside, which my friends and I occasionally sneaked into. (and within 15 minutes were summarily shown the exit by lifeguards). The buildings were all made of aromatic cedar wood which had a very pleasant smell on hot summer days.

My Dad took the Kodachrome slide below in 1974. He also sneaked in to get the shot. Go Dad!

I've placed some Flickr Notes on the image with more details than the title allows. Shot in our neighbor's front yard at the corner of Rock Street and Merwin Avenue. This was the ONLY year where you could see the beach in the background. In 1965, all the old 19th century cottages were torn down. This became the site of the brand new Surf Club West for the start of the summer 1967 season.

My dad was really great at capturing moments like this using his 1950s Kodak Retina 35mm camera loaded up with Kodachrome slide film. Sure wish I still had that curly blonde hair!

One of the first photos I took with the Kodak Instamatic 104 camera which Santa kindly left under the Christmas tree a week earlier. It came in the standard yellow box lined with styrofoam and included one cartridge of 126 Kodachrome slide film and precisely one flashcube.

How many stores do YOU remember?
This is just north of the Wilbur Cross Parkway. (also known as the Merritt Parkway). The shopping center still exists, but doesn't look anything like this mid century view of America's early shopping plazas.

This momentary insight into single-digit life was taken by my dad using a Kodak Instamatic 104 camera loaded up a 126 cartridge of Kodachrome slide film.

Unfortunately all I had was a memory, but no photographic proof... until NOW!

Going through scans of my dad's Kodachrome slides, I found this one of our beach. It's a deep crop of a small part of the slide image.

The old abandoned Sauter Hotel hovers over the numerous cottages which used to line the shore.

And there it is in all its wooden glory... the SNACK SHACK that until an hour ago was just a memory! I've placed a Flickr Note around it. It's on the right, standing in the sand. On its side, you can make out a painted Pepsi bottle cap and a bottle of Pepsi.

There's absolutely no trace today that it ever existed. I believe it was torn down sometime in the late 1960s.

This peek into the past was taken with a Kodak 104 Instamatic loaded up with a plastic cartridge of 126 square format Kodachrome slide film. To make it all work, a Sylvania Flashcube burned one of its four internal coiled wires for the 1/25th of a second it took the film's emulsion to permanently capture this image.

A scan of one of my dad's Kodachrome slides. He took hundreds of slides documenting everyday life from the 1950s to the early 2000s.

There used to be a lot of villages which simulated the hardships of daily Pilgrim life in Connecticut. My parents loved to watch lye and fat being boiled into soap, sheep being sheered, bread being baked, the milking of cows, the chopping down of overgrowth, the planting of corn (snore!), the feeding of pigs.

Naturally, my sister and I were always dragged along. I'm not sure about her, but I found these places ultimately boring. All I wanted to do was to be back home biking and hanging out with my friends. After all, I was a kid of the 1960s, not the 1760s!

Over the decades, most of these Pilgrim Villages have been turned into Walmart parking lots as well as large suburban developments. Oh, well.

We were just children then, but felt so grown up. It was a gray day across the street from Long Island Sound. The kind of day where rain drops could start at any moment. Some of the cars parked on Merwin Avenue were quite old, even for the era when this fleeting moment in time was captured. Film is a form of magic which allows you to actually relive moments from much earlier in your life.

In fact, only we old-timers still call it "The Turnpike". All signs with that name have long been removed and today it's just a bland I-95.
For reasons unknown to me, collectors of these kinds of highway signs call them "Trailblazers", which probably refers to an even earlier era before the Federal Highway System was begun in the mid 1950s.