116 Kenney Street

According to Bessie Gwillim Law's recollections, she, Harry Nathan Law, and Reed Gwillim Law moved from a duplex house into the single-family house at 116 Kenney St., Forestville, CT in 1925. Emma Augusta Moore Gwillim was part of the household at that time, from about 1918 until her death in 1943.

Reed Gwillim Law Jr. was a frequent visitor there and subsequently a full-time resident. (I haven't been able to pin down the dates, but the visits probably began in 1947 and the residency continued at least through the 1951-52 school year and perhaps starting earlier.)

This house faced south near the crest of a hill. It had a long back yard that ran down to the next street, and a detached garage to the right. In the yard there were many bushes including blueberries, and an apple tree. Along the front facade was a roofed porch with the left half screened in. The front door was at the right end of the porch. It opened on a vestibule from which stairs ran directly up to the second floor, the living room was to the left, the kitchen was straight back, and other doors led to a bathroom and the cellar stairs. There was a pantry off the kitchen, and the dining room completed the first floor. The division between the living and dining rooms could be described as a triptych: a rectangular hole with columns that defined parallel holes on each side.

The house was heated with coal, and the cellar was devoted to that apparatus.

The second story had a large bathroom at the top of the stairs with a claw-foot bathtub and a parabolic electric heater that required caution to avoid shock or burn. I don't remember whether there were two or three bedrooms. I slept in the bedroom above the living room. I often woke up to birdsong.

Finally, there was a walk-up attic where Harry stored his collection of National Geographic Magazines.

I could climb in the garage and sit in its rafters. There was something like a shed attached to the back of it, and I could enter it directly from the rafters, and get out and jump down to the yard.

On school days I would walk to school and home. I headed east on Kenney, turned right on Forest, and left on Pine. The corner of Forest and Pine was an open field with a sign advertising Purina Chow. There was a convenience store at Central St. just before the school grounds. Rarely I spent my spare change there on a little wax bottle filled with sugary fluid.

In another ritual, out of school days, Bessie and I would walk down Kenney to Central, buy a popsicle at a shop in a home, and further down to East Main St., where we would buy a comic book at a newsstand.

I had many playmates in the neighborhood. We played a lot outdoors: tag, hide and seek, red light green light. Most of the yards we played in were Kenney Street addresses. I remember playing Parcheesi on a friend's front porch. Sometimes we would play indoors, sharing toys. The Herrens family bought the first television set, and the kids would gather regularly to watch "Howdy Doody."