I am spending my week on a business trip to a tiny seaside village on the Connecticut coast that is mainly deserted except for seagulls and big boats. Everything is colored blue, white and green.
I am in New London/Groton, where my client's main R&D facility is. The client's facilities are built out on landfills that jut into the Long Island Sound surrounded by breakwaters, seagulls, and billowing berms of sea grasses, sedum, and black-eyed susans. Every office has a startling view of the blue water and white sailboats, blue sky and big white clouds. It is silent. People in the building move at a zen-like pace. The slow pace is imposed because no-one can move around the complex with any real degree of freedom. There is a slow-moving shuttle bus from the entry way to the main building, there are escorts from the doors to the elevators, all the office doors lock behind you, communication devices don't work well, there is no Internet access for visitors.
The facility interrupts a line of white sand beaches and breakwaters that stretch from New London out to the sound. Along the beach front are several private marinas, an eatery called Fred's Shanty (excellent grilled cheese sandwiches on picnic benches built out over a rocky section of the sea), a white lighthouse, some very fancy homes with white picket fences and dark green gardens, some very ramshackled old seaside homes built dizzingly out over the water and worthy of a Popeye movie, and my accomodations, the Lighthouse Inn.
The Lighthouse Inn faces the ocean and is the former private residence of the Guthrie family. The beach in front of it is called Guthrie Beach. It is a rambling old stucco building, a designated Historic Inn of America. It is three stories tall.
My room is on the top floor under the eaves and runs the length of one whole side of the house. My ceiling is slanted. My bed is hard and flat and shoved in a corner, away from the bay window. It is covered with a white, crocheted bedspread. The furniture is old seaside Victorian. My small wooden chest of drawers is shoved in the opposite corner from my bed. There is a large sagging Victorian backed sofa covered in some kind of pink watered silk with a flower motif, and a small table and two wing chairs with thin, salmon-colored upholstery in the window. I can see the white sail boats wobbling out on the blue Sound under the white clouds. This morning I was awoken by seagulls. Very old dark green trees lean out over the large green lawn, complete with white gazebo and rose garden. There are little white party lights threaded up through the trees and paper lanterns on the railings of the porches.
The ground floor is dark wood, gold gilt fabric coverings, and deep red carpeting. The entryway is vaguely Moorish -- a large iron lantern illuminating watery, fern-covered grottos over cobblestones and wood, all suffused with slightly unbalanced, overly loud piano music. 
An elaborate mahogany grand staircase leaves the ground floor for the second floor (not the third). It is said a bride fell down the staircase and now haunts the third floor -- my floor -- looking perpetually out to sea. The windows are all slightly salt stained. Water marks are on the old-fashioned wallpaper. The floor boards are loud and uneven. There is Internet access, they say, but no cords with which to test it. The sockets in the wall will charge your blackberry but not if the flickering lights are on. Lemony Snicket could have been filmed here. A down-at-the-heels Katharine Hepburn would fit right in.
The commute from our accomodations takes us 5 minutes down the beach, past the lighthouse, past the breakwaters, past Fred's Shanty, to the large industrial complex surround by sea grass and black-eyed susans. The complex has a private helipad for executives who travel here from headquarters in the shadow of the Chrysler Building in New York. The helipad is painted with our client's bright blue logo, visible from almost everywhere.
This morning on our commute down the sea we saw a nuclear submarine entering 
the estuary from the Sound. The whole crew was on deck facing out towards the white beaches, miniscule against the bulk of the ship. It was flat black and absorbed all light. It passed silently and ominously, followed by a tug and a Coast Guard Cutter. It took a very long before it was out of sight.
the estuary from the Sound. The whole crew was on deck facing out towards the white beaches, miniscule against the bulk of the ship. It was flat black and absorbed all light. It passed silently and ominously, followed by a tug and a Coast Guard Cutter. It took a very long before it was out of sight.When we arrived at the complex, people whispered in excited tones -- did you see the sub? Did you see it?! Apparently they only come in once a month or so, and when they do, all the employees rush to the many windows and press their faces against the glass to watch.
After our meetings, we drove to a revolutionary fort that sits in the shadows of the complex -- Fort Trumbull. We had asked about it inside the complex and people were vague -- oh yeah, it's historic or something. It is in fact a revolutionary era star fort that housed the group during WWII that worked on submarine sonar, invented the sub to sea antenna, and did research on microwaves. The main defense work on sonar was done in a non-descript brick building called Building 28. The fort is built on breakwaters out into the water with expanses of grass running down from the defenses to the sea. We walked all around the fort and looked back at the complex, the helipad and the lighthouse. We looked out to sea.And then another submarine came in the river! Two in one day! We stood way out on the end of a deserted pier and watched the sub move up the river -- the epitome of evil and aggression. A machine of war. Silent, black, almost invisible against the industrial buildings on the opposite shore. Creepy. We might never have noticed it if the big orange tug wasn't following. Once we noticed it, we could not turn our eyes away. I told my colleage the story from Das Boot of the German WWII sub slipping into Vigo in northern Spain un-noticed by the Allies including the Spanish, to reprovision. I had always thought that seemed unlikely (a sub is so big!) -- watching the silent, enormous, invisible boat go by now, I began to understand how it could happen.
Again, the crew was miniscule against the sub's tower, standing with hands behind their backs and staring out to the complex, Fort Trumbull, Building 28, and our pier. It passed swiftly and silently past the GE submarine building facility, past the enormous, orange Coast Guard station, under the bridge that carries I-95 towards Rhode Island, and up the river to the US submarine base. It took a half an hour to make the trip. We stood silently the whole time, our hair blowing in the white and blue breeze.
Again, the crew was miniscule against the sub's tower, standing with hands behind their backs and staring out to the complex, Fort Trumbull, Building 28, and our pier. It passed swiftly and silently past the GE submarine building facility, past the enormous, orange Coast Guard station, under the bridge that carries I-95 towards Rhode Island, and up the river to the US submarine base. It took a half an hour to make the trip. We stood silently the whole time, our hair blowing in the white and blue breeze.
After the submarine went by we turned around just in time to see a helicopter land at the complex and pick up an executive. We couldn't believe our good luck. Two submarines and the company helicopter in one day!
Then we hopped back in the car and drove over the giant bridge to the Groton side to another revolutionary fort, Fort Griswold. This was high on the bluffs and looked down on Fort Trumbull and the complex. It is a huge earthen work structure, now overgrown with seagrasses, somewhat reminiscent of Old Sarum on the Salisbury plain in England. There is an underground passageway down the bluff from the earthenworks to a stone fort with cannons facing out over the river to the narrow cobbled streets of old New London and Fort Trumbull.In 1781, Benedict Arnold sailed up the river right where the nuclear subs had gone and massacred a whole contigent of Revolutionary Americans at Fort Griswold in what came to be known as the Massacre of Groton Heights. He killed, among many others, Captain Ledyard, who is buried right up on top of the earthenworks in the bright blue breeze.
We loved Fort Griswold. It smelled of sweet sea grasses that waved in the breeze and the underground stone passage and rock supports and outcoppings were cool and soothing to touch. We might go back tomorrow morning.
Other notable facts about this town are that Nathan Hale went to school here -- his little red schoolhouse is right in the center of a complicated three way intersection in the narrow old streets in the old part of town. Also, Eugene O'Neill lived here. His white house is in the middle of a big green lawn on the sea road passed the complex on the way to the lighthouse.
Labels: Fort Griswold, Fort Trumbull, Lighthouse Inn, New London
posted by Anonymous @ 9:34 PM
0 comments
